Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 20

May 8 2008 Post-Gazette Local News COVERAGE CLOSE TO HOME EDITORIALS FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2008 PAGE B-8 WEATHER REPORT Section E-mail: Phone: 412-263-1601 Web: Editor: Tom Birdsong Questions about delivery or service? Call 1-800-228-NEWS (6397). LOTTERY PAGE B-2 EDITORIALS PAGE B-6 PERSPECTIVES PAGE B-7 INSIDE FOR MORE LOCAL NEWS COVERAGE AND BREAKING UPDATES, VISIT Steve With their hands in the air, David Zimmerman and Sophie Simon, both age 6, finished the Tzaddik Katamar dance yesterday during Yom 2008, a celebration of 60th anniversary, at Community Day school in Squirrel Hill. The children are kindergarten students at the school. The event, sponsored by the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh, featured music, folk dancing, an Israeli Shuk (or shopping bazaar), food vendors, a photo exhibit and a program featuring teens from sister cities of Karmiel and Misgav. Michael William Belt, president of ACORN, chants in protest of the Federal policies on mortgage lenders yesterday in front of the Federal Reserve Bank on Grant Street in Downtown Pittsburgh.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, ISRAEL! PROTESTING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK Coal companies fight royalties on exports By Don Hopey Pittsburgh Post-Gazette American coal companies, including Bethel Park-based Consol Energy Inc. and its subsidiaries, are suing the United States because they want to pay federal royalties on millions of tons of coal they export. The royalties 31.5 cents a ton for surface-mined coal and 13.5 cents a ton for deep-mined coal are assessed on all coal, whether for domestic consumption or for export. But the coal companies claim that it is unconstitutional to tax coal is that is exported. Seventy-five companies that mine, sell and export coal are listed as plaintiffs in the law- suit against the U.S.

Department of the Interior, including at least a dozen from Pennsylvania. Seven of those are subsidiaries of Consol Energy, the biggest mining operator in Pennsylvania and the fifth-biggest by tonnage in the nation, mining 66 million tons last year, 7 million tons of which it exported. The royalties, which have been assessed since 1977, bring in millions of dollars a year to the federal Abandoned Mine Lands Fund, which is used to reclaim dangerous and degraded abandoned mine lands and streams. If coal companies are successful in avoiding the royalties on exported coal it will reduce the amount of money Pennsylvania and other mining states get to reclaim thousands of acres of land and fix thousands of miles of ecologically damaged streams. just Pennsylvania it would be millions of dollars that would not come to the said R.

John Dawes, chairman of the Pennsylvania Abandoned Mine Land Campaign and executive director of the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds. ridiculous because the mining companies should want to pay the royalties to clean up the scars of the past, which are bad advertisements for the SEE COAL, PAGE B-2 They say the tax is unconstitutional County staying out of Swissvale battle By Karamagi Rujumba Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Allegheny County officials have declined to intervene in a dispute between Swissvale and a county mental health contractor that placed 25 of its patients in apartments in the borough. Pyramid Healthcare of Altoona, an addiction, mental health and adolescent behavioral treatment provider, rented apartments in two buildings last year. The presence of the patients 20 men in an apartment complex at 1901 Hanover and five women at 1935-1937 Delaware Ave. immediately caused uproar in the community, with residents and borough officials accusing Pyramid of operating an illegal group home.

came in here and opened a group home without telling us what they were doing or what kind of people they were bringing into the said James Bonacci, a borough councilman who resigned this week in protest of the matter. Mr. Bonacci, 67, a retired teacher and 40-year resident of Swissvale, decried what he called a county-funded scheme to place transitional housing and Section 8 residents in communities like Swissvale. find it inconceivable that Chief Executive Onorato and County Council have chosen to ignore the voice of Swissvale, whose reservations about such activity are well- established and said Mr. Bonacci, who urged the county to step in and help resolve the dispute between Swissvale and Pyramid at County Council meeting.

is clear that Swissvale and other Mon Valley communities are the target of these group home ventures on the part of the he said. He argued that because Pyramid is a county contractor, the county could control the company by ending its contract. Kevin Evanto, Mr. spokesman, said the county has no such control. The Department of Human Services, which oversees the contract, federal pass-through money, which we control.

From our perspective, this is a dispute between the municipality and the health Mr. Evanto said. SEE HEALTH, PAGE B-4 Borough says mental health contractor has illegal group home Jury to weigh life or death for farmhand By Michael A. Fuoco Pittsburgh Post-Gazette WAYNESBURG, Pa. A Greene County jury may today begin deliberating whether Jeffrey R.

Martin should be put to death or sentenced to life in prison for raping and murdering a 12-year-old Greene County girl nearly two years ago. Yesterday, after finding Mr. Martin guilty of sexually assaulting, strangling and burying Gabrielle Miranda Bechen on June 13, 2006, the jury of six men and six women began hearing testimony in the penalty phase of the case. Returning to the stand today will be Maryland psychologist Marc J. Tabackman, a defense witness.

Yesterday, arguing against putting Mr. Martin to death, he testified that mitigating factors include his dysfunctional family life and a traumatic brain injury from being hit by a car as a child. That injury, he said, left Mr. Martin with an IQ between 70 and 79, with 100 being average. Furthermore, Dr.

Taback- man testified, Mr. Martin said he had been molested several times as a child, and during his life had been alcohol dependent, depressed and suicidal. District Attorney Marjorie Fox had only begun her cross- examination, during which she began to dispute some of those findings, when President Judge H. Terry Grimes recessed for the day. SEE MARTIN, PAGE B-3 Jury finds Greene County man guilty of assaulting, strangling 12-year-old girl URA to market new scholarship program By Eleanor Chute Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The Urban Redevelopment Authority wants to promote a program that provides college scholarships to city public school students, in hopes of attracting new residents to the city.

The URA board yesterday voted to seek proposals from marketing firms to design an marketing for the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program as well as other incentives, including URA housing programs and residential tax abatements available in some neighborhoods. are several initiatives and several programs that are real economic generators that, quite frankly, we just promote enough as things to entice people to move in as residents or business or keep people said Yarone Zober, URA chairman. The Pittsburgh Promise is just getting started, with the first scholarships of up to $5,000 a year for four years going to the Class of 2008. So far, more than 950 students in Pittsburgh Public Schools and charter schools within the borders have applied. The Pittsburgh Promise, which was established at The Pittsburgh Foundation, was started with a $100 million commitment from UPMC, counting $10 million for the 2008 graduates.

The remainder is a challenge grant requiring others to contribute $135 million. SEE PROMISE, PAGE B-3 Komen race celebrates thousands of triumphs over breast cancer By Pohla Smith Pittsburgh Post-Gazette On Sunday, Melissa Ward will put on the pink T-shirt and cap emblematic of breast cancer survivors, sit in an unfamiliar wheelchair and let her friend Annette Oros push her over the 5-kilometer course of the 16th annual Susan G. Komen Pittsburgh Race for the Cure. It will mark the second consecutive year that Ms. Ward 32, of Aspinwall, a school psychologist for the Fox Chapel Area School District, has had to race in a wheelchair because of surgery related to her breast cancer.

Last year, the Komen race fell 10 days after she underwent a double mastectomy. This year, reconstructive surgery on Tuesday left her too tired and woozy to walk or run the course that starts at Flagstaff Hill and loops around Schenley Park in Oakland. A plastic surgeon took muscle out of her back to rebuild pectoral muscle destroyed by the radiation she underwent after the mastectomies and original reconstruction. not going for a third in a Ms. Ward joked, the day before her most recent operation.

The Pittsburgh version of the Komen races, which are run across the nation, had more than 35,000 registrants in 2007, and that same number is anticipated this year. Last year, more than 2,600 breast cancer survivors participated, and race Executive Director Kathy Purcell said are expecting even more than that this The survivors come in all ages, shapes and sizes, and each of their stories of trial, tribulation and triumph is unique. Ms. starts with the source of the two types of cancer found in her right breast: Genetic testing showed she carried a mutated BRCA 2 gene. When mutated, BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genes increase the risk of breast cancer, as well as prostate, ovarian and pancreatic cancers.

Breast cancer progresses more rapidly in women with the gene mutation than in survivors without it. Those were the reasons she had the left breast, which at the time was free of cancer, removed as well. SEE KOMEN, PAGE B-3 PennDOT stays in-house with new keystone logo By Joe Grata Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has changed its logo for the second time in seven years. This time, the design was done in-house rather than paying $110,000 to a marketing consultant as the department did the last time. Also, the logo will be phased in on everything from station ery to hard hats and dump trucks rather than buying four new T-shirts for every highway worker and 10,800 equipment decals as it did in 2001.

is part of a commonwealth-wide branding effort featuring the keystone PennDOT spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick said. state agencies are incorporating the keystone as a standard, integral part of their a reflection of nickname as the Keystone State. The new logos have been introduced at two other state agencies thus far: Department of Banking and Department of General Services. new logo includes the elements drawn up the last time: blue and green and a large blue dot. They, too, are contained inside the symbolic keystone.

SEE PENNDOT, PAGE B-4.