Some advice for the MTA

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in a financial hole and the magic bullet is cutting overtime [“Eyeing overtime cuts,” News, June 28]. Vilify the work force and that will fix the problem. One interpretation of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Thus, the MTA is insane.

For decades it has paid outside consultants to tell the MTA what most people already know. You can’t spend more than you make. It is easy for the MTA to blame the unions and contract language, forgetting that the very language now blamed for excessive overtime was negotiated by the MTA. I have been a principal union officer for the Long Island Rail Road for more than 20 years and have seen it all. I’d like to offer six points of advice: manage better; stop contracting out work; hire outside professionals to negotiate contracts; recognize the LIRR has more than one union; think outside the box, and, finally, accountability. We are in a mess, a “four-alarm fire.” This pandemic has accelerated the inevitable. Now, we must work together. I’m ready, and I hope the MTA is, too.

Ricardo Sanchez,

Patchogue

Editor’s note: The writer is general chairman of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 589.

Suffolk deserves independent IG

The Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted the need for accountability for those in power. To me, the need is most pronounced in Suffolk County. The response to young Thomas Valva’s death was our leaders merely offering to study the issue or empanel a commission. This is a pattern in Suffolk, and I expect not much will change. I know. Forty years ago, I was locked up in the children’s shelter by a Suffolk family court judge and sentenced to a maximum term in a state reform school even though I had never been arrested or committed a crime. In 2019, a report was issued highlighting that Suffolk County detains more minors than any other county in the state, by a wide margin.

Unless and until we are prepared to confront powerful police unions and toxic political parties in Suffolk County, I say nothing will change. It’s time for an independent office of inspector general to make those in power answer to the citizens they serve. Such an office was established in Nassau County to resounding success. Recently, Legis. Robert Trotta and Anthony Piccirillo sponsored Suffolk Resolution 1099-2020 to create such an office.

Suffolk County residents deserve no less.

Daniel G. Rodgers,

Southampton

Editor’s note: The writer was a Suffolk County assistant district attorney from 1993 to 1996.

Face mask letter was offensive

I have disagreed with many letters, but none has been as absurd and offensive as Thomas Fanning’s letter equating wearing face masks to the start of the Holocaust. His suggestion of a parallel between being told to wear face masks in the fight against a pandemic that has already killed 130,00 Americans and being forced to wear a Star of David or a colored triangle in Nazi Germany insults the victims of the Holocaust, the soldiers who died fighting Nazi Germany, the medical workers making extreme sacrifices in the fight against COVID-19, and all of us willing to put up with a minor inconvenience in order to protect those around us from a potentially fatal disease.

Elizabeth Twiss,

Stony Brook

I take exception to the letter “It all begins with a new law on face masks.” The writer’s references to patches on outer clothing, tattoos on forearms and immediate punishment are all references to the laws meant to marginalize and then execute the Jews in Nazi Germany. The only thing missing was a cattle car reference. The author meant to equate the requirement to wear masks to an infringement on our personal freedoms; however, the remarks are insensitive and offensive. There is a stark contrast between scapegoating a specific group of people for the purposes of an organized genocide by blaming them for all of the perceived ills of a society and the requirement to wear a mask at a time when more than half a million people around the world have died of a virus that is making millions more sick and can be largely controlled by simply wearing a mask in public. I’m sorry if you believe that your personal liberty is infringed by being a responsible citizen doing his part to keep his community and family safe from this disease.

Howard Sussman,

Jericho

How to honor those who fought in Korea

I can fully understand why veteran Chuck Darling is grateful for the return of the remains of U.S. servicemen killed during the Korean War [“Korean War vet grateful to Trump,” Letters, July 6].

However, America’s military personnel have historically fought and died for this country’s ideals of truth, freedom, equality, democracy, the right to free speech and the rule of law. To me, President Donald Trump represents the polar opposite of all these values. I might suggest the real way for Darling to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in Korea is to vote against Trump, who I see as a corrupt and incompetent “leader” whose admiration for dictators such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un knows no bounds.

Steve North,

Roslyn Heights