IN THE LAST WEEK

The state budget saga continues.

Pennsylvania House Republicans went into caucus over last weekend to try to close a $2 billion gap in the nearly $32 billion budget. Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Marshall, brought in a proposal to balance the budget without new taxes, instead borrowing and siphoning funds from other areas.

The proposal went nowhere, and the meeting ended with the gap unchanged.

The Senate took over the puzzle and passed a revenue plan Thursday that included imposing taxes on natural gas drilling and on

phone, electric and gas bills.

The House is expected to consider the package before the end of August, but “we certainly have no intentions to rubber stamp these bills,” House GOP leaders wrote Thursday in a letter to their constituents. To be continued. As Pennsylvania issues consumed the Commonwealth, national issues visited its neighbors. President Donald Trump attended the Boy Scout Jamboree in Glen Jean, W.Va. His speech to tens of thousands of Scouts extolled the virtues of the organization but was interspersed with a push to repeal Obamacare and a knock on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the “fake media.”

Whether they — or their parents — were impressed or angry with the president’s speech, the Scouts returned afterward to the community service, woodland adventures and patch trading that characterize the Jamboree.

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, went on to Youngstown, Ohio, to tout his administration’s successes to a supportive crowd. Closer to home, new building

projects loomed. Retail broker Herky Pollock has proposed a $40 million redevelopment of a corner in Squirrel Hill, complete with 125 apartments, 13,300 feet of retail space and 130 parking spaces. Chicago-based McCaffery Interests, meanwhile, intends to develop a nearly vacant warehouse in conjunction with its redevelopment of the nearby Strip District produce terminal.

And Walnut Capital plans a third building in Bakery Square. Dubbed Bakery Square 3.0, it would complement the buildings that currently house Google, PNC and UMPC offices.

A few blocks away in Shadyside, developers pitched plans to redevelop the historic Alfred E. Hunt Armory — ideas include an indoor beach and a multisport buffet.

As a Marianist priest who once taught at North Catholic High School in Pittsburgh finished a prison term in Australia for sexually abusing three children there, a Diocese of Greensburg priest was charged with sexually abusing a

10-year-old boy in the early 1990s. The victim of the alleged abuse came forward after seeing “Spotlight,” an Oscar-winning film about the exposure of sexual abuse by priests in Boston.

The Greensburg Diocese said it removed the Rev. John T. Sweeney from his post and placed him in a home for retired priests.