Delco Rising

Nick Giannini

5.0 (2)
News Commentary
Updated Weekly

Delco has 600k residents and almost no independent political analysis. Delco Rising tries to help fill that gap -- covering county council meetings, PA legislative battles, elections, healthcare, and the people making decisions that affect your life. This podcast serves as a way to shine light on members of the Delco community -- from activists, to students, community leaders, etc.

Sep 22

Rep. Lisa Borowski on Public School Funding In Pennsylvania and the Revenue Problem

State Rep. Lisa Borowski (D-168) joins the show to discuss public school funding in Pennsylvania. Borowski represents Radnor, Newtown, Edgmont and part of Middletown Township, covering the Radnor, Marple Newtown and Rose Tree Media school districts. She served on the Radnor School Board from 2011 to 2015 before her election to the House, where she is now in her second term and serves on the Health Committee. The conversation opens with the structural problem: Pennsylvania covers a smaller share of K-12 education costs than nearly any other state, leaving the difference to local property taxes. Borowski describes what she saw as a school board member, noting that the poorest districts often carried the highest tax burdens, and recalling visits to facilities that she says would have prompted outrage in her own community. On the pace of reform, Borowski argues the central obstacle is revenue. “You can’t get blood from a stone,” she says, calling for a new recurring revenue stream dedicated to education. She walks through the options currently in play in Harrisburg: Digital ad tax. Passed the House and awaiting Senate action. Borowski is a proponent, arguing that if large tech platforms can target Pennsylvanians with advertising, the state should capture revenue from it. Recreational cannabis. Held up in part over the sales mechanism and in part over remaining questions about health and impairment. Borowski would want revenue directed to both education and public transit. Skill games. She says the state Supreme Court has set an October 13 deadline, after which unregulated machines would be removed. The House has left the next move to the Senate. Severance tax. Pennsylvania remains the only major gas-producing state without one. Borowski cosponsors two bills but says passage is unlikely in the current legislature, and would require at minimum a Democratic trifecta. She recounts meeting a House appropriations chair at the Country Squire Diner in Broomall as a school board member to discuss using Marcellus Shale revenue for schools, and being told it would happen. It never did. Delaware loophole. House-passed legislation closing it remains stalled, which Borowski attributes in part to lobbying influence. The discussion turns to cyber charter tuition, where a House-passed reform bill that would have saved districts an estimated $600 million annually died in the Senate. Borowski argues cyber charters do not require the same per-student funding as brick-and-mortar schools, and notes the Auditor General found cyber charters spending on items unrelated to education. Borowski then raises healthcare unprompted, calling Delaware County’s situation a crisis. She cites roughly 202,000 Pennsylvanians dropping coverage through Pennie and the ACA, and the resulting uncompensated care burden on hospitals. She discusses Riddle Hospital, where her father practiced for four decades, and state funding the delegation has secured for emergency department staffing. On EMS, she notes Crozer’s closure left approximately 51% of Delaware County without coverage, and that Pennsylvania places the obligation on municipalities. Her first priority would be an on-time state budget, since districts must adopt their own budgets by June 30 regardless of whether Harrisburg has acted. She also suggests Senate Democrats have had fewer opportunities to advance their priorities than the House majority has.
Sep 1

Emergency Pod: Kyle McIntyre on Upper Darby's ICE Ordinance

The councilman who wrote it on the 287(g) back door nobody else closed, why Upper Darby police now have to show their faces, and the Sept 16th vote.
Aug 27

Upper Darby Councilman Kyle McIntyre on Zoning, Data Centers, and ALPRs

Kyle McIntyre, Upper Darby councilperson and chair of planning and zoning, on why every development fight is decided before the developer shows up. Zoning basics: by right means no hearing for residents. Special exception isn't a denial tool, it's approval with conditions. Spot zoning is determined by surrounding properties, not lot size, which is why the Mozino tract doesn't qualify. You can't ban a use, and you can't de facto ban it through requirements. Every municipality that tried to fight smoke shops lost, Philadelphia included. So on data centers, McIntyre's play is the strictest possible ordinance, passed now. Shapiro's executive order means no state permit without local approval, but once a land development application is filed the code is frozen and the project is grandfathered. Upper Darby's real exposure isn't a big complex, it's micro data centers and home Bitcoin farms nobody has coded for. Western Delco, Chester, and Upper Providence are the vulnerable ones. Strategy note: argue electricity and stormwater, not water consumption. On Flock, he's drafting four provisions. Ordinance not resolution, specified location and data, stated purpose argued publicly, and a sunset. He calls it a three-part package with the ICE ordinance and a police oversight board, and says all three have to pass.
Jul 30

The Last Forest in Upper Darby Shouldn't Be Paved Over: A Conversation with Save the Mozino Forest

Podcast Notes: Show your support for preserving the Mozino ForestSave The Mozino Forest website Planning Commission vice chair Lee Jordan & retired EAC chair Bonnie Hallam on 15 acres of green space — from the developer's own rezoning ordinance to the grassroots fight to make the township buy it
Jul 7

Healthcare Is a Human Right: A Conversation with Put People First! PA

Two Put People First! PA organizers, Jamie Blair and Robin Stephens, on taking back healthcare in Delco — from private equity-ravaged hospitals to the Crozer 8 and their Crowd the Capitol event.
Jun 16

Meet The Delco Activist Collecting Signatures to Push Mary Gay Scanlon on Medicare for All

She has 1,700 signatures, spoken to Dem committees across Delco, & is forcing the question — why won't a congresswoman representing a county without a hospital co-sponsor Medicare for All? Note: People who want to get involved can look at the Facebook group here (PA Dis. 5 Demands Medicare for All!) OR email kaekalwaic@gmail.com Volunteers to help collect Medicare for All signatures are welcome. Subscribe to read about her efforts here, she just started it: https://padistrict5medicareforall.substack.com/
Jun 9

Judy Trombetta on the Budget Mess, School Funding, and What Comes After a 24-Point Primary Win

The Democratic nominee in PA-166 walks through the campaign that beat Greg Vitali, Harrisburg's dysfunction, and what she'd push for in a Democratic trifecta.
May 26

Delco DSA's Doug Leake on Building a Left Wing United Front

Delco DSA Is Dragging Delaware County Democrats Kicking and Screaming to the Left I sat down with Doug Leake, co-chair of Delco DSA, to talk about the Swarthmore Nine, progressive organizing in Delaware County, and what it actually takes to build a left political infrastructure in a county that spent 150 years under Republican machine control. Delco DSA’s current priorities Pride is up first — they’ll be at both the Media parade and the Upper Darby resource festival. After that, the Swarthmore Nine case is front and center. After nearly a year of trying to connect with Swarthmore’s Students for Justice in Palestine, Doug finally linked up with them at the No Kings march in Media last month. DSA has since connected them with UDTJ and Kyle McIntyre, and Doug’s been helping them navigate a county most of them don’t know. The Swarthmore Nine and Tanner Rouse One current and one former students are facing up to a year in prison for a campus protest. Doug’s argument is simple — the moment the DA’s office got involved, it stopped being a campus matter. New DA Tanner Rouse inherited this case from Stollsteimer and could drop the charges tomorrow. The path to getting him there is public pressure, and Doug breaks down exactly what that looks like in practice. DSA and the Democratic Party DSA Delco isn’t the enemy of the Democratic Party. Doug’s framing: they’re going to drag Democrats kicking and screaming to victory. His experience with regular Delco residents has never been negative. The friction is always with party leadership — not with the people. Why local politics is where the left wins Doug makes a compelling case that the national left keeps going for the crown and missing. Bernie’s two losses convinced him to think smaller. Local politics is relationship-driven, low-resistance, and the place where you actually build the infrastructure to win bigger fights down the road. Chester, voter turnout, and the representation gap The city with the most Democrats in Delco has some of the lowest turnout in the county. Doug connects this to exhaustion, not apathy — and flags a real racial representation gap in the Delco Democratic Party that nobody wants to talk about out loud.
May 19

Swarthmore 9 Defendant Jace Boland on Protest, Prosecution, and Delaware County's Choice

Boland faces a year in jail as the first criminal trial of pro-Palestine campus protesters in the Philly region heads to Delaware County court.
12/11/2025

Pennsylvania House Rep. Jennifer O'Mara on Taxes, Transit, and State Priorities

Rep. Jennifer O'Mara walks through the political stalls, internal fights, and policy choices shaping Pennsylvania.

10 Episodes

5

out of 5

2 Ratings

Delco has 600k residents and almost no independent political analysis. Delco Rising tries to help fill that gap -- covering county council meetings, PA legislative battles, elections, healthcare, and the people making decisions that affect your life. This podcast serves as a way to shine light on members of the Delco community -- from activists, to students, community leaders, etc.

Creator

Nick Giannini
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

10
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© 2026 Nick Giannini
Show Website

Delco Rising