Butler County Commissioners today rejected a plan to join the county with five other counties in backing a federal loan to the Boscov's department store chain.

Commissioner chairman Dale Pinkerton made the motion to approve the plan, and said he would have voted favorably because he supports the jobs at Boscov's stores. The chain has 39 stores nationwide with about 5,000 employees, 122 at the store in Clearview Mall in Center Township.

But Pinkerton never got the chance to vote as his motion died for lack of a second.

"I'm just not 100 percent sure this is the way to go," said commissioner James Lokhaiser, whose daughter is a Boscov's employee.

After the commissioners' decision, state consultant Walt Haglund of Urban Design Ventures in Pittsburgh said he was uncertain what happens to the loan plan.

"I'll go back to the DCED (state Department of Community Economic Development) to determine what happens now,"he said.

The agreement, already approved by Blair, Cambria, Lackawanna, Lebanon and Schuylkill counties, calls for a six-way backing of the $35 million, 20-year bank loan.

The Snyder County commissioners rejected the idea when it was originally proposed as a seven county package.

The state asked these counties to secure the federal loan with the pledge of their Community Development Block Grants as collateral.

The loan would go to the Boscov family, which already pledged $53 million of its own equity to keep the chain open.