The despicable political attacks on Mayor Paige Cognetti over maternity leave are misleading and grossly unfair.<\/p>\n
Facts matter. Leave benefits for City of Scranton employees are negotiated through union contracts and reflect the priorities of each bargaining unit. Scranton workers still receive paid sick time, personal days, vacation,\u00a0<\/p>\n
holidays, bereavement leave, continued health coverage, and childbirth-related short-term disability. Unused sick time can accumulate significantly, and employees may take up to 14 weeks away from work when city and federal leave provisions run together.<\/p>\n
Just as important, Paige Cognetti has a real record of supporting families. Her administration invested in child care, literacy, tutoring, hunger relief and safer parks for children. Now she is running for Congress on a platform that includes fighting for the PRO Act and federal legislation that ensures universal paid family leave. That is not the record of someone who is anti-mother or anti-family. It is the record of a leader who understands what working families actually need most.<\/p>\n
What is especially troubling is that these attacks distract from serious issues facing women and children right now. Recent federal cuts to SNAP and to the Farmers Market Nutrition Program reduced access to healthy food for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young children, while also hurting local farmers. Those are the kinds of issues our leaders should be focused on.<\/p>\n
Voters deserve the real story, not fabrications and ridiculous political hit jobs.<\/p>\n
John Pace
Honesdale, PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The despicable political attacks on Mayor Paige Cognetti over maternity leave are misleading and grossly unfair. Facts matter.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[7975,1957,178,180,179,2920],"class_list":{"0":"post-167019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-cognetti","9":"tag-families","10":"tag-scranton","11":"tag-scranton-headlines","12":"tag-scranton-news","13":"tag-support"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}