Keep our neighborhoods safe
The tragic mass shooting on Columbus’s East Side over the Independence Day holiday, which left a teenager dead and five others injured at a party house operating as a short-term rental, is yet another heartbreaking reminder of why municipalities and other local governments must maintain the authority to regulate short-term rentals in their communities.
Columbus city leaders have already put in place commonsense rules requiring permits, local contacts and the ability to revoke licenses when criminal activity occurs — all tools that help protect neighborhood safety and quality of life. But as Councilmember Rob Dorans rightly pointed out, these local rules are only effective if cities retain the power to adapt and strengthen them as new challenges arise.
Unfortunately, this important local authority is now under threat at the Ohio Statehouse. Senate Bill 104 and its companion bill, House Bill 109, currently being considered in the Ohio Legislature, would preempt municipalities from enacting or enforcing their own local short-term rental regulations. This legislation would directly undermine the home-rule powers our Constitution guarantees cities and villages to protect residents’ safety, property values and neighborhood stability.
Tragedies like the one on Wilson Avenue show that local leaders must be able to respond to the real-life impacts of short-term rentals — including potential “party house” operators that can become magnets for violence. Preempting local action removes critical safeguards that our communities depend on.
We urge state lawmakers to listen to local officials, learn from the painful lessons in Columbus and other cities and reject legislation that takes away local tools that help keep neighborhoods safe.
Kent Scarrett, Executive Director, Ohio Municipal League
Sound the alarm
It is time for the mainstream media to stop soft peddling criticism of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts is either not as smart as he thinks he is or is slowly plodding to help make America a monarchy, again.
He appears to not know much of the meaning of the Revolutionary War and the reason it was fought. Or that the intention of the Founding Fathers was to set up a Democratic republic.
Roberts is allowing a criminal to absorb as much power as he wants or thinks he has without oversight. President Donald Trump is launching a lawsuit against an entire district court, wants to take over New York, ignores court orders, ignores the right of habeas corpus, claims emergencies that don’t exist to allow executive privilege and does company business from the West Wing.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is not an outlier justice on the Supreme Court; she is sounding the alarm. She needs to be heard and supported. The media needs to follow suit.
James G. Dalessandro, Shaker Heights
Speak up for graduate education
The mission of a university is the creation (research) and dissemination (education) of knowledge. Training of graduate students in many fields requires their first work of original scholarship, the Ph.D. dissertation. It fulfills the obligation of those who have benefited from higher education to return new knowledge to the system.
The sum total of university scholarship from faculty, students and post-doctorals is the major source of new knowledge, much thanks to the wisdom of Congress and the government.
The results? The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reports research is responsible for one-fifth of economic growth during the last 50 years. Despite these results, our government has chosen to severely cut federal research funding and support of education on the basis of fraud, waste and bureaucracy (a universal malady).
If we understood brain function properly, we would be a lot more efficient in both research and education. Bureaucracy at universities is the inevitable response to invasive and unnecessary regulation.
Stand up for science. Beware your lazy complacency.
Gideon Fraenkel, Columbus
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Reject legislation that removes local control in cities | Letters