Government agencies spending public tax dollars should be transparent in their decision making and open with communications. But that is not how the Department of Veterans Affairs handled its recent decision to build a new health care center on Duffy Road in Center Township.

Having spent months evaluating four different locations, including a now-bulldozed site on state Route 68 that once was a tree-covered Butler Township park, the VA sent out a brief press release on New Year's Eve, perhaps hoping nobody would notice it.

The announcement was made without alerting either municipality involved, Butler and Center Townships.

Beyond the simple press release, the VA did not make anyone available to answer questions from the media or from anyone else. Reporters' questions had to be emailed; even then, only selected questions were answered.

One obvious question — what was it about the Duffy Road site that caused it to be selected over the Route 68 location, which is next door to the VA campus and has already been partially excavated? Was there a problem with the new developer? Was the additional acreage or proximity to Route 422 a factor favoring the Duffy Road site?

Not only was the media kept in the dark, so was U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-3rd, who has been involved in VA issues, including the earlier botched selection involving developer Westar and the Route 68 location. Despite his staff asking for regular progress reports on the VA's site-selection process, Kelly and his office staff said they were just as blindsided as everyone else by the VA decision.

To his credit, Kelly says he wants answers from the VA — and he sounds determined to get them.

Kelly notes, correctly, that taxpayer dollars are involved and transparency and open communications should be expected. He says he's upset with how the VA handled the whole matter.

Saying he has no preference for one site over another or one developer over another, Kelly is unhappy with the way the VA handled the processe and the general lack of communication from the federal agency. And he's right. It was badly handled.

The VA earns a Jeer. and Kelly gets a cheer.

Yee-haws to the friends and neighbors of Kevin and Linda Mathias. The Winfield Township couple needed to round up a posse of farmhands after their herd of heifers broke a fence Jan. 6 and spent several days on the lam.The eight adolescent cows apparently got spooked by a pair of coyotes, and snowfall hid their tracks.The couple and their children, who were home from college, searched by foot and car finally spotting the herd that afternoon 2.5 miles from home. The heifers resisted attempts to round them up and instead stampeded for the woods.On Saturday morning 10 people accompanied the Mathiases to round up the livestock.After an arduous effort, which included the 400-to-500 pound heifers hoofing it onto a frozen pond, the posse steered the brazen bovines into another Winfield farmer's barn, where they were loaded onto a trailer for a ride home.Considering each of the cows is worth about $800, the successful roundup is worthy of a celebration of thanks for the neighbors and friends who helped capture the cattle.It was a job well done.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is drawing heat — and rightly so — for its handling of the Penn State University-Jerry Sandusky scandal.It was disclosed last week that a ranking former NCAA official admitted he never read the investigation report that made up the basis of sanctions he approved.In court documents filed Thursday as part of a Paterno family lawsuit, Oregon State University President and then-NCAA Executive Committee Chairman Ed Ray admitted to not actually reading report by former FBI director Louis Freeh.The seven-month, $6.5 million report was considered so complete, detailed and unbiased that the NCAA adopted it as its own. When Freeh released the report June 12, 2012, Ray said he was appalled by the findings of inaction by university leaders after Sandusky's crimes came to light. “Nobody made a phone call, for God's sake,” he said in an interview with USA Today.But according to Onward State, an independent news blog run by Penn State students, Ray admitted in a deposition that he was unaware he needed to read the report before the organization's executive board meeting later that month. Instead, Ray was in Hawaii where, he said, he was unable to access it.Onward State points out that Penn State had uploaded the entire Freeh report in time for Ray to access while in Hawaii. It's still online at http://progress.psu.edu/the-freeh-report.The unprecedented sanctions — a $60 million fine, vacated wins for 1198-2011, a four-year postseason ban and scholarship reductions — are about to be lifted. The NCAA announced Friday an agreement with Penn State which, among other things, restores the 13 seasons of vacated victories.“The repeal of the consent decree and the return of the wins to the University and Joe Paterno confirm that the NCAA and the board of trustees acted prematurely and irresponsibly,” the late Coach Joe Paterno's family said in a statement Friday.A multitude of Pennsylvanians might be inclined to agree.