NewsLanc.Com

    Providing Greater Lancaster with an Alternative Source for Local News and Commentary  _________________________________________________________
  October 3, 2006                                         Publisher: NewsLanc.com LLC                                   Volume 1, Number 9
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Make Your Voice Heard. Write a letter, make a call: Edward G. Rendell, Governor 225 Main Capitol Building Harrisburg PA 17120 (717) 787-2500 E-mail the Governor here. Gibson Armstrong, State Senator (717) 787-6535 [email protected] Mike Sturla, State Representative (717) 295-3157 [email protected] J. Richard Gray, Mayor, City of Lancaster (717) 291-4701 [email protected] Ernest Schreiber, Editor Lancaster New Era [email protected] (717) 291-8733 C. Ray Shaw, Editor Intelligencer Journal [email protected] (717) 291-8650 Marvin Adams, Editor Sunday News [email protected] (717) 291-8788

"Failure Was Not an Option" Last week NewsLanc.Com scooped the monopoly Lancaster Newspapers in reporting that the Convention Center Authority seeks to borrow $12 million to bridge the construction cost gap. Later in the week we learned that the amount was to be $14 million. And now we hear it may be $16 million. Readers may recall the Aug. 11 Intelligencer Journal article headlined "Center closes fund gap," in which Lancaster Newspapers chairman Jack Buckwalter was quoted as saying: "It looked like this project would fail. Failure was not an option." Failure may not be an option for the 44% sponsor Lancaster Newspapers, Inc., but it sure should be an option for the taxpayers who now will be asked to guarantee yet another $16 million! ______________________________ Lancaster Newspapers' Rush to Judgment One day after Thomas LeCrone's name surfaced as the leading candidate for the position of interim County Administrator, the daily newspapers published a front page article ("Concerns cloud hiring of new county exec") packed with unsubstantiated innuendo that cast LeCrone as a personality-challenged incompetent. This rush to judgment is representative of the monopoly Lancaster Newspapers' ongoing smear campaign against Commissioners Shellenberger and Henderson. The commissioners acknowledged their error in not providing adequate public discussion of Conestoga View and apologized. Yet the newspapers keep on rehashing the Conestoga View story and suppressing dozens of accomplishments which go under-reported. When will the Lancaster Newspapers apologize for five years of misrepresentations and spin to sell its 44% owned convention center/hotel project, one that began with $45 million of private investment, and now is careening toward perhaps $180 million with over 90% at taxpayers' risk?

In the Spirit of Yom Kippur The open discussions at the county commissioners' meetings and elsewhere concerning the location of the new morgue have been productive in vetting the issues and providing possible alternatives. We appreciated the commissioners' publicly repenting their lack of public hearings concerning Conestoga View and are heartened by this evidence of their resolve not to repeat the past mistake.

Say What? "The anti-convention center crowd at Lancaster First offers $10 an hour to hand out its fliers on Penn Square. Whatever happened to doing something on principle?" Marv Adams, Sunday News Editor, in his Oct. 1 column: Marv, please try to get a story straight. It isn't Lancaster First, it's NewsLanc.Com. (Read the masthead!) Some newsletter distributors are paid and many are volunteers. How many volunteers are handing out the Sunday News? None? Tsk, tsk.