It's apparent that former Gov. Tom Ridge's 1996 experiment that involved the closing of Butler County's state health center either was a failure or got lost in the shuffle of other commonwealth business.

After this county's health center and similar centers in Dauphin and Berks counties were closed, the initiative seemed to sputter - but Ridge never sought to reopen the three centers, nor did he ever provide any evidence of more efficiency or cost-effectiveness because of that move.

The action required Butler County residents eligible for state health center services to either obtain services through private providers or seek assistance through other counties' state health facilities.

Many eligible local people regarded Ridge's action as an unnecessary, ill-conceived attack on something that had worked efficiently for years. But Ridge never acknowledged the failure of his health-center venture prior to leaving the governorship to become the nation's homeland security director after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Neither did his successor, Mark Schweiker, address the issue.

Since the 1996 move, the lone, persistent voice in terms of reopening Butler's center has been state Rep. Guy Travaglio. With the state's announcement last week about the local center's reopening, Travalio, who is retiring from the General Assembly at the end of the year, has become the proverbial "squeaky wheel that got the grease."

While Butler County's center will reopen after an office is leased, equipped and staffed, whether the Dauphin and Berks health centers will reopen or remain closed is uncertain. However, Richard McGarvey, a spokesman for the state Department of health, said Ridge's test program showed no difference in services or costs between the private providers and the public services.

However, he said, the Rendell administration had decided to reopen the Butler center to make this county's available services more consistent with the system in the rest of the state - and, they should be.

The inconsistency during the past eight years has been one of Travaglio's points in persistently arguing for the reopening of the center. It shouldn't have taken eight years for the state to evaluate the impact and acknowledge the findings of the three centers' closings. An accurate verdict on the experiment should have been available within three fiscal years of Ridge's action.

Once it opens, the new Butler clinic will provide basic health care services such as immunizations, disease prevention and screening, health and nutrition education and prenatal care. In addition, it will coordinate public services and responses to health care crises, should health emergencies arise.

Ridge's experiment might have been worthy of higher marks - and maybe could have provided justification for certain other center closings, even if the decision regarding Butler were shown to have been wrong - if Ridge had kept the experiment in focus. Because there isn't any evidence that he did, his good intentions in embarking on the experiment were never fulfilled and the effort, although a source of some data, came at Butler County residents' expense - and for much too long.

The unfortunate fact is that Butler County was one of the losers in what Ridge tried to do. The good news is that this county will soon be back in the winning column.

- J.R.K.