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Pennsylvania should follow Minnesota lead

No matter when and/or how Pennsylvania’s budget impasse ends, members of the General Assembly need to exercise an examination of conscience into why they allowed the current fiscal embarrassment to persist for so long — now having passed the three-month mark for a basic budget-preparation responsibility that should have been completed by the June 30 deadline. There are people in this state who believe if lawmakers don’t want to do their job they should resign and presumably allow someone more responsible and responsive — some people would use the word “competent” — to ...

Local media binds our community

One day last month, newspaper stories shined a light on the troubles, triumphs and transformations happening in communities across Pennsylvania. In Erie, readers followed fundraising efforts to save an injured dog named Dopey. In Harrisburg, people gathered at a vigil for a teenager whose life was cut short. Philadelphia buzzed after a hard-fought Eagles win and as the Phillies closed in on the National League East title. In Sharon, a father confronted the sentencing of the person who killed his son. And in Greater Hazleton, plans emerged for the region’s largest data ...

Embracing expanded rail service

A great opportunity awaits industries and other business entities and interests in the six-county Southern Alleghenies region. If most embrace the opportunity, hopefully expanded Amtrak passenger train service will be the result. If they don’t, it is possible that such expanded service could be doomed for many years, perhaps forever. The latter should not be allowed to come to pass. Transportation resources are vital for any region to move forward; the counties of Blair, Cambria, Somerset, Bedford, Huntingdon and Fulton, which make up the Southern Alleghenies region, are no ...

Cricket Knoll: Staying open about plans

Anyone who did not read the entire Sept. 24 Mirror article “Altoona officials meet with Cricket Knoll residents” might have missed what possibly were the two most important paragraphs of that article. Parts of those paragraphs are as follows: — “When the plan is finished, there will be additional meetings with residents.” — “We’ll keep the conversation going.” It was Altoona City Manager Christopher McGuire who made those comments, spoken during a meeting with more than a dozen Cricket Knoll residents. Also attending that meeting was City Councilman Jesse ...

American history should never be whitewashed

A recent editorial was accompanied by a photo of a formerly enslaved man in Louisiana displaying whipping scars on his back during the Civil War. Made in May 1863 and widely published two months later, it presented gruesome evidence of slavery’s inhumanity for countless Americans who didn’t necessarily comprehend it before. It has been credited with helping coalesce support for the defeat of the Confederacy and ultimately ending slavery. More than 160 years later, the Trump administration doesn’t want you to see it. Bowing to President Donald Trump’s pernicious campaign to ...

Employers should be open to ‘fair chance’

It is reasonable to conclude that virtually all companies and all supervisory employees, at one time or another, have run into employees who wanted a job but didn’t really want to work — who wanted the pay but didn’t really want to put forth the effort to earn it. Such employees undermine their company’s overall performance and, thus, often erode the company’s bottom line. In this competitive business world, that truly must be characterized as unsustainable and must be addressed quickly. Enough of that, though, because this editorial will be focusing on a resource that ...