As the year comes to a close, we’d like to look back on some of the issues, people and organizations whose good work we’ve cheered and missteps we’ve jeered in 2015.

[naviga:h3]Cheers [/naviga:h3]

It was a year of changes and big developments in Butler County, and nothing — business, education, politics and sports — was exempt from the shake-ups.

- In a long-awaited economic win, Butler’s Centre City Project broke ground on a new hotel and parking garage this fall. Together the two projects represent more than $13 million in economic investment in the city, and are the culmination of perseverance in the face of years of delays and false starts.

- In Center Township, work began in September on a new facility for VA Butler Healthcare. The scandal-plagued project, which is expected to be completed in 2017, has languished for years amid legal challenges and rebidding processes. The Butler County region’s veterans deserve a modern medical center to address their health care needs, and taxpayers deserve one that’s built efficiently and operated with transparency.

- Three new commissioners and four new members of Butler School Board were ushered into office by voters in November, and both groups already have much work before them.

Board members are already engaged in a review of the district’s building consolidation, and the district has promised a full report on the consolidation in 2016. It is sure to be a must-read document.

Commissioners, faced with a 2016 budget that hikes millage rates and depletes the county’s general fund, have promised their own thorough review of the spending plan.

We thank our elected officials for hitting the ground running. These are important issues that deserve to be taken up immediately.

[naviga:h3]Jeers [/naviga:h3]

Politicians and government in general top the list of 2015’s Jeers — among them Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, former Butler County Housing and Redevelopment Authority director Perry O’Malley, state Supreme Court justice Michael Eakin, and an apparently unaccountable and incompetent Department of Veterans Affairs administration in Washington, D.C.

- Kane, charged with obstruction and perjury and her law license suspended since October, continues to refuse to do the right thing — resign her office.

- O’Malley was fired in March after 23 years and accused of abusing travel and sick time, neglecting his duties and abusing authority resources.

- Eakin, who sent lewd and offensive e-mails that included comments and sexually suggestive observations about Eakin’s staffers, was suspended by the Court of Judicial Discipline on Dec. 22 and faces a formal hearing — and the prospect of sanctions — next year.

- The VA has been covering itself in shame for years now. But with embarrassing revelations about a Colorado VA project $1 billion over budget, senior employees’ abuse of its relocation bonus program, and a $2.5 billion budget shortfall, the department might just have outdone itself in 2015.

- And let’s not forget our governor, Tom Wolf, and both chambers of the Pennsylvania Legislature, who managed to muster only a still-incomplete budget deal this week, after a record six month stand off.

They should all be ashamed. Their self-absorbed and irresponsible conduct has harmed the people and organizations they are supposed to be serving. Even worse, it has eroded, in a multitude of small, cumulative ways, the public trust necessary to making government effective in our society.