Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Editorials from around Pennsylvania:

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COMEY’S TELL ALL: THE FORMER FBI DIRECTOR DOES NOT ACT WITH HONOR, April 17

James Comey, the former FBI director fired by President Donald Trump has, as everyone knows who has not just arrived here from another planet, written a book. It is a much-hyped book, and undoubtedly will sell well and make Mr. Comey a handsome dollar.

What is the book about?

That is hard to say.

Its title is “A Higher Loyalty,” and it purports to juxtapose Mr. Comey’s higher purposes with the president’s. In some sense that is what the book is about: An attempt to show that the president is “unworthy” of high office and Mr. Comey is worthy.

Mr. Comey wants to be Mr. Trump’s nemesis, and this he has accomplished.

But Mr. Comey makes his case, not with argument but with the “tell all” approach of a supermarket tabloid.

Hence we have learned what Mr. Comey thought of the size of the president’s hands, and that he told the president he did not take the infamous and revolting Steele dossier seriously (but that he does not now totally dismiss it), and even what Mr. Comey thinks of the president’s language, mannerisms and marriage.

This is higher loyalty and purpose?

More important, we have learned that Mr. Comey is willing to go on TV and talk about legal matters still in play - like the Mueller Russia probe. This is utterly unprofessional for an ex-FBI man, and it violates FBI ethics, in spirit if not also in letter.

Tellingly, we have learned that he knew the Steele document was politically financed and generated when he told the president about it, but he chose not to tell the president that.

This is worthiness?

Mr. Comey’s tell-all tells all about him. He reveals himself to be partisan, petty and disappointingly, breathtakingly, small-minded. There seems to be no thought behind this book - only gossip and rather pitiable attempts at self-aggrandizement.

When the president fired Mr. Comey almost everyone in America who writes about politics and government thought it was a terrible mistake. And it was politically. It resulted in the special counsel and the investigation of the president’s lawyer and possibly his sex life. (Didn’t we do this once and learn it was pernicious folly?)

But the person Mr. Comey has revealed himself to be over the last few days is completely at odds with what an FBI director should be. The director should not be a vindictive infighter, building his fiefdom like J. Edgar Hoover, but a top cop and lawyer, a straight arrow, a pro - like Bill Bratton or Robert Morgenthau.

Mr. Comey has long presented himself as such a man. Alas, he is anything but. He is, by his own evidence, a score-settling bureaucratic conniver whose vanity has triumphed over his sense of duty and whose personal agendas obliterated the thing he most wanted to be - a good public servant.

None of this negates the president’s legal or political troubles. None if it legitimizes impulsive behavior or government by tweet. It doesn’t work that way. But Mr. Comey contributes nothing to our understanding of this moment in our history and only adds to the coarsening of our politics.

Meanwhile, the FBI desperately needs to be cleaned up, depoliticized and reprofessionalized. Mr. Comey has hurt the FBI terribly. The only thing he has damaged more is his own reputation.

-The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

-Online: https://bit.ly/2vicYC6

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BUDGET CLOCK TICKING, April 17

Pennsylvania lawmakers and Gov. Tom Wolf still have about 2¢ months to meet the June 30 state budget-preparation deadline, and most state residents probably view that as more than enough time for the commonwealth’s legislative and executive branches to complete that vitally important, constitutionally mandated task.

But based on past budget exercises, don’t bet on “smooth sailing,” even with this year’s legislative and gubernatorial elections set to judge Harrisburg’s performance.

Crunch time, which Webster’s dictionary defines as “a critical moment or period when decisive action is needed,” already should be construed as having begun, since incoming revenue remains anemic.

Thanks to borrowing and an increased reliance on gambling revenue, Harrisburg was able to piece together a purportedly balanced 2017-18 spending package. State residents should be interested in watching how much money might need to be borrowed to balance the 2018-19 budget, as well as whether gambling revenue projections have been realistic or not.

On Jan. 2, the online news and information service Capitolwire reported that Pennsylvania revenues, halfway through the 2017-18 fiscal year, were continuing to produce solid performance, although Capitolwire acknowledged that concerns remained for the second half of the fiscal year, which ends June 30.

The validity of those fears was revealed on April 2 by Capitolwire, when the news service reported that General Fund revenue for March was $274.2 million - 6 percent- less than anticipated.

Compared with March 2017, last month’s collected revenue amounted to a decrease of $97 million, or 2.2 percent.

Numbers like that aren’t “the end of the world” in a budget the size of Pennsylvania’s. The state faced a $2 billion fiscal shortfall a year ago when 2017-18 budget preparation got underway.

But the newly reported weak numbers are troubling nonetheless amid the many questions that continue to exist regarding the Keystone State’s financial future.

In February, Wolf unveiled a 2018-19 budget proposal totaling about $33 billion.

Wolf, who is seeking re-election, expressed optimism three months ago, saying that he envisioned better days ahead for the state’s finances. In an Associated Press article published in the Jan. 7 Mirror, the governor was described as seeing the state government’s post-recession deficits in the rear-view mirror.

However, the governor again won’t be getting his proposed severance tax on Marcellus Shale drilling, and his plan for a per-capita levy on municipalities depending on state police protection presumably is dead also.

There’s hope, at least in the Legislature, that increased revenue from new gambling options and additional casinos will be a fiscal savior for the state during the coming year, but don’t place too big of a bet on such an outcome.

The May primaries are just over a month away. That’s when the state’s voters will go to the polls to select party nominees for the Nov. 6 general election.

With Easter having come and gone, it’s time for the Legislature and Wolf to gear up toward resolving their many spending differences.

With the distractions that the election and the campaigning leading up to it create, the urgency for tackling the unfinished work quickly, aggressively and cooperatively is obvious.

Crunch time is here, and the voters shouldn’t look kindly on avoidable roadblocks that prevent a timely budget settlement, wasting money as well.

-Altoona Mirror

-Online: https://bit.ly/2JVvrI6

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FIRING STARBUCKS MANAGER WON’T ADDRESS PHILLY POLICE’S OVERBOARD RESPONSE TO HER 911 CALL, April 18

Demonstrators on Tuesday continued to demand the firing of a Rittenhouse Square Starbucks manager whose 911 call led to two African American men who wouldn’t make a purchase being detained by police after they refused to leave the coffeehouse.

Whether the manager is fired is a corporate decision that won’t address the roots of a problem that reveals how pervasive racism remains in America. Nor would it address the heavy-handed police response to a complaint that shouldn’t have ended with two men being arrested for wanting to wait for someone without buying a latte.

How the police reacted is important in a city that too often has allowed race to play a role in criminal justice. District Attorney Larry Krasner, a former defense attorney, in large part owes his victory in November’s election to vowing to change the system. But both Mayor Kenney and Police Commissioner Richard Ross made deferential statements regarding that aspect of the Starbucks arrests.

Kenney noted how “heartbroken” he was that it happened in Philadelphia, but didn’t address the appropriateness of seven officers being ordered to respond to a nonviolent disturbance. Instead, he asked the city’s Commission on Human Relations to examine Starbucks’ “bias training.” (Starbucks announced Tuesday that it will close all its U.S. locations on the afternoon of May 29 to provide bias training to its employees.)

Ross defended his officers, saying the men arrested were asked three times “politely to leave the location . because they were trespassing” and that the officers “had “a legal obligation to carry out their duties. And they did just that.”

What Ross leaves out is that officers do have some discretion in carrying out their duties. Consider when the Eagles won the Super Bowl and only four arrests were made after drunken, celebrating fans flipped a car, dismantled light poles, smashed a Macy’s window, and crumpled an awning at the Ritz-Carlton.

Philadelphia police were praised for showing discretion during the protest-deluged Democratic National Convention two years ago, when they made only 11 arrests over four days while issuing more than 100 citations. Where was that restraint when police responded to the 911 call from Starbucks?

Even Hans Menos, executive director of the so-called watchdog Police Advisory Commission, said it had concluded the police response was correct, but added that “Starbucks and the residents of this city should consider . how police have been used as tools by citizens to perpetuate many social ills - especially racism.”

People should also consider whether some police are racist.

Whether bias played a role in how police responded to a complaint seemingly steeped in racism should be explored. Ross told 6ABC News there will be a review of police policies, “but not so much about that arrest, but how we can facilitate things for other officers in the future, relative to maybe getting signed forms and things like that while they are at the scene.”

Signed forms, really, commissioner? That type of response is why some Philadelphians feared that a cop who spent 28 years rising through the ranks of the city’s police force might be reluctant to criticize fellow officers when they need a kick in the pants for making a bad situation worse. This is one of those times, and the mayor should have your back when you raise your foot.

-The Philadelphia Inquirer

-Online: https://bit.ly/2EXg4el

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ASK THE KIDS WHAT THEY WANT, April 17

The York County Planning Commission is used to looking at issues in the long term.

It deals with plans that stretch at a minimum three years into the future, while at the same time keeping in play a comprehensive plan that was first envisioned in 1992 and has been updated to look ahead to York County in 2040.

So when the commission started to look at York County’s future transportation needs, it was looking far beyond fixing the potholes on Interstate 83 and updating the traffic signals along Route 30.

Go York 2045 asks the question in its name - how will York be moving in 2045?

And while the commission wants to know what today’s adults think it should prioritize as it looks 27 years into the future, its planners also came up with a novel idea.

Let’s ask the people who will be adults in 2045.

The commission is reaching out to high schools to get young drivers to take its survey on what they would consider the priorities for York County’s transportation.

“Because a student graduating from high school this year will be in their mid-40s by the end of this plan, we’re hoping to get input from drivers who are 16, 17 and 18,” said Mike Pritchard, senior planner with the commission.

The survey asks those taking it to rank objectives ranging from protecting the environment and maintaining a healthy lifestyle to educating people about land use and the movement of goods along with improving affordability, efficiency, reliability, safety and more.

Do teenagers have different opinions about those issues than older people? That’s what Go York 2045 aims to find out.

Maybe teens would prefer to make it safer to bike to work instead of widening roads to make room for more vehicles. Maybe they would prefer communities where people could take care of most of their needs within walking distance or where public transportation is a viable option for everyone.

Or maybe they’re more concerned that first responders can get everywhere quickly or that businesses have the transportation they need.

One thing is certain: The current generation of teens is not afraid to speak about their thoughts, and they expect their opinions to hold weight.

On March 24, many high school students were among hundreds of people who gathered in downtown York for the March for Our Lives, a sister event to the rally in Washington, D.C., against gun violence.

March for Our Lives was spearheaded by the students who survived the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 of their classmates and teachers.

That event has pushed students around the country to become more socially active, mostly speaking out about gun violence and the need for gun control but also on other issues that are important to them,

“I think it’s time - past time - to make a difference (and) have our voice be heard,” Dover Area High School junior Ethan Snyder said at the York march.

Even younger children are going to municipalities and speaking out. Indian Rock Elementary School fourth-grader Olivia Diehl recently spoke to the Spring Garden Township board of commissioners to try to ensure funding for the township’s basketball league, which she played in this season for the first time.

And that’s great. Communities have been working to get young people involved for decades, and it hasn’t always worked.

Getting teens involved in making decisions that will affect their lives as adults is an idea whose time has come. We hope more community groups will take the time to ask young people what they want, take the time to listen to the answers and then act on that information.

After all, those high school students will be the ones driving on the roads - or not driving - long after the rest of us hang up our keys.

-York Dispatch

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

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MORE HELP NEEDED FOR STORM-TOSSED CITIZENS, April 18

We’re trying to imagine what it’s like to lose nearly everything in a storm - or even to live for months without electricity.

We get impatient when our power goes out overnight. To live without it for more than half a year, as thousands of residents in Puerto Rico have? That’s unfathomable.

What if, in addition to losing power in our homes, our community was wrecked by a devastating storm? And what if there appeared to be little or no help in sight?

Would you leave your storm-ravaged region for a different part of the nation, where businesses, the schools, health care facilities, are all operating normally?

Say you concluded you had no other choice.

Now get on your mark. Get set. Go - rebuild your life in less than a year.

That’s essentially what has been expected of the evacuees from Puerto Rico who have come to Lancaster County in recent months.

Among them is Tamara Rivera-Santiago, who broke down in tears several times as she recounted her story to LNP last week.

Rivera-Santiago brought her three children, ages 2½ to 7, to Lancaster County after Hurricane Maria destroyed their home in Barranquitas in September.

Without other options, her family and seven others have been living in rooms at the Budget Host Inn on Lincoln Highway East in East Lampeter Township. But Rivera-Santiago has been told her FEMA housing assistance won’t be renewed. She and her children now face the prospect of being homeless.

That’s a travesty.

Emergency assistance of the sort dispensed by FEMA is, by definition, meant to be temporary. But it was FEMA’s weak response to the catastrophe in Puerto Rico that forced so many island residents to leave for the mainland.

The website Politico recently reviewed, with the help of disaster response experts, FEMA’s plan for dealing with the disaster.

Politico found that the federal government “significantly underestimated the potential damage to Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria.” It “relied too heavily on local officials and private-sector entities to handle the cleanup.” It failed to take into account the financial instability of Puerto Rico’s government. And it vastly underestimated the time it would take the island to shift from response to recovery mode.

Politico compared the federal government’s response to Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey to its response to Puerto Rico after Maria. The discrepancies are stark and distressing:

- It took at least three weeks to deploy 70 helicopters to deliver emergency supplies to Puerto Rico. Seventy-three were deployed over Houston within six days of Harvey.

- “Nine days after the respective hurricanes,” Politico reported, “FEMA had approved $141.8 million in individual assistance to Harvey victims, versus just $6.2 million for Maria victims.”

- Again, nine days after the respective hurricanes, the federal government had 30,000 personnel working in the Houston region. After Maria, the number in Puerto Rico was 10,000 - a mere third.

- And it took FEMA 43 days to approve permanent disaster work for Puerto Rico. It took the agency just 10 days to approve that work for Texas.

Yes, the logistics involved in helping Texas and Puerto Rico were different. But they both are part of the United States.

As a headline on a recent article in The Economist stated: “America has let down its Puerto Rican citizens.”

It shouldn’t continue to do so.

FEMA ought to be able to extend housing assistance to Rivera-Santiago and others like her, who remain in an acute state of crisis. We hope Congressman Lloyd Smucker of Lancaster County will champion their cause in Washington.

In the meantime, thankfully, there is the local Puerto Rican Evacuee Task Force, which has been meeting since January to help new arrivals from the island.

As LNP reported, arrivals who need assistance are initially directed to the Community Action Partnership for an intake interview. Then, CAP and SACA jointly handle case management, referring people to other organizations and programs as needed. Church World Service focuses on housing and job placement.

Because dozens of the evacuees need direct aid - money for a housing security deposit, for instance - CAP and its partners will host a benefit concert titled “Mi Casa, Su Casa” (“My House (Is) Your House”) from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Tellus360 in downtown Lancaster. We hope you’ll attend and support this cause if you’re able. The aim is to raise at least $10,000.

“We want to help everyone we can,” Milzy Carrasco, development director at San Juan Bautista Church, told LNP.

That is, after all, the ethic of people in this city and county of ours, and we laud those who are working hard to meet the needs of the Puerto Rican evacuees.

But this is a huge effort, and it’s going to require more resources from state and federal government.

The School District of Lancaster essentially has gained a whole other school population in its 300 new students. And the needs of the evacuees are great.

CAP has been granted about $27,000 by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development to provide rapid rehousing dollars for arrivals whose FEMA assistance is ending. But that sum, while helpful, “won’t actually serve that many households given the cost of housing,” said Dan Jurman, CAP’s chief executive officer.

“What we’re getting is not as much as we need to do the work,” he said, adding that he also struggles “with how long it’s taken to see what financial support has been made available.”

We hope Congressman Smucker is exploring that question. It demands an answer - and a remedy.

-LNP newspaper

-Online: https://bit.ly/2qI5UJG