'Fracking' Has a Friend in
Pennsylvania
Beneath the
Eastern U.S. is enough
natural gas to power the coast, perhaps for 50
years. But the cache is cordoned off because of concerns
about “fracking,” the method of harvesting gas by
blasting the shale with a mix of water, sand, and
chemicals. The
EPA is investigating if the method affects
reservoirs, while landowners, spurred by flammable tap
water and allegations of poisoned animals, have launched
lawsuits. But fracking may be poised for a comeback—at
least politically.
With the
House in Republican hands, fracking is likely to survive
efforts to regulate it under the Safe Drinking Water
Act. But more significantly, this foe of
environmentalists now has a friend in gas-rich
Pennsylvania. Governor-elect Tom Corbett will soon
reopen state land to new drilling, his spokesperson
tells NEWSWEEK. That would clear the way for as many as
10,000 wells (up from the 25 active today) and,
according to a recent study, create tens of thousands of
new jobs and hundreds of millions in state- and
local-tax revenue. The industry funded that research.
But the prospect is tempting others: New York
Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo is also open to lifting his
state’s moratorium, says a spokesperson.
Source:
Newsweek
Auditor Gives School Finances Top Grade
By Martha
Knight
David
DiTanna, CPA, of Buffamente Whipple Buttafaro (Olean,
N.Y.) had high praise for the financial management of
Port Allegany School District, when he presented the
annual audit report to the school board Monday night.
Adjectives
DiTanna used included fantastic and excellent. Business
manager Judy Bodamer and superintendent Tony Flint were
mentioned as providing superior management, and praised
for maintaining consistency in operations.
General
“unqualified opinions” declared in the report represent
the highest possible scores, DiTanna said.
One
deficiency he noted had to do with purchase order
handling during part of the period covered by the
2009-10 fiscal year, which ended June 30. He expressed
approval of the current system Bodamer described to him
and the board.
Another
deficiency related to tracking federal ARRA (“stimulus”)
funds, and proof of compliance with the relevant
program guidelines.
The
district’s beginnings in preparing for coming financial
stressors, such as increased health coverage and
retirement costs, are wise steps, DiTanna said, and
should be continued.
Aside from
the two deficiencies, DiTanna gave the district
management team a high score and encouraged continuation
of the good work.
The audit
presentation was moved to the top of the agenda so
DiTanna could start his drive back to Olean. Then the
board conducted its annual reorganization.
Board
member Dave Mensch presided while Melynda Budd was
re-elected board president. Daniel F. Kysor was
re-elected vice-president. Both elections were
unanimous, with no other nominations made.
Bodamer
deferred committee appointments until the January
meeting.
Bodamer
was appointed primary voting delegate and borough
manager Richard Kallenborn was appointed first alternate
voting delegate to the county Tax Collection committee.
In
personnel matters the board accepted the resignation of
Sharon Daniels as English department head, effective
November 8. Board member Gary A. Hardes asked whether
Daniels was under contract as department head, and Flint
replied that she was, but could resign from the
supervisory position. Hardes voted No on the acceptance
motion.
Adam
Greenman and Kysor were approved as volunteer wrestling
coaches for the 2010 season.
Carey
Boyer and Cheryl Brown’s compensation for services to
the dramatic and music departments was set at $350 each.
Danielle
Dodge was added to the list of substitute teachers.
The board
approved a revised Safety Policy. Bodamer, who chairs
the relevant committee, said that the group meets
monthly and is active in following up on incidents and
pursuing additional measures to enhance safety.
The board
adopted the required measure it has used each year, to
declare that it will not increase taxes more than 2.1
percent for the 2011-12 fiscal year. This permits the
board and administration to follow the regular timetable
for budget preparation and adoption, with final action
in June.
The
schedule of 2011 meetings adopted by the board calls for
regular meetings to be held at 7:30 P.m. in the
elementary school large group instruction room {“Blue
Room”) on second Mondays, and committee-of-the-whole
meetings to be held at the same time and place on fourth
Mondays. Both kinds are open to the public, by law, as
are meetings of other committees.
Exceptions
are that there are no board meetings scheduled for July,
and in December there will be one meeting, on December
5.
Because
the board will not meet again until January 10, 2011,
the board voted to authorize the administration to
prepare and pay the bill list which would otherwise be
presented for action at the December 13 meeting.
Hardes
told the board there had been an open house at the
Seneca Highlands Area Vocational-Technical School
recently, attended by 400 people. He said there are
continued discussions of changing the school’s name to
Career Center, but in his opinion, “a rose is a rose is
a rose.”
Student Vocal
Ensemble To Perform Today
BRADFORD, PA – The University of
Pittsburgh at Bradford’s new student vocal ensemble will make its debut
during a holiday concert Thursday, Dec. 9, at the campus.
The free Noon Tunes program will take place at 11:30 a.m. in the KOA
Speer Electronics Lobby in Blaisdell Hall, as part of the university’s
Spectrum Series. Students will perform a program that includes “Let it
Snow!,” “Christmas Time is Here,” “Seasons of Love,” “The Most Wonderful
Time of Year” and other holiday favorites.
There will also be solo performances: Brianna Pollock, a broadcast
communications major of Doylestown, will sing "How Lovely are the Feet”
(from Messiah) and Daniel Robinson, a pre-nursing major from Gifford,
will sing “The Christmas Song.” A brief carol sing-along will round out
the concert.
Other students in the choir include Jeremy Freer, a broadcast
communications major from Cyclone; Karli Lawson, a biology major, and
Katlyn Lawson, an elementary education major, both from Trevose; Kayla
Neal, a public relations major from St. Marys; Colin Sullivan, a
broadcast communications major from Olean, N.Y.; and Maria Tucker, a
broadcast communications major from Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania General
Assembly's Final Session Under Rendell Produces Fewest New Laws In A
Generation
Gov. Ed Rendell certainly isn’t suffering
from writer’s cramp.
Rendell hasn’t been signing nearly as many laws in the past two years as he
had previously.
By any measure, the General Assembly’s final legislative session under
Rendell produced little in substance or volume.
In terms of the number of new laws, it was the Legislature’s least
productive session in a generation.
Outside of the approval of table games at casinos and some alterations to
public pension systems, few can cite other significant new laws.
Few think of the last legislative session as one where taxpayers got their
money’s worth from lawmakers.
“If it were a matter of pay for performance, they would owe us,” said Tim
Potts, co-founder of Democracy Rising PA, a government reform advocacy
group.
Lawmakers approved 226 new laws in the final two years — the lowest number
in at least 12 legislative sessions.
Nearly three dozen new laws were ceremonial road and bridge namings or land
transfers. One in five of the new laws were budget-related.
In the final legislative session of former Govs. Tom Ridge/Mark Schweiker
administration, 433 new laws were enacted in 2000 and 2001.
And the total number of laws signed by Rendell during his eight years in
office falls well below the administrations of Ridge and former Gov. Robert
Casey.
More rancor than money
To be sure, Rendell and lawmakers faced
the worst economy since the 1930s.
“To the extent that anything anybody wants to do requires money, which is
most things, there was not a lot of available money,” said Gary Tuma, a
spokesman for Rendell. “That depressed the agenda.”
That was not the case for Congress, though.
The current congressional session is said to have been the most productive
session in nearly half a century, despite the partisan bickering and a
difficult economy.
The Democratic-controlled Congress and President Obama approved laws to
reform health care and bail out banks, the auto industry and state and local
governments.
But Democrats paid a price for that productivity in last month’s elections.
They lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
In Harrisburg, one reason for this session’s lackluster results may be
because there was no full-blown post-election session in November, as has
been the case with past sessions.
The only action that both chambers took after last month’s election was to
override Rendell’s veto on a multi-faceted education bill.
In the past, these lame-duck sessions produced a flurry of substantive
legislation that sometimes touched on controversial issues, such as pay
raises.
However, government reform groups frowned on lame-duck sessions. Critics
complained outgoing lawmakers could not be held accountable for their votes.
This reaction led the state Senate to scuttle this legislative period in
this session.
Ridge enjoyed an advantage Rendell surely envied. Ridge’s fellow Republicans
controlled the House and Senate. But Rendell had to deal with a politically
divided Legislature throughout his entire administration.
Republicans have held the Senate throughout the Democratic governor’s eight
years. Democrats have held the majority in the state House for the last four
years, but the GOP controlled the chamber in Rendell’s first four years.
In the final months of the Ridge-Schweiker administration, Republicans may
have had extra incentive to pass legislation, since they faced the
possibility of a Democratic administration, Tuma said.
“That may have resulted in a push for them ... to get more done,” Tuma said.
Some suggest the fewer new laws
that go on the books, the better.
“If we could just get it down to zero, we’d be in good shape,”
quipped David Patti, president & CEO of the Pennsylvania Business
Council in Harrisburg.
But he and others note that numbers don’t tell the story of whether
the session was a productive one.
It is whether the laws that were enacted moved Pennsylvania forward
in any measurable way.
Using that yardstick, veteran lobbyists and longtime Capitol
observers, for the most part, say the session was one of missed
opportunities.
Bi-partisan conversations were held on the state’s need to replace
the dollars lost from the federal rejection of tolling Interstate 80
to fix its roads and bridges and fund mass transit, but no plan
resulted.
Lots of debate occurred over issues associated with the state’s
burgeoning natural gas industry but no law resulted. Lawmakers at
one point agreed in principle on placing a tax on natural gas
drilling, but Democrats and Republicans clashed over the size of the
tax. In the end, lawmakers couldn’t agree to impose a tax.
Many voiced concern about the anticipated $4 billion to $5 billion
budgetary hole the state faces next year from the loss of federal
stimulus funds and other big bills coming due.
Rendell proposed lowering the state’s sales tax from 6 percent to 4
percent and taxing more items to help address the state’s financial
challenges, Tuma said. Along with that, he called for taxing cigars
and smokeless tobacco and some business tax changes to generate more
revenue. But Senate Republicans stood firmly against those ideas.
“There was a great reluctance to enact any legislation that had a
fiscal impact,” said Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi.
“Some people, and I’ll start with the governor in that class, argued
for more spending and more taxes. ... In hindsight, very clearly we
were correct and if we had followed the governor’s lead in the last
two budgets, we would be facing an even more difficult budget
deficit in the coming year.”
Tuma maintains the Rendell proposed taxes would have put the state
in better shape to deal with next year’s fiscal challenges.
“Nevertheless we are in much better shape than a lot of states,” he
said.
To those outside the Capitol, the political posturing and bickering
looked bad, said Potts of Democracy Rising.
“From the ordinary citizen’s perspective, what they saw when they
looked at the Legislature was the inability to confront problems
facing the commonwealth ... and found nothing but legislative
paralysis,” Potts said.
Patti was among the few that took an optimistic view on the
Legislature’s productivity over the last two years.
Some business tax changes made in last year’s budget positions the
state to be better off than others when the economy recovers, Patti
said. And this year’s creation of an office to provide independent
budget guidance to lawmakers could prove to be worth its weight in
gold in future years.
The transportation funding debate, although falling short of
producing a plan to address this issue, helped to tee it up for
action in the next session, he said.
The pension reforms may not have been as comprehensive as some had
hoped; the changes delay retirements and reduce benefits for newly
hired workers but don’t affect current employees. Still, the
legislation did provide immediate much-needed budgetary relief to
state and local governments in their annual pension funding
obligations.
“Delay is not always the worst thing,” Patti said. “Sometimes
nothing is better than bad policy and sometimes, incremental and
small steps are necessary to get to the big picture.”
Democrats were divided
Some observers blamed the lack of productivity on a fractured House
Democratic caucus.
Critics said inexperienced Democratic leaders found it difficult to
unite rank-and-file lawmakers, while bumping heads with a solidified
Senate Republican front.
Pileggi cited the legal troubles related to the Attorney General’s
investigation of corruption in the Capitol, which dogged a member of
the House Democratic leadership.
Of the dozen individuals interviewed for this story, only former
House Majority Leader Todd Eachus used the word “successful” in
describing the just-completed session.
In a Nov. 30 letter Eachus sent out to “friends and colleagues,” he
describes the last legislative session as “one of the most
productive and successful in recent memory.”
“I think it was incredibly successful even in the two budgets we
did. Democrats stuck to our values. We fought for seniors, children,
veterans and education,” said Eachus.
Eachus was voted out of office last month, ending the Luzerne County
Democrat’s 14-year legislative career.
Holding firm to their positions on preserving program funding for
those segments of society was no easy task. He viewed the extension
of unemployment compensation as a noteworthy accomplishment.
“We had to bring, as we did on most things, Senate Republicans
kicking and screaming on the extension of benefits but we did it,”
Eachus said.
But the House Democratic leadership put their caucus members in
strangely difficult positions.
Because of the political repercussions with voters, tax votes are often only
cast when they are assured of becoming law.
Yet the House Democratic leaders had their members cast votes to tax cigars
and smokeless tobacco and natural gas drilling, knowing full well the
GOP-controlled Senate had no interest in passing them.
“It was that type of bravado I thought was stupid,” said the lobbyist, who
asked not to be identified.
Franklin & Marshall political scientist G. Terry Madonna noted those tough
votes contributed to the tension within a caucus that was already fractured
over fiscal and environmental policy differences that some had with caucus
leaders or Rendell.
Rendell’s reluctance to accept his lame-duck status may have contributed to
the drop in new laws, Madonna said.
“This is usually a time when the governor defers to lawmakers because all
along it’s been about his agenda. Now it’s the Legislature’s turn,” Madonna
said. “But Rendell continued to push a big-change agenda.”
Carvers' Association Offers Toy For The
Holidays
The
Allegheny Mountain Carvers' Association is offering for sale a toy Holgate
Log Truck. This toy is an original design by one of our Allegheny Mountain
Carvers Club members. Holgate Toy Company (yes, THE Holgate company
that is known for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood fame) has produced a dated,
limited edition only for our club. The cost of this truck is $14.00 with the
proceeds benefiting the annual Woodworking Wonders Carvers Festival that is
held the third Saturday in June. The truck is solid maple wood with a clear
finish and five wheels painted black. There are two removable "people" and
three wood logs that are tied to the truck. The imprint on one side of the
truck is the club name and the other side is the festival name. The front of
the truck has the Holgate stamp as proof of it's authenticity. Please
call (814) 642-7533 for your orders. Shipping and handling is an additional
$5 for up to three trucks. These are a limited edition collector's item:
when they are gone they are gone forever. You can only get this special
Holgate toy only through the carver's club in Port Allegany, PA. This
Holgate Log Truck is available for the Christmas holidays. Don't miss this
opportunity to fill a stocking with this special one-of-a-kind gift.
Gift
Keeps On Giving - Rene Beltran, left, plant manager for
Saint-Gobain Containers (Verallia) encourages Port Allegany United Fund
president Keith Delacour by presenting the company's contribution of $8,730
toward the current UF campaign's goal of $29,000. Many plant employees also
make personal contributions. Delacour said the company support is a shot in
the arm to the United Fund, which needs all the help the community can give,
to meet its goal by December 31. About 20 local agencies and programs, and
the hundreds of people they serve, are counting on the United Fund.
Martha Knight
Photo/Story
University Offers A
Healthy Way To Kick Off 2011
BRADFORD, PA – Those
wishing to kick off the New Year with a healthier lifestyle can attend three
different exercise classes at the Seneca Building in downtown Bradford.
The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford
Continuing Education and Regional Development will sponsor Overall Body Boot
Camp, Total Body Toning, and Turbo Kick, each running for two sessions.
Overall Body Boot Camp will be held
5:30-6:30 p.m. Tuesdays Jan. 4-Feb. 22, and March 1-April 19, in the
fifth-floor ballroom. Cost is $23 for a single session or $40 for both.
Instructor Denise Watson will show students
how to shed weight quickly and build endurance. Hailed as intense, the
workshop will include nonstop intervals of boot camp, plyometric drills and
resistance training. Participants should bring an exercise mat and
dumbbells; other equipment will be supplied.
Total Body Toning is set for 5-5:45 p.m.
Mondays and Wednesdays, Jan. 5-March 2, and March 7-April 27, in the
fifth-floor ballroom. Each session is $35, and it is $65 for both.
Instructor Rhonda Race will detail how to
pinpoint body problem areas, increase metabolism and cut inches. Students
should bring 3-5 pound dumbbells and mats.
Turbo Kick will meet 6-7 p.m. Mondays and
Wednesdays, Jan. 5-March 2, and March 7-April 27, in the fifth-floor
ballroom. Cost is $45 for one session and $85 for both.
Race will teach how students can tone their
muscles and lose weight while jamming to upbeat music. This class will
include kickboxing, dancing, plyometrics, martial arts, toning and
stretching moves. Students should bring exercise mats.
For more information or to register, call
Continuing Education at (814) 362-5078 or e-mail
contined@pitt.edu.
Players, Performers to merge
PORT ALLEGANY—The Port Performers and the
Potter Players will hold a joint meeting at 3 p.m. Sunday, December 12, in
the Gethsemane Lutheran social hall on Arnold Avenue.
People interested in becoming involved in
the combined group’s dramatic and musical productions are encouraged to
attend the meeting.
Volunteers are needed for all aspects of
production, from acting, singing and dancing to makeup, costuming, lighting,
set construction and publicity.
The Potter Players have presented numerous
theatrical and musical shows in recent years. The Port Performers’ initial
production was “Moments to Remember,” a musical revue featuring music of the
1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It was sponsored by the Port Allegany High School
class of 1960, in late September, timed to coincide with Alumni Weekend.
The two groups plan to reorganize into one
unit and produce shows to be performed in both Potter and McKean counties.
Holiday Band Concert
- Members of the Elementary Band are pictured during a rehearsal held
Tuesday morning at the Port Allegany High School. The Port Allegany School
District Concert Bands will present a Holiday Concert Thursday, December 9
at the school. The program, featuring students in grade 5 - 12, will
begin at 7:30 p.m. and is under the direction of Brad Stewart. Tickets
will be available at the door. Pam
Fischer Photo/Story
Wintersongs Coming - The Port Allegany
School District Music Department will present Wintersongs featuring the
choirs of the Port Allegany School District on December 17 and 18 at 7:30
p.m. in the Port Allegany high School Auditorium. Tickets with a General
Admission charge of $2 may be purchased through the PASD office and at the
door on the night of the performance.
Collecting For
PACS - Citizens and Northern Bank is collecting the following
items for PACS (Port Allegany Community Services): Soup, crackers, macaroni
and cheese, and boxed dinners. There are 106 families being served this
year. Items will be collected up to December 21. Santa and Mrs. Clause
will be here from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
