Bus drivers should roll on their own merits

7/16/2006

Seven bite-size Lemmon Drops to nibble on while waiting for The Andersons to make the Fortune 500:

  • On the front page of this week's Toledo Journal is a story about a fired TARTA driver crying foul over the reinstatement of another fired driver.

    The drivers were involved in similar accidents, hitting pedestrians as they were turning their buses, the paper said. One is African-American; the other is white.

    Only the white driver was reinstated.

    The article in The Journal which bills itself as "Northwest Ohio's Only African American-Owned Newspaper" was clearly sympathetic toward the African-American driver, Katrina Ruffin. (Ms. Ruffin says the union leader sold her out by agreeing to management's demand that the other driver's case could not be discussed at her arbitration hearing.)

    A casual reader might pick up vibes of racial undertones in the comparison of these cases. However, the article doesn't give enough of the details of either case to decide what's fair, nor does it address either driver's "body of work" with TARTA.

    I don't know anything about Ms. Ruffin's case. Maybe she deserves to be reinstated, maybe she doesn't.

    But I do know a little about the driver who was reinstated. Don Glaza has been at the wheel of the bus I've taken home at least 100 times. He is the most conscientious TARTA driver I have encountered. And I've observed dozens, if not hundreds.

    Mr. Glaza, a TARTA employee for nearly 30 years, is prudent and operates his bus in a totally professional manner.

    In this case, he made a mistake. (Try navigating a 35-foot-long bus through traffic for 5,000 miles a year and see if you make any.)

    If that was his only mistake, it would have been an injustice not to reinstate him. The fact that he is white makes it convenient for The Journal to insinuate there are racial undertones involved.

    But Ms. Ruffin should leave Mr. Glaza out of her fight, which, according to The Journal, includes a pending civil rights complaint against TARTA.

  • Come on, Ken Blackwell and Ted Strickland. If you're going to have four gubernatorial debates, then Toledo has got to be one of the sites.

  • A week ago today, St. Hedwig Catholic Church on Lagrange Street unveiled a Ten Commandments monument, becoming the second parish in the Catholic Diocese of Toledo to do so.

    A Ten Commandments monument erected on church grounds instead of public property, such as a courthouse lawn? What a concept.

  • In watching the Triple-A All-Star Game on ESPN2, the view of Toledo's skyline from Fifth Third Field looked pretty darn impressive.

  • This item is for anyone who would dispute that Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner has the highest name recognition of any local politician in northwest Ohio.

    Fostoria Mayor John Davoli has drawn comparisons to Mr. Finkbeiner. Each is considered a polarizing figure people either love him or hate him. Some critics of the Fostoria mayor are wearing T-shirts with Mr. Davoli's face on the front. It's accompanied by two words: Carty Lite.

  • Note to Mr. Finkbeiner: Should you be interested in forming Carty Inc. the domain name carty.com is still available.

  • Why am I not surprised Bob McCloskey never registered his River East Children's Fund as a tax-exempt charity and, now, it's being investigated?