Editorial Roundup: Pennsylvania

Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Pennsylvania’s newspapers:

A misguided strategy

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Sept. 7

It seemed like such a great idea.

Back on April 30, state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale agreed to audit the waiver process used to decide which businesses could open while others remained closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He did so at the request of Republican legislators and with the blessing of Gov. Tom Wolf.

Mr. DePasquale didn’t offer a timeline back then, but he promised that it would be quick.

Four months later, the audit hasn’t been completed - and there’s been no word on when Mr. DePasquale’s office will release it.

“Business owners deserve to know if waivers were granted consistently and without undue outside influence,” Mr. DePasquale said during a May 14 news conference. “Because COVID-19 is going to be with us for a while, I want to make sure the waiver process truly reflects the delicate balance of protecting lives and livelihoods.”

The auditor general has said nothing publicly about the report since that news conference.

The waiver process was cumbersome and lacked transparency and consistency ― allowing one competitor to open, while another remained closed. Making matters worse, Mr. Wolf stopped processing open records requests, including some about the waivers, citing closed offices due to the pandemic.

About 40,000 businesses applied for a waiver; only about 8,000 received one.

Mr. Wolf said he created the waiver system to provide flexibility to business owners.

“We tried to do the right thing. Were some mistakes made? Maybe, and if they were, the folks in Pennsylvania have every right to know about that,” the governor said in welcoming the audit.

Meanwhile, Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries is accusing Mr. DePasquale of a conflict of interest. He maintains Mr. Wolf was a recent guest at a fundraiser for Mr. DePasquale, who is running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 10th District.

It probably wasn’t the best idea to have a public official running for Congress to conduct this audit. If Mr. DePasquale absolves Mr. Wolf of blame, Republicans will attack him. If Mr. DePasquale is critical of Mr. Wolf, Democrats will condemn him.

Of course, Mr. Wolf could have avoided this by setting up a consistent and fair waiver process in the first place. What we got instead was a program riddled with questionable decisions and lacking any hint of transparency.

Mr. DePasquale promised a quick audit of the waiver program. He needs to deliver on that and not allow his run for Congress to influence the timely release of his findings.

Online: https://bit.ly/35mXdKO

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Legal mariuana just matter of time, money

The Citizen’s Voice

Sept. 8

As Gov. Tom Wolf presses for full legalization of marijuana, it’s worth remembering why Prohibition, which banned alcohol production, sales and consumption for 13 years beginning in January 1920, was such a dismal failure.

Although pop culture focuses bootleggers booze and speakeasy society, Prohibition did vastly reduce alcohol consumption. The reason that Congress ended Prohibition in 1933 was to revive the distillery, brewing and wine industries to help generate jobs and government revenue.

Today, alcoholic beverage industries directly employ 4 million people and generate more than $70 billion a year in local, state and federal taxes.

Just as there was during Prohibition to reintroduce legal alcoholic beverages, there are multiple arguments now to decriminalize marijuana.

Legalization would save billions of dollars a year in enforcement, prosecution, and incarceration costs, and spare thousands of people from acquiring a record for using a substance less dangerous than alcohol. Part of that would entail the disproportionate of Black and Latino people for pot-related crimes. It would diminish the cash flow for violent drug cartels.

Thursday, Wolf and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman made the case that ultimately will make pot legal in Pennsylvania.

“Now more than ever, especially right in the middle of a pandemic, we have a desperate need for the economic boost,” Wolf said. He noted that Pennsylvania is much larger than Washington, which collected $319 million in pot taxes in 2018, and Colorado, which collected $266 million.

“Legalizing marijuana would create thousands of jobs,” Fetterman said. “I would challenge anyone … to name one other policy decision that could have so much immediate impact and so much unambiguous benefits both in terms to our treasury, to our employment statewide. To our social justice concerns.”

Some legislators still express moral objections to legal pot, much as many legislators expressed moral objections to casino gambling before the Legislature legalized it in 2004. In 2019, gambling produced $1.3 billion in state tax revenue.

Legalized pot is not problem-free. But the numbers make it inevitable. The Legislature should start addressing matters such as impaired driving detection and addiction treatment before taking a hit of that intoxicating tax revenue.

Online: https://bit.ly/2GLBnGr

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The CDC has taken the right steps to help renters survive the pandemic, but what about landlords?

Harrisburg Patriot News/Pennlive.com

Sept. 5

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has taken the right move to protect people from evictions during the coronavirus pandemic. They are right, throwing thousands of whole families into the streets or forcing them into shelters is a sure-fire way to spread COVID-19, which will benefit no one right about now.

The new rule comes none too soon and provides protections until Dec. 31 for people who make less than $99,000 and are facing economic hardship due to the coronavirus.

This is the compassionate thing to do, considering millions of people have contracted the coronavirus, lost loved ones to the virus, suffered furloughs or have completely lost paychecks in this pandemic.

And that includes landlords.

People who own property and rent it out are among the millions worried about how they will physically and economically survive this pandemic. Just because someone owns a second or third or even fourth piece of property doesn’t mean they don’t have a slew of mortgages to pay each month to keep them.

What happens when the landlord loses her job, tenants aren’t paying rent, and she can’t pay the mortgage on the rental property? If the landlord loses the property, the tenant inevitably loses his home. No one wins.

The CARES Act tried to address this problem, providing grants to help low and moderate-income renters, with the money going directly landlords for rent. That program is slated to end Sept. 30. But even the CARES Act didn’t help enough. This economic shutdown has impacted people of all incomes who have been unable to meet basic expenses of food, transportation and shelter.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has offered mortgage forbearance to property owners on condition they don’t evict tenants unable to pay rent. And that forbearance must continue through the end of the year or millions of property owners will be in crisis mode.

In past months, landlords could apply for a line of credit from their banks or for a Small Business Administration (SBA) Disaster Loan. That helped forestall catastrophe. But all of this begs the question, what happens when the loans have to be repaid?

Landlords, just as their tenants, are wondering how they will cope with the thousands of dollars in unpaid bills that will come due come December. Many fear their tenants won’t ever be able to catch up on back rent, not to mention late charges that could be added.

Many fear we are facing yet another economic nightmare when the deferrals stop, there’s still no income, and everyone starts demanding to be paid.

So, we agree, the moratorium on evictions is good and necessary, but the federal government has only dealt with one side of the problem. And that is a grave mistake.

Once again in this coronavirus crisis, Washington has passed the buck to states with scant resources to throw millions to ward off a looming disaster.

We urge state and federal lawmakers to think through the economic problems that the coronavirus has created and work together to come up with a solid plan to address them.

December will come all too soon when the stop-gap measures stop. And without a clear solution to the landlord-tenant crisis, voters may decide to show their anger in November.

Online: https://bit.ly/3ifyPyc ___

Troubling times as summer nears end

Reading Eagle

Sept. 6

As we mark the unofficial end of summer in this most unusual year, it’s a good time to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going as a community, state and nation.

Recent weeks have given us much reason to be discouraged. After a Black man was shot by police in Kenosha, Wis., there was unrest in that city and elsewhere. Violence, looting and rioting led some civilians to decide to act as vigilantes and try to tame the unrest themselves. That resulted in further conflict and more deaths.

People should be able to agree on a few basic ideas here. There’s nothing wrong with peaceful protests, but acts of violence and destruction must not be tolerated. Such criminal behavior is plainly wrong, and creating mayhem in the streets only serves to hurt the cause the perpetrators claim to support. And the response to rioting, looting, etc. should be left in the hands of trained professionals. Disagreement with how local authorities are responding is no excuse for people to take matters into their own hands and risk further inflaming the situation.

Of course we have little agreement. Instead these issues have become grist for our bitter national debate.

It’s the same troubling trend we’ve seen during the coronavirus pandemic. An occasion that demands national unity instead is tearing us further apart.

Still, each of us has some power to make things better, at least in the corner of the world we inhabit. Avoid the temptation to lash out at people who disagree with you. Engage in reasoned, respectful dialogue. And do your part to help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Everyone should know the health precautions by now: wear a mask, practice social distancing, wash your hands, etc. This advice still applies. Stemming the spread of the virus will remain tremendously important as temperatures cool and people spend more time inside. A few simple practices can make a big difference.

The other thing people should do is support local businesses as they try to survive this unprecedented situation. Restaurants in particular are looking at huge challenges. With strict limits on in-person dining, many have compensated for it by expanding outdoor seating. That won’t be practical as we get deep into the fall. We urge readers to consider takeout and delivery options now and in the coming months to help keep these beloved businesses afloat.

Labor Day weekend also means that the school year is underway, and of course that’s being affected by the pandemic as well. Many districts are holding classes online either all or part of the time, while some have opted for full in-person instruction. Please keep our students and educators in your thoughts as they deal with the challenges of this time.

Take special care to show appreciation and respect to our high school seniors. The class of 2020 deservedly received an outpouring of love from our communities as rites such as prom and traditional graduation ceremonies were taken from them.

Remember that the class of 2021 is also losing a lot. While things might be better by spring, right now even those seniors attending school in person are dealing with serious restrictions on activities and interaction. And the pandemic has deeply complicated the college application process.

With all this in mind, let’s treat this year’s crop of seniors the same way we did for those in the spring.

With so much out there to trouble us, how can we enter the late summer and fall with an upbeat, productive attitude? We advise turning to the Kid Superintendent.

The Reading School District opened its school year with a video featuring a pep talk from 9-year-old Jermaine Edwards II, stepping in to deliver the year-opening address typically given by Superintendent Dr. Khalid Mumin.

The entertaining and inspiring video went viral. It was filled with excellent advice for honing a positive attitude in tough times, but one simple statement stands out and applies to everything else we’ve just discussed: “Let’s give each other grace, not grief.”

Those are words for all of us to live by.

Online: https://bit.ly/32eFBi2

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Higher citizenship costs, a fee on asylum-seekers - so much for Reagan’s ‘shining city on a hill’

LNP

Sept. 9

As Enelly Betancourt, editor and staff writer for LNP Media Group’s Spanish language website La Voz Lancaster reported in Sunday’s LNP ’ LancasterOnline, immigrants seeking permanent status and citizenship in the United States face steep fees that are set to become even steeper. Betancourt reported that this summer, “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, announced it is increasing immigration fees, including adding a ($50) first-ever fee for asylum applicants and an increase for naturalization services beginning Oct. 2. With the change, the N-400 application fee will soar 83% to $1,170 for paper filing (or 81% to $1,160 if filed online).” The fee for biometric services - fingerprinting, photos, etc. - will drop, but not nearly enough to cover the hike in the application fee. Those fees are nonrefundable, “regardless of whether the application is approved or rejected,” Betancourt noted. The N-400 is an application for citizenship for those with permanent resident status.

Remember when President Ronald Reagan invoked the language of Puritan John Winthrop to describe the United States as a “shining city on a hill” for people around the globe facing danger and hardship?

He did so repeatedly, but perhaps most fully in his 1989 farewell address, when he explained how he envisioned that “shining city”: In “my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace … and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

Under the Trump administration, the doors have slammed shut on the shining city.

The U.S. has agreed to take in just 18,000 refugees this year - a precipitous drop from 110,000 in 2016, and an all-time low.

Now, with its plan to impose fees on asylum-seekers, another bolt has been placed on the doors. As an article in the Miami Herald noted, the U.S. will become “one of only four countries around the world that charge a fee for humanitarian protection.”

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “A refugee is a person outside his or her country of nationality who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her country of nationality because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. An asylee is a person who meets the definition of refugee and is already present in the United States or is seeking admission at a port of entry.” (The italics are ours.)

A $50 fee may not seem like a lot - unless you’ve lost everything you had, or never had much at all. And we’re talking about people seeking safety from dire circumstances. They shouldn’t be forced to pay an admission fee.

What they bring to a community cannot be quantified, as we’ve seen here in Lancaster County.

LNP ’ LancasterOnline’s Jeff Hawkes recently chronicled the amazing achievements of Sheila Mastropietro, who retired last month after 33 years with Church World Service.

Mastropietro helped to resettle 6,000 asylum-seekers “from 37 countries plus 15 former Soviet republics in Lancaster and neighboring counties,” Hawkes reported, and oversaw the resettlement of “another 2,300 who came in a separate U.S. initiative from Cuba and Haiti.”

She got a broad range of Lancaster County places of worship involved in resettling refugees from countries including Syria and Myanmar, and together they created a county known for its welcoming spirit - a county that has flourished, in part, because of new residents working in existing businesses and creating new ones.

As Hawkes noted, “The diversity is astounding, with public schools here reporting over 70 languages spoken by students, giving Lancaster County a worldly identity belying its Pennsylvania Dutch image.”

We’ve seen Reagan’s vision realized here, and we’ve benefited richly from it.

Online: https://bit.ly/2RgldGR

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