Welcome to Capitol Notes, a smattering of bite-sized news nuggets from under the green dome at your state Capitol.

JUST SAY NOTA

Don't like your choices on Election Day?

You could pick the lesser of two evils. Or, you could take the advice of one political committee.

The committee, NOTA-PA.org, is urging voters to write in "NOTA" (as in, "none of the above") when they are dissatisfied with their candidate choices.

"We started the campaign to encourage people to vote without giving their vote away to a candidate they find distasteful," said David Lynn, chairman of NOTA-PA. "Too often, when voters don't like the candidates presented to them, they don't bother to vote at all. We would like to reverse this trend."

ANOTHER WRITE-IN OPTION

Those who took in Thursday's Capitol Steps performance at The Forum in Harrisburg might prefer to write in Sick Rantorum or Cobby Basey, instead.

The D.C.-based musical comedy troupe made mention of both during their signature "Lirty Dies" monologue, which flips the first letters of words for hilarious results. It was the night's only mention of Pennsylvania politics.

The troupe missed opportunities to lampoon the infamous ray paise and made no mention of rax teform, winimum mage or boking smans. Red Endell and Swynn Lann were not mentioned, either.

OK, Napitol Cotes is garting to set a sittle lilly. We'll nop stow.

WHERE TO HOUSE PRISONERS?

Legislators from the Philadelphia area have introduced a bill aimed at easing overcrowding in the Philadelphia county jail, but if passed, it would ease financial pressure on county lockups around the state.

Rep. Dennis O'Brien, R-Philadelphia, and others want to require any prisoner with a sentence of 1 year to 5 years to be sent to a state prison, rather than a county jail. Judges now have the discretion on where the prisoners are housed, as long as their sentence doesn't exceed 5 years. If it does, they automatically go the a state prison.

Most inmates in county jails are awaiting trial or have a sentence of less than a year, but there are also several thousand prisoners (when all 67 counties are taken together) who have sentences of 1 to 5 years.

Many counties are staggering under the weight of jail costs, Mr. O'Brien said, and some are overcrowded because of inmates who really should be doing "state time," he said.

His idea, of course, would increase state prison costs. The state system is already about 13 percent over capacity, with about 41,000 prisoners.

If thousands of prisoners now in county jails had to switch to state prisons, the Department of Corrections said it would be forced to build at least one new prison, costing several hundred million dollars.

The state House would first have to vote on the prisoner transfer measure, and then the Senate, and with issues such as slots reform and transportation funding on the agenda, the prison issue probably won't come up before next year.

CLEAN ENERGY

Four Allegheny County agencies will get a share of $5.1 million being distributed statewide to promote the production of clean energy.

The grants were awarded this week through the Energy Harvest Grant Program. Grant funds will be used to leverage another $8.2 million in private funding, the governor's office said.

Locally, the following grants were awarded:

Conservation Consultants, Inc. -- $45,000 for solar power systems.

International Union of Operating Engineers Local 95 -- $22,500 for solar panels for the union's technology center.

RiverQuest (formerly Pittsburgh Voyager) -- $56,504 for solar photovoltaic cells for its new flagship, Explorer.

UrbanHomesteaders LLC -- $208,730 for a solar domestic hot-water system for Ross Hill Retirement Residence, a low-income housing development for senior citizens.