Dec 30, 2017 11 min read

The deadly opioid epidemic remained a major local story in our area in 2017, but it was the collapse of a large apartment building in Washington that led the list of newsworthy events here during the past year, according to a poll of the Observer-Reporter editorial staff. Following are capsules of the top 10 news stories of 2017 in Greene and Washington counties:

1. Building collapse on North Main: More than five months since a three-story apartment building partially collapsed, trapping a tenant for hours, the complications created by the cave-in are far from over.

The July 12 buckling of the 15 N. Main St. structure trapped Megan Angelone, 37, for more than nine hours before rescuers finally freed her. It also displaced her and other tenants and carried legal and financial repercussions that continue for the city and building owners.

The July building collapse was the top local story of 2017, based on voting by Observer-Reporter writers and editors.

The city obtained a court order allowing for demolition of the North Main building – a process that left that block of the busy street closed to traffic for months while a contractor worked to tear it down.

The city has gone to court in a bid to make insurers for the building’s owners – Washington landlord Mark Russo and his sister, Melissa, of Colorado – pay the more than $1.1 million to cover a bill from Allegheny Crane Rental Inc. for demolition work, legal fees and other costs arising from the demolition.

City officials cited the collapse as one reason for unexpected costs this year that prompted an increase in real-estate taxes to fuel next year’s budget.

At the time of the collapse, the Russos already were facing one citation the city code enforcement officer had filed after a tenant complained about a cracking wall he asserted was never adequately fixed.

Officials inspected several other rental properties owned by the Russos, filing more citations and evicting tenants from two – 350 Duncan Ave., which has since been sold, and 149 Hall Ave. – that they deemed uninhabitable, a step they appear not to have contemplated taking at the North Main Street building before it caved in. Most of those citations are still pending.

2. Opioids still taking a huge toll: The heroin epidemic continued to cause scores of deaths across Washington and Greene counties in 2017, although the number of drug overdose deaths were on track to decline in Washington County for the first time in years.

The office of Washington County Coroner Tim Warco said 95 people died from drug overdoses in the county between Jan. 1 and mid-December, down from 109 last year. Seventy-five of the 2017 deaths involved the use of heroin or fentanyl. The office had no explanation for the decrease in such deaths.

Washington County District Attorney Gene Vittone said the county’s aggressive approach to using naloxone to revive overdose victims could help explain the decrease in deaths.

Police and fire departments have administered 280 doses of the opioid antidote since the naloxone program was launched in June 2015. The efforts saved 255 lives, Vittone said.

The number of overdose deaths in Greene County increased by 36 percent in 2016, with 19 people dying from acute combined drug toxicity, compared to 14 overdose deaths the year before. In July, the Observer-Reporter filed a lawsuit against Greene County Coroner Gregory Rohanna seeking access to his office’s complete 2016 annual report after statistics showed the uptick in the number of overdose deaths in the county. That lawsuit remains active, and no information is yet available on how many overdose deaths occurred in Greene County this year.

Meanwhile, emergency medical workers said they were being stretched to their limits by increased calls to revive opioid overdose victims.

And, Washington County sued major drug manufacturers in December, joining many others counties across the state in an attempt to recoup the mounting costs to taxpayers associated with dealing with the epidemic.

The complaint alleges the defendants knew of the addictive qualities of their prescription pain medication, but continued to push the drugs onto patients long after they had left the hospital, where it was better controlled and managed.

It also contends the county spent millions of dollars across many departments on the problem, which includes increased demands on law enforcement.

3. Murphy’s career craters: He was elected to the state Senate in 1996 and easily defeated a Democratic opponent in 2002 to take a seat in the U.S. Congress.

Yet, in 2017, U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy’s political career went down in flames.

Not only was he named in a divorce case, but it came to light that the married, anti-abortion Republican congressman encouraged his mistress to seek an abortion during a pregnancy scare. Irish eyes weren’t smiling: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in October released a statement that Murphy, who originally wanted to serve out his term, had given two weeks’ notice, and the Republican politician from Upper St. Clair who was popular enough to run unopposed in the past two elections became persona non grata. Murphy’s Oct. 20 resignation meant there would be no investigation by the House Committee on Ethics.

A Republican nominating convention in November chose state Rep. Rick Saccone of Elizabeth Township as their candidate for a special election March 13 to fill the remainder of Murphy’s current term. A similar event among Democratic delegates resulted in the nomination of former federal prosecutor Conor Lamb of Mt. Lebanon.

4. AGRiMED coming to Greene County: With the support of Steelers Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Ham, Philadelphia-based AGRiMED Industries secured one of the dozen licenses across Pennsylvania to grow medicinal marijuana at a specialized facility in Greene County.

Ham represented the company during its successful effort to build the facility on a 61-acre site in Cumberland Township near the Nemacolin Mine coal refuse dump that once was planned for a power plant.

After reviewing 177 applications from companies across Pennsylvania, the state Department of Health issued a permit to AGRiMED in June with the stipulation that the facility would be in operation by Dec. 20.

The growing and processing operation will employ 62 workers, although that number could grow as production increases. A ground-breaking ceremony was held Oct. 11 for the first building, which will house about 2,400 plants. The company, which plans to invest $25 million in the project, hopes to have its first products ready to distribute to dispensaries in the first quarter of 2018.

Meanwhile, one of those medical marijuana dispensaries will be located in Washington. The Healing Center on West Chestnut Street will be one of 52 dispensaries in the state. The company plans to raze the existing structure on the site and construct a new building, which is slated to open for clients in 2018.

5. Washington County reassessment: The Washington County property reassessment will become a decadelong process in 2018. In some ways, the reassessment saga in 2017 came full circle, when individual cases began to be heard in court. The first reassessment in more than three decades was triggered by the McGuffey and Washington school districts demanding Washington County Court order revaluing of property, on which county, municipal and school district tax levies are based.

Representatives of the school districts began attending county commission meetings and raising the reassessment topic in 2008. The commissioners weren’t interested. So Washington and McGuffey filed a mandamus action, and the court fight lasted until the commissioners ran out of legal avenues in 2013.

As of Dec. 22, the court had convened 1,290 conciliation conferences on property assessment appeals. Those reaching a mutual agreement totaled 859; cases postponed numbered 199; among those proceeding to a formal hearing were 153; and 79 appeals were either discontinued or withdrawn, according to Washington County Court Administrator Patrick Grimm, whose statistics do not include 80-some parcels where settlement agreements were still being circulated among the parties. As to those that reached the formal hearing stage, 17 cases were convened, 82 agreements were hammered out, 18 were postponed and four were withdrawn or discontinued.

6. Rohanna loses coroner’s race: In the more than two decades Gregory Rohanna has served as Greene County coroner, he never faced a general election opponent. That changed in 2017 when retired funeral home director Gene Rush challenged Rohanna and eked out a razor-thin victory, showing that every vote does, indeed, count.

The election showcased a seesaw battle as Rush initially took an eight-vote lead on election night, only to see Rohanna hold a one-vote lead the following day after absentee and provisional ballots were tallied. A final canvass by the elections office staff, however, showed Rush won by four votes out of nearly 7,000 votes cast in the county.

Rohanna declined to challenge the results, making Rush the first new coroner since Frank Behm resigned in September 1996.

7. Greene, Washington CYS under scrutiny: The Children and Youth Services departments in Washington and Greene counties were rocked when it was revealed earlier this year that a Greene County teen allegedly was sexually abused by his foster mother over several years.

Joelle Barozzini was charged with rape and other felonies in May after investigators said she abused the boy over several years while caring for him at her Greensburg home.

Making the situation more troublesome, a caseworker in Greene County raised concerns about Barozzini’s alleged behavior around the boy in February 2012, only to be reprimanded for “gossiping” by former Greene County CYS Director Dee Dee Blosnich-Gooden, who called it an “inappropriate comment.” The boy left Barozzini’s care the following year when he became an adult.

Blosnich-Gooden left her position in Greene County in March 2013 to work as deputy director at Washington County CYS. She submitted her resignation from that position the day after Barozzini was charged and it was revealed she had been notified of alleged misconduct by the foster mother.

8. No warm welcome for immigrants: A large group of Roma asylum seekers settled this year in California Borough, drawing outrage from many neighbors who claimed they were creating havoc in the college town.

However, the Romas by November had abandoned the borough, owing their landlords thousands of dollars in unpaid rent, local property manager Vito Dentino claimed in court records.

Dentino further alleged the immigrants left behind other unpaid bills and damages to many of the 32 rental units they shared.

The families did not leave behind forwarding addresses, he said.

The Romas were attracted to the borough by the availability of affordable apartments that were empty because of enrollment declines at California University of Pennsylvania.

Romas are descendants of nomads and are known to travel in groups. They have been persecuted in Europe for decades for a variety of reasons.

9. Mon Valley attorney pleads guilty: A former Charleroi attorney and newspaper publisher pleaded guilty in October to mail fraud for bilking more than $500,000 from a client who suffers from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, funneling some of the money into the accounts of his Mon Valley publication.

Keith A. Bassi, 61, of Jefferson Township, Fayette County is expected to be sentenced in federal court at 9:30 a.m. March 14 before U.S. Judge Anthony J. Schwab. He has paid $269,000 in restitution and agreed to other forfeitures as part of his plea.

Bassi took the money from the client, who has been identified in court records only as N.J.L., putting $110,000 into accounts related to the Monessen-based Mon Valley Independent, which is under group ownership. He also used her money to open a personal life insurance policy and a bank account in his name.

The crime led to Bassi voluntarily surrendering his license to practice law.

10 Health center goes private: Washington County’s care of the indigent – its mission for 187 years – came to an end Dec. 1, 2017, when the sale of the Washington County Health Center was finalized.

In January 2017, the Washington County commissioners hired a Harrisburg attorney, Mark Stewart, who gave a slide presentation explaining why it wasn’t feasible to keep using taxpayer and other dollars to subsidize care at the 40-year-old, 288-bed county health center, which had been $9 million in the red since 2012. A steady stream of health center employees spoke at commissioners meetings for months on the topic, to no avail.

Stewart represented the county in the sale, which was originally slated to take place in the beginning of October. But Oct. 1 came and went without a transaction. The county transferred operation of the health center to Premier Healthcare LLC of Philadelphia on Oct. 20, for $2.5 million, and the $25.35 sale of the real estate was completed Dec. 1. The new name of the facility is Premier Washington Health Center.

According to Washington County Finance Director Joshua Hatfield, the only expenditures from the proceeds of the sale so far went toward legal and subdivision fees. “An overall plan or use of the money has not yet been determined by the board of commissioners,” he said in late December.