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Maybe it’s too much time inhaling diesel fumes. Perhaps modern plastics are emitting some odorless, mind-altering gas. It’s possible that newer vehicles running on compressed natural gas or propane exude some never-before encountered chemical compound with deleterious effects on the human brain.

Something seems to be causing those responsible for bus transportation around here make bad decisions, or to make decisions that sound good but turn out bad.

First there was the over-payment to a company — owned by the school board president’s parents — for bus service at Hanover Area School District. While the district recouped most of the money through insurance, it’s still a serious failure of bookkeeping.

Then there was the debacle that followed the discovery that Rinehimer Bus Lines did not have required paperwork for many of the drivers hired for Crestwood School District bus runs. The Rinehimer contract was cancelled, G. Davis was brought in. G. Davis promised it could handle the job despite having less than two months to get everything in order, then said it couldn’t. The contract with G. Davis was cancelled, and Rinehimer was rehired.

That sequence was disturbingly similar to 2016, when Crestwood dumped Rinehimer for a cheaper vendor who, at the last minute, announced it couldn’t do the job, and the school board hired Rinehimer back.

And there is the strange case of Luzerne County Transportation Authority re-branding itself as the North East Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (NEPTA).

The Hanover Area error cost money, but at least the wheels kept spinning and passengers got where they needed to go. The Crestwood problems have now caused school delays twice, and it’s a bit harder to forgive and move on when essentially the same thing happened twice.

The LCTA/NEPTA kerfuffle? Well, it is apparently a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

The authority board didn’t know the change was going to be announced. Neither did Luzerne County Council, the people who appoint authority board members and who authorize a tidy local contribution to the authority ($650,409 this year) required to obtain $6 million in state money.

By all accounts, nobody was left abandoned at a bus stop and no money disappeared from authority coffers — except for a $70 fee to register “NEPTA” as a fictitious name with the state — as a result of this poorly-thought-out action.

And the theory behind it — taking a leading role in what some expect will be an inevitable regionalization of local transportation authorities — isn’t a bad one, though there’s a caution not yet voiced elsewhere: “NEPTA” sounds quite ripe for a meme on “nepotism”

But it’s clear there was a mistake in pushing the idea forward without connecting all the bureaucratic dots. Just as it is clear Crestwood has a knack for signing contracts with unreliable bus companies and Hanover Area has, or at least had, a serious spending oversight issue.

Any one of these problems would have been quite enough fodder for taxpayer frustration. All three?

Well, if you feel like you’ve been blindsided by a bus, there are good reasons.

– Times Leader

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