According to an article in today’s edition of The Express-Times, “Business Section, ” Putting Valley on the map,” by reporter Stephen M. Althouse, Michael Stershic, president of the Lehigh Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau, the “Valley” needs a new convention center “to put it on the map.”
Stershic’s lament was echoed at a meeting Thursday at the Da Vinci Sciene Center by the center’s executive director of Lehigh University’s Stabler Arena, Richard H. Fritz.
The Billybytes’ publication’s including http://www.billybytes.com/blog have warned its readers for years now about the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation’s (LVEDC’s) Janet Smith and Victor Rodite, whom venal politicians like former Easton Mayor Thomas Goldsmith and Michael McFadden instituted in collusion with Northamton County officials like former council president J. Michael Dowd and the former county executive Glenn Reibman. (See today’s edition of The Express-Times regarding yesterday’s firing of Smith from the LVEDC as reported by staff writer Anthony Salamone.)
The county created the LVEDC in 1998 following Reibman’s election in 1997, from the ashes of Lehigh County’s Industrial Development Corporation as operated by Reibman’s predecessor, Bill Brackbill.
Goldsmith and other corrupt officials of Northampton County and its seat Easton used the LVEDC and Janet Smith and Victor Rodite, in charge of the 1988 Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ) tax exemption to curry favor with politcians and poitical patronage with officials like former Governor Tom Ridge and incumbent Governor Ed Rendell and former Pennsylania State Senator Joe Uliana, currently a Harrisburg lobbyist and fomer member of the Bethlehem Authority under is director Ronald Donchez.
Despite the efforts of prominent residents of Northampton County and its seat Easton like Easton attorney and College Hill resident Democrat Danny Cohen to stave off the attack last year from former 15th Congressional District representive Pat Toomey against incumbent U. S. Senator Arlen Specter, Pennsylvnia’s senior senator is about to lose his powerful chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as reported in yesterday’s (and today’s) editions of The New York Times.
Even worse for Pennylvania’s junion senator Rick Santorum, last Tuesday he lost his seat to Democratic opponent Bob Casey Jr.
As reported by The Morning Call reporter Tracey Jordan in today’s edition of that journal, public oppostion to the downtown Easton Riverwalk project is building, however belatedly - though this is a boondoggle that the Billybytes blog has long warned its readers about.
This boondoggle traces its roots to Easton Mayor Thomas F. Goldsmith’s administration and his sycophant cabinet members Easton Planning and Development Director Robert O’Neil and chief planner Barbara Kowitz - who succeeded O’Neil after his sudden departure from city government not only as director of plannning and development but also as the executive director of the totally courrupt Easton Redevelopment Authority (on the same level as the equally corrupt Easton Parking Authority under the current chairmanship of Lou “Mr. Easton” Ferrone, mentioned in Tracey Jordan’s article of today’s dateline.