Winners & Losers
This week’s biggest Winners & Losers
Who’s up and who’s down this week?
City & State
A long-anticipated return to the U.S. Senate. An abrupt resignation by a major university president. Woodergate. Statewide school threats that turned out to be hoaxes. There were plenty of storylines driving the news in Pennsylvania this week, from worries about Philadelphia’s water supply to Pittsburgh’s push to challenge tax-exempt properties.
Keep reading for more of this week’s Winners & Losers!
Dennis Biondo -
Dennis Biondo, the director of Kane Community Living Centers in Allegheny County, was honored by Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald this week with the 2022 Frank J. Lucchino Distinguished Service Award, which goes to a county employee who exceeds expectations and makes a “significant impact” on the county. Fitzgerald had high praise for Biondo, who has served in county government for almost 45 years, saying: “In baseball, we’d call Dennis our utility player because he is used in so many different ways and is an extremely valuable asset with rare skills.”
John Fetterman -
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman is expected to return to the chamber next month, according to the Associated Press. The freshman Democrat will return the week of April 17, a source close to him says, two months after Fetterman began inpatient treatment for clinical depression. His return to the Senate is good news for Democrats, who have struggled to garner the votes needed to secure nominations in the closely divided chamber.
Elizabeth Fiedler -
This isn’t the first year Democratic state Rep. Elizabeth Fielder introduced legislation requiring medical professionals to receive explicit consent from patients before performing pelvic or rectal exams while they’re unconscious, but this week does mark the first time the bill has been advanced out of committee. It has a long way to go before it becomes law, but Fiedler still notched a significant win this week.
Jason Wingard -
The newest question in Philly: Who will lead the Owls? Temple President Jason Wingard’s tumultuous tenure at the university came to an end this week as he announced his resignation. Wingard, who had led Temple since July 2021, leaves the role as the faculty union prepared to hold a vote of no confidence following a graduate student strike, a drop in enrollment and the recent murder of a campus police officer.
Rasheen Crews -
A Philadelphia political consultant pleaded guilty this week to forging hundreds of signatures on nomination petitions for Democratic candidates he hoped to get on the 2019 primary ballot. Rasheen Crews, a former deputy in the city’s Register of Wills office, reportedly hired workers to fill in names and addresses of voters without their knowledge or consent, and now faces sentencing in June. Maybe if he had a premonition about the petitions, he wouldn’t now be under state supervision.
Randy Frasinelli -
Nobody likes fraud, particularly when it involves money that was allocated to help people weather the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This week, a judge sentenced Allegheny County’s Randy Frasinelli to more than six years in prison after Frasinelli pleaded guilty to bank fraud and money laundering last year. Frasinelli reportedly used fraudulent payroll reports and tax records to apply for multiple COVID-19 relief loans, which he then used to buy luxury cars, guns, gold bars and jewelry. And that doesn’t even get into the fabricated letters.