Letter to the Editor: Luster Heights should be a lesson

To the Editor:

I often wonder what has become of the officers and staff who worked at Luster Heights. Have they found equal jobs elsewhere?

How is our county coping with the loss of cost-effective labor that the inmates provided? Luster Heights had work agreements with Lansing, Harpers Ferry, Eastern Allamakee schools, Allamakee County Conservation and the DNR. Inmates helped maintain Lansing’s Mt. Hosmer Park, Waukon’s City Park, and our County’s secondary roads.

They also did community service projects, building shelves for libraries and the county fair, growing plants for the Allamakee County Master Gardeners, and a nativity scene for St. Ann’s Parish in Harpers Ferry. The inmates’ contributions to our county were enormous and appreciated by many.

The closing of the Luster Heights corrections facility continues to stand out as an example of irresponsible budget cuts made by our current governor and our state house representative. After the party that now controls state government gave big tax credits to corporations, they then balanced the budget on the backs of us citizen taxpayers by cutting $35.5 million to departments, cutting programs, and cutting vital services we rely on.

Besides a $3.4 million dollar cut to the department of corrections, the governor, our state representative and legislators from this political party reduced funding for universities and community colleges (bringing tuition increases for students), health care (resulting in at least one northeast Iowa clinic closing) and the state’s High Quality Jobs program, which lost $10 million in state funding.

What every voter should have learned from the loss of Luster Heights is that we need a state representative who puts her constituents first. We’ve also learned what happens when a representative votes mainly along party lines without considering how her vote will affect her constituents. We already have too many legislators who put party first instead of the people they are supposed to represent.

D. Kevin Moore
Harpers Ferry