Where's the plot?
Whitehall’s council president vacancy has produced an interesting version of the Sunshine Law. Apparently, if three councilors don’t know in advance whom one of the other four intends to nominate, the nomination must have been the product of a secret plot.
At the Aug. 18 meeting, a well-known Whitehall community member was nominated for council president. Four councilors voted to approve the nomination; three immediately cried foul, invoking the “Sunshine Law,” “ambush” and “backdoor dealings.”
If there is evidence of an illegal meeting, let’s see it. But four councilors voting to nominate a person they already knew and likely had already formed opinions about hardly requires the discovery of a secret plot. Sometimes four people vote alike simply
because they agree.
What strikes me as backwards is declaring that something devious must have happened and then asking the city attorney to go find it.
Meanwhile, the clock is running on the council’s responsibility to fill the vacancy. Delaying that responsibility while searching for evidence to support an accusation that surfaced only after the nomination seems an odd way to conduct public business.
Perhaps Sunshine Law should mean sunlight on evidence – not a search for evidence to support a conclusion dreamed up in the dark.
Jeffrey Thoburn, Columbus
The people who take care of us
Families across our communities are already struggling with the rising costs of health care, child care and aging and disability care.
At the same time, our country faces serious shortages of workers who provide this essential care. Yet instead of investing in care and stability, immigration policies are putting these workers – and the families who depend on them – at risk.
Losing trusted caregivers can deepen workforce shortages; disrupt care for children, older adults, people with disabilities and patients; weaken local economies and increase costs for families.
Dreamers and Temporary Protection Status recipients are nurses, nursing assistants, child care providers, home health aides, teachers, parents and neighbors. They are essential to the workforce and to the communities we all rely on every day.
Congress must act now to protect Dreamers, the 1.3 million TPS holders, and their families from detention, deportation and family separation. Passing the American Dream and Promise Act would provide a pathway to permanent protections and allow these essential workers to continue caring for our communities.
Protecting immigrant caregivers means protecting the people our families depend on, strengthening our communities and building a stronger economy for everyone.
Beth Gerber, Columbus
Fighting prejudice with more prejudice
Re: "The kind of suspicions that dogged Jason Arday hurting OSU students," Aug. 20: It’s not necessary to read between the lines on Judson Jeffries’ opinion column concerning Cambridge professor Jason Arday.
His prejudice is in plain view.
The crux of his letter is to bemoan the fact that people, particularly college professors, make too many assumptions and suspicions, then act on their suspicions. Yet, this is exactly what he did when he made assumptions about Professor Nathan Cofnas.
Cofnas bemoaned DEI and articulated his beliefs in mean ways. But Jeffries’ descriptions of this “white” professor describe him as “green with envy,” “spent his brief academic life in the ivory tower” and “has an axe to grind.” Really? How do you know? Sounds like assumptions and suspicions to me.
Remember what our mothers taught us: Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Wendy Tullis, Dublin
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Cries of 'ambush' in Whitehall are nothing but a witch hunt | Letters
