Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Editorials from around Pennsylvania:

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OPIOID DEATHS SHOW NEED FOR BIPARTISAN COOPERATION, Sept. 24

Every day, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office sends out emails with short bullet points of the cases that are being investigated.

Too many of them sound as similar as the chorus of a sad song.

The facts in these cases ring the same notes. Death was by overdose, death was accidental. The litany of drugs runs through the range of opioids. Cocaine. Fentanyl. Heroin.

The same things repeat update after update. The deceased are black and white. The ages are scattershot: 34, 19, 52, 46.

The epidemic of addiction to prescription drugs and heroin is not improving. The number of deaths keeps climbing. It’s so bad that two men who do the same job but seem to agree little about how it should be done agree about this.

The state’s two U.S. senators differ on almost all counts. Bob Casey is a Democrat. Pat Toomey is a Republican. Toomey supports President Donald Trump. Casey opposes him at almost every turn. They bleed blue and red respectively and are both vocal in their partisanship.

But there are too many dead Pennsylvanians to let which side of the aisle they occupy get in the way. On Monday, they announced that Allegheny, Beaver and Washington counties have been designated High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas.

The designation identifies a problem that has been scattered across the country. While opioids are everywhere, there are fewer HIDTAs. As of February 2017, the only other Pennsylvania area, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, was Philadelphia.

That status means more resources to fight the problem.

Maybe more people in Washington could do what Casey and Toomey did Monday and stop fighting about who is winning and who is losing just long enough to focus on the drugs that are killing people every day. Maybe some of the people in Harrisburg could, too.

Maybe everyone who was elected to do a job that could do anything at all to help the people who are dying, and the families who are losing them, should get those emails from Allegheny County’s medical examiner every day. Maybe they could get similar lists from Beaver and Washington, and all the other counties in HIDTAs across the country.

Maybe a deluge of lists of ages, drugs and where the bodies were found could drive home the volume of loss. Maybe people could decide that fighting this fire is more important than arguing over who gets credit for putting it out.

But the not-so-slowly escalating nature of a problem everyone has agreed has been growing for years says that probably won’t happen.

The steady stream of investigations by the medical examiners says the same.

-The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

-Online: https://bit.ly/2NDULI5

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OPEN PRIMARY A GOOD IDEA, Sept. 25

There is an element of political math to state Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati’s assertion that unaffiliated voters should be allowed to vote in primary elections. But it’s a good idea beyond the math alone.

Scarnati, a Jefferson County Republican, knows the numbers. Pennsylvania has 4,052,147 registered Democrats, 3,232,574 Republicans, 443,406 voters affiliated with smaller parties, and 764,845 unaffiliated voters, according to the state Department of State. That last group is the fasting-growing cohort in the state. As a simple political matter, Scarnati is wise to invite them into the house rather isolating them outside.

But he’s also correct that including unaffiliated voters in primaries will improve the election process and, therefore, the governance that flows from it.

Over the last decade or more within his own majority caucus, many members have resisted compromise for fear of being “primaried” from the far right. Including independents in primaries is a sound means to focus on individual candidates and policy, rather than on ideological purity to assuage a narrow base on the right or left. Having to face a broader primary electorate likely would inspire some officeholders to do something more than simply dig in their heels.

Critics of open primaries worry that such a system would enable people who don’t actually support a party to sway the party’s nomination. That would be possible but it would require an extremely high level of coordination among unaffiliated voters that would make it rare.

The U.S. and Pennsylvania constitutions do not recognize any political party. And the state government, the commonwealth, is supposed to represent everyone. But in Pennsylvania, everyone pays for primary elections through their local and state taxes but only those registered with a political party are allowed to vote in primary elections (except when the primary ballot includes a referendum).

For fairness and better governance, the Legislature should adopt Scarnati’s proposal.

-Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice

-Online: https://bit.ly/2zw2lvP

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JUST A START TO PROBE, Sept. 24

Congressional Republicans have done little to cover themselves with glory since a California doctor went public with allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh drunkenly assaulted her some 35 years ago when the two were high school students.

Senate Judiciary Committee Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley’s take-it-or-leave-it demand that the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, appear at a hastily arranged hearing at which she and Kavanaugh could swap stories was, literally, the least he could do.

Other prominent Republicans did their best to downplay or belittle the accusations.

GOP North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer, a Senate candidate, called the allegations “absurd.” He offered his thinking - if that’s the word for it - in a radio interview: “These are teenagers who evidently were drunk, according to her own statement. They were drunk. Nothing evidently happened in it all, even by her own accusation. Again, it was supposedly an attempt or something that never went anywhere.”

Donald Trump Jr. turned to the social media platform Instagram to distribute an infantile graphic mocking the accusations. Republican Rep. Billy Long of Missouri did likewise on Twitter.

And President Donald Trump himself was characteristically unhelpful, first sympathizing with Kavanaugh, then raising questions about Blasey Ford’s accusations on Twitter. If Kavanaugh’s actions were “as bad as she says,” he tweeted, “charges would have been immediately filed.”

These asinine statements resulted in not only a tsunami of Twitter outrage from women detailing the many personal, emotional and societal reasons they do not immediately report assaults (hashtag: #WhyIDidntReport) but a rare rebuke from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who warned the president about gumming up the skids to the high court he has so carefully greased.

After much back and forth, Blasey Ford has tentatively agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Kavanaugh, presumably, will do likewise.

And there the matter may well end. The committee’s GOP majority has done little to erase the perception that they simply wanted to hurriedly hear out Blasey Ford so they can get on with their predetermined confirmation of Kavanaugh.

McConnell does not serve on the committee but sounded anything but open-minded about the hearings when he told a conservative group in his home state of Kentucky on Friday: “In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court.”

That’s unfortunate: For Blasey Ford, who has endured everything up to and including death threats; for the untold tens of thousands of women like her who will be further dissuaded from unburdening themselves of their own stories of abuse; for the court itself, which will issue rulings from under a cloud for the generation or so Kavanaugh is among its members; and for the nation, which will see reaffirmed the lessons of Donald Trump’s election that privileged white males can ascend to the highest reaches of power despite credible accusations of moral and legal impropriety.

By all rights, Thursday’s hearings, if they come to pass, should be the first step in the Senate’s efforts to ascertain the truth behind the accusations. Kavanaugh’s actions then, as well as his honesty about them today, are defining characteristics of is fitness for the court.

The FBI could, within several weeks’ time, interview others known to have been at the party - not the least of which a Kavanaugh chum who is said to have witnessed the assault.

Senators of both parties should demand this information before deciding on a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court.

But senators of the majority Republican party, with one eye on a conservative Supreme Court majority and the other on an election calendar that could reverse their grip on senatorial power, very likely will not.

They will almost assuredly check the “we heard her testimony” box and rush to confirm Kavanaugh.

Christine Blasey Ford deserves more than that. So do the American people.

-York Dispatch

-Online: https://bit.ly/2zwgedj

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TURNAROUND AT BRADEN AIRPARK A WELCOME SIGN FOR AVIATION, ECONOMY, Sept. 23

Braden Airpark is back from the brink. That’s good news.

After years of financial uncertainty and annual $250,000 operating losses, the small airport in Forks Township has been reborn with an infusion of capital improvement cash and tenants to provide pilot training and aircraft maintenance.

This is a dramatic turn from four years ago, when the airport’s owner, Lehigh Northampton Airport Authority, was entertaining proposals to cut its losses. One plan was leasing Braden to a group of local pilots. Another was selling to a developer to convert the property to a shopping center or business park. Neither proposal made financial sense. Another idea - having Northampton County buy the airport and create an authority to run it - was torpedoed by county council.

Throughout most of its history, Braden - also known as Easton Airport - was a successful, family-owned business. The authority bought it in 1999 as part of a plan to keep smaller private planes based outside Lehigh Valley International Airport.

Years later, the authority - which owns LVIA and Queen City Airport in Allentown, along with Braden - was confronted with a court order to repay $16 million in debt. Looking to cut losses, authority officials looked at selling Queen City or Braden.

Meanwhile, the physical plant at Braden Airpark fell into decline. A leaky terminal building and aging hangars needed repair or replacement. Moyer Aviation, the firm that provided services at Braden, left after a lease dispute with the authority.

Last week the authority, having dealt with its court-ordered debt repayment, declared a new era of aviation and commerce at Braden.

Northampton County provided a $250,000 grant from casino taxes, matched by the authority, for capital upgrades. The authority has a $325,000 state grant to put toward construction of a new terminal. Five buildings at the site have been demolished.

Equally important, Braden’s new tenants, ProFlite Aero Services and SpiritWings Aviation LLC, are providing essential services.

Nouman Saleem, owner of ProFlite, is offering a flight training school, aircraft rental, scenic tours and photo flights and educational consulting. Owner David DaSilva said SpiritWings provides maintenance for general aviation aircraft, up to light twin-engine aircraft, inspections, aircraft modifications, equipment installation, engine alterations and repairs, and sales of parts and supplies.

During a tour of hangars and other facilities on Thursday, authority Executive Director Thomas R. Stoudt declared that Braden was finally emerging from an era of “turbulence.”

The airport isn’t self-sustaining yet, but it’s taking steps toward that goal. The authority plans to lease some of its acreage for development, Stoudt said.

Kudos to those who never lost sight of the value of preserving a general aviation airport in the Easton area, including local pilots and county officials. And to authority members who resisted the temptation to liquidate.

The airport authority’s primary responsibility is operating and growing LVIA - nurturing a first-class facility that will attract airlines and give travelers more options at reasonable prices. Having jettisoned a heavy debt load and gotten Braden Airpark back on course, it’s time to move forward on those objectives.

-Easton Express-Times

-Online: https://bit.ly/2zuYaAc

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FIXING PHILADELPHIA’S LIBRARIES IS OVERDUE, Sept. 24

Philadelphia is wisely spending millions to renovate city libraries, but too frequently, residents find the doors shut, with a note saying there just wasn’t enough staff to open.

This all-too-common event begs the question: What’s the point of spending millions to refurbish Philadelphia’s public libraries if the city can’t staff them?

This year, branches across the city closed 372 times. They closed without notice and left users without access to books, the internet for job searches, a safe place to do homework or school projects, and so much more. According to a recent Inquirer report, more of the closures happened in neighborhoods with high poverty rates, though the city denies this is the case.

Calling libraries essential centers of the community doesn’t even begin to cover the role of libraries in our lives. They hold the tools residents can use to make themselves better. Membership is free, and patrons can check out musical instruments, learn a language, attend lectures, and take courses. Not only can members use the library to find a job, but they can check out a tie, scarf, or even jewelry, so they look their best at a job interview. In one extreme case, the librarian at Kensington’s McPherson Square Library has administered live-saving Narcan to opioid users.

Library President Siobhan Reardon told staff writer TyLisa C. Johnson that her department’s budget was cut a decade ago, which leaves her “constantly moving chess pieces in order to” keep branches open.

The library, like other city departments, was hit with budget cuts in the 2008 recession, and its budget is slowly being restored to pre-recession levels.

Still, those cuts were deep. Staff is down by about 150 positions from 11 years ago. According to city budget documents, there were 813 full-time positions filled in the library system back in 2007, before the recession hit. At the end of this March, there were 657. The cuts make staff allocation all the more important. Library leadership would be wise to plan better for the unexpected and study absenteeism patterns, so it can keep the branches open, especially on weekends.

The staffing problem has lingered for years. In 2012, the Pew Charitable Trusts reported that Philadelphians don’t use their libraries as much as their cohorts in other big cities because of the “extraordinary number of times that branches have experienced temporary, unscheduled closings in the past few years.”

Annually, an average 6 million people use the system’s 54 branches. Soon, those branches will get some long-overdue attention. In the first two years of its Rebuild program, the city expects to issue about $90 million in bonds to refurbish libraries as well as parks, playgrounds, and recreation centers. But it is absurd to fix buildings and not supply enough staff to help people use them.

Mayor Kenney and City Council should fix the staffing problem so that when libraries are repaired, they can better serve the city. Call and tell them that a city without fully-functioning libraries doesn’t offer much hope to residents who want to better their lives, or their minds. If you want to help, go to https://libwww.freelibrary.org/support/. Use it to send a donation.

-The Philadelphia Inquirer

-Online: https://bit.ly/2xFe35H