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The state doled out another $12.7 million from legalized gambling this week through the Commonwealth Financing Commission, giving thousands of residents reason to rejoice, right?

Well, not so much. As pointed out in the past here, the money gets spread around so thinly the real impact remains questionable.

To quote a 2014 editorial, let’s not settle “for what’s awarded to our favored community or cause, like so many peasants gratefully scooping up the duke’s bread crumbs. Let’s, for the first time in a long time, do what’s best for Luzerne County’s masses, not what pleases small pockets of people in their separate fiefdoms.

“For crying out loud, let’s stop considering the completion of a routine road repavement project as ‘progress’.”

Now as then, it’s easy to pick apart the grants as small-minded, shortsighted and in many cases merely providing money for work that should have been covered by other sources. A brief sampling.

• $100,000 to improve acoustics at Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza in Plains Township. Few would dispute the need, but shouldn’t that have been part of the original design?

• $125,000 for infrastructure improvements along Route 115 in Bear Creek Village. Sounds like something that should be covered by the state with an ongoing road maintenance fund.

• $500,000, for paving and drainage work on Bunker Hill Road North Street in Kingston Township. See above.

• $750,000 for improvements on Old Berwick Road in Sugarloaf Township. See above.

All told, this year’s local share gets smeared around some 50 projects. It’s a bit like trying to coat a few loaves of bread with a pad of butter. Politicians smile and say, as Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton did this year, “Every little bit helps.”

The operative words are “little bit.” Surely pooling the money into one or two grants could accomplish something big for the county, with the potential to be a regional game changer.

Paving a few blocks of roadway here and there, while useful, isn’t that something.

But wait. This year a new contender took the crown as “project getting the biggest share,” and it promises to have lasting and widespread impact.

The nascent, county-wide SHINE program nabbed $831,454. Short for School and Homes in Education, the program targets children at risk of falling behind in school— or getting into trouble outside it. Statistically, that usually means low-income and minority students.

Carbon and Schuylkill counties have had SHINE after-school programs for years, and in December when state Sen. John Yudichak, D-Nanticoke joined others in announcing plans to bring it here, he touted data he claimed showed its value.

“A 96 percent promotion rate, 92 percent increase in school attendance, 86 percent increase in family participation in a child’s education.”

There is strong evidence that quality after-school programs, as well as early education programs, can radically reshape the lives of at-risk children. While SHINE could use more, putting this much money into one of those programs seems a case where the gaming commission got it right.