SOP has learned that Paul Kanjorski's pending announcement this afteroon will release plans to bring an anti-terrorism training center to Northeastern Pennsylvania, probably billed as "Tobyhanna South".
This facility was proposed for Ruthsburg, Queen Annes County, Maryland but was soundly rejected by its residents.
It is interesting that Kanjorski's announcement puts the potential jobs at 1,000 while the Washington Times article pegs the number nearer 400, mostly custodial, maintenance, and food service.
For more than three hours, officials from the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the General Services Administration patiently answered questions and withstood scathing comments that revealed an opposition and distrust rivaling the most confrontational displays in last year's health care town-hall summits.
They promised the campus would be a good neighbor and pledged to mitigate traffic and noise problems.
But many residents say the stimulus funds and the jobs come with too big a price tag. They fear that long after the financial crisis has passed, they will be saddled with a facility that spoils the rural character of the area, strains the local infrastructure and further harms the environment around the Chesapeake Bay.
And many are just distrustful of promises made by the federal government.
Here is a link to a Washington Post article that spells out many opposition points to such a facility.
This article from the Baltimore Sun illustrates a great point about Kanjorski's motive to tought jobs.
The politicians "heard 'jobs, jobs, jobs,' and at that point, they stopped thinking. They never looked under the hood," said Jim Campbell, 71, a former partner at a high-powered Washington law firm who retired to a waterfront neighborhood on an arm of the Chesapeake Bay, about 10 miles from the proposed site.
They warn that the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center -- with its driving tracks for teaching evasive maneuvers, mock urban center for live-fire training and explosives pit for detonating 3-pound bombs -- would be a "little Aberdeen." Some are convinced the installation could eventually swallow more of the surrounding area, a roughly 30-square-mile swath of countryside with relatively few residents and little commercial development.
At the heart of the local opposition are a number of concerns, both practical and ideological: hostility to the stimulus law, worries about declining property values on nearby farms, possible environmental damage and noise from munitions blasts used to teach agents about roadside bombs.
This announcement is just another fantasy for Shamjorski's Dreamville- High Speed Rail from Scranton to New York, Kanjorski Center Nanticoke, Cargo Airport Hazleton, Regional Equipment Company, Cornerstone Technologies, Infatable Dam, Wall Street West (actually located in Bethlehem), Earth Conservancy, Hybrid Auto Plant, Sallie Mae's 2000 jobs that turned to lost jobs...when will it stop...next Disney will be located here with all the verbal rides Kanjorski sends this area on for political reasons. Remember he was the one quoted as saying Democrats are willing to stretch the facts to win an election.
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