Hits and Misses
Brenda Davis
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
California Area Elementary School students, from left, Austin Ott, Emma Vash, Ryan Neil, and L.J. Pollock, display the solar-powered scooters they drive between the elementary school and the high school as part of the district’s environmental and sustainability initiatives.
HIT: At the outset of this year’s Major League Baseball season, most prognosticators forecast that the Pittsburgh Pirates would do better this time around than the last couple of 100-loss seasons, but that they would still end up with more losses than wins, and come nowhere near the top of the National League’s Central division. That, of course, could still be the case – there are still five months of baseball left to play – but the Pirates have gotten the season off to a rousing start. At the start of this week, they held the second-best record in baseball, after the Tampa Bay Rays, and were on a seven-game winning streak. The team was still impressive in a Tuesday night loss against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the game that brought the winning streak to an end. As Zachary D. Rymer put it on the website Bleacher Report, “It’s a good time to be a Pirates fan.”
MISS: The tenure of Brenda Davis as Washington County’s clerk of courts has been packed with controversy, even though it’s a job that shouldn’t be controversial at all. It’s a clerical job. But since being elected in 2019, Davis has served time in jail for contempt of court in a needless dust-up over transferring juvenile case files from her office to the county’s probation office. She is also under investigation by the state attorney general, accused of manipulating the electronic time cards of employees in her office. Now, the county is contemplating legal action against her after she altered a quote from an Observer-Reporter story and splashed it onto social media, making it sound like commission Chairwoman Diana Irey Vaughan said something that she didn’t say it all. In the story about a lawsuit accusing officials of recording jailhouse conversations between lawyers and inmates, Davis changed a quote in which Irey said, “All policies and procedures were followed. There is no wrong-doing on behalf of Washington County,” to “no policies and procedures were followed” and that “there is wrong-doing on behalf of Washington County.” More amusingly, Davis misspelled the last name of Commissioner Larry Maggi as “Maggie” in her handiwork. Manipulating a news story as Davis did is dishonest, but it’s also profoundly nonsensical – why misrepresent something that can be checked so easily? This is yet another reason for voters to question Davis’ judgment as the May 16 primary approaches.
HIT: Expanding access to high-speed internet has been a top priority for officials in Washington, Fayette and Greene counties, and it’s not hard to see why – it’s tough to imagine any scenario in this day and age where communities can grow, attract new businesses or new residents, without having high-speed internet available. Washington County recently took a step in expanding broadband access by approving a plan that would make it available in more than 600 homes and businesses in Hanover Township and Burgettstown. Funds for the expansion are coming from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. Additional communities in Washington County are on the list for broadband. Diana Irey Vaughan, a Washington County commissioner, correctly noted that “access to high-speed internet is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.”
HIT: Kudos to California Area School District for becoming one of just 11 districts nationally – and the only in Pennsylvania – to be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for its innovative sustainability efforts. For years, the district has offered a variety of hands-on, theory and practical application environmental curricula, including an aquaponics program that allows students to grow their own food on campus, and an apiary, where students raise bees and make lip balm and other products. And last year, solar-powered scooters were brought to campus. “We’re really honored,” said Superintendent Dr. Laura Jacob. “If we’re going to see change and if we’re going to see action, we have to teach it to our kids, so we have to model that.”