Beaver County’s coroner says he is running for reelection. David Gabauer announced Tuesday he wants to remain on the job after winning in 2015. The Chippewa Township man says he’s optimistic voters will select him again.

(Matt Drzik/Beaver County Radio)

The Commissioners’ final work session for February featured several different aspects; most of them focused on the local departments rather than legal or political issues.

First was Parks & Recreation head Tim Ishman, who spoke extensively about branching out the promoting of Beaver County in its tourism attractions through television commercials that would air in several far-off locations in Ohio and West Virginia:

 

However, according to Commissioner Sandie Egley, Ishman was “putting the cart before the horse”, and not acknowledging the lack of tourism pamphlets in welcome areas and rest stops along Pennsylvania’s western border:

 

An even more startling revelation came about a half-hour later during the work session, when it was learned that the information about several potential retirees in the County’s different departments was lacking, and the interest in filling these positions was lacking even further. Such a revelation was familiar to Waste Management director Holly Vogt, who aired out her grievances about being short-staffed:

 

Commissioner Egley shared Vogt’s concern about short-staffing and a lack of interest, adding a slight note about the shifting conditions among the Board of Commissioners:

 

Egley herself had recently announced that she is seeking the position of Beaver County Treasurer in the November election. Both Commissioner Chairman Dan Camp and Commissioner Tony Amadio have announced their plans to run for re-election.

A Pennsylvania lawmaker is proposing a ten percent tax on violent video games to help fund safety measures at public schools. The House Finance Committee is considering a bill from Representative Christopher Quinn to provide additional funding for schools to implement safety measures to protect students and teachers. Quinn believes that a contributing factor to the rise in shootings and other violent acts in American schools is material that children see in video games. The bill is being co-sponsored by two other legislators.

Pennsylvania is about to start issuing driver licenses that allow holders to board commercial airliners and enter certain secure federal facilities when federal Real ID standards take effect in Pennsylvania next year. The state Department of Transportation plans to issue the so-called Real IDs starting Friday. Those who want one must bring proof of current address, a Social Security card and proof of identity, such as a passport or birth certificate, to a driver license center.

The East Rochester- Monaca Bridge, reopened late Monday after  the power lines   went down due to Sunday’s winds in our area.  A PennDot spokeswoman  confirmed the reopening this morning.

Duquesne Light said this morning that a crew from Alabama  Power has come in to assist with outages in our area resulting from Sunday’s high winds..  There are still 306 outages reported in Beaver County, that includes poles and wires., according to the report.

WEATHER FORECAST FOR WEDNESDAY, FEB. 27TH, 2019

 

TODAY – CLOUDY THIS MORNING. A FEW SHOWERS
DEVELOPING DURING THE AFTERNOON. HIGH – 45.

TONIGHT – CLOUDY WITH SHOWERS OF RAIN AND WET
SNOW THIS EVENING. LOW NEAR 20.

THURSDAY – MOSTLY CLOUDY. HIGH – 36.

Casey adds backing to $15 minimum wage bill in US Senate
By MARC LEVY, Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said Tuesday that he is adding his support to legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, joining the party’s growing chorus at the state and federal level ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
The bill Casey is joining is already backed by 30 fellow Democrats. It is written by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and backed by five other Democratic senators who, like the politically independent Sanders, are seeking the party’s nomination to run for president.
Casey acknowledged that winning passage in the Republican-controlled Senate is a tall order, but that it is important to build support for it now if a Democrat is elected president in 2020.
“I would not be a candidate during 2020 running for Senate or Congress not supporting this because I think it’s popular across the board,” Casey said. “Not only do people know the data on wages, they’ve lived these lives of very little wage growth and I think it’s the No. 1 economic challenge that we have.”
In the Democrat-controlled U.S. House, similar legislation is sponsored by 198 Democrats, including eight of nine Pennsylvania Democrats.
The bill is widely embraced by labor unions and other groups aligned with the Democratic Party. Previously, Casey had authored legislation to increase the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020 and to index it to the annual change in median wages.
The “Raise the Wage Act” that Casey will co-sponsor would also index future annual increases in the federal minimum wage to median wage growth and gradually raise the $2.13 minimum for tipped workers to the full federal minimum wage.
Five states — Illinois, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts and New York, as well as the District of Columbia — have put their minimum wages on a path to reach $15 an hour.
Pennsylvania, however, is one of 20 states that remain at the $7.25 minimum. In recent weeks, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, introduced similar $15 minimum wage legislation, although it faces long odds in the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature.
A top state Republican lawmaker, Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, said Monday that Wolf’s $15 proposal is not reasonable or worth discussing.
However, Corman, R-Centre, suggested there is enough Senate Republican support for a more modest increase to bring a bill to the floor, although Corman would not define what he views as a reasonable increase.

US appeals court clears AT&T’s $81B purchase of Time Warner
By MARCY GORDON and TALI ARBEL, AP Business Writers
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday cleared AT&T’s takeover of Time Warner, rejecting the Trump administration’s claims that the $81 billion deal will harm consumers and reduce competition in the TV industry.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington came in the high-stakes competition case, approving one of the biggest media marriages ever. It was already completed last spring, soon after a federal trial judge approved it. AT&T, a wireless carrier and TV and home internet provider, absorbed Time Warner, the owner of CNN, HBO, the Warner Bros. movie studio, “Game of Thrones,” sports programming and other shows.
Many observers had expected the decision favorable to AT&T from the three-judge appeals court panel. The decision was unanimous to uphold the trial judge’s June ruling. Opposing the merger forced the Justice Department to argue against standing legal doctrine that favors mergers among companies that don’t compete directly with each other, what’s known as a vertical merger.
The U.S. antitrust lawsuit against Dallas-based AT&T marked the first time in decades that the government has challenged that doctrine by suing to block a vertical merger.
The appeals court judges said U.S. District Judge Richard Leon was correct to dismiss the government’s argument that AT&T’s takeover of Time Warner would hurt competition, limit choices and jack up prices for consumers to watch TV and movies.
“The government failed to meet its burden of proof” for its theory that costs for Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting content would increase after the merger, mainly through threats of programming “blackouts,” the judges wrote. The Turner networks include CNN.
The Justice Department antitrust attorneys had asserted that Leon misunderstood the complexities of the TV industry and the nature of AT&T’s competitors.
The idea behind the merger was to help AT&T — which claims about 25 million of the 90 million U.S. households that are pay TV customers — compete better with online rivals like Netflix, YouTube and Hulu.
AT&T already had a streaming service, DirecTV Now, but it launched a cheaper offering called WatchTV soon after the deal closed. It’s planning another streaming service, “WarnerMedia,” for later this year.
“The merger of these innovative companies has already yielded significant consumer benefits, and it will continue to do so for years to come,” AT&T General Counsel David McAtee said in a statement. “While we respect the important role that the U.S. Department of Justice plays in the merger review process, we trust that today’s (decision) will end this litigation.”
The ruling dealt a major setback to the Trump Justice Department. If the government decided to appeal the ruling, the next step likely would be the Supreme Court, and it wasn’t clear whether Justice planned to do so.
There’s about a 50 percent chance of the government taking it to the high court — and scant prospects of it winning there, said Matthew Cantor, an attorney focusing on telecom antitrust matters at Constantine Cannon in New York.
The Justice Department appears committed to pursuing the long-shot bid against the merger, rather than considering conditions that could have been imposed on AT&T by the trial court to make the deal more acceptable. The head of Justice’s antitrust division, Makan Delrahim, doesn’t like merger conditions requiring regulators to keep an eye on the combined company’s conduct for years after.
But politics and presidential influence also could be a factor, Cantor suggested. When the deal was first made public in October 2016, it drew fire from then-candidate Donald Trump, who promised to kill it “because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” Trump as president has publicly feuded with Time Warner’s CNN, calling it “failing” and a purveyor of “fake news,” and suspending one of its correspondents from the White House.
“It seems to me that political considerations played into this,” Cantor said. “It’s odd that the Justice Department has gone after this merger as its principal merger case. … This was a very tough case. It’s very hard to challenge a vertical merger.”
The case could affect future antitrust regulation. It underscores that the government should look at vertical mergers more critically, particularly when the companies combining are already in industries that have few competitors, said Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute.
There has been a rush of deal-making in the cable, entertainment and telecom industries over the last few years, and Leon’s ruling opened the doors for more efforts.
Just a day after his decision, Comcast jumped back into a bidding war with Disney for most of 21st Century Fox’s TV and movie businesses. Disney eventually won, and Comcast bought British broadcaster Sky instead.
In other deal activity, wireless carriers Sprint and T-Mobile also are attempting to combine. The Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission are still reviewing that deal, which is not a vertical merger. Sprint and T-Mobile are direct competitors.
___
Arbel reported from New York.

A top Republican lawmaker is opening the door to raising Pennsylvania’s minimum wage, but he’s also insisting that Democrats lower their sights. Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman said Monday that Gov. Tom Wolf’s latest proposal isn’t reasonable and not worth discussing. Corman wouldn’t define what he views as a reasonable increase. But he suggests there’s enough Senate Republican support for a more modest increase to bring a bill to the floor.