The BillyBytes pubications have exposed the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, and the state’s Liquor Control Board as well, but here is more on the LCB, again from the December 14, 2006, edition of the Philadelphia free newspaper, the Metropolitan.

Since i cannot link to the Metro article, I am posting it here in its entirety:

“Question raised over new liquor board gig” is the articles headline.

“Pennsylvania’s 643 liquor stores have been racking up record sales in recent years, but it was concern about the system’s rising expenses that led to the hiring of a just-retired state senator to fill the newly created job of chief executive.

“Bucks County Republican Joe Conti was hired yesterday by a 2-1 vote [one of whose was former Easton Mayor Thomas F. Goldsmith, a Governor Edward Rendell surrogate], with a  strong dissent from Liquor Control Board chairman Jonathan Newman.

“Newman said Conti’s salary of $150,000 - more than twice what Newman makes - is too high and the process by which he was selected was too secretive.

“‘This was the opposite of an open process,’ Newman said.  arguing that the board should have first determined if such a position is needed.

“Gov. Ed Rendell, speaking in Philadelphia, said he has repeaedly told  Newman he needed help running operations, and that rising expenses were a ‘huge red flag.’

“‘This organization needs a CEO.  Do you know of any $1.7 billion company that does’t have a CEO?’ Rendell said.”

BillyBytes thought it important to get this Metro story on its  blog (http://www.billybytes.com/blog/) before the PGCB announces the casino license sweepstake winners on December 20, 2006.

Former Bucks County state senator Conti’s views are opposed by that county’s Republican state representative, Paul Clymer.

He wants Act 71 legalizing casino and racino gambling repealed and the PGCB’s scheduled December 20 announced delayed until its decision-making process and that of the LCB are brought into line with Pennsylvania’ Open Public Meetings Statute, or Sunshine Law.

BillyByte’s old nemesis dating back to 1991 when he challenged Republican Goldsmith and Democrat incumbent Salvatore Panto Jr. as the Independent candidate for Easton Mayor.

BillyByte’s two main issues were the creation of a local historic district ordinance, giving zoning teeth to the National Historic District designations the city already enjoyed, and a negotiated agreement with Lafayette College to pay its host city of Easton an in-lieu-of-property tax, or PILOT.
Following the 1991 election, BillyBytes continued to lobby for the local historic district ordinance and for the Lafayette College PILOT.  The city finally adopted the historic district ordinance this year, but in violation of Pennsylvania Act 167 of 1961, the statute enabling municipalities to adopt such ordinances.
Easton, and also Northampton County of which the city is the seat, have corrupted Pennsylvania’s Historical and Museum Commission under its former Executive Director Brent Glass.

Glass has been rewarded for his efforts by promotion to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., as executive director of the National Museum of Industrial History.

It is from this lofty position that he has lobbied with Musikfest and ArtsQuest Executive Director Jeff Parks for SteelStax, the Madison-Avenue name for the defunct Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s rusting five blast furnaces that restored and illuminated would serve as the backdrop for a stage for performng rock stars.

The lobbying’s purpose is to build support for a Las Vegas Sands slot machine gambling casino constructed on 1600-1800 acres of Superfund Site land that has never been remediated as required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA.

Las Vegas Sands Chief Operating Officer William Weidner has warned city of Bethlehem officials often and publicly that his casino would not bear the cost of the site’s clean-up, nor would it pony up for preservation of the blast furnaces.
And whereas Bethlehem officials are prepared to spend millions of dollars preserving these furnaces and remediating the site that’s a virtual Love Canal, they aren’t as willing to restore to operable condition the four pump houses the U.S. Corp of Engineers built on the Lehigh River in 1964 to control runoff from South Mountain and prevent storm water from bacling out of sewers along Second and Third streets.