Report on Leinbach’s trip to Washington is worse than hot air

by Steve Reinbrecht

What kind of reporting is this, in this muddled Reading Eagle story about Republican Berks County Commissioner Christian Leinbach going to Washington?

He was there to oppose a federal law forcing regions to cut ozone levels by 6.6 percent.

The first paragraph says Leinbach visited the U.S. Senate environment committee's oversight subcommittee “to discuss how important infrastructure projects have been impacted by federal regulations.”

The story never mentions any of these infrastructure projects.

The article degenerates into an uncredited complaint about over-regulation.

"In 2015, 3,140 rules that were issued by federal agencies,” the text continues [with the badly edited bumping numbers.] “Those unfunded mandates cost local governments between $57 billion and $85 billion a year, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget."

If the anonymous writer is going to insert these factoids into his or her news story about Leinbach, it would be SO easy for the Reading Eagle website to link to the sources, here in the digital age.

That way we could check for ourselves how many of the 3,140 rules that were issued by federal agencies had to do with the topic at hand [the environment].

We could check to see if it really was the White House Office of Management and Budget that called the rules “unfunded mandates,” or if not, attempt to surmise who really is using those words, like the reporter, or a Leinbach press release.

We could try to figure out why, speaking of 2015, there was confusion about “between of $57 billion and $85 billion a year.”

According to the article, Leinbach said county officials “are concerned that the rule-making process and the enforcement mechanisms fail to consider the capacity of local communities to absorb the costs.”

The award-winning newspaper seems to quote Leinbach’s officialese verbatim, but here’s the translation:

“County officials think the federal government doesn’t fairly make or enforce rules to force people to stop polluting water and air.”

I’d really like to know what our elected county leader is saying, but I have to wonder, are these sentences in the Reading Eagle supposed to make sense, or are they just things to fill in the wide white spaces between ads?

In any case, it seems healthy to reduce ozone, according to the state:

“Maintaining concentrations of ground-level ozone below the health-based ambient air quality standard is important because ozone is a serious human health threat, and also can cause damage to important food crops, forests, and wildlife.

“Repeated exposure to ozone pollution may cause a variety of adverse health effects for both healthy people and those with existing conditions including difficulty in breathing, chest pains, coughing, nausea, throat irritation, and congestion. It can exacerbate bronchitis, heart disease, emphysema, and asthma, and reduce lung capacity. Asthma is a significant and growing threat to children and adults.”