Local Government TV

Friday, November 09, 2007

The Eye of Mordor Invades a Norco Council Budget Hearing

Yesterday, Northampton County Council conducted the second of a series of budget hearings before it decides to accept, amend or reject what county exec John Stoffa has proposed. As boring as this may sound, it is probably council's most important job.

For example, should prison guards be working so much overtime? Although the bean counters say this is actually cheaper than making new hires, doesn't it also stress out corrections officers? What's the right choice?

Should the county spend more time on repairing and replacing its 119 bridges? Their average life expectancy is around fifty years, so we should be replacing two every year. But instead, we've replaced only eight bridges over the past five years. A big reason for this is the bureaucratic red tape imposed by PennDot. And it's going to get worse because now the feds are getting involved, and even PennDot complains about them. How do we solve this problem?

These are the kinds of problems a county council faces at budget time. Sometimes they find an answer. Sometimes, there is no answer.

Yesterday, council members John Cusick and Tony Branco were MIA. But the Eye of Mordor fixed its unrelenting gaze on cowering council members. Morning Call columnist and blogger Bill White was in the house, and everyone was on their best behavior. Council members often looked anxiously in Bill's direction to see what he was doing. Even Ron. And Bill was writing furiously.

Uh oh.

Charles Dertinger took his obligatory swipe at the administration, but after doing so, I saw him look regretfully at White. Bill just kept scribbling away.

After the meeting was over, Bill White dropped a page from his notebook, and I stole it. Here are some of his raw notes.

14 comments:

  1. Yer a sick man, O'Hare. You need help. Keep up the good work. Like Demothug, I'm doing whatever the hell those initials mean...

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  2. You made me choke on my throat lozenge.

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  3. Bill,

    It was nice to see you yesterday.

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  4. Genius!!!
    My wife is asking me why I am giggling like a school girl.

    LISTEN TO MY PANTO INTERVIEW!!!
    http://eastonundressed.org/interviews/Mayor_elect_Panto.mp3

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  5. Rolling On The Floor Laughing

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  6. Bill Loves Bernie? Is it just possible that they have been carrying on a secret love affair for years? Can't you just picture Bill and Bernie walking hand and hand down Main Street Bethlehem singing we love Ron Angle!
    --The Ultimate Warrior

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  7. Actually, my unrequited love interest is Joe Long. It's the moustache.

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  8. The taxpayer money needed to repair bridges goes instead to KOZs, KIZs, LERTAs, TIFs and other incentives to developers like Lou Pektor, Richard Thulin, Abe Atiyeh, and Alvin H. Butz, and boondoggles like Riverwalk and Lafayette College's Bushkill Village.

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  9. Bernie,

    The inventor of the public-private partnership was Bill Clinton, of the tax-and-spend school.

    Government has its role and the private sector has its. It not the responsibility of government to subsidize so-called "economic development."

    That's socialism, not free interprise. Adam Smith must be turning over in his grave.

    The only good jobs being created through these "public-private partnerships" are for people like Kerry Wrobel of LVIP, Micahel Kaiser of the LVPC, Jeff Parks of Musikfest and ArtsQuest, Armand Greco and Fred Williams of LANTA, George Doughty and Larry Krauter of LVIAA, and now Phil Mitman of the LVEDC.

    And, oh, yeah. Don't forget Tony Iannelli, Marta Garbriel Boulos, and J. Michael Dowd of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Greaster Easton Development Partnership, which now has annexed Warren and Hunterdon and other counties of New Jersey.

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  10. O, yes, and don't forget Donna Taggart Associates, which has recently opened in partnership with former LVEDC chairman John Engelsson, now CEO of Dymetrics, a branch of New City America (NCA), headquartered in - you guessed it, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, no doubt on city's South Side 3rd St. or elsewhere in the Lehigh River flood plain.

    The highly vaunted "public-private partnership" is nothing more than new wine in an old bottle, or somthing like that - a mere euphemism for oligarcy.

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  11. You have some weird people posting here, the Bill White imposter for one. I may not agree on some of your Ramblings, but the foul language is no good. Delete that and report that to the blog police. I love to argue a point , but foul language is just filler words for the ignorant.

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  12. Voice of legit anons,

    Yeah, That one had to go.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi. Can some one please tell me what happened to the website EastonUndressed.org ?

    ReplyDelete

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