Laurels & lances: Getting things done
Share this post:
Laurel: To a meaningful name. Congress is not known to get much done — especially not in the last few years when lawmakers have been paralyzed by partisanship. But this month something crawled across the finish line for Southwestern Pennsylvania.
In July 2023, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, introduced a bill to name the new Veterans Affairs center in Monroeville after Wilkinsburg resident Henry Parham, who died in 2021 at age 99. Parham was a private first class in the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, the only all-Black unit to land at Omaha Beach on D-Day.
The bill had 16 co-sponsors — all of the House members from Pennsylvania. Democrat and Republican alike, party didn’t matter when it came to serving veterans in a building named for a veteran.
That doesn’t mean it happened quickly. The bill languished in committee for more than 17 months before being brought to the floor Dec. 16. It passed the House by a voice vote before being handed over to the Senate a day later. It avoided the pitfalls of tacked-on amendments and passed unanimously Dec. 21.
It isn’t surprising to see legislators come together for this kind of bill. There is rarely controversy in naming a building after a service member. It’s the kind of work lawmakers tend to push through without problems.
But after a difficult election year, and heading into a potentially more contentious Congress, it is a ray of hope to see them accomplish anything. It is even better to see it done in the name of a D-Day soldier from Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Lance: To rising problems. More and more Pennsylvanians have experienced housing problems in 2024.
The Pennsylvania Association of Realtors says that, while housing costs for owners fell this year, they increased for renters. Real estate website Zillow puts median rent in the Keystone State at $1,539. The Pennsylvania State Data Center put average rent in 2014 at $848.
Laurel: To giving help. More than 3,000 households in Westmoreland County found relief through the rental assistance program operated for the county by Union Mission in Latrobe.
“It’s a great thing we had the money but a bad thing we had so many people who need the help,” county Human Services Director Rob Hamilton said.
The program has closed applications because of overwhelming demand. This is a real success, as a previous round of funding ended with little of the money being released to those in need. In 2022, the county said $10.4 million would be returned to the federal government because of onerous application criteria.
While only a small pool of the $37 million allotted under a pandemic response program remains, at least it was put to its intended use rather than being returned to sender.