Catalyst

Every politician promises to promote economic development, but Pennsylvania's Gov. Casey is doing it. His new program, the Pennsylvania Economic Development Partnership, holds great potential as a catalyst for effective action. Mr. Casey's basic idea is deceptively simple. He appointed 42 Pennsylvanians prominent in business, labor, academia and local government to serve as the partnership's board of directors. They would devise a comprehensive economic development plan for the state and take over direction of most programs now under the Department of Commerce.

Like everyone, Corey Dickerson has critics. "They say I'm too slow," the senior from Masterman said. "That's why I like Lawrence Moten [the former Syracuse basketball star]. " Dickerson even goes so far as to wear his socks Moten-style - pulled up as far as they can go - when he takes the floor for the boys' basketball team. The fashion statement, then, must be the reason he has been on a scoring tear over the last two years. He averaged more than 23 points per game as the team's lead guard last season.

Blasting over a 13-fence speed course, Catalyst and rider Katie Monahan jumped to a clear-cut victory last night in the Devon Horse Show's $10,000 open jumper competition. The gelding roared over the course cleanly in 56.918 seconds. Invictus, although rocking several rails, left all of them in place and completed the contest's one round in 59.380 seconds. Although 2 1/2 seconds slower than Catalyst, it was good enough for second place for Invictus and rider Eric Hasbrouck. Heaven Sent, ridden by Debbie Dolan, took the third-place ribbon with a clean round in 59.986 seconds.

Catalyst Energy Development Corp., the New York conglomerate trying to save Center City's shrinking steam loop, plans to convert one of the system's oil- fired power plants to a waste-to-steam plant. A Catalyst subsidiary wants to spend up to $20 million to transform the Willow Steam Plant at Ninth and Willow Streets to burn 200 tons of garbage a day, according to R. Lee Torrens, president of the subsidiary, Catalyst Waste-to-Energy Corp. Torrens said the new garbage plant would not only be a cheaper source of energy for the steam loop, but also would be a marketing tool to attract new customers to the loop.

The city today sought a $60,000 fine from a South Philadelphia refinery it said was the source of a mystery powder that sifted down on the neighborhood last week. At least five tons of powder escaped recently from a catalytic cracking unit at the Atlantic Refining and Marketing plant on Passyunk Avenue, said Bob King, director of enforcement for the city Air Management Services. "We don't know how much of it ended up in the neighborhood and how much went somewhere else in the plant area," said King, who identified the white- to-light-gray substance as zeolite, an aluminum silicate powder used as catalyst.

It's not realistic to think that Maple Shade can keep up its early-season scoring pace, but the Wildcats unveiled an impressive offensive in their first two games. Maple Shade opened with a 5-4 win over Buena and then defeated Burlington City, 5-2. "We introduced a new formation to utilize our players' strengths," Maple Shade coach Robert Henes said. "Also, we are getting some goals off set plays. " Junior Jesse Hamilton has been the catalyst with four goals in the first two games.

Meet the MCI of the electric power business. In an industry dominated by sluggish monopolies, this upstart has grown on competition. Applying Wall Street savvy to the national itch for deregulation, its managers have created an alternative network of power plants that some utility experts say provides a model of the industry's future. In less than four years, it has zoomed from a bright idea to a conglomerate soon to generate a half-billion dollars in annual revenues. Last spring, it won the first hostile-takeover battle in modern utility history.

The one-story Johnson Matthey building in Devon is similar in appearance to the other office buildings on Devon Park Drive - but the company inside is not so typical. The Johnson Matthey plant in Devon has produced catalytic systems for more than 50 percent of the 120 million cars being driven in North America, according to Ken Arnold, president of Johnson Mathey's catalytic division. Last week, the production of the 100-millionth catalyst was marked in a two- day celebration in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the Clean Air Act. Many of the company's 320 employees attended festivities celebrating both events on Friday and Saturday.

The city Public Health Department yesterday asked the Atlantic Refining & Marketing Corp. to pay a $60,000 fine for polluting several sections of South Philadelphia with aluminum silicate, a nontoxic ashy substance, over four days last month. "It was a nuisance . . . but toxicity is not the issue," said Robert W. King, director of compliance and enforcement for the department's Air Management Services office. Laboratory examination of samples taken from three sections of South Philadelphia "indicated that all three samples were comparable to the catalyst used by the Atlantic Refining & Marketing Corp.

Americans continued to entrust their money to savings institutions in April, despite increasing publicity about S&L bail-outs and closings, the government said yesterday. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board said net deposits, the amount by which deposits exceed withdrawals, at the 3,113 federally insured thrift institutions increased by $1.2 billion to $962.4 billion in April, the seventh consecutive monthly increase. Net deposits during the first four months of this year totaled $16.3 billion.

ARLINGTON, Texas - When Mike Napoli was playing for the other team, Texas Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler had a serious dislike for him. Sure, a lot of that had to do with Napoli playing for a division opponent for five years before he became part of a World Series team in Texas. There was also the way Napoli flipped his bat after hitting a home run or how the top button of his Angels jersey was often undone. "I would never tell you last year I would probably enjoy having him in the clubhouse," Kinsler said.

NEW YORK - From the moment Domonic Brown arrived in Clearwater for his first big-league spring training a year-and-a-half ago, veterans in the Phillies' clubhouse have spoken appreciatively of the young outfielder's eagerness to absorb the intricacies of life at baseball's highest level. In the minors, athletic talent is the ultimate accelerant, the undisputed impetus for a top prospect's rise. In the majors, though, survival hinges on nuance, on the subtle behaviors that slow the game down to a manageable speed.

It was a simple question, yet Lorin Dixon paused, then smiled before answering it. On Monday, the Connecticut reserve guard was asked, "What's your role on this team?" "I get that question a lot," Dixon chuckled inside the locker room. "But it's hard to answer. " That's because when she was a senior at Christ the King (N.Y.), everyone expected her to become a lethal scorer at Connecticut. The former high school McDonald's All-American was supposed to use her fleet feet to routinely produce double-figure point totals.

It's not realistic to think that Maple Shade can keep up its early-season scoring pace, but the Wildcats unveiled an impressive offensive in their first two games. Maple Shade opened with a 5-4 win over Buena and then defeated Burlington City, 5-2. "We introduced a new formation to utilize our players' strengths," Maple Shade coach Robert Henes said. "Also, we are getting some goals off set plays. " Junior Jesse Hamilton has been the catalyst with four goals in the first two games.

Philip Jaurigue keeps his eye trained on the horizon at Sabre Systems Inc., the Warminster company he founded on a shoestring more than two decades ago. His business philosophy is all forward-looking. If there's one adage he abhors, it's, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. " But Jaurigue also recalls the small boost he got way back at the start, when he decided to set out on his own after nearly a decade in the 1980s' booming information-technology business. Jaurigue, now 51, started Sabre, an engineering- and technology-consulting company, with the help of a home-equity loan, four employees, and a fair amount of gumption - a critical quality for any entrepreneur.

ON BEHALF of the Private Investors Forum, a nonprofit consortium of 150 accredited private investors and angel investor groups in the Mid-Atlantic Region, I'd like to note that the April 28 special report on the region's entrepreneurs, "Big Thinking," overlooked the Angel Venture Fair and its contribution to the region's economy. The fair, on April 6 at the Union League in Philadelphia, is considered the premier meeting of accredited angel investors and entrepreneurs in the region.

Calls for drastic changes in how the state Judicial Conduct Board investigates and disciplines judges should not go unheeded. The board has received deservedly harsh criticism for its lackadaisical approach to complaints about two former Luzerne County judges who allegedly accepted bribes from operators of juvenile-detention facilities. Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan pleaded guilty to fraud charges last year, but a federal judge threw out their plea agreements, saying the men had not accepted responsibility.

The Egg Harbor Township boys' basketball team has been like a puzzle with pieces scattered all over a hardwood floor the last couple of seasons. However, the parts now have been snapped into place, and a new centerpiece puts them together to form an action picture of a true contender in the Cape-Atlantic League American Division 1. The once chemistry-challenged Eagles, whose record was 6-18 last season and 9-16 the season before, began to click at the end of last season. Then, in July, the big piece, Anthony Taylor, transferred to the Atlantic County school to round out the starting five.

The Egg Harbor Township boys' basketball team has been like a puzzle with pieces scattered all over a hardwood floor the last couple of seasons. However, the parts now have been snapped into place, and a new centerpiece puts them together to form an action picture of a true contender in the Cape-Atlantic League American Division 1. The once chemistry-challenged Eagles, whose record was 6-18 last season and 9-16 the season before, began to click at the end of last season. Then, in July, the big piece, Anthony Taylor, transferred to the Atlantic County school to round out the starting five.

So, it was an average rotten day on Wall Street yesterday - rainy, cold and miserable, with a sluggish Dow Jones bumping along depressingly at the low level of 8,200, more or less. And then, boom, it's 2 p.m., and the Dow Jones mainlined Red Bull, climbing from 8,300 to 9,065 in two hours as the market closed. That was almost an 11 percent increase from the day's opener. It's been weird like that a lot lately. Two Mondays ago, on Oct. 13, the Dow Jones jumped 936 points, again in late-in-the-day trading.