IT SOUNDED LIKE A SCAM as big as some of the Wall Street rip-offs that led to the Great Recession. The fat cats reportedly bilked the federal government out of billions and spent the money lavishly on... caring for people with developmental disabilities?

Coarc is the largest agency in the county caring for people with developmental disabilities. If you haven't seen the Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces that Coarc now uses instead of buses, don't waste your time looking for them. They don't exist. But the federal government has determined that for decades the state was reimbursed far more than New York was entitled to receive for programs aimed at helping people with developmental disabilities--perhaps as much as $15 billion. The question now is who's responsible for repaying that miscalculation, and the answer so far doesn't look good for Coarc, this county or the people who benefit from the programs run by private, non-profit service providers statewide.

YOU MAKE PLENTY of errors as a newspaper editor--I once endorsed two opponents running for the same school board seat. Humbled by the memory, I still climb back on my high horse weekly to find fault with others. Amazing how fast humility wears off.

Because of my editorial on state school funding last week and a letter in that same edition faulting my sub-headline and some facts in an earlier news story on the huge fire at the TCI plant in West Ghent, it looked as if once again I faced a large order of boiled crow on my menu. Or maybe not.
The school spending editorial suggested that instead of reducing the state aid to school districts that operate more efficiently, "the state should offer incentives that encourage even more savings." The way to do that would be to let the districts keep some of the savings at least for a while, I wrote.