Butler Township Commissioners have borrowed a page from Slippery Rock Borough Council’s playbook — and not a very good page at that.

The township’s appointment of a gas well advisory panel on Monday has all the trappings and potential pitfalls of Slippery Rock’s trash advisory panel of about a year ago. That advisory panel had no authority, no accountability and no impact on a final decision to change bulk trash collection dates back to their original times of year. Council members deemed it easier to have a committee go back on an unpopular decision than to reverse it themselves.

Butler Township’s issue isn’t trash; it’s Marcellus Shale gas wells and regulations criticized by many for being too lenient. The commissioners formed the new panel on the spot Monday after a resident in attendance suggested it.

It was not made clear when, where or how frequently this new board will meet or what its specific task would be.

That’s questionable.

Meanwhile, the commissioners did authorize Solicitor Larry Lutz to go ahead with amendments to the township’s gas and oil extraction ordinance. The amendments would restrict drilling in residential and commercially zoned properties, but the amendments will not apply to the crux of residents’ complaints — gas wells already approved for the Krendale Golf Course property. Lutz said the amendments can’t retroactively apply to the Krendale well pad because Rex Energy received approval in September to build them.

Also questionable: the panel’s appointed leader, Jillian Ramsey Stern, is the resident who suggested the panel just moments earlier. When asked afterward by a reporter about her qualifications, Stern said only: “I live here.”

But perhaps the most questionable detail is whether the panel’s meetings would be public. This should not be a question at all: government functions are public, with few, notable exceptions covered specifically under the state’s sunshine law.

The creation of an advisory panel to study an ordinance already being composed by the solicitor has the look and feel of an added buffer between the public and their elected government representatives — a panel that was klatsched together for appearance’s sake, with no authority or objective and little accountability.

The advisory panel is tasked with researching topics related to the oil and gas industry, compile its recommendations and present them to officials.

Ironically, that’s exactly what the shale gas opponents claim to have been doing all along.