Making History in Pennsylvania
John Todaro, a legally blind resident of Palmer Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, attended the January 3, 2005, meeting of Northampton County Council.
Also attending the meeting was the County Executive Glenn Reibman and his administrations attorney.
The meeting was historic. It was the first county council meeting convened away from the county’s government center, located a half-dozen blocks from the January 3rd meeting site, in the Dutchtown-Gallows Hill neighborhood of downtown Easton, the county seat.
The January 3rd meeting was also historic in that it was held in Easton’s oldest still extant building, the Jacob Bachmann Publick House, located on the northeast corner of Northampton and N. Second streets.
Councilman Ron Angle, a history buff, celebrated the occasion by laying in the middle of the meeting table a sword and a flint-lock pistol dating to the American Revolutionary Era.
Downtown Easton itself if recognized on the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of three cities together with Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey, in which the Declaration of Indepenence was first read, on July 8, 1776.
At the January 3, 2005, Northampton County Council meeting, John Todaro and this blog’s editor, Billy Givens, asked council to conduct public hearings on Act 71, “legalized gambling.”
Council concurred, and its president, J. Michael Dowd represeting the county voting district that includes Easton, District 2, gave the assignment of scheduling council’s first meeting to Ms. Ann McHale.
Ms. McHale, who represents the District 1 City of Bethlehem, one of the sites selected by Act 71 for a Class 2 stand-alone casino, arranged the first meeting for June 28, 2005, in Foy Hall of Bethlehem’s Moravian College.
Messrs. Todaro’s and Givens’ request for public hearings on January 3, 2005, marked the first formal request for such hearings - hearings that continue with mounting opposition to Act 71, with an increasing number of Pennsylvania legislators like Bucks County representative Ralph Clymer calling for its repeal.
Act 71 is a reprehensible piece of legislation the likes of which has not been seen in Pennsylvania since the “Ripper Act” of 1901, described in the 1917 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and on the Internet and on numberous articles written by Billy Givens and published in e-mails, articles on his www.billybytes.com Website, and postings on his http://www.billybytes.com/blog/.
The outraged public’s oppostion and legal actions spawned by Act 71 account for the “Delays for Casino License Appeals Could Cost Pennsylvania” article published in today’s edition of The New York Times.
Copyright © 2006-2008 Billy Givens
Billy Givens said,
March 17, 2007 @ 6:53 pm
The Pennsylvania state representative referred to in this posting is paul Clymer, not Ralph Clymer.
The New York Times article re the delay in the opening and operation of cssinos in Pennsylvania takes the heated casino issue outside the boundaries of the so-called “Lehigh Valley” and into the adjoining states of New York and New Jersey and beyond.
Principals of the Sands BethWorks LLP Casino planned for the City of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania include besides major stockholders Sheldon Adelson and Karl Icahn the New York Real Estate Giant Newmark & Co., whose CEO Barry Gosin has since the company’s involvement in the Sands BethWorks LLP Casino project has internationalized Newmark by merging it with Knight Frank; the New York law firm of Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner, and Harding; and the New Jersey law firm of Perrucci, Florio, Steinhardt, and Fader.
Michael Perrucci, a Phillipsburg, Warren County, lawyer and developer, is a former chairman of that county’s Democratic Party; James Florio is a former New Jersey governor; and Richard Fischbein is a major money contributor to the National Democratic Party Committee. Fischbein is also the next door neighbor in the Hamptons of New York financier Wilbur Ross.
Ross bought the bankrupt Bethlehem Steel Corporation, of whose 1800-acre tract Sands BethWorks LLP bought 126 acres as the site for its proposed casino, luxury hotel, and other attractions.
Ross had purchase the entire tract from previous owners Tecumseh Steel and the Indian Steel giant owned by Lakshmi Mittal.
The chairman of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board created by Act 71 is Timothy “Tad” Decker, manager of the Cozen O’Connor law firm’s offices in Philadelphia and Governor Edward G. Rendell’s appointee to the board.
Cozen O’Connor represents the Delaware-Lenni Lenape Native American Tribe in its legal efforts to regain ownership of 315 acres in Forks Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, that it claims to have been defrauded of by William Penn’s son Thomas in the infamous Walking Purchase of 1737 through fraud including forgery of deeds.
Governor Rendell opposed the Native Americans’ efforts for the reason that he wanted no competition to the Sands BethWorks LLP project.
Bernie O'Hare said,
March 17, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I have these words for you and your loudmouthed accomplice, John Turdaro: Póg mo thóin!
Billy Givens said,
March 18, 2007 @ 1:28 am
Bernie,
You’re OT (Off Topic).
Your pog mo thoin comment applies more appropriately to my blog posting titled “KIZ My Azz.”
Nonetheless, thanks for your comment, old friend and fellow blogger, and for the St. Paddy’s Day humor.
I’m sure our mutual friend and Northampton County Government foe John “Turdaro”. will find your comment humorous as well.
John never did think that you were among his Northampton County Government foes who phoned his and wife Rosina’s home on Ground Hog Day 2005, the day he announced his candidacy for Northampton County Executive, challenging incumbent Glenn Reibman.
The detractors called to ridicule John, who’s legally blind, for seeking the county’s highest office, derisive calls that brought Rosina and other members of his family to tears.
I consoled my friend John by assuring him that the was not disabled, but differently abled.
Though differently abled, he would have made a far better executive than Glenn Reibman - and, for that matter, Reibman’s successor John Stoffa as well.
Anyone attending Northampton County Council’s last meeting, March 15, 2007, witnessed Stoffa make a fool of himself again, as, indeed, did all of council’s members except Ann McHale and Ron Angle.
In voting to support Stoffa’s decision to buy two properties on Wolf Avenue for a new county archives building, with only council members Ann McHale and Ron Angle voting no. (My likely Democratic opponent in this November’s general election, at-large member Tony Branco, was absent again at last Thursday’s meeting; his political campaign strategy is that if he’s not at the meetings to vote, then constituents won’t know where he stands on the issues.)
Thanks also to Ron Angle, he succeeded in amending the resolution introduced by J. Michael Dowd that saved Northampton County from committing to a Lehigh-Northampton bi-county health department.
Angle was agile-witted and far-sighted enough to get a legal opinion from council solicitor Leonard Zito concurring with his proposed amendment to the original motion.