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Police: Driver of vehicle pulled to the side of I-80 was under the influence

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Fracking’s promise: Pennsylvania used bad math to inflate industry’s job numbers

<p>Out of the mouths of babes &#8211; and elected officials.</p><p>Careening toward what was almost a disastrous and unprecedented government shutdown this month, the Luzerne County Council members said some interesting things.</p><p>To recap, the county was close to going out of business when Councilman Harry Haas surprised everyone and sided with the council minority to not borrow $20 million to cover payroll, services and an important debt repayment because the state hasn&#8217;t passed a budget and owes the county an estimated $22 million.</p><p>Then on Tuesday, an equally unpredictable Councilwoman Eileen Sorokas surprised everyone by siding with the council majority and voting to borrow the money. Crisis over &#8212; for now.</p><p>We learned that even though several council members can&#8217;t stand county Manager Robert Lawton and want him gone, they weren&#8217;t about to allow Rick Morelli to have the honor of making the motion to fire him.</p><p>Morelli, a past Lawton ally, announced last week he would make that motion and believed he had the votes to pass it. However, Rick ended up with egg on his face when he learned he didn&#8217;t.</p><p>So what happened?</p><p>Morelli said he didn&#8217;t get the support to fire Lawton because he proposed it, the Times Leader reported. &#8220;They would rather spite me than spite him,&#8221; Morelli said, according to another published report. &#8220;That&#8217;s just politics.&#8221;</p><p>Not that it matters now since Lawton resigned Wednesday. Who can blame him after all the unfair abuse he has endured?</p><p>The council meeting was packed with county employees worried they would ring in the holiday season without a job.</p><p>They had good reason, especially when Haas had the nerve to say, &#8220;This is not about you.&#8221; Instead, it seems it was all about Harry. He remained steadfast in blaming state Gov. Tom Wolf for the county crisis. One audience member who apparently is not wild about Harry, shouted, &#8220;What&#8217;s your proposal, Harry?&#8221; Harry said it was to &#8220;put the blame where the blame is due.&#8221;</p><p>Did he really believe scolding the governor instead of coming up with the money to pay an $8.5 million loan payment on time was the responsible thing to do?</p><p>It&#8217;s grossly unfair that the county may have to pay around $200,000 in interest and fees for borrowing $20 million because of the circus playing out in Harrisburg. But the county&#8217;s financial consultant Scott Shearer, of Public Financial Management, said defaulting on the debt repayment would cost the county millions of dollars in the future because of, among other factors, future debt restructuring interest rates.</p><p>Did council members Haas, Stephen A. Urban, Stephen J. Urban, Edward Brominski and Kathy Dobash take that into account? Do they know more than the county&#8217;s financial consultants?</p><p>Stephen A. Urban said Gov. Wolf &#8220;wants everything or nothing.&#8221; He said he&#8217;s &#8220;sick and tired&#8221; that taxpayers are being punished because of greedy unions and the county administration&#8217;s mistakes.</p><p>Then he said this, &#8220;I love getting attacked. It makes life interesting.&#8221; If you&#8217;re a masochist.</p><p>One who does not get a kick out of getting attacked is council member Dobash. She said the uproar at the meeting over the loan &#8220;sounds like a mob mentality.&#8221; She said huffily, &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to be bullied like that from the crowd.&#8221; She didn&#8217;t have to worry because she was at a safe enough distance from the courthouse when she told off the bullies since she attended the meeting, once again, by phone.</p><p>Speaking of long distance, Gov. Tom Wolf and state lawmakers are wreaking havoc on counties and school districts with their bickering over the budget, specifically who should get the lion&#8217;s share of a planned hike in the sales tax from 6 to 7.25-percent.</p><p>Who&#8217;s to blame for this?</p><p>The Republicans, Democrat Wolf declared. He said the GOP&#8217;s leaders can&#8217;t garner enough votes from their rank and file members to support &#8220;a crucial sales tax increase they had proposed.&#8221; He then said there are too many of them &#8220;who just want to blow things up,&#8221; a very poor choice of words in this day and age, especially from someone who has no problem allowing Syrian refugees into Pennsylvania, despite concerns nationwide that terrorists may be among them.</p><p>State Rep. John Yudichak said, &#8220;I share every citizen&#8217;s outrage, with the hyper-partisanship in Harrisburg that fuels our protracted state budget impasse.&#8221;</p><p>State Rep. Gerald Mullery said his frustration over the stalemate has turned to anger. &#8220;Firm ideologies must be put aside in favor of compromise,&#8221; he said.</p><p>Could he actually have been talking about his Democratic colleague, Eddie Day Pashinski, who said the budget impasse is &#8220;unconscionable&#8221; before declaring that &#8220;the Republican leadership continues to protect the gas industry by refusing to levy a fair and responsible extraction tax?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Republican leaders need to get serious and lead, especially in their own caucus,&#8221; Pashinski said. Just the Republicans, Eddie?</p><p>While the feuding in Harrisburg continues, relief that a government shutdown in Luzerne County was derailed could be short-lived.</p><p>Former county controller Walter Griffith plans to contest the plan to borrow the $20 million when it goes before a Court of Common Pleas judge for approval.</p><p>Oh, Walter, give it up &#8212; unless you have a better solution.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Betty Roccograndi</p><p>Zeroing In</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Betty Roccograndi, a Wyoming Valley resident, is an award-winning journalist. Her &#8220;Zeroing In&#8221; column appears every Sunday in the Times Leader.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Zeroing In: The saga of the Luzerne County circus continues