How green can the Valley be?

Congressman Tim Ryan has announced $2.7 million for an incubator to help spawn green jobs here in the Mahoning Valley.

Ryan said:

$2,700,000 for the Warren Technology and Business Center for Energy Sustainability

Money would be used to rehabilitate a facility in Warren. The prime focus of the incubator will be the creation and expansion of clean technologies including alternative energy sources and green building materials. This will also be the first area building to be rehabilitated under LEED standards and is expected to be a model for green building redevelopment.

Since he has been elected, Ryan has been consistent in his goals — one of them is to use earmarks to for cutting edge technology jobs that can help the Warren-Youngstown economy grow. These kinds of earmarks do more to bring good paying jobs to the Mahoning Valley than anything previous members of Congress have done.

Yes, that includes Jim Traficant. Many think Traficant’s big legacy is the Covelli Center, which is nice and helps downtown Youngstown, but what kind of jobs does it produce? And selling his vote to get the money destroyed his effectiveness in Congress, if he had any left at that point.

Traficant’s one true accomplishment was his work on the airbase at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.

However, in less than half the time Traficant spent in Congress, Ryan has done more to foster research, economic development and good jobs throughout his district.

Starting an incubator in Warren to compliment the software incubator in downtown Youngstown has been one of Ryan’s goals. How he is on the verge of getting signifcant money to make it real.

I just hope he doesn’t let local politicians somehow screw it up.

Forum Health bankruptcy

Creditors have lost confidence in bankrupt Forum Health’s management, a spokesperons for creditors said in today’s Tribune Chronicle. Some of us lost confidence in the management long ago.

What is especially revealing are statements that creditors want someone with health care experience to run the hospital system, which includes Hillside Hospital and Trumbull Memorial in Warren and Northside Medical Center in Youngstown. That action, of course, would rule out current CEO Walter “Buzz” Pishkur, whose experience is with water companies. Trumbull County residents should welcome such a move.

After all, Northside has been a money pit for years, soaking up resources from Trumbull Memorial. While nobody wants to see Northside workers lose their jobs if it should close, it would be worse for Northside to take down Trumbull Memorial with it. Forum has had years to find a way to deal with Northside and has consistently failed — despite paying millions to consultants.

Doctors at Trumbull have seen the writing  on the wall and called on the Forum Board to dissolve the Trumbull Memorial-Northside merger that created Forum Health. Unfortunately, those votes of the medical staff have gone nowhere, and with vary rare exceptions, individual doctors have been reluctant to take their case public.

In all of this, it would be interesting to hear how from Forum board members from Trumbull County explain how continuing the merger is good for Turmbull Memorial.  But the remain silent as well.

Forum has made a boatload of mistakes in the past few years. Maybe it is time for the creditors to come up with a restructuring plan and for the court to put experienced leadership in place.