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Move carefully on standardizing bail

We don’t disagree with the idea of making sure local judges are properly using bail. It’s unfair if people are in a county jail solely because they can’t scrape together minimum amounts of bail. Bail should be used as a means. But we think state lawmakers should act deliberately on any proposal that could end up impacting public safety. We think Rep. Tim Bonner, R-Grove City, has good intentions with House Resolution 519, but Republican lawmakers should be wary of unintended consequences from taking the first step toward bail reform that House Resolution 519 proposes. Bonner ...

Senate to defer pay during shutdowns

Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much these days, but you can bet they share an aversion to political suicide. Consider this week’s Senate vote on a bill related to government shutdowns. On Wednesday, members of the upper chamber adopted a resolution to withhold their pay — most make $174,000 a year — during future shutdowns. The vote was unanimous. No surprise. Who’s willing to go on record demanding his or her own paychecks keep coming when federal workers are sent home without pay? Shutdowns have become increasingly more common in recent years as political ...

Asphalt, oil and the high cost of smooth roads

Planning a government budget — large or small — requires a little clairvoyance. Not only does it demand looking back at the history of what was needed, but there also has to be a crystal ball to anticipate the unpredictable. One of the most prominent examples is road maintenance. Clear, usable roads are necessary for everything from economy to education to emergencies. They need to be traversable in winter, which means road salt and functioning plows. They need to be repaired in good weather, which means asphalt and heavy equipment. Planning ahead is smart. It also can be almost ...

People carry burden of Spirit departure

The consequences of war, economic policy and big business make headlines. They get talked about on cable news shows. They are discussed in board rooms and government hearings. Those are big-picture topics. They matter on a macro scale but can be hard for people to connect to their communities. The community felt it in Unity Township last week. Twenty-five workers at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport lost their jobs in the fallout from Spirit Airlines abruptly shutting down operations. Two more employees saw their hours cut. The Transportation Security Administration has informed the ...

Why the Nevada state treasurer race matters

It's challenging enough to pay attention to political races in our home states, much less those in other states. But recent headlines make clear that it's more important than ever that the klieg lights shine on these offices, and that those who occupy them face national as well as regional scrutiny. Remember Tiffany Henyard, the self-proclaimed Democrat "super mayor" of tiny Dolton, Illinois? Her unaccounted-for spending was so bad that the village brought in former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to investigate; Lightfoot's work revealed that the village of Dolton went from having a ...

Israel: A 78-Year-old miracle

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. It did so following a United Nations vote to partition British-ruled Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The fact Israel is still here and still flourishing 78 years later is a modern-day miracle. On the very day of its declaration, that beleaguered nation with fewer than 1 million people was attacked by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, a coalition with a combined population more than 30 times greater. Since then, Israel has resisted aggression undertaken by its neighbors in 1967, 1973 and 2023. A loss in any one of ...