Authority

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

Readers often ask us about the backgrounds of the opinion writers whose work appears on the Commentary Page. Many of these writers belong to interest groups, think tanks and opinion mills. Sorting out the political stances, allegiances and aims of these organizations can be confusing. But readers are sharp: They want to know where writers and their support groups stand. So we've set up a Web site titled "Sources of Authority. " You can visit it at http://home.phillynews.com/inquirer/opinion/archive/tanx.

The Chester Redevelopment Authority Board appointed the Rev. Thomas Jackson as its permanent executive director at a meeting on Monday. Mr. Jackson, a former federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) management official, had served since March 18 as the authority's temporary executive director. He is the pastor at Chester's Calvary Baptist Church. He will be paid $60,000 a year. Mr. Jackson was hired to replace former board chief Willie Mae Wells, who was laid off in March after Chester's City Council seized the authority's bank accounts and cut off its money.

IN HIS MAY 12 letter, David Lee asks why the local minimum-wage legislation does not cover all Philadelphians. The simple answer is that City Council does not have the authority to raise the minimum wage across the board in Philadelphia. That's why I am joining the lobby to raise the state minimum wage to create the maximum benefit for Philadelphia's working poor. I applaud Mr. Lee's compassion for the low-income citizens of this city. We must band together to lobby the state Legislature to raise the state minimum wage.

The Burlington City Housing Authority will receive bids Friday on an ambitious plan to completely refurbish the authority's 17 buildings at a cost of more than $1 million. The project, funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, will provide for renovations on all 90 units owned by the authority. Work should begin in about five weeks, said Joseph Badame, the architect overseeing the project. Through the extensive plan, each apartment will be redone from floor to ceiling.

Local political leaders have found much to bicker about since the city's chronic fiscal problems reached crisis proportions last summer. But there is one thing on which almost all of them agree: Philadelphia will be insolvent in July, or soon thereafter, unless the state legislature creates an authority to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars in the city's behalf. The question now is: Can that be done soon enough to make a difference? Cash projections indicate that the city treasury will be virtually empty on June 30. Major debt-service payments are due the next day and throughout July and August.

The selection of a new chairman and, possibly, a new executive director is expected to top the agenda at tonight's reorganization meeting of the Deptford Township Municipal Utilities Authority. Two top MUA officials resigned last month, and a third member of the authority is expected to be replaced because his reappointment was ruled invalid after he voted for himself. Gary Covely, an MUA member, is considered a leading candidate for the chairmanship. "He would do an excellent job as chairman, and he knows as much as anyone about the MUA," Township Solicitor Eugene McCaffrey Jr. said.

Two Bristol Township officials overstepped their authority by trying to negotiate with a businessman whose company is suing the township, three other officials say. The three, in interviews last week, said that Councilman Vince Lattanzi and Solicitor Clyde Waite had no right in a Feb. 7 meeting with businessman Gary Roberts to try to negotiate an end to a suit filed by Waste Alternatives Inc. in November. "Holding a private, nonadvertised meeting in a developer's place of business is inappropriate," Councilman Robert Lewis said.

The Central Chester County Recycling Authority is considering three sites for a new processing center for recyclable materials, according to Emil Meyer, the authority's president. Meyer said at the authority's meeting Tuesday night that three sites were under consideration, two of which are owned by Lukens Steel Co. in Coatesville. Meyer said that Lukens had expressed an interest in selling the land, but that the authority wanted a donation. Meyer said the third site was on Valley Road in Valley Township and would be leased.

The sea of red ink that has engulfed the balance sheets of the Chester County Solid Waste Authority for the last several years is departing. According to audited financial statements released last week, the authority's accumulated deficit dropped by more than $6 million last year, the result of revised engineering estimates on the costs of closing parts of the authority's Lanchester Landfill. As of the end of 1995, that deficit stood at $754,409, down from $6,775,000 at the beginning of the year.

Paul Fussell, 88, an acclaimed author of books on war, poetry, and class, and a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, died Wednesday, May 23, in Medford, Ore., of natural causes. His stepson Cole Behringer said Mr. Fussell died at a long-term care home in Medford, where he eventually relocated with his wife, Harriet Behringer-Fussell, after moving from Philadelphia in 2008. Fussell's 1975 book, The Great War and Modern Memory, about the myths of World War I and the war's impact on literature, won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Modern Library publishing house named it one of the 20th century's best nonfiction books.

TRENTON — The Christie administration wants to take $200 million from the clean-energy fund to plug a hole in the state's current budget and withhold money for transportation infrastructure projects next year to preserve Gov. Christie's top priority for 2013: implementing a 10 percent income tax cut. The revised $31 billion proposed budget depends on robust revenue growth that is higher than that predicted by two Wall Street rating agencies and...

A video has gone viral of a man who put a young boy into a washing machine at a Camden laundromat. The machine automatically locked and turned on, setting off a frantic scramble to rescue the boy. Authorities today said they don't believe the act was criminal and are now speaking with the boy's mother. Her name has not been released. 6ABC reported the boy's grandmother, whose name was not given, said the child was with a babysitter and her boyfriend when the incident occurred.

Two years after it was created by City Council, the Philadelphia Energy Authority hits the public stage on Wednesday looking for a few good ideas about saving energy. The five-member authority is holding a public hearing to gather suggestions on ways to fulfill its mission of reducing city government's energy consumption and to facilitate the development of renewable energy projects. "We're looking for great ideas," said Christopher A. Lewis, a Blank Rome law partner who is the authority's chairman.

Flight attendants for a major US Airways Express operator, Air Wisconsin, have authorized a strike if negotiations fail. In a vote that concluded Tuesday, 97.3 percent of flight attendants voting approved the strike. Air Wisconsin, the largest privately held regional airline in the United States, operates as a US Airways Express carrier serving 70 cities from hubs in Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; New York; Raleigh; and Norfolk. No strike deadline has been set

This story was updated on May 21, 2012 A politically connected insurance broker pleaded guilty Friday to defrauding the Philadelphia Housing Authority of $2.3 million and is now naming names for federal authorities of public officials and others who allegedly have accepted bribes or kickbacks in return for business. Kobie T. West, 39, who took over West Insurance Group from his father and the firm's founder, Bernard T. West, has admitted to one count of wire fraud.

Neshaminy School District teachers, who have been working under the terms of an expired contract for four years, voted Wednesday to lift their controversial "work-to-contract" job action and to authorize their second strike of the school year. There has been no decision on whether the 633 members of the Neshaminy Federation of Teachers will go on strike, union president Louise Boyd said in a statement Thursday. Members authorized the NFT executive committee to call a strike "when and under the circumstances the committee decides are appropriate.

If anyone understood the pie-in-the-sky chances of becoming a successful author, it was Hugh Gilmore. For 10 years, he owned a small bookshop in Chestnut Hill overflowing with old and rare novels, nonfiction, and poetry, the great and woeful majority of which — no matter how well-written — were destined for dust-coated obscurity or the ignominy of the recycling bin. "Of the millions of books that have been published, I was the person...