Sounding off: County vehicles, school funding, a better Pittsburgh, Tenn. racism, Turnpike, McCutcheon, socialism

Time to end taxpayer-paid vehicles for county employees

Let’s continue to beat the dead horse and reclassify it as living impaired.

Why does any Westmoreland County employee have a taxpayer-paid vehicle to commute to work?

According to Rich Cholodofsky’s latest expose (“Westmoreland DA vehicle usage declines as a result of crash,” April 5, TribLIVE), the county coroner uses a county vehicle to commute from Scottdale to Greensburg daily.

The round trip is 33 miles x 5 days per week x 48 weeks (assuming three weeks’ vacation and a week of sick time). Mileage for the commute is 7,920 miles at 19 mpg (2022 Ford Explorer) = 417 gallons of fuel at $4 per gallon or $1,668.

The county sheriff commutes from New Alexandria 22 miles daily (round trip), or $1,111 annually.

The numbers do not include vehicle depreciation, fluid changes, tires, maintenance, inspections, insurance, etc.

Why not:

Domicile vehicles at the courthouse. Employees drive their personally owned vehicles (POA) to work, sign for county vehicles for county business, then return the vehicles when the business is concluded.

If after hours the employee drives their POA, he or she records the mileage then submits a mileage log for fuel reimbursement at 65 cents per mile.

Sell administrative vehicles, and require county employees to use their POA and reimburse for them for mileage.

David Scandrol

Lower Burrell

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Funding, not schools, broken

In his op-ed “Now is the time for transformational change in Pa. education” (March 28, TribLIVE), state Rep. Jesse Topper fails to mention that the majority of K-12 funding for public education comes from property taxes — not from state revenues. Pennsylvania ranks 43rd nationally for state share of funding, providing just 38% of K-12 costs.

Such a heavy reliance on local wealth means that taxpayers in low-wealth districts struggle to provide the resources that students in their communities need, even with high property tax rates.

The recent Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruling states “… the Court concludes that money does matter, and economically disadvantaged students and historically underperforming students can overcome challenges if they have access to the right resources that wealthier districts are financially able to provide.”

Our public school systems are not broken; our state funding system for public education is broken.

Instead of “reimagining” public education in Pennsylvania (code for privatizing schools and funneling public dollars into private pockets), Topper should go to Harrisburg and work to adequately and equitably fund our public schools so that all students will have the opportunity to attend a high-quality, public, neighborhood school that will allow them to thrive and succeed.

Cheryl Towers

Squirrel Hill

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Let’s work together to better City of Pittsburgh

In February, I started a new job in the City of Pittsburgh. I was thrilled to start working downtown in a bright new space.

I’ve made Allegheny County my home for more than 30 years. I have seen and heard from various media outlets that the City of Pittsburgh “is a disaster” or “ has gone down a bad path.” Now was an opportunity to see what is going on firsthand. As I recognize and understand the concerns of residents and business owners, coming from the suburbs, I have a different perspective.

One recent day I had meetings from one end of town to the other. I walked from Grant Street to Eighth Street through the Cultural District and then to the Highmark Building on Penn, then back through downtown on Fifth Avenue. It was quite pleasant. Professional people were speed-walking to meetings or lunches, and residents were heading to shops and restaurants. It’s nice to see places like the Speckled Egg in the Union Trust Building crowded and a busy Target downtown.

There’s so much opportunity to collaborate and work through issues to grow the City of Pittsburgh. I hope everyone can work together on behalf of its betterment. It’s important to embrace the city instead of trying to take it down. Our Allegheny County seat has a ton of history, a vibrant community with many people to meet and beautiful areas to enjoy. Identifying problems and fixing them can be a collaborative effort.

Carrie Lewis DelRosso

Oakmont

The writer is a former state representative in District 33.

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Racism in Tennessee

The state of Tennessee added another chapter to its sordid history of racism when Republican legislators voted to expel three duly elected colleagues charged with violating a laughable rule of acceptable “decorum.” Guilty only of joining protesters demanding gun control, following the killing of six people at a nearby school, two male Black legislators were ousted from office, while a white woman survived expulsion by a single vote.

These Republican legislators ignored the gun deaths, which included three 9-year-old children and instead focused on the phony decorum charge.

As the 1865 birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, and of its first grand wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Tennessee has had an insensitive-at-best racial history. Statues of the former Confederate general Forrest were erected. They and a bust of Forrest’s likeness were only recently removed from prominent places in the state. It’s worth noting Klan members served in the state’s law-making branch. None were ever expelled.

The 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis is but another example.

Republicans will argue the vote to expel only the Black legislators wasn’t racially motivated. But they can’t deny their leaders have refused to enact widely supported gun restrictions in Tennessee and elsewhere.

The ugly face of racism is too often seen in America. Enacting commonsense gun laws is too rare.

Glenn R. Plummer

Unity

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Turnpike as government’s cash cow

The editorial “Make E-ZPass easier for low-income drivers” (April 3, TribLIVE) brings to light facts that should make that our blood should start to boil. It points out the true facts that legislators started to force the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission in 2007 to start paying the state for the government, mass transit and the Department of Transportation as well as supporting its own expenses of operations, construction and maintenance. This has forced the commission to borrow $450 million a year for those added mandate payments. Let me say that again: borrow $450 million a year.

How do they do that? By raising tolls for the 15th consecutive year! The Pennsylvania Turnpike is the most expensive toll road in the United States, and maybe the world. For those of us who use this toll road, it is not fair that we should pay for the legislative body’s inability to govern and collect revenue appropriately for its programs and not single out a steady cash cow of revenue.

Let the turnpike commission manage itself. Yes, they have had issues as well, but to pile on what I call a state tax on a state agency is proof that the current and past legislators cannot manage money and take the easy way out.

Ron Giuliana

North Huntingdon

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Welcome home, Cutch

The day we have long waited for has come. Welcome home, Cutch. Our Pittsburgh icon has come home where he has always belonged, and our jerseys and No. 22 gear that were lovingly packed away are now proudly on display. We can now start to watch Pirates baseball again after five long years. Oh, how you were missed.

Julia Sphon

Greensburg

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Government helping average citizens is socialist?

The writer of the letter “Taxpayers not responsible for student debt” (March 16, TribLIVE) gives us his sage wisdom, surprisingly free of charge. You see, he doesn’t seem to like the idea of the government easing some of the financial burden for those who are struggling. It’s strange though, that he never mentions the hundreds of millions given to corporations annually through subsidies and tax breaks. Apparently, it’s only a part of the “socialist agenda” if the government helps the average citizen. Herbert Hoover had a similar philosophy; thankfully we replaced him with FDR.

To further illustrate my point, I’ll use an example from the Bible, a source many conservatives claim to be devout adherents to and students of. According to one account, while giving a sermon, Jesus fed multitudes with two fish and a loaf of bread. Using this letter-writer’s and many other conservatives’ argument, by doing this, Jesus was being disrespectful to anyone who came to his sermon and was responsible enough to bring their own lunch.

I won’t even get into how Jesus should have been reimbursed by insurance companies for all of the free medical care that he seemed to have provided.

Brian Luce

Buffalo Township