Butler's Main Street district is the heart of the city and the city is, in some ways, the heart of the county. For those reasons, it was encouraging to learn last week that the Butler Downtown group is looking forward with optimism and creativity while coping with the loss of Main Street manager Becky Smith, who died in a car accident in September.

In addition to finding and hiring a new Main Street manager, the group is working to replace the state funding that is scheduled to end in 2013. That Main Street funding, which began in 2008-09 and will continue through 2012-13, amounts to about $70,000 a year, with $40,000 going to operations, meaning mostly the manager's salary. Another $30,000 is directed to facade improvements.

Finding the new Main Street manager falls to the Butler County Chamber of Commerce and chamber president Stan Kosciuszko reports that applications have been received and are being reviewed. Kosciuszko also says the Butler Downtown group will launch a fund-raising campaign to bring in $500,000 to fund the Main Street program for the years after the funding ends.

Keeping the focus on Main Street is important because a healthy, attractive and vibrant Main Street is good for the city and sends a positive message about Butler, which faces many of the same challenges that other small cities are facing in this region and elsewhere.

The $500,000 fund-raising goal sounds lofty, although Kosciuszko reports that the Butler Downtown group has raised about $100,000 since its creation in 2008. So, there is a reasonable foundation of support for Main Street here, and that suggests it's well understood by many people that a healthy Main Street district contributes to a healthy Butler — and that's good for businesses and residents.

The upbeat mood and active volunteers involved in Butler Downtown is encouraging. It's an important, though challenging, job given today's economic realities.

Given the controversy and conflicting information swirling around the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations associated with Marcellus Shale gas extraction, it's appropriate for the Environment Protection Agency to conduct a national study. On Friday, it was announced that the EPA was set to begin a broad investigation into fracking that will involve in-depth studies of fracking sites at natural gas wells in Pennsylvania, Texas, North Dakota, Louisiana and Colorado.The study will look at how drilling and natural gas companies handle the massive amounts of water used in fracking — where they get the water and how it is processed or disposed of after use.The federal study also will examine allegations of contamination of well water and surface water near drilling sites. The examination should provide a fact-based report that could help clear up allegations of widespread well contamination by actually investigating reports of spoiled well water or surface water pollution to pinpoint the causes, whether they relate to fracking, faulty drill casings, slopping drilling crews or other issues.The EPA study should help clear up the vastly different views expressed by those opposed to fracking and the supporters of Marcellus Shale gas development who claim the operation is safe and no more risky than other large-scale industrial operations.

It's possible that not many people outside of the New York City area read the news, but a disability scam that cost a federal agency $1 billon should be national news. It's an outrage.Late last month, a former union president, a doctor and eight others were arrested in a fraud case involving Long Island Rail Road workers that is believed to have cost $1 billion in bogus disability claims.State investigators and the FBI coordinated their efforts in the investigation that was triggered by a 2008 New York Times investigative story on abuses of the Railroad Retirement Board pensions.One worker receiving disability checks because he claimed he could not hold anything in his hand without extreme pain was found to have been playing golf dozens of times.The Times investigation found that nearly every career employee of the railroad was receiving disability payments. As “disabled” workers, the railroad employees also enjoyed playing golf at a state-owned course — another perk of their disability.The rate of disability claims at the Long Island Rail Road was three or four times higher than other railroads. Why was this not a red flag to others within the union or at the federal agency managing the pension funds? It looks like union officials were complicit, from top to bottom. And it also looks like federal regulators were asleep — again.Two doctors charged in the case were accused of preparing false medical assessments so workers would receive payments for nonexistent injuries or disability conditions.One worker, who received $100,000 a year in payments because of severe neck and shoulder pain, was filmed shoveling heavy snow. Another worker, also receiving $100,000 a year, played tennis several times a week and golfed more than 100 times in a year.So much dishonesty on such a wide scale is hard to comprehend. It's possible that it started with a just a few workers, then others saw what they viewed as a sweet deal and they pushed aside whatever moral values they had and joined the scam.This is just one group of workers in one union. The $1 billion price tag and the extent of the scam brings up questions of where else this is going on and why it is allowed to happen.