Breaking News

Brenda J. Linert

Virus can’t affect open public business

National Sunshine Week, intended to showcase the importance of access to meetings involving our public officials and to all sorts of public records, wrapped up Saturday. Typically during this week, I write about why we all should care about this stuff because an open government is key to a strong democracy. I usually write about how we shouldn’t forget that every discussion or decision made by government is everyone’s business, and how you, as a citizen, have a right to know about it. I also often say things like every document (no matter if it’s on paper, in the form of a video ...

Health concerns trigger virtual reactions

This isn’t science fiction, folks, although it sure seems like it. Yellow tents are popping up outside hospital entrances. Retailers are sold out of, well, everything. School is canceled; people are quarantined. And much of the general population that does venture out in public is clad in face masks, as if it’s just the normal thing to do. Having traveled a year or two ago to Asia, I can tell you that is the norm there. The streets of Taipei, for example, are crowded with unimaginable numbers of mask-clad people jammed onto motorized scooters buzzing in and out of ...

Automotive plans bring excitement to region

It’s been about five years since I walked inside the sprawling Lordstown auto assembly plant that was, at that time, where General Motors workers built passenger vehicles. I was the Tribune Chronicle business editor at that time, writing stories about production of the then-hot selling Chevy Cruze. Last week, invited by new operators of Lordstown Motors Corp., who are preparing to build an all-electric pickup truck, I walked through again, this time with dozens of area political and business leaders. Thursday, the plant was cold, dark and eerily quiet. As one member of the ...

Improper public spending rises at election time

CLICK HERE to view Ohio Auditor Keith Faber’s video about the dos and don’ts of using public money in campaigning. The number of public complaints to the Ohio Auditor’s office about tax money being improperly spent on campaign or election issues routinely increases around this time of year, according to Ohio Auditor Keith Faber. Those complaints typically address things like school districts or government entities using public money or resources to promote tax levy campaigns. This is such an important issue, and one that I think often is misunderstood or even widely accepted as ...

Opioid crisis once again is a campaign issue

Most people can tell it is election season by the sudden uptick in campaign advertising and, of course, all the candidate signs popping up in yards and intersections. I, however, have a different signal. Each spring and fall, our downtown Warren office becomes home to a parade of political candidates coming to meet with a panel of newspaper employees including reporters and members of our editorial board for interviews in which candidates share goals, plans and ideas. As has been the case over the past few years, again last week some incumbents and challengers discussed the opioid ...

History behind funding of Law’s campaign

It might really be true that no good deed goes unpunished. Tribune Chronicle political reporter David Skolnick reported Feb. 1 the answer to a burning question about who funded last fall’s political campaign of Warren mayoral challenger Randy Law. Law ran as an independent candidate against incumbent Democratic Mayor Doug Franklin in November. As it turns out, according to a Federal Election Commission filing made public in recent weeks, the company providing $133,109 to a political action committee that funded Law’s unsuccessful campaign is affiliated with Patriot Water ...