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NS merger must be watched

The fate of the proposed merger under which Norfolk Southern Railroad would be acquired by Union Pacific Railroad, creating America’s first transcontinental rail freight carrier, is beginning to undergo scrutiny by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board under what is being touted as a tough new standard. Therefore, the review, now just beginning, will not only decide whether the proposed merger would be in customers’ best interests; it also will deliver a verdict on the correctness and effectiveness of the new standard itself. For communities like Altoona that have a stake in ...

Human verification essential

Municipalities in this part of Pennsylvania generally feel insulated from the problems affecting big cities. For the most part that is true, especially regarding crime and the challenges — financial and otherwise — associated with providing needed municipal services. Even the issues of cities such as Altoona and Johnstown are of minor scope compared with those being dealt with by New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta, for example. Municipalities large or small and those of any size in between have one thing in common, though, the need for an adequate amount of revenue to ...

Transparency ensures public gets answers

The words “irreconcilable differences” didn’t — and don’t — delve into the specifics about why the Blair County commissioners cut ties with the architectural firm working on the new-county-prison project. Commissioner Amy Webster, who offered that vague explanation following a commissioners meeting on July 23, said “there were several things that we couldn’t get answers to,” but those additional words also failed to shed light on specifics about which county taxpayers have a right to have clear information, even if not every detail. However, Webster did say the ...

Region must remain great destination

One of the definitions in Webster’s Dictionary for the word “destination,” besides the definition “a place to which one is journeying,” is “a place worthy of travel or an extended visit.” That last definition is apropos, for a number of reasons, for this region — especially when one ponders several recent events. Think back to earlier this month when the world’s largest operating steam engine — Big Boy — arrived in Altoona, “posed” at Norfolk Southern Railroad’s Rose Yard for two days, then traveled to the Horseshoe Curve, where it “posed” again for ...

Facing issues best done immediately

Too often, elected officials act as if they are walking among uncooked eggs when they’re faced with a tough issue. They are fearful of cracking open the eggs and unleashing a sticky, hard-to-clean-up mess — when sometimes such a mess already exists. It was the Blair County commissioners who were faced with that kind of a dilemma early this year in connection with the county Planning Commission but, to their credit, they navigated it appropriately. Recent days confirmed the importance and correctness of what action they felt they needed to take, as well as how problematic ...

Lawmakers need lessons on compromise

Pennsylvania has an approved 2026-27 budget; that’s the good news. The bad news is how much unfinished budget-related business the state General Assembly has before it, but was unable to accomplish, despite missing the June 30 statutory budget-completion deadline by nearly two weeks. For starters, lawmakers were unable to come to agreement on a regulatory framework for skill games, including taxing those devices. While some state residents might regard that as unimportant, from a fiscal standpoint it is, because it is estimated that taxing those games could generate about $2 ...