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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > May > 31
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Editorial: Land lines still safer in an emergency
With cellular phones always close by in a pocket or purse, it’s easy to see why people are ditching their land-line phones.
Especially in this economy, it’s hard to justify paying for two phones when you can get by with just one. Yet, while it may be cheaper (if you don’t count the kids’ phones and unlimited texting charges) to stick with a cell phone, it isn’t necessarily safer.
A recent national survey found that the move toward cell phones is happening fast. More people now have only cell phones than have only land lines (the majority still have both). In Ohio, 14 percent said they are cell phone-only.
But even with many of today’s 911 dispatch centers equipped with the latest mapping technology, finding a cell phone caller who has an emergency, in some cases, can cost precious minutes.
“Until this new technology becomes absolutely certain in how it locates callers, I personally will always have a wire line phone in the house,” said Frank Young, director of Warren County’s 911 dispatch center.
Among the area’s biggest counties, Montgomery, Warren and Miami have the best technology available for locating cell phones. Greene County will upgrade to the new equipment by Sept. 1.
When cell phone calls come in, the new equipment pinpoints the caller’s location automatically on a video map, which shows the address or nearest address. This is similar to the process for land-line phones, which immediately display the address of the call.
In both cases, dispatchers can send the information to video displays in emergency vehicles with a few keystrokes.
Technological advances have greatly improved response times in emergencies by reducing confusion. In the past, dispatchers had to be trained to know things like what firehouse served what neighborhoods and the job required typing in a lot of information. Now those tasks are largely automated.
But people still make mistakes, and the high-tech equipment is not perfect. For instance, the software may accidentally locate a cell phone in the house next door to where the caller is. Older phones can sometimes only be narrowed down to a general area, not always to a specific address.
When the emergency is grave — health crises, severe injuries, violent threats — confusion can be fatal.
Volume is growing. Miami County reports 60 percent of its 911 calls now come from cell phones. Dispatchers are trained to ask callers for an address first, but people in distress may struggle to remember exactly where they are. The whole idea of automating addresses in the system was to move quickly past “where are you,” so dispatchers can get to “what is your emergency?”
To stay protected, consumers consider taking these steps:
Keep a land-line phone. Especially for households with children or those who are elderly or medically fragile, a traditional wired phone is still the safest bet for quick response in an emergency.
Upgrade your cell phones. Phones more than two years old may not have GPS capability, making it harder for emergency workers to locate a caller.
Ask questions when buying a cell phone. Make sure the phone has the latest GPS technology and specifically ask how well it can be pinpointed during a 911 call.
Ask questions of phone service providers. Those who want to use cell phones at home or get home phone service through their cable company or over the Internet need to know for sure that 911 service offered. They must make sure the provider has their address correct, especially after a move. Also, keep in mind that when the power goes down, phone service provided through the Internet or cable goes down, too.
Checking with municipalities. Before going cell phone-only, check to see if your city’s 911 dispatching service can track cell phone location. Keep in mind that some cities do their own dispatching and may have different equipment than the rest of the county.
Mr. Young tells the story of one 911 caller on an old cell phone with a medical emergency who couldn’t speak.
“We had a great deal difficulty locating that phone,” he said. “All we got was the sector of a 911 tower. We eventually found the person, but it took an hour and a lot of work with the cell phone company.”
When minutes count, make sure your phone is ready.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Scott Elliott
Guest column: Payday lenders milk loopholes
By Tom Allio and Bill Faith
One year ago this week, Gov. Ted Strickland signed the Short Term Loan Act that capped the annualized interest rates payday lenders could charge at 28 percent, down from 391 percent.
Today, payday lenders are celebrating all the way to the bank, using loopholes in the law to charge up to 680 percent APR.
As of February, Montgomery County had 62 payday storefronts, the fourth-highest in the state. (Greene and Warren counties have 9; Miami has 10.)
The businesses are living it up, trapping customers in debt with their trademark one-two punch: excessively high interest and short repayment terms. Not even the people’s vote would stop them.
Maybe you remember that after the governor signed the rate cap law, the industry spent $20 million of its enormous profits to “let the people decide” at the polls last November. By a margin of nearly two-to-one, Ohioans voted yes on Issue 5 to uphold the 28 percent rate cap law.
First, our elected officials spoke; then the people of Ohio weighed in. No more debt trap, right? Wrong.
Only 19 of the 1,000-plus storefronts statewide licensed themselves under the Short Term Loan Act. The rest opted for licensure under Ohio’s Mortgage Loan Act and Small Loan Act.
Both statutes were designed to regulate other long-term lending products, like second mortgages; neither was intended to regulate a short-term product like a payday loan.
Under these statutes, payday lenders got creative. They started issuing loans in the form of a check, then charging the customer to cash the check; started charging origination fees — in addition to interest and other fees — as often as every week. Loans bulging with add-on fees sent interest rates through the roof, up to 680 percent APR.
The Housing Research and Advocacy Center confirmed all this in a March 2009 report titled, “The New Face of Payday Lending.”
The new face of payday lending funnels money from the needy into the vast coffers of a greedy industry. It mocks the system that tries to regulate it. It thumbs its nose at the will of the people. And except for even higher rates and fees, the new face looks a lot like the old face.
It lures borrowers with the promise of easy, fast cash, then traps them with excessively difficult repayment terms.
Borrowers don’t choose to return again and again. They do so because they’re trapped; and borrowers trapped in debt cannot save, invest or contribute productively to a healthy free-market economy. The practice strips wealth instead of building it.
Ohio has seen enough wealth-stripping from the foreclosure crisis. We don’t need more bad lending products that promise one thing and deliver the opposite. And we certainly don’t need a deceptive industry sidestepping the law to continue the carnage.
Let’s stop “loophole lending” with legislation that tethers all loans for under $1,000, and for less than 90 days, to the 28 percent annualized rate; that prohibits charging a fee to cash the loan check; and that gives the attorney general authority to go after lenders who attempt to skirt the law.
The people spoke clearly in a historic referendum last November. Ohio’s public officials have been delivered a mandate to address abusive payday lending practices.
Legislation that effectively closes the payday loopholes should be passed through both chambers and signed by the governor as quickly as possible.
Nothing less than the integrity of the Nov. 4, 2008 vote of more than 3 million Ohioans is at stake.
Tom Allio is director of the Social Action Office of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. Bill Faith is the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Elections, Guest Columns, Ohio politics, Predatory lending
Ellen Belcher: Dragging down Dayton gets region nowhere
I’ve been in too many conversations lately where there’s an anti-Dayton subtext.
Two weeks ago, I criticized the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force for not promoting Dayton’s Wright brothers’ National Park Service sites. Some of the push back I got was: Why should the Air Force museum promote Dayton?
Prior to that, I wrote a piece about Children’s Medical Center objecting to Kettering Medical Center creating an intensive care unit for sick newborns.
Again, there was an undercurrent in some people’s complaints that the expensive facility is needed because suburban women don’t want to deliver at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton. (It has a neonatal intensive care unit, as does Children’s.)
Then there’s the debate about the regional 911 dispatching center. Some critics argue that, with Dayton being part of the venture, calls from the city will suck up resources. It’s, of course, not news that Dayton isn’t beloved by all.
Some people who have been around a long time will trace those feelings to the veto Dayton exercised (for a while) over the construction of I-675, thereby infuriating the suburbs.
Though most of the players in that controversy are dead, this wouldn’t be the first time historical animosities have lived on past the point when people can remember what they’re supposed to be mad about.
Others will say the disdain is rooted in racism, and the fact that the city has become increasingly black and poor over several decades.
Without a doubt, the quality of Dayton’s schools has made the city a target — for some good and some horribly unfair reasons.
Also, once upon a time, Dayton couldn’t be dismissed because so many companies and jobs were located downtown. It was a hub — economically and politically in a way it’s just not today.
Here’s the thing, though. The animus toward Dayton — covert and overt, conscious and unconscious — is poisonous.
Is anybody better off if — borrowing from the Rush Limbaugh school of politics — Dayton fails?
Ned Hill, an urban affairs professor at Cleveland State University, said that sourness about cities isn’t “just self-defeating. It’s self-fulfilling. That’s why it has to be fought.”
An adviser to the Ohio Department of Development, Hill said that when he hears others outside the region talk about Dayton, the community isn’t seen as fractured as it might seem to people living here.
In fact, when it comes to recruiting new businesses, the Columbus area is perceived as more willing to cannibalize itself, he said.
On the other hand, that region also has a reputation for rallying around that city when, say, there’s a possibility of it creating an amenity that improves quality of life for everyone.
Hill said that he also believes that the sport of running down Cleveland — long a pastime of the locals as well as late-night comedians — has “calmed down.”
Dayton, however, Hill said, can’t not focus on the city’s well-being. “You’re in danger of becoming an exit ramp community.” Without Dayton, there’s no core and no brand.
Hill is quick to insist that Dayton, or any struggling city, won’t be revived by putting a guilt trip on its suburban neighbors or through boosterism. Rather, meaningful, distinctive selling points — walkable streets, a green culture, eclectic arts, historic homes, good restaurants and bars — have to be leveraged and created.
Carol Coletta, the president of CEOs for Cities, agrees, adding cities must play to their strengths in a counter-intuitive way.
“If you’re in a downward spiral, you have to invest in assets. … You have to intensify and magnify the good things,” Coletta said. That approach, she concedes, bumps up against the political reality that politicians are elected to fix what’s wrong, not improve what’s working.
“I think we’re at a moment in time where all the trends are moving in the direction of cities,” said Coletta, whose nonprofit organization advocates for, and does research on, urban issues.
“We can’t spend infinitely on infrastructure. We’re undermining our ability to be innovative in the way we spread people out over too much land,” she said. Meanwhile, young people are saying in “pretty strong numbers” that they prefer central cities.
Nobody denies Dayton has problems. But those who can’t see its strengths and possibilities, those who don’t recognize its importance to the region’s success, might want to ask themselves if maybe they’re too quick to judge or even uninformed.
Or they could consider if they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Columns, Ellen Belcher, Miami Valley Politics, Montgomery County
