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Tentative deal good for county

Editorials

There have been a lot of changes at the tract of land that sits at 4000 Sunset Boulevard as the decades have passed. Residents of the region have watched during the past 60 years as the 84-acre site in Steubenville’s West End has gone from holding the abandoned Jefferson County Infirmary to the modern Eastern Gateway Community College, which brought affordable, high-quality higher education and job training to the region. Now, it appears the property is nearing another transformation, one that likely will bring a new educational opportunity to the community while opening a large ...

Don’t drive drunk, don’t drive high

Editorials

“If you feel different, you drive different. Drive high, get a DUI.” That’s the theme of an effort by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to help local law enforcement be highly visible from now through Labor Day, as they crack down on those taking the risk to drive impaired. Even in states such as Ohio where adult-use cannabis is legal for recreational use, it is still illegal to drive under the influence. It doesn’t matter what substance is to blame. But, according to West Virginia’s Governor’s Highway Safety ...

Guest column/W.Va. moving to offense

Local Columns

For too long, West Virginia has sat at the bottom of health, education and economic rankings. Policymakers have spent decades trying to solve these problems, but frustratingly little progress has occurred. Action, not platitudes, is needed for true growth. If we want to truly move the needle, we must stop treating the symptoms and instead focus on the real disease: For too long, our state simply didn’t do enough to create an attractive enough investment and regulatory climate. That’s why I signed an executive order establishing an economic Backyard Brawl on my first day in ...

Weirton’s water questions remain

Editorials

Not long ago, Weirton’s water system — and the people it serves — went through one of the worst winters in the city’s history, with hundreds of line breaks and numerous water outages happening during a period of several weeks. People weren’t happy, and, eventually, the complaints found their way to the West Virginia Public Service Commission, which held a public hearing in Weirton and launched its own studies of the system. Among its findings, the PSC ruled Weirton’s storage tank capacity is not sufficient enough to meet requirements of the city, that approximately 40 ...

Gee’s OSU return offers perspective

Editorials

Ohio State University isn’t letting its former President E. Gordon Gee rest for long, after his departure as president of West Virginia University. They’ve asked him to return to Columbus for a one-year consulting role. According to a report by The Columbus Dispatch, that role will include working with OSU’s new Salmon P. Chase Center to recruit faculty and increase the center’s presence on campus and nationally. Chase was Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury and later the sixth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, serving in that role until his death in 1873. ...

Guest column/Carbon capture can be an economic accelerator

Local Columns

I recently became aware of a series of community workshops held in Cadiz and Wintersville by Tenaska. The topic was carbon capture and storage and the truths about the technology and impacts to communities. These sessions were well attended by inquiring local citizens, as well as some folks not from Jefferson or Harrison counties. And so why would some fella from Houston care? I graduated from Wintersville High School in 1973 and was raised on Meadowbrook Drive, went to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh and have spent the last 45-plus years in the energy markets, both ...