Idiocy at the Erie Times-News on a slow news day

In today's Erie Times-News:

Snowy early winter in Erie region's forecast
By ROBB FREDERICK
robb.frederick@timesnews.com

A month from now, when hurricane waves are carving up all that nice Atlantic tline, pay attention. Those storms could have us shoveling in December.

This is perhaps the most idiotic Page One banner story I've ever seen. Snow in Erie in December? What a revelation! Whoever wrote this story must live on the Equator. Must have been a slow news day.

11 county school districts agree to subsidize proposed community college

Despite assertions that property tax revenues won’t be used to support the controversial community college proposed by County Executive Barry Grossman, eleven school districts within the county which pay for the operation of the Erie County Technical School from local school district property tax revenues have agreed to subsidize the proposed community college should it materialize.

The technical school has agreed to donate rent-free 35,000 sq. feet of its classroom, lab and welding instruction space worth more than half a million dollars annually for five years, thus circumventing Erie County council‘s prohibition against the use of tax revenues to support the project.

The technical school operating committee, which consists of a board member from each of the participating schools throughout the county, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Grossman providing for the rent subsidy at its regular monthly meeting Thursday. The specific details remain to be worked out in a lease agreement, according to the unsigned MOU outlined in the agenda for Thursday’s meeting.

The eleven participating school districts include Wattsburg, Harborcreek, North East, Iroquois (Lawrence Park/Wesleyville), Girard, Fairview, Fort LeBouef, General McLane, Millcreek, Union City and Northwestern.

In a resolution adopted at its meeting Thursday night, the technical school's operating committee resolved that it fully supports the establishment of a county community college and the donation of rent-free space to it, even though the 11 school districts its members represent are strapped for operating funds, drastically cutting both personnel and programs to meet budgetary cutbacks.

There was no indication whether the 11 school boards have been consulted or voted on the subsidy, or whether the technical school operating committee members acted on their own without their various boards' knowledge or express consent.

Erie Times-News unveils another community college propagandist

The Erie Times-News and its stepchild, Rethink Erie, the elitest group behind the controversial tax-supported community college proposed by one-term County Executive Barry Grossman, trotted out their latest propagandist to reiterate their talking points, an obscure businessman from Fairview whose op-ed column in Sunday's newspaper reeks of naivete.

In a typically misleading headline over his column, the Times-News lamely mis-characterized Andrew Foyle as an "educator" simply because he is a citizen who sits on the Fairview school board, and represents that board on the board of the Erie County Technical Institute, presumably to try to qualify him as a credible advocate for a community college, a futile ploy. Nowhere in his dissertation does Mr. Foyle betray any evidence of expertise as an educator, rather the contrary.

In a specious apples and oranges exercise, Mr. Foyle wrote in the Times-News that the position of the three county council members who oppose using property tax revenues to fund the proposed community college is morally inconsistent with their recent objections to a proposal to privatize the two county-owned and operated nursing homes.

"It's unfortunate," Mr. Foyle piously wrote, "that the slim majority of council doesn't feel the same 'moral obligation' to help educate our young people who are also in need of financial assistance."

That's an inane statement that underscores Mr. Foyle's fundamental misunderstanding of both higher education and subsidized health care. The latter is mandated by federal and state law, the former is not. Morality has nothing to do with it.

Whether the county nursing homes continue to be run by government or are given over to the private sector to operate, the vast bulk of patients' costs will continue to be paid from the same public sources, medicare, medicaid and their various permutations. And the private sector is certain to operate them more efficiently, providing the same or higher level of services for less cost, a plus for both the patients and taxpayers.

With supreme arrogance and utter disdain for the facts, Mr. Foyle wrote: "Inarguably (Inarguably?), an educational gap exists in our region between secondary education and affordable postsecondary education and/or the existing for-profit business and trade schools. With far too many families in our community living at or below the poverty level, demand exists for affordable education."

For one thing, there are numerous public and private sources of post-secondary funding for disadvantaged students which help to level the financial playing field, so the "gap" is not as foreboding as Mr. Foyle implies.

Second, why should county taxpayers have to pay for the specialized vocational training of prospective employees whom manufacturers and industrialists like Mr. Foyle require to operate their for-profit businesses, when they should be providing the training themselves out of their profits as a cost of doing business?

Is it any wonder that, as Mr. Foyle asserts, "Many of the leading employers in this community have been quite vocal in their support of a community college because of a growing demand for skilled workers." Who wouldn't rather have someone else pay for some of their costs of doing business, rather than paying for it themselves? It's the American way.

So, as we can see, Mr. Foyle, GE and other employers who support a tax-funded community college are just as guilty of seeking to avoid certain costs as the vast majority of the county's property taxpayers are reluctant, indeed unable, to finance a community college. His and his cohorts' position isn't the altruistic conceit he attempts to portray it as.

Mr. Foyle says what bothers him most is that the county pays out millions of dollars towards social services, but "Unfortunately, our county government doesn't make the connection that an investment in education today will lead to a decreased demand for social services tomorrow." If Mr. Foyle or anyone else thinks investment in a community college will diminish the entrenched social services bureaucracy in any way, they are self-delusional. The historic experience dictates that it will grow bigger.

Mr. Foyle writes in the Times-News: "Without a community college, or other affordable alternative, many high school graduates from lower-income families can't afford the education necessary to gain these skills. Without a skilled local labor force, how long do you think these companies will stay in Erie?"

Is Mr. Foyle deaf, dumb and blind? Doesn't he know that Erie businesses are leaving Erie in droves for greener pastures offshore like Mexico and elsewhere, not because there aren't skilled workers here, but because there are skilled workers there who will work for much lower wages in venues where taxation, utilities and other key cost factors are a fraction of those here in Pennsylvania. Here a dominant source of industrial energy is electricity, the cost of which will nearly double next year, thanks to the dismal legacy of former governor Tom Ridge's disastrous deregulation initiative back in the mid-90s.

Mr. Foyle says "I applaud Grossman for his vision in continuing to champion a community college." Here we find him at his most naive. Would Mr. Foyle turn over his business to the county government to run? I don't think so. County government has consistently failed in its higher educational initiatives. As Keith Farnham has repeatedly pointed out, county taxpayers are still nearly a million dollars in debt to the state for the county's last failed attempt at post-secondary ed, CamTech. It isn't "vision" that's driving the county executive's pipedream, it's blindness to economic reality.

If County executive Grossman, Mr. Foyle, the Times-News,Rethink Erie and other proponents of a county community college would get behind the promising but aborted effort to align with the highly successful Butler County Community College to provide a proven community college environment here in Erie at much less cost than is proposed for Grossman's boondoggle, Erie County's disadvantaged youth would have their affordable education.

But affordable education isn't really what the county executive, the Times-News, Rethink Erie and their sycophants are really interested in. What they're really interested in are empire building, self-aggrandizement and power-broking at any cost to the taxpayers.

Pat Howard's hysteria, histrionics and the community college

In his hysterical advocacy for an Erie County community college opposed, according to his own newspaper's survey, by nearly 90 percent of readers, Erie Times-News Managing Editor Pat Howard, in typically prolix prose, resorted to prevarication and half-truths, even urging an elected public official to disobey state ethics law.

These combined with an array of factual errors in last Sunday's vituperative column denigrating two county councilmen who have displayed the courage of their convictions, undermines what little credibility Howard may have as a putative journalist, none in my estimation.

It would take more time and space than his epistolary histrionics are worth to disprove all of Howard's fanciful notions about the role of two of the four council members - Lyle Foust and Joseph Giles - who, along with two other council colleagues, have bravely withstood the gross falsehoods and misrepresentations published almost daily in the monopoly Erie Times-News by Howard and his cohorts, so I'll just address a few of the most glaring ones.

It begins with the headline Howard wrote over his Sunday column: "Foust's decision to abstain not as clear-cut as he portrays it.", an assertion so at odds with reality it boggles the mind. Foust took his principled stand to abstain from voting on the community college issue based upon a thorough legal analysis by county council's own attorney, Thomas Talarico. He concluded it would be a clear conflict of interest and violation of state law for Foust to vote on the community college question whether he voted yea or nay. It doesn't get more clear-cut than that.

Nevertheless, Howard wrote that Foust should "push" what Howard misperceives as "the legal limits of the gray area," and vote in favor of a community college, but which a rational person would see as a black and white legal admonition against voting either for or against it. In other words, according to Howard, break the law.

Howard claims Foust "advocated" (Howard's word, not Foust's) in favor of an Erie county community college when two years ago he wrote in the Meadville newspaper that it was "an opportunity that northwest Pennsylvania must seize if it is to make progress in the challenging years ahead."

Howard fails to note that was long before first (and quite likely one) term County Executive Barry Grossman was elected to that position and "advocated" that the community college's unknown but considerable costs should be financed by Erie County's already heavily-burdened property taxpayers. That provision is at the very root of Councilman Giles' opposition to the community college proposal advanced by the dissembling county executive.

The most pernicious aspect of Howard's and his newspaper's relentless campaign on behalf of a community college is their abject failure to give not merely equal, but ANY time and space to opponents. Instead they publish slanted news stories, editorials and op-ed columns on its behalf almost daily, but none in opposition, while printing every letter to the editor favoring their pet project, but only one in ten of those opposed to it, despite their pious editorial pronouncements proclaiming freedom of speech and the press. It underscores the cynical truism that "A free press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

Grape expectations

Each year, as grape harvest season rolls around in rural Erie County and neighboring communities, and the fragrance of ripening grapes permeates the countryside, the Erie Times-News trots out one of its reporters to produce a formualic article on the prospects for this year's harvest - its size, volume, quality and value.

An unusual aspect of this year's crop is that the remarkably hot summer days in July and August have ripened the grapes sooner than normal, and harvesting is scheduled to begin in about a week, one to two weeks earlier than usual.

The ritual typically consists of interviews with a couple grape growers, invariably one from North East, the heart of the lake shore grape-growing district; the fellow out at the Lake Erie Regional Grape Research Lab on North Cemetary Rd,John Griggs, a knowledgeable and dedicated grape expert, and a Welch Foods spokesperson whose company processes most of the non-vinifera grapes grown in Erie County and neighboring New York and Ohio vineyards at its North East plant, the biggest in the world.

Rarely, if ever, do the reporters have the slightest knowledge of the grape farming industry, and their articles betray their ignorance. For example, in this year's article, the reporter fails to identify the predominant grape under harvest, the famous Concord grape whose juice finds its way into millions of jelly, jam, preserves and beverage containers marketed by Welch and others around the world.

But later in the article, he writes: "The region's Niagara harvest, which began in 2009 on Sept. 25, is likely to begin before Labor Day, Griggs said."
Clearly the writer doesn't know the difference between Concords, which are purple, and Niagaras, which are white.Typically, local grape growers harvest their Concords first, then when finished with that variety, begin harvesting the Niagaras.

However, this year, a new harvest strategy is being implemented by the National Grape Cooperative members in which some of the Niagaras will be harvested earlier, followed by the Concord harvest, after which harvest of the Niagaras will be completed, one prominent local grape grower told me.

Had the reporter done a modicum of homework, he would have known the Concords are the predominent variety by far, while the Niagaras represent only a tiny percent of the annual harvest locally.

The Grossman / community college / Erie Times-News / Flowers axis

Erie Times-News Reporter Kevin Flowers, who seems to be County Executive Barry Grossman’s personal propagandist for his beleaguered community college proposal, authored yet another polemic in Sunday’s newspaper anticipating Grossman’s planned trip to Harrisburg to confer with state officials on his pet project’s diminishing prospects.

The article presents, ad nauseum, all of Grossman’s pat and discredited arguments in favor of his proposal, a paroxysm of contradictions, circular illogic, pyramiding assumptions, mis-truths, half-truths and outright lies, many of which may be found verbatim in the editorials of the Erie rag.

I suspect Flowers has a “SEND” key on his computer programmed to transmit with robotic precision reconfigured versions of Grossman’s cliché-ridden litany of community college rhetoric on a pre-set schedule without having to apply additional thought.

Penning his article in advance of Grossman’s trip to the commonwealth’s capital provides two more redundant opportunities for the Times-News to reiterate the county executive’s tiresome fabrications disguised as news stories, typically adorned with a mug shot of the snowy-bearded solon: another while he is in Harrisburg, yet another upon his return.

Flowers quotes Grossman as saying: “"I'm not going to lie to them. I'm going to tell them (state officials)exactly what the situation is here…" Why would Grossman have to disclaim any intent to prevaricate, unless it’s part and parcel of his mind-set? Indeed, it’s a matter of public record that the county executive has not always told the truth, on the one hand pledging publicly that county property taxes would not be needed to finance his pipedream, but on the other privately pursuing strategies to acquire them precisely for that purpose.

Grossman is also quoted by his personal publicist as saying that “I want them (state officials) to understand that we have the vast majority of our business community asking for this college. That we have financial support already. We have support from labor, and the minority community, and a lot of the nonprofit groups.”

But what he undoubtedly WON'T tell them about is the vast opposition throughout the county to his hare-brained scheme, which two informal media surveys, one of them by the Times-News, have measured at more than 80 percent.

Reporter /publicist Flowers wrote in the article: “Grossman also said that pursuing a partnership with an existing community college could be possible, but county officials prefer to start their own school to maintain local control over curriculum.”

To which county officials would he be referring besides himself, as there are no others on record to that effect? In any event, that’s a red herring, because any model of that configuration would provide for a local advisory board to set local community college curricula.

Flowers also wrote: “Grossman has said that the Erie region could be one of the largest areas in the country without direct access to a community college.” Another falsehood. For example, Butler County Community College just to the south of us has already announced plans to provide a college credit tourism training course for Edinboro University students, and has for years provided first-class training for firemen from Erie County communities.

Although more than three-fourth’s of Flowers’ lengthy Sunday article consisted of Grossman’s previously-publicized and readily rebuttable rationalizations in favor of the community college, and very little about opponents' arguments against it, Flowers did note at one point buried deep within the story, that “County Council's Tuesday night vote drew cheers from many community college opponents in the area, who have long argued that Erie has adequate higher-education options, and that both the county and state government cannot afford a community college.” Amen.

The Erie Times-News: Spinning the facts, twisting the truth

The lengths to which Erie Times-News editorialists will go to twist the truth and spin the facts in its all-out, unprincipled campaign for a proposed Erie County community college was graphically demonstrated in an editorial last week in which it launched an ad hominem attack at two county councilmen who oppose the college, one on groundsthat county taxpayers do not support using property tax levies for it, Joseph Giles; the other, on conflict of interest grounds, Kyle Foust.

For example, in a cheap attempt to discredit Foust, the editorial stated: “On Feb. 1, 2008, Foust wrote an Op-Ed column for the Meadville Tribune, saying that ‘there is no doubt that the long-term economic prospects for northwest Pennsylvania will be greatly enhanced by the creation of a community college.’ Foust, who works for Mercyhurst College, now claims that voting on the college represents a conflict of interest.”

The editorial falsely implies there’s a contradiction in the two positions attributed to Foust by the editorial when, in fact, there is none. One may laud prospects for a community college, but still justifiably vote against it on conflict of interest grounds, as Foust honorably and legally did.

As Foust has conclusively demonstrated, it would be a direct violation of state conflict of interest statutes for him to vote in favor of the government-subsidized non-profit community college while working for a competing for-profit higher educational institution, to wit, Mercyhurst College. Were he to do so, Foust could be prosecuted for official misfeasance and misconduct, notwithstanding a far-fetched and hysterical rebuttal in Sunday’s newspaper by its managing editor and columnist Pat Howard, the Times Publishing Co.’s chief lobbyist for the community college.

Community college boosters: Hoist on their own petard

The sponsors of a proposed Erie County community college have been, to paraphrase Shakespeare and Hamlet, embarrassingly hoist on their own petard. Their dubious proposal is broadly based on hypothetical grounds that a community college would serve as an engine for economic development in Erie’s depressed economy and jobless environment by training workers for new jobs in a transformational workplace.

It ignores the reality that key existing employers are laying off workers right and left, and/or relocating to other venues, like Mexico, where business and industrial costs are much lower. Who’s to say there will be jobs here for prospective community college grads to fill? Quite the opposite. Proponents have coated their advocacy with a slick façade of spun rhetoric while omitting any contrary viewpoints, giving their enterprise a false aura of legitimacy.

The move for development of a community college in Erie, one of 38 of the state’s 52 counties without one, has been spearheaded by a self-anointed group called Rethink Erie. It consists of various special interests including the Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership and its chief officer, Jim Dible, retired publisher of the Erie Times-News. Though the proposal is controversial within the community, you’d never know it based on what you read in the Times-News, which studiously ignores the widespread opposition in its one-sided coverage.

Institutional proponents - a laundry list of the area’s leading elitests, including the Times Publishing Co. and its political weapon, the Times-News - have contended from the outset that community college costs, whatever they may be, will be met without burdening the county’s taxpayers. That has become their mantra of sorts.

For example, in an editorial published March 28, 2010, The Times-News opined: “With its due diligence to develop a ‘pro forma’ on projected enrollments, revenues and expenses, Rethink Erie has the necessary numbers to persuade Erie County Council and Erie County's school districts to join as partners to sponsor the college, with no burden on taxpayers (my emphasis).

And First Term County Executive Barry Grossman, in lockstep with Rethink Erie and the Times-News, who has made the community college his administration’s signature symbol, has echoed that enticing but dubious promise. He was quoted by the Times-News as saying that “… gaming revenue, endowment money, tuition, scholarships and state and federal grants will pay for the college; taxes won't be raised, he pledges.”

Even longtime retiring Schools Superintendent James Barker has opted in. Under state law, the school district is a potential co-sponsor of the community college along with the county. Barker was quoted as saying that “The need for a community college isn't in question, the cost is…But it's clear that if we do this right, it will add no burden on our taxpayers." (Barker denies having any interest in a job with the prospective community college. Judith Miller, hired recently by Rethink Erie to serve as coordinator for the proposed community college, may be a candidate for the top job there. She retired in June as superintendent of the North East School District).

But once the “pro forma” was tested, proponents have had to back off that key no-tax claim, as discussed below. And therein lies their embarrassment and dilemma.

Typically, the cost of maintaining and operating a community college in Pennsylvania derives from a three-way split: one-third, from the students via tuition; one third from the coffers of the principal sponsor, the county (and, possibly, one or more school districts); and the final third from the state.
Since the Erie County’s budget is already perennially overcommitted, any additional revenues would have to come from increased property taxes.

Unless the first two funding sources convince the third source - the state - that they can uphold their end of the financial plan, the state, represented by the state board of education, won’t approve the required application for establishing a community college here, thus negating the state’s one-third share of funding.

The key to moving Rethink Erie’s proposal forward earlier this year was approval by county council of the application to the state for establishing a community college in Erie County. That question came to a critical vote before council in late June. The outcome was in serious doubt because at least three of the council’s seven members (one abstained on conflict grounds, a no-vote under parliamentary rules) weren’t willing to entertain even the remote possibility of saddling taxpayers with any part of funding for the proposed two-year institution. They were justifiably skeptical of proponents’ claim that county property taxpayers would not be exploited.

But that wouldn’t seem to be a problem, because proponents of the community college, mostly stakeholders who stand to profit financially or personally - directly or indirectly - have argued, as shown above, that local costs of establishing and maintaining a community college can be magically met through non-tax revenues.

These include a share of gambling proceeds from the Presque Isle Casino estimated at $1.5 - $2 million annually, a one-time grant of $1 million from the Erie Community Foundation, and other lesser sources. Taxpayers, they have claimed from the outset, need not apply. Based on these sources, they assert, the county’s annual one-third share would approximate a manageable $1.5 million, sufficient to support the college. But that’s obviously unrealistically low.

For example, with a student load of around 700, close to that estimated for Erie County, Butler County provides its highly successful community college, the oldest one in western PA, with a $4 ½ million subsidy from property taxpayers each year to keep the institution going, spokesman Bill O’Brien told me, about which more below.

Co-incidentally, on the eve of the county council vote last June, the prolix propagandists at the Erie Times-News shifted into high gear, disgorging a barrage of articles and editorials attesting prospectively to the dire consequences should council fail to authorize the application seeking permission to establish a community college. One of the editorials ended on this ominous note: “If council rejects the community college, remember whose votes torpedoed Erie's future.”

Shoving journalistic ethics and balanced and fair coverage out the door, the Times-News has lavishly promoted the community college in its news and editorial columns, while ignoring the vast reservoir of suppressed opposition to it within the county. Ironically, in June, the online version of the Times-News - GoErie.com - featured a running survey on its editorial page asking readers to vote on whether or not they agreed with the paper’s position on the community college. The last time I looked, just before the survey was yanked from the web site, the vote was 83 percent of respondents opposed to the Times-News position and the community college, 17 percent agreed!

To ensure that proponents’ claim that county property taxpayers wouldn’t be burdened with having to pay perpetual operational and life cycle maintenance costs of the community college, if established, Councilman Joseph Giles offered an amendment to the proposal at the June council meeting. It expressly provided that property tax revenues would not be raised for those purposes. As amended by Giles, the proposition, which may otherwise have been narrowly defeated, was approved by county council with near-unanimity.

Since the county council’s action putatively met the non-property tax criterion of Rethink Erie and its various sycophants, one would assume they would have applauded it. But not so. Instead, they condemned Giles’s amendment. That betrayed their true intention of railroading the community college through the approval process, then subsequently seeking to impose property tax increases to help fund the county’s one-third share.

County Executive Grossman admitted as much when, in an astonishingly obtuse move, he went before the Erie school board on June 30, hat in hand, to beg for a healthy chunk of school funds to help finance the community college. He sought a commitment to contribute $250,000 each year for the next ten years. Asked by a board member whether that meant county council would reverse itself and rescind the Giles amendment prohibiting the use of county property tax money for the community college, Grossman, according to a report in the Times-News, replied: “I have to be frank with you. I'm trying to use you people as leverage."

And in an interview the following day with the Times-News, Grossman let the cat irretrievably out of the bag. He was quoted as saying that “if school districts, private businesses and others throw their financial support behind the community college, it could make it harder for County Council to maintain its position regarding county tax dollars.” Nevertheless, the school board politely but firmly rebuffed Grossman. He told the Times-News he would ask all the other school districts in the county for contributions as well, but the prospects there are even less promising.

While previously maintaining the pretense that county tax money would not be used to support the community college, Grossman has now made it clear he intends to renege on that “pledge.” Indeed, he has already done so by supporting a $29,800 grant from the county to Rethink Erie. That group, in turn, is using the taxpayer money to contract with a consulting firm to prepare an economic impact study needed for state-mandated approval of the community college. It was, in effect, a sole source, non-competitive no-bid contract; not illegal, but under the circumstances, highly questionable.

In a column following county council’s June vote, Pat Howard, managing editor of the Times-News and lead tenor in the community college choir, dismayed by the turn of events, bewailed council’s adoption of the Giles amendment. In its aftermath, he warbled a convoluted recitative: “With an assist from state Sen. Jane Earll, who led the push to attach some gambling money to the project, and from the folks at Rethink Erie, who commissioned new research on the subject,” Howard wrote, “ Grossman, the county executive managed to lower projections for the local tax share to a nice round number. Zero (my emphasis).”

However, Howard added, “The gambling revenue the college is banking on is likely to remain relatively static over time, or could even drop in the face of expanded competition in the gambling business, while the local share of community college costs will be subject to the normal cycle of inflation...As things stand now,” Howard wrote, “a community college at some point would either have to cut costs or find new, sustainable sources of revenue other than taxes if the gambling cash doesn't cover its nut." Nut?

The dilemma emerging from Rethink Erie’s and County Executive Barry Grossman’s untenable proposition is that (one) there are no “new sustainable sources of revenue” available; (two) politicians and bureaucrats are congenitally incapable of cutting costs from their pork buffets, and (three), by Howard’s own admission, gambling revenues are certain to be insufficient. That leaves property taxes to foot the community college tab a certainty, an outcome its proponents have publicly ruled out, but privately endorsed, until Grossman allowed the feline to escape. And that’s the petard of their own devise on which they are hoist.

Community colleges are a positive force wherever they exist, and would prove to be so in Erie. But the threshhold consideration here is whether this county’s property taxpayers can afford the one proposed by the Rethink Erie cabal given the uncertainty of its purported utility and the inhospitable socio-economic circumstances prevailing here.

That combined with the proliferation of other unique higher and alternative education options available in the county, both technical and academic, renders their proposal based upon its inevitable burden on taxpayers redundant. And the overriding taxpayer sentiment in Erie County is a resounding “No!” There are too many other higher needs and priorities clamoring for finite county resources.

Lost amid clouds of effluvia generated by Rethink Erie, the Times-News and their single-minded cohorts, are other more realistic and palatable options. These include a promising one which was briefly explored locally but summarily rejected by the county’s control barons aiming for a power grab. They prefer a puppet institution readily susceptible to various forms of insider manipulation.

This option stems from an impressive presentation made in Erie earlier this summer by Butler County’s widely-respected community college system (not covered by the Times-News) offering to establish a satellite college in Erie like those highly successful ones it has already placed in Lawrence and Mercer counties. Those are in addition to five more it is in the process of installing throughout the region.

Under the Butler model, the set-up, operational and maintenance costs by an operator with proven competence and success would be far less than establishing one in Erie County from scratch. It would also genuinely, not falsely, eschew the need for property tax revenues. The non-tax sources cited by the Rethink Erie axis such as casino revenues, Erie Community Foundation and other private grants and donations would truly suffice to cover all costs, given the efficiencies obtainable within the established and highly qualified Butler system, negating any need to use county property taxes.

Butler Community College has already made impressive inroads by establishing partnerships with a handful of institutions outside its geographical bounds in western Pa. like the one proposed with Erie County, including Edinboro University, and in western New York. But in yet another one-sided news article in the Erie Times-News, a Rethink Erie spokesperson blithely dismissed these key developments, and others like them, as irrelevant to the higher need for a community college.

The facile rejection by Rethink Erie, County Executive Grossman and the Times-News of the superior Butler model demonstrates that they are more concerned with incestuous empire building at taxpayers’ expense, than they are with providing affordable higher vocational education for lower income residents aimed at bestirring an economic and industrial renaissance, and reversing joblessness in Erie County.

As of this writing, several weeks before this article was published, the resolution of this issue was still very much in doubt. Would the state approve the county application if county council remains steadfast in its stand against the use of property taxes? Or would council ultimately bend under the high voltage pressure applied by Rethink Erie and its principal lobbyist, the Erie Times-News, and concede to the tax pushers? Stay tuned.