Letters, 8/22: In Legislature’s court

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I think your editorial (“School trust ought to end court battle,” Aug. 20) missed a major point. The schools trust wanted to give the Legislature a third legislative chance to correct the Omaha mess. This is what the Supreme Court ruling in a case involving small K-12 rural schools said must happen. In its ruling it declared it is legislative responsibility to correct the problems with the school financial issues.

To date, the Legislature has rejected a comprehensive study done by out-of-state school financial experts. It has failed to advance legislation that would establish a study of its own. Nor has it established a state commission on school finance as the governor suggested. It has not moved to establish a legislative subcommittee to explore what other states are doing and how they are funding approximately 50 percent of the actual resources schools need to operate.

Instead, the senators have tinkered, amended and further tweaked present statutes and legislated more restrictions on resources at the local level. All of which have resulted in a balloon effect of pushing a finger in one side to correct the bulge and having it pop out on the other side — to be corrected “next year.”

The legislative body must take the time to study a meaningful solution to adequacy and equity in the formula, then devise an understandable formula and fund it on a basis to provide 50 percent of the needed resources by the state of Nebraska. Until voters demand this from our representatives, true equity and adequacy for all children to a quality education will not exist.

Milford Smith, Odell

Fix is years late

Oh, gee, thanks for the big slap in the face to state workers (“State worker pay system needs review,” LJS editorial, Aug. 17).

You make it sound like we don’t deserve any kind of remuneration for all that we do. It’s not our fault that the pay scales in this state are so messed up. You can blame that on those past governors who are now Washington politicians who were given chances to rectify our reclassification issues but refused because they would rather spend the money on their pet projects.

Try working for the state for 25 years and try living in this town at the wages we get and try paying the exorbitant house prices and property taxes, and see if your paycheck can stretch to buy groceries, pay for utilities and make ends meet, and while we’re at it, try and maintain a second job just so you can provide for your family.

Try being a state maintenance worker for the Department of Roads whose pay doesn’t even qualify as a living wage in this city. 

We have taken the brunt of the abuse for years from morons like you who think we are overpaid compared to the rest of the “state.” Try buying gasoline to get to and from work, and find out at the end of the month at the rate things are going you can’t get that crown put in because your insurance that everyone thinks is so great pays for only a fraction (yes, thank you, governor, for getting us a swell deal on insurance).

You haven’t a clue what kind of garbage we’ve had to deal with just to get a break. We have gone through many years of little or no raises when the state really had no money at all in exchange for additional sick or vacation leave. The only good that came from this is that it helped us to hold down that second job we needed.

I, for one, am glad the Commission on Industrial Relations ruled in our favor. We deserve it! It had to stop somewhere, and it landed dead square on the governor’s desk. Now, Mr. Control should just eat his crow and move on to fixing the classification issue that should have been done many years ago.

David G. Brady, Lincoln

The tip of the iceberg

Thank you for your engaging article on recalls of lead-tainted toys (LJS, Aug. 17).

Although it was not addressed, the lead content of newly manufactured consumer products is the tip of the iceberg of the risks of lead poisoning to Nebraskans. The Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends a maximum of 600 parts per million (ppm) of lead in these, whereas that in lead-based paint (LBP) is 5,000 ppm — nearly 10 times as large.

In Nebraska, nearly 75 percent of the housing stock predates 1978, when LBP was banned from residential housing. Approximately 33 percent predates 1950, when use of LBP in interior residential paint began to diminish.

Deteriorating LBP in these older structures is a source of highly toxic dust and chips. Performing repairs to improve them without using lead-safe work practices can release massive quantities of toxic debris.

Many assert that we have “turned out fine” in spite of the significant lead exposures we must have suffered. “Alarmists” are reminded that we reduced blood lead levels in the general populace by 10 times when we de-leaded gasoline.

So haven’t we essentially solved the problem? Few are aware that the bone content of lead in the average Joe/Josie in the early 1990s was 100 to 1,000 times that found in pre-industrial humanity, and, even now, this content is still 10 to 100 times as great.

How can we know how many of our vague common ills, “normal” signs of aging, even serious physical malfunctions and organ breakdowns have something to do with lead exposure? Many of these are known health effects of overt lead poisoning.

We have no “normal” baseline level against which to measure incidences. There is no safe level of lead in biological organisms. It has no use in living cells but easily replaces things that do, binding 100,000 times as tightly.

It is time to minimize our personal lead exposures and to maximize public safety in the presence of an enormous and growing present-day environmental burden of lead that we cannot escape.

Lelia M. Coyne, Lincoln, Ph.D., M.S.T.,

Nebraska-certified risk assessor, lead-based paint

South of the border

Radio, TV, and newspaper news are all covering the illegal Mexican mother’s (Elvira Arellano) deportation. Her 8-year-old son was crying when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took his mother away.

Sad? “Yes.” Most children cry when they are separated from a parent.

How many million Mexican children cry when a parent or parents abandon them heading to the northern border to leave them and their country? Why not see some news on that sad situation?

Bill Allen, Blue Springs