Letters: RCO is step toward better care for our communities; Will Trump go out of fashion?

RCO is step toward better care for our communities

I’ve been a nurse for nearly 19 years, and I’m a passionate advocate for patient safety. We work in nursing because we want to care for our communities, and we want to make sure that everyone from a neighbor to a loved one has what they need when facing medical difficulties and emergencies.

Our calling to care for our communities doesn’t end when we leave work. That’s why I support the proposed Centre County responsible contractor ordinance.

As a nurse, I know what the results of workplace injuries look like. We see them both in our own workplaces, and in the people that become our patients. I know we can’t avoid all of them, but employers and the government can take steps, like requiring OSHA training, to make sure that more can be avoided. Providing OSHA training to every construction worker on county projects, like the ordinance requires, won’t just make that job site safer. It’ll make every job site they work on in the future safer because they’ll know when something isn’t right, and what to do to fix it.

“Do no harm” means taking active steps, like passing policies and ordinances, to prevent harm before it can happen. Every person deserves a safe workplace, and health care workers shouldn’t be faced with caring for injuries that could have been avoided. Supporting the responsible contractor ordinance is an important step to better care for our communities.

Will Trump go out of fashion?

Einstein was a famous name we heard on the radio news in East Aurora, NY, when I was a kid in the 1930s. Another name was Hitler.

Adolph Hitler’s hatred forced Jewish scientists such as Einstein to flee Germany. These memories always come back when I hear Donald Trump repeat a Big Lie.

At Princeton, Albert Einstein became a U.S. citizen who found joy in how Americans used their First Amendment freedoms. Walter Isaacson’s 2007 biography of Einstein describes an outspoken non-conformist, who thought independently, who opposed tyrants who crushed free speech, whether it was Hitler or Soviet Russia’s Joe Stalin.

Then came the Red Scare and the intimidations of McCarthyism after World War II, and he feared his adopted country might become another authoritarian regime. But Isaacson says Einstein eventually realized that Americans can be caught up in waves of political passion and by 1954 this Red Scare was waning. Einstein wrote his son:

“God’s own country becomes stranger and stranger, but somehow they manage to return to normality. Everything — even lunacy — is mass produced here. But everything goes out of fashion very quickly.”

Can we dare to believe that the admiration Republicans have for Donald Trump will begin to go out of fashion soon enough to prevent the Electoral College from putting him into the White House a second time?

PA must solve child care crisis

Centre County businesses need workers! Businesses are struggling to find workers because many of the workers have been forced to stay home to take care of their children. The business of child care is in crisis across the nation, but also here at home. It’s ridiculous and embarrassing that we still haven’t solved the child care crisis in this country. The reality is that child care is unaffordable for too many families; some families report paying a third of their take home pay to child care. And child care businesses can’t afford to pay their teachers livable wages. Most ECE teachers earn less that $13 per hour to take care of our most important resource — children.

Legislators need to wake up and see that PA needs child care for working families and the educators need to be paid what they deserve for their talent, skills and education on par with elementary teachers. The research is showing that PA is losing families to other states that offer paid family leave, livable wages and earned income tax credits for workers. PA is also losing $6 billion in lost production due to families not able to find child care.

If PA legislators are not willing to save child care, Centre County can do it for our residents.

Ordinance would set clear standards

On June 27, the Centre County Commissioners will vote on a responsible contractor ordinance, joining Bucks, Lehigh, Montgomery, Northampton, Delaware, Dauphin, Westmoreland and Allegheny counties in protecting taxpayer dollars on large capital projects put out for bid by the county.

Responsible contracting exists in dozens of counties, cities, townships and school districts across Pennsylvania for a simple reason: it secures the best value for taxpayer dollars. Taxpayers want to make sure that our money is spent on buildings, roads, and public infrastructure built on budget, built on time, and built right.

Any private individual looking for a home contractor doesn’t just look for the lowest cost: they look for things like quality of work and the contractor’s reliability. Nobody wants to hire a contractor only to have them run over budget, over time, and botch the renovation. It’s just common sense — but right now, government can’t take those things into consideration without facing lawsuits from jilted contractors. Just imagine if you could be sued because you told a contractor you were going to go with the other guys on rebuilding your deck.

Setting out clear standards means everyone knows what the rules are, creates a level playing field for contractors, and makes sure that county government can spend taxpayer dollars wisely. Residents don’t just want government to do things on the cheap: we want government to do things the right way. Approving responsible contracting will make sure county government can do that.