Ashland attorney Ernest M. Pitt Jr. is an excellent choice as the new Area 4 director for the Kentucky Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve. Pitt knows first hand the essential role National Guard and Reserve units play in today’s military and how the support of civilian employers is critical for both the National Guard and the Reserve to maintain the manpower they need to do their increasingly important jobs.
Area 4 corresponds with Kentucky’s fourth congressional district represented by Republican Geoff Davis.
Pitt retired as a colonel after 30 years in the in U.S. Army and Army Reserve. He knows what it is like to put his civilian career as an attorney on hold to serve on active duty in the military. So do many other area members of the National Guard and the Reserve. At one time members of the National Guard and the Reserve were called “weekend soldiers” who surrendered one weekend a month and a couple of weeks in the summer for military training. Their chances of actually being called into active duty for an expanded period of time were slim.
But the role of the National Guard and Reserve began to increase with the advent of the all-volunteer military, and since the 1980s, Guard and Reserve units have been called into active duty in every military conflict. Pitt himself was called into active duty during the first Gulf War, and during the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, nearly every single member of the National Guard and Reserve has been called into active duty. Some have been called more than once.
That, of course, has placed an added strain on their civilian employees. Many civilian employees either have had to operate short-handed or temporarily hire replacements for employees called into active duty. Members of the Guard and Reserve are guaranteed positions with their civilian employers when their tours of duty have ended.
Some employers are reluctant to hire members of the Guard or Reserve because the risk of losing their service if they are called into active duty, yet still having to keep a position open for them upon their return. One of Pitt’s tasks in his new position will be to convince employers to hire members of the Guard and Reserve despite the risk of losing them for extended periods of time. One way of doing that is convincing employers of how they are helping their country achieve its military objectives by allowing their employees to serve.
If anyone can convince a reluctant employer to support employees who serve in the Guard and the Reserve, it is Ernie Pitt. He knows from decades of experience that today’s members of the Guard and Reserve are a lot more than just “weekend soldiers.”
Editorials
Excellent choice — 10/31/09
Ernie Pitt is well suited as advocate for Guard, Reserves
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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