Off Route 29 in Noxen, short stakes mark the future location of the drilling pad on Robert Longmore's 97-acre farm. The state Department of Environmental Protection is currently reviewing the Texas-based gas company's permit to place and operate a well it filed May 11.

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The farm is near properties that are part of the Noxen Area Gas Group, a body of roughly 150 families with a combined 8,500 acres which is in the midst of negotiating a lease with Houston, Texas-based Carrizo Oil and Gas.

Just down the road from Longmore, Noxen group organizer Joel Field verified that the group is in the final stages of negotiation with Carrizo. Field and co-organizer Harry Traver declined further comment due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.

"Until things are settled down, they'd rather not give any statements," Harry Traver's wife, Dawn Traver, said Monday.

Longmore, 56, has owned the farm since 1998 and signed a lease with Chief roughly four and a half years ago. The landmen who approached Longmore about the deal, he said, made the three-page lease giving his family $25 per acre with the minimum 12.5 percent royalty sound like a good deal.

"We were kind of taken advantage of four and a half years ago," Longmore said. "I know people getting $6,000 an acre."

The lease had almost no provisions protecting Longmore's farm. At the time, the landmen made it seem unlikely that drilling would ever commence during the terms of his lease, which ends May 15, 2011.

Chief Oil and Gas media contact Ben McCue attempted to reach operations employees for comment Monday afternoon but they were unavailable by press time.

Since Longmore signed, though, he said his experience with the company has been much more positive.

Earlier this year, the Longmores were given the opportunity to amend the lease.

"They proposed some amendments to the lease," Longmore said, "so we countered with some amendments with some environmental stuff."

Chief offered to reopen the terms of the lease in order to add protections for the company in anticipation of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that could have invalidated thousands of gas leases where gas companies were deducting production costs from the state minimum royalty.

The opinion on the case was an interpretation of the Pennsylvania's Minimum Royalty Act which establishes the 12.5 percent royalty requirement for all oil or natural gas recovered from a well but doesn't stipulate when to calculate the royalty.

The court ultimately decided in favor of the gas companies roughly a week after the Longmores and Chief finalized the revised lease.

The Longmores added amendments that protected ground and surface water, along with the 0.25-mile stretch of Bowmans Creek that runs through the property.

Longmore's son, Josh Longmore, manages the Luzerne County Conservation District and helped his father amend the lease.

"Unfortunately, they signed a very basic lease that didn't have some of the protections that the newer leases have," Josh Longmore said. "Our biggest goal, our biggest hope is that the property maintains its natural beauty, its agricultural purpose."

The younger Longmore doesn't have any stake in his parents' farm, but felt that it was necessary to help. He and his father combed through leases that they found online and pulled out the clauses that fit their needs.

"There was like three or four different categories of amendments," Longmore said.

Chief accepted 90 percent of their roughly 20 amendments, Longmore said.

The company did draw the line on an amendment that would have prohibited the company from disposing cuttings - the rock equivalent to sawdust - on the pad. The company argued it would be cost-prohibitive to haul it off-site, Longmore said.

"I really got the impression that they weren't hiding anything from us," Longmore said. "They were willing to answer every question we had."

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In the midst of an ongoing corruption probe, two community organizations called Tuesday for elected officials, business leaders, political candidates and Luzerne County residents to sign a pledge to practice ethical behavior and restore public integrity.

• Print out a copy of the ethics pledge
• Visit the ethics awareness site
• View a list of citizens who have signed the pledge

Roughly 150 people crowded into the lobby of the Kirby Center to add their signatures on the document at a kick-off event for the Ethics Awareness Initiative, an effort spearheaded by Leadership Wilkes-Barre and the Ethics Institute of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

"We don't hold ownership," said Kim Koehl, Leadership Wilkes-Barre's director of junior and intercollegiate program. "Our entire community must fashion steps that lead us toward a community that we are all proud to call home."

The initiative's leaders outlined components of the project they hope will inspire conversations among residents and community groups about how to fulfill the tenets of the pledge. Among those resources is a website featuring guides to use during forums along with a section at the Osterhout Free Library featuring materials on ethics for residents of all ages.

The initiative is also assembling a basic curriculum for teachers' lesson plans in elementary and middle-school classrooms to begin shaping the attitudes of younger residents about what it means to be ethical.

After community groups or businesses host forums, the initiative wants to see participants take the next step and people grow the list of people who have signed the document.

The inspiration for the ethics initiative came from Leadership Palm Beach County in Florida, which launched a similar program in June 2008 amid a similar federal investigation that began in 2006 and led to the arrest of three county government officials, said Lori Nocito, executive director of Leadership Wilkes-Barre.

In Luzerne County, federal investigators have spent 16 months looking into a range of offenses from the kids-for-cash scandal to kick-backs for minor public works projects, bringing shocking revelations and the arrests of close to 30 public officials.

Yet, the "culture of corruption" revealed has long been a persistent problem, said David W. Kistler, a former medical chief of staff at Geisinger who gave opening remarks at the event.

Kistler said he remembers when his father spoke of graft during the construction of the Luzerne County Courthouse and rumors that coal barons manipulated public officials behind the scenes. Yet, those indiscretions and others recently revealed have spurred residents to action.

"This was a wake-up call," he said. "When you look and see how much damage it has done to the people who have worked so hard … it is a sad state."

And while the initiative is out front trying to stir interest, its leaders emphasized they want any progress or changes in policy and practices to come from residents and organizations, said Sister Bernadette Duross, executive director for the Ethics Institute.

The initiative held a seminar during a conference hosted by the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Commerce, which was attended by 25 people, Nocito said. She said there are no plans currently in the works to host a similar event.

Duross and Koehl said the initiative will gain momentum as groups share their "success stories" and let those serve as inspiration to residents to take similar steps.

"We have so many good, hardworking (and) ethical people," Duross said. "They'll want their signature to be recognized and people to know this is how they live their lives."

mharris@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2110

At first glance the above statement might seem over-the-top, but not so to those following the developments in the scandal known as Bonusgate. Most understand that bonusgate refers to the arrests of 25 Democrats and Republicans for using taxpayer funds for political purposes. It is the details that many do not understand fully.

There are essentially three aspects to the scandal: The use of state computers for political, not legislative, purposes. The use of state staff for political campaigns and a massive gathering of legislative aides for working on the petition challenges to Ralph Nader in 2004 and to my U.S. Senate candidacy in 2006. One can understand, to an extent, that there may be a blurring of lines of boundary with regard to working on your boss' re-election or in sending communication. Considering how jaded the public is with regard to the political culture of corruption, it barely raises concern when such behavior is revealed. Such practice has been unchallenged for so long that it is often assumed. Further, the victim(s) in these instances is the Pennsylvania taxpayer, so the individual impact is rather muted.

However, in the effort against the voter signatures gathered by Ralph Nader and the Green Party we have living, breathing victims; namely Ralph Nader, Carl Romanelli and Larry Otter. Each of us remain encumbered with over $80,000 in fees and costs owed to the lawyers representing Democratic candidates John Kerry and Bob Casey. Shocking news considering that we now know that the original review of our signatures was done by state workers, on state time, in state offices, using state resources, and the resulting work product was then transferred to the aforementioned lawyers who produced what became the challenge petitions against the signatures we collected. Additionally, those who participated were awarded large, taxpayer-funded bonuses.

In looking to the petition effort, note that Nader and I were no threat whatsoever to any state legislator, as we were running for federal office. In 2006 the Green Party filed nearly 100,000 signatures on over 3,700 pages. This is the most signatures filed by any candidate, of any party, in the history of Pennsylvania elections. Challengers only have one week to prepare a challenge, thereby requiring a small army of workers in order to manage so much paper. Considering the financial and human resources of the Democratic Party, Bob Casey and the law firms used against us; there should be no need for legislative involvement.

Yet we can see through looking at the facts of bonusgate that the legislative involvement was massive. The Grand Jury Presentment of July, 2008 first confirmed that legislative aides were heavily involved in the petition challenges of 2004 and 2006. Seven have entered guilty pleas to various felony counts of conspiracy, conflict, and theft. The two highest ranking staffers to plead, Mike Manzo and Jeff Foreman, have entered pleas that specifically spell out their involvement in petition challenges. Finally, the ongoing Veon, Cott, Keefer and Rosepink trials continue to provide information confirming the conspiracy against the rights of Nader and me as citizens and as candidates. In the case of my plight it is important to note that all that was done to me was done in Bob Casey's name by lawyers who boast of being Casey's 2006 Election Law counsel. Also note that the illegal bonus program was run during the same period that Casey was our state treasurer.

The Greens clearly understand that Senator Casey remains the one person in the country that could make a difference regarding Otter and I. We have been asking Casey to weigh in and denounce the crimes committed in his name for years now. We ask that he demand his lawyers drop the punitive fees levied against us.

Please, Senator Casey, recognize that Pennsylvanians deserve the same civil rights you desire for Iranians. In the absence of Casey's help one is compelled to ask: What did Bob Casey know and when did he know it?

Carl Romanelli resides in Wilkes-Barre. He is the Co-chair of the Luzerne County Green Party, State Committee delegate of the Pennsylvania Green Party and serves on the Green Party of the U.S. Media and International committees. He was a 2006 U.S. Senate candidate.

Students at Wilkes-Barre Area schools will be wearing collared shirts with khaki-style slacks, knee-length or longer skirts and long shorts when they return to school Sept. 2.

The school board unanimously approved a stricter, uniform-like dress code for the district today during a noon meeting at the Administration Building. Board members James Fisher and Brian Dunn were absent. Dunn has not attended meetings for several months and is facing a federal corruption charge.

View the new dress code requirements

The school board heavily debated a stricter dress code during the 2007-08 school year, but decided to give the former code one more year to see if students would comply. Board member Maryanne Toole said that did not happen and students continued to dress inappropriately. Toole said the code was not enforced, so the board chose to go ahead with the stricter code.

Board members considered stricter dress codes from four area districts, and ultimately based the new code on the one at Wyoming Valley West, with some tweaking.

No parents or students attended the meeting to protest the code. The only parent who attended asked for clarification that sneakers were allowed and there were no restrictions on gym clothes.

Solid color golf, or polo, shirts and button-down dress shirts are allowed. At this time, no stripes or plaids are allowed. Red, a color that some schools have banned because of of possible gang connotations, will be allowed. Toole said the board discussed the color, but ultimately chose to allow it because Coughlin High School's colors are red and blue.

The shirts must be buttoned just below the neck and cannot have logos more than two inches by two inches. Polos cannot be longer than the middle pants pocket, and dress shirts must be tucked in.

Hooded sweatshirts are not allowed, but properly fitting crew neck sweatshirts and crew or v-neck sweaters are, with a collared shirt underneath. Turtlenecks are allowed if worn under a collared shirt.

Pants are limited to having no more than two front and two back pockets, with no cargo pockets, and must be khaki, navy blue, black or gray. Cargo pants, baggy/skateboard pants, extra wide/extra full pants, military fatigues, sweat pants, wind pants, jeans and "excessively" tight pants are not allowed.

Skirts must be the same colors, cannot have cargo pants and must be knee to ankle length. Shorts can only be worn from April 1 through Oct. 31. Shorts must be the same colors as pants, cannot have cargo pockets, are limited to two front and two back pockets and cannot be shorter than two inches above the knee.

All shoes have to have backs and closed toes, and heels have to be shorter than three inches.

Other restrictions include unnaturally colored hair, all-black outfits, fishnets and plug earrings. Piercings are limited to two per ear and cannot be larger than one inch in diameter for hoops or longer than one inch for drop.

Parents and guardians can fill out an an exemption form for medical or religious reasons and meet with their principal(s).

The district has an elementary and secondary tiered plan for disciplining students who do not follow the dress code that ranges from asking the student to change to out-of-school suspension.

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