Police Personnel Shortage

There is a solution to the problem of retaining members of the police department and attracting new recruits. That is, treat them just like the employees of the Education Department. That is, provide them with a 3 percent or more guaranteed increases in pay every year and the same health insurance and retirement benefits at 90 percent of their cost. As a carrot, get the State to pass a law requiring contractors who open our streets for construction and require traffic control to obtain the services of off duty policemen to direct traffic around the construction whether it is required or not. This is what Massachusetts requires and what is good for Massachusetts should be good for Maine.

If you do this, you will create the same monopoly the teachers have and the town will have to fend off would be applicants. The latter can be avoided just like the teacher’s union does by rehiring retiring employees. When was the last time you saw and want ad for teachers?

Fred Blanchard,
Brunswick

Maine Sens. Should Oppose Gorsuch

I am writing to strongly urge senators Collins and King to vote against the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. We need a Supreme Court justice who will defend the rights of those who cannot speak for themselves—students with disabilities—rather than relegate them to the dark windowless janitor’s closets where they used to spend their school days.

While Gorsuch was testifying at his own confirmation hearing, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned one of his most egregious rulings: that public schools need only provide disabled students with educational progress that is “barely more than de minimis,” meaning slightly more than none at all. You would not accept that standard from your surgeon. You wouldn’t accept it from your mechanic. Why would you accept it from the schools that are teaching your child? Neil Gorsuch believes that low standard is good enough … if your child happens to have a disability.

Speaking of dark janitor’s closets, he has also written that confining disabled students in a windowless closet as a form of punishment does not “shock his conscience” and is not “unreasonable.” I disagree.

People with disabilities are under attack: We have an education secretary who believes states should have discretion over whether or not enforce federal law guaranteeing an education for students with disabilities. We have a U.S. attorney general who believes kids with disabilities are the most annoying thing teachers have to contend with. And we have a president who openly mocks people with disabilities. The last line of defense in this country is the U.S. Supreme Court. Without those justices on their side, students with disabilities will have no one to speak for them. I do not want Neil Gorsuch in a position where he could rule on the future of my disabled daughter, because judging from his record, he would send her back into the Dark Ages.

Lisa Wesel,
Bowdoinham