If the new accounting system that will be bought by Butler City Council for $23,000 plus $6,900 for annual support service helps the city financial operations run cost effectively, the purchase decision shouldn't be criticized.

But if the financially strapped city has cash for such a purchase, it ought to be able to scrape up a few dollars to buy pruning equipment needed to trim tree branches that are shielding some stop signs.

Perhaps the city already has the equipment but no one has thought to use it.

Cutting away those branches would involve only minutes, but this summer a number of city stop signs have become obscured, creating a potentially dangerous situation.

City employees perform tasks throughout the municipality. It should not be too much to expect that when they observe such a situation, they should address it, or at least call it to the attention of their supervisor so the pruning can be scheduled.

So, in the area of financial operations efficiency, the city council gets an "A" for its decision to update its equipment and perhaps save money in the process. But the council gets a lesser grade for not insisting that smaller issues like the concealed stop signs be resolved when they are observed — and it's impossible to fathom that they haven't been observed.

It's sometimes easy to neglect the little things, but little problems can sometimes have serious consequences.

Cheer C

An action being implemented in a county a couple of hundred miles from Butler County might not generally be of interest to people here.

But when that action — in this case, positive action — has a tie to this county, many local residents are likely to take notice and be interested.

That would seem to be the case in the latest follow-up action by Luzerne County regarding the juvenile justice scandal that has one former county judge facing up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge, while another is awaiting trial.

The two judges were charged last year with accepting millions of dollars in exchange for putting juvenile offenders in private detention facilities, including Western PA Child Care LLC in northern Butler County, sometimes for very minor offenses.

As a fallout of the scandal, Luzerne County Chief Public Defender Al Flora announced Tuesday that his office will open a full-time unit focusing on young defendants. He said the new unit of three lawyers would push for outpatient treatment services whenever possible. Incarceration will be a last resort, he said.

For Butler County, it was troubling having a connection to the judges' crimes. But no one locally has been implicated in connection with the scandal.

So, while interest here remains in how the case will conclude, because young offenders were brought to this county, more importantly people here can feel a sense of satisfaction that steps are being taken to ensure that a scandal like the one in question never will be repeated in Luzerne or anywhere else in the state.

Luzerne officials deserve praise for this new safeguard that they plan to put in place.

At the time of the tax amnesty program earlier this year that brought in $261 million in delinquent revenue, the state promised to step up tax enforcement efforts.The Department of Revenue laudably is following through with that promise. It has broadened its online list of businesses and individuals who are delinquent to include not only employer withholding and sales tax, but all state liens filed since July 2009.The 39,000-plus liens encompass $233 million in taxes — nearly as much as the months-long amnesty program realized.According to Daniel Hassell, state Secretary of Revenue, the goal of the latest action is to embarrass the tax scofflaws so they'll pay what is due to the commonwealth. That aim-to-shame also should be viewed as a deterrent to other potential tax scofflaws who might fear appearing on the list.The state's financial problems demand that all sources of potential revenue be pursued. To its credit, the Revenue Department has now taken another step in that direction.Still, the department should not hesitate to expand the scope of that online list or have it printed in newspapers for wider exposure of tax scofflaws.Those who refuse to pay their fair share of taxes deserve to be embarrassed. Too bad such action wasn't forthcoming years ago.