But which buys more ads?

Stories in the Reading Eagle on Friday:

Fleetwood SD hires new schools superintendent: word count 123

Reading Hospital Paws for Wellness program: word count 615

Reading and city agencies are in the real-estate business

by Steve Reinbrecht

Reading, the Reading Redevelopment Authority, and Our City Reading, a development agency formerly run by Albert Boscov, who died last month, own nearly 250 properties among them, mostly residences.

Here is a list, from Berks County records.

The city owns 110 properties.

Our City Reading owns 63 properties.

The redevelopment authority owns 67 properties.

• Do people live in them?
• Are they paying rent?
• How many are vacant?
• How do the city and agencies maintain them?
• When is the last time one was sold?
• Do the city, authority and OCR have a strategic plan for all these properties?

The Reading Eagle could try to find out.

Few non-whites show up in Reading Eagle's Business Weekly

The Reading Eagle’s Business Weekly is full of photos illustrating its stories and ads.

Reflecting Berks’ power structure and its lack of interest in presenting a diverse and welcoming image, only two of the 82 photos where I could judge ethnicity were non-white men, and each was in bank ads on pages 30 and 32.

Four of the photos were non-white women – two the same image of Luvleen Sidhu.

The answer is not to pad the edition with minorities. But does anybody at the Reading Eagle even consider this stuff?

Berks sheriff deputies will get training to assist federal immigration officers

by Steve Reinbrecht

The Berks Sheriff Department will be the first in Pennsylvania to get federal training to help U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents detain undocumented immigrants under a program called 287(g).

Berks Sheriff Eric Weaknecht said he knows Berks needs better enforcement because so many undocumented immigrants are processed for felonies in the county booking center.

“Nothing’s being done with them” at the federal level, he said.

The 287(g) program allows a state or local law enforcement entity to enter into a partnership with ICE to receive “delegated authority for immigration enforcement within their jurisdictions.”

Of the 3,141 counties in the United States, 37 have signed up for the 287 (g) program, the latest on Feb.28, and none in Pennsylvania.

Weaknecht applied to the federal training program in 2009, but federal officials withdrew the funding.

Under the Trump administration, he expects funding to become available. Trump signed an executive order on immigration enforcement in January that encourages more local involvement for 287(g) training. Once trained, local officers are authorized to interview, arrest, and detain anybody who may be in violation of immigration laws.

Four deputies will get the 4-week training so that one trained deputy will be available around the clock, Weaknecht said. They will perform their normal duties until ICE officers request assistance, he said.

According to the ICE website, counties in these states are in the cooperative 287(g) program.

Alabama                   Nevada

Arizona                     New Jersey

Arkansas                  North Carolina

California                  Ohio

Florida                      Oklahoma

Georgia                    South Carolina

Maryland                  Texas

Massachusetts          Virginia

I’m not sure if the list is up-to-date. A woman who answered the phone at the ICE PR office didn’t know and told me to send an e-mail to “ICE media.”