The two years involved in drawing up a comprehensive plan encompassing Buffalo and Clinton townships will be proven as time well spent.

The plan, approved by both municipalities' supervisors during the past week, will help to ensure orderly development in coming years while ensuring that the townships maintain their rural character.

In addition, the just-completed effort could help the two municipalities to secure grant money for projects, since the state and federal governments look kindly on joint planning.

The Clinton-Buffalo joint planning acknowledges a basic point that some municipalities that choose to "go it alone" ignore. That is that development doesn't stop at municipal borders.

Also included in the plan are the findings from resident surveys; in those surveys, residents told their governing officials what they want to see in their respective townships.

Few, if any, such plans ever are judged perfect, in part because of changes that occur over years of time. However, Buffalo and Clinton now have an organized blueprint for the future that can be adjusted to reflect currently unanticipated needs, while retaining the thinking at the foundation of the plan.

Leaders of the two municipalities deserve praise for carrying this project to a successful conclusion.

Butler County Prison Warden Rich Gigliotti was right Tuesday when he reported to the prison board that unauthorized items found during an "unannounced shakedown" April 5 at the prison were "better . . . than weapons or drugs."But the fact that a cigarette lighter, extra clothing and street clothing — all unauthorized — were found during the shakedown still indicates that someone wasn't paying full attention to their responsibility of ensuring that unauthorized items did not get in the possession of prisoners. Such lapses must not be repeated.Gigliotti said he was satisfied with the results of the inspection and in large part he should be.But hopefully he reminded prison staffers that they still have some security loose ends to address.

The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue deserves to be commended for its new weapon against people and businesses that have failed to pay overdue sales taxes.Earlier this month, the department posted on its Web site the names of 75 people and businesses that owe between $11,000 and $260,000 in taxes they collected from customers, plus interest and penalties.Perhaps public embarrassment will be the right key in encouraging the delinquents to settle their accounts with the commonwealth.Meanwhile, the department reported other good news: It is considering expanding this public-embarrassment approach to include other taxes, such as the income taxes employers withhold from employees' paychecks, cigarette taxes, corporate net income taxes and personal income taxes.Regarding the sales tax list, Revenue Secretary Gregory Fajt said, "It's very, very important to keep in mind that every business or person on this list has been given many, many opportunities to come forward."Fajt also reminded state taxpayers that "every dollar that we don't collect from tax avoiders is one more dollar that we must collect from honest taxpayers."Fajt said the state has collected $3.9 million since the department began issuing letters in late 2005 warning that delinquents' identities would be made known. He also said the department has obtained agreements for deferred payments totaling $4.3 million more.This new tactic is worthy of a thumbs-up from all state taxpayers, not only those who comply with sales tax obligations.