Creating signs means work for those who perform that task. However, spending money to create signs announcing the source of the funds being used for highway and bridge projects is a wasteful expenditure. That money could be better spent for actual improvements to roads, berms, guiderail — whatever.

The source of the money could be announced during a news conference about upcoming projects that highway officials conduct during the normal course of their workday, or by news releases.

Unfortunately, that isn't the thinking that is in play regarding some projects being funded under the federal stimulus package. For example, motorists traveling on Route 422 in eastern Butler County have been greeted by such a sign at the beginning of a resurfacing project that has been in progress in recent weeks.

And, similar signs have been put in place at other locations fortunate to have attracted stimulus money.

Compared with the size and price tag of the projects, the money being spent for signs isn't much. The cost of the individual signs has been listed as $2,000. Statewide, so far, the sign outlay has been reported as about $60,000.

But it's the principle that, in these difficult economic times and the opportunities that the stimulus money is providing, every effort should be made to fully capitalize on the availability of that money — to put every penny to the best use possible.

The signs in question ignore that goal.

<B> </B>Butler County motorists and pedestrians got good news during the past week by way of county government action ensuring that DUI checkpoints will continue in the county through late 2010.The checkpoints are a valuable resource in the effort to keep drunken drivers off streets and highways. Sometimes the checkpoints also are a basis for illegal-drug arrests.The county commissioners' action on Wednesday involved $65,700 in federal funds for the period Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, 2010. Most of the money will go toward paying police officers who conduct the checkpoints, with any money not used for the checkpoints going for things such as training.The state Department of Transportation will be the entity actually holding the checkpoint funds and dispersing the money as the checkpoints are conducted. According to an article in Thursday's Butler Eagle, police departments with officers participating in the checkpoints will submit time sheets to the county. The county will reimburse the respective police departments, and PennDOT subsequently will reimburse the county.Some motorists who never drive after drinking alcoholic beverages might sometimes regard the checkpoints as a nuisance and a travel delay. But even in those instances motorists should be thankful that such efforts are undertaken.They are geared toward saving lives and no doubt sometimes they do.

The state Supreme Court didn't enhance faith in the commonwealth's court system in ordering the destruction of the records of thousands of youth offenders who were victimized by two corrupt judges in northeastern Pennsylvania.Former Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, both of whom pleaded guilty Feb. 12 to fraud and face more than seven years in federal prison, accepted $2.6 million in payoffs to put the juvenile offenders in question in privately owned detention centers, PA Child Care in Pittston Township, Luzerne County, and Western PA Child Care in northern Butler County.The judges' actions tainted as many as 6,500 Luzerne convictions and, as a result, the high court rightly overturned the youths' convictions.But while the Supreme Court's initial action was correct, its order that the youths' court records be expunged, or destroyed, is wrong.The youths should have the right to pursue damages from the corrupt judges. If the youths' records are destroyed, they would lose evidence needed to press forward with that action.Thus, the high court was shortsighted in ordering that the records be destroyed.The juveniles' lawyers, who in an extraordinary legal filing accused the high court of sabotaging the federal claims of children whose constitutional rights were violated, said the Supreme Court's actions "are characteristic of its apparent and persistent insensitivity" to the needs of victims of what might be "the most significant child-related judicial corruption scandal in the nation's history."A federal judge has scheduled a hearing for Monday on the lawyers' request to halt the records destruction. It is to be hoped that that judge has a fairer outlook on the issue than the Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices whose opinions were the basis for the high court's "destructive" ruling.<B><I> — J.R.K.</B></I>