Letters to the Editor | May 18, 2023

Why is it that Taylor Swift can hold three concerts in a South Philly stadium for more than 200,000 fans without disrupting the neighborhood, causing SEPTA to reroute buses, requiring sanitation workers to work overtime to clean up the mess, requiring hundreds of portable toilets for patrons, or creating noise to interfere with anyone else, but the Made in America music festival can’t manage to do any of these things?

Michael Volpe, Philadelphia

In a recent article about the Patient Safety Act, HB 106, a measure before the Pennsylvania House that would mandate minimum staffing levels for nurses in hospitals, you quote State Rep. Kathy Rapp (R., Warren County), the former chair of the House Health Committee and an opponent of the bill, who claimed that such mandates could force understaffed rural community hospitals to close. But Rapp cited no evidence that requiring a minimum nurse staffing level causes hospitals to fail. It is true that rural hospitals have failed, but there are other reasons why they have. New, for-profit owners can short-staff a struggling community hospital, causing it to close, then try to use the building for another, more-profitable enterprise. Indeed, an April Inquirer article cites an example of that in Berwick, Pa. Day-care centers in Pennsylvania have statemandated staffing ratios. You can’t get an airplane off the ground without a required number of flight attendants. Minimum mandated nurse staffing standards are a matter of safe and effective care.

Claudia Crane, retired nurse, Philadelphia

Thank goodness both escaped prisoners from the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center have been recaptured without incident. But where was the camera surveillance of the two prisoners letting themselves out of jail? Why did we not receive an emergency alert on our cell phones as soon as it was discovered they were missing? Why has there been no swift action from the city? Someone needs to be held accountable.

K. Mayes, Philadelphia

For 15 years, The Inquirer and the Committee of Seventy have advocated abolishing Philadelphia’s row offices as elected positions. For decades, row officers have failed to break the cycle of waste and corruption. This failure has less to do with what voters deserve and more to do with a “bad combination of autonomy and anonymity,” lack of term limits, and minimal oversight that render row offices unaccountable by design. Open wards (wards in which committee people vote on endorsements instead of accepting them from the Democratic City Committee or their ward leader) are leading the charge to look beyond row office candidates who will inevitably disappoint and focus on electing reform minded City Council candidates. With City Council set for “massive turnover,” efforts by open wards and voters to elect Council candidates committed to change could be the catalyst government needs — and voters deserve — to move past the Philly shrug and eliminate the sheriff and register of wills as elected offices.

Danny Hosein, committee person, 15th Ward

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