The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

June 24, 2008

Congressman English fires back at Sharpsville councilman

By Tom Davidson

SHARPSVILLE — U.S. Rep. Phil English was fired up Tuesday as he responded to Sharpsville Council President Tom Lally’s lament that the seven-term congressmen couldn’t deliver any cash or clout to help the borough build a new $10 million water treatment plant.

Lally voiced his dissatisfaction with English, Erie, R-3rd District, in an interview Monday that prompted the congressman, facing what may prove to be a nationally supported Democratic challenger in Kathy Dahlkamper, to fire a salvo of his own.

“It appears I’m obliged to set the record straight,” English said. “Mr. Lally made some claims that are flat-out ridiculous.”

He said he’s lobbied for Sharpsville and delivered. In 2003 he got the borough $100,000 for its sewer system and he’s working on an appropriations request now for the town, he said.

English doesn’t dispute Lally’s position that the government wasn’t able to help the borough fix its water system, but said it wasn’t for lack of effort on his part.

“I’ve never said it was fair,” English said of the federal bureaucracy and limited amounts of cash available for an ever- increasing number of projects.

But English said he’s never spoken directly to Lally and was irked by the councilman’s comments.

“I don’t think he gets to criticize unless he has the initiative to pick up the phone” and call, English said.

“This is a bizarre charge from Mr. Lally, who has never contacted our office,” English said.

He called Lally’s comments an “outrageous charge from someone with a political ax to grind,” he said.

Lally and his colleagues have spent much of the last three years jumping through bureaucratic hoops set by the state Department of Environmental Protection with regard to the town’s water system.

Shortly after voters elected to keep the aging treatment plant instead of selling it to Aqua America, the DEP found the borough’s water wasn’t up to snuff and ordered something to be done.

After years of studies, funding applications and other hurdles, the cost to build a new plant came in at about $10 million. That’s cash the borough didn’t have and couldn’t get although it applied for most state and federal assistance programs — even with support from English, state Rep. Mark Longietti, Farrell, D-7th District and state Sen. Robert D. “Bob” Robbins, Salem Township, R-50th District, Sharpsville Mayor Kenneth Robertson said.

Robertson concurred with English that the congressman has tried to help.

“(English) has always listened to what we’ve had to say,” Robertson said. “This isn’t a political hot potato. The borough had a need bigger than the government could provide. That’s the disappointment for all of us on council and I guess some of us are expressing it in different ways.

“We’re all frustrated with the process.”

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