Please telephone Northampton County Executive Glenn Reibman this morning at (610) 559-3191 (office) or (610) 559-3000 (switchboard).

Urge Glenn to veto the line item for Open Space in the FY2005 budget that Northampton County Council adopted at a special meeting called last Monday, December 6, 2004.

County Council at the direction of its president J. Michael Dowd (District 2-Easton) held this meeting at 4:00 PM when the County's working taxpayers could not attend.

Dowd and his Council allies Peg Ferraro, Tim Merwarth, Nick Sabatine, Mike Corriere, and Wayne Grube voted to use Swaption money to fund the Open Space (actually Open Taxpayer Wallet) program for budget year 2005.  Councilpersons Mary Ensslin, Ron Angle, and Ann McHale voted against the Open Space proposal. 

The Open Space line item represents the first installment of a total $37 million debt imposed on County taxpayers - this on top of the $111 million debt imposed by the 2001 bond issue and the $30 million bond prior to that.

The Swaption is a dangerous derivative, legislated in September 2004 as Pennsylvania Act 23.  With the threat of a law suit looming, the bill's only sponsor from the Northampton County's legislative delegation was Pennsylvania State Representative Craig Dally of Plainfield.

Dally supports the bill because the Swaption will enable him and his allies to siphon off a portfolio of risky common stocks with high immediate growth potential from the more stable blue-chip securities that make the $111 million bond issue a safer investment for the County.

The Swaption stocks, traded over the counter (OTC) and not subject to SEC oversight, will be used to fund horse-racing and slot-machine gambling in Palmer Township.  Gullible indeed are they who think this opportunity for gambling profits and the Swaption are not themselves a matter of chance.

And for those who like their hair raised straight up from the follicles by fiction writers like Stephen King, BillyBytes recommends to those readers the writer Frank Partnoy, a real-life Wall Street trader, and his book Infectious Greed. 

Partnoy describes in harrowing detail how the once-prestigious house of Bankers Trust, through the Swaption derivative, cost the Lehigh Valley corporation Air Products & Chemicals millions of dollars of lost revenue.