The Community Development Corporation of Butler County deserves positive notice for its role in helping to secure a financing package from the state for Verizon Wireless.

Verizon plans an expansion that calls for 338 new jobs in Butler and Allegheny counties.

Verizon will relocate about 300 current employees to a newly leased 68,000-square-foot building across the street from its regional headquarters in the Thorn Hill Industrial Park. About 250 of the relocated employees will come from the company's customer service center in Cranberry Woods. New customer service positions will be created to staff the Cranberry Woods building.

According to Diane Sheets, CDC executive director, her agency worked with a number of other agencies to secure the financial package from the commonwealth.

"This is not just about jobs; it's about good jobs," said Dennis Yablonsky, secretary of the state Department of Community and Economic Development, who visited the newly leased building.

While the effort is of dual benefit — not only to Butler County but also to Allegheny — it is an example of the kind of cooperation that the state likes to reward.

Residents of this county should be proud of the CDC's role in making this economic boost involving Verizon possible for the region. This type of success story oftentimes becomes a seed for other successes as others notice the assets that this region has to offer.

A new Pennsylvania casino probably will lose more by way of bad public relations than it would have lost if it had opted to pay a jackpot that resulted from a botched test of a prize-announcement system.The decision by the casino not to pay Stephen Wilkinson, a retired carpenter from Feasterville, Bucks County, the $102,000 that a message board attached to the slot machine he was playing indicated he had won will do nothing to enhance players' confidence in that gambling facility.Rather than opting for a casino operation that they might regard as, rightly or wrongly, suspect in terms of paying future jackpots legitimately won, some players might simply decide to plunk their money into slot machines in Atlantic City, rather than at the PhiladelphiaPark casino in question.Instead of paying the jackpot, the casino offered Wilkinson two complimentary buffets.Darlene Monzo, a PhiladelphiaPark spokeswoman, explained that the error occurred when a casino worker in one of the offices, thinking Wilkinson's slot machine was out of service and not even on the casino floor, made up the $102,000 number and punched it into the machine.The message board on the slot machine lit up and a short time later the controversy was ignited when the casino refused to pay.Andrew Becker, a PhiladelphiaPark spokesman, was right that a casino wrongly crediting a player with a jackpot is no different from a bank wrongly crediting a depositor with money he didn't invest.However, John W. Kindt, a University of Illinois professor who writes about gambling issues, also was right in observing that the dispute, fairly or unfairly, casts doubt on the fairness of casino gambling.Perhaps the best advice to the casino and Wilkinson came from I. Nelson Rose, a gambling-law expert at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, Calif., who said, "If I were them (casino), I'd talk settlement because they are getting killed in the public relations. If I were (Wilkinson), I would also talk settlement, since there's an overwhelming chance he could lose."Regardless, the casino's initial response to the problem left much to be desired.

When President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, one of the statements that drew the largest standing ovation was his support for ending earmarks, also known as pork spending and generally characterized as having highly targeted beneficiaries—and sometimes dubious value.As Bush announced his support for a dramatic reduction in earmarks, it appeared that just about every member of Congress rose out of his or her seat to applaud.It made good political theater, but the enthusiastic, near-unanimous support of Congress raises the question, "If just about every member of Congress is standing to applaud the ending of earmarks, where did the 14,211 spending requests come from in 2006?"Americans should keep their eyes on Congress to ensure that earmark reform is a reality and not just talk.Earmarks, those middle-of-the-night spending proposals that are slipped into appropriation bills at the last minute and never submitted to any examination or debate, have grown dramatically in the last decade.Most recently, the infamous "bridge to nowhere" pushed by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, called for spending $223 million to build a bridge to a remote island in Alaska with 50 residents who seem quite content with ther current ferry service to the mainland. Other headline-making earmarks included $1 million for a Waterless Urinal Conservation Initiative and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum, in Sparta, N.C.There were about 4,155 earmarks in 1994 that cost about $29 billion. By 2006, earmarks had grown to 14,211 and cost taxpayers $53 billion.From a strictly financial perspective, ending earmarks would have a minimal impact on the budget deficit — as they represent less than 2 percent of total federal spending.The House of Representatives passed its earmark reform bill easily, but in the Senate there was an effort to derail the reform. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, failed in an effort to use a parliamentary procedure to reject support for the House version of the bill. Reid claimed that a Senate version was better, but by some estimates Reid's version would only derail about 5 percent of earmarks.Voters, taxpayers and the media have to continue to watch congressional spending to see if the recent high-profile support for ending earmarks and pork-barrel spending is anything more than a public relations stunt.