With a little more than two months left to pass a bill and start the long, winding road to a constitutional amendment, Senate leadership now appears fully in on passing a bill to change how the state conducts redistricting.

“We want to be done by June, before we leave,” Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman (R-Centre) said yesterday, adding: “It won’t be exactly Senate Bill 22 — we will amend it, I'm sure — but we’ll definitely keep the same spirit and same direction that SB 22 goes in, making an independent commission.”

A recently released Independent Fiscal Office review of Governor Tom Wolf’s 2018 budget analyzed three marquee proposals found within — a cut in the state’s corporate net income tax, a natural gas severance tax and raising the minimum wage to $12.00.

Taken together, the IFO predicted an average annual gain of $418 million each year in state revenue, which peaks in the early 2020s before falling down by 2023.

Despite a last minute gut-and-replace maneuver last week, redistricting advocates have not given up the fight to pass a redistricting bill through the House by its self-imposed June 30 deadline.

In fact, they’ve even settled on a new strategy — namely, a flood of legislation all heading for Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) and the State Government Committee, which so recently gutted and rewrote the House’s prime redistricting bill without any outside input.

It was a busy week in Harrisburg with both chambers in session, and so while a flurry of activity is expected, here are three bills that deserve a little extra attention:

According to Pittsburgh activists, a case involving a French water company linked to the Flint water crisis has been referred to Attorney General Josh Shaprio’s office over its role in Pittsburgh’s ongoing water issues.