Dowling crash needs further explanation
The automobile accident that has sidelined state representative Matthew Dowling of Uniontown sounds awful: traveling alone, police say, Dowling’s vehicle plowed through a field before striking a tree 100 yards off a road in Upper Leacock Township in Lancaster County.
It was 7 in the evening. The date was Oct. 6. Dowling was on his way to a party function, described in this newspaper as an “informal retreat.”
According to police, Dowling never tried to stop his SUV. For this reason, authorities surmise that Dowling suffered a medical emergency. Speed, they said, was not a factor in the accident.
A photograph that appeared in the newspaper of the wrecked SUV illustrated the severity of the crash. The front of the vehicle looked completely smashed in.
Representative Dowling is due our prayers for a rapid recovery. My own father was killed in a vehicle accident in Connellsville in 1991. He slammed into a driveway wall a few feet off Crawford Avenue in the vicinity of Geibel High School on an early November night.
There were no brake or skid marks. The coroner speculated he either had a heart attack or stroke – a medical problem – in the seconds before the crash.
My dad was in his 80s.
According to Wikipedia, Matthew Dowling is 36. He will turn 37 on Nov. 18.
The other day he took a leave of absence from his state House duties. A news release explained that the legislator wants to devote all of his energies to recovering his health.
Let’s hope he does just that.
With all that said, we still need more details about the nature of the crash and the extent of Dowling’s injuries. It would help to know how long Dowling’s recovery might take, how long he might be away from his duties in Harrisburg or be unable to attend personally to the needs of his constituents.
We should also hear from House Republican leaders in Harrisburg about what this particular official leave of absence entails exactly.
Obviously, Matthew Dowling is not the highest elected official in the land. We don’t need a presidential-style minute by minute rundown of the accident. But we should have at least some idea of the medical issues that were involved in the crash.
What’s needed is more transparency. It is absolutely the case that private citizen Matthew Dowling deserves privacy and time to heal. At the same time, Representative Dowling is an elected public servant occupying an important policy-making office.
From a purely political perspective, the silent treatment is the worst option. It engenders rumor, innuendo, speculation.
Speaking of policy-making … most county row officers are not policy-making jobs. The recorder of deeds, prothonotary, clerk of courts, register of wills, coroner, sheriff, and possibly treasurer should not even be elected positions.
This is not to say they are insignificant offices. Someone needs to look after the matters that are currently entrusted to them by voters. But they just as easily could be appointed jobs, under the purview of the county commissioners, or a strictly non-partisan county civil service commission.
It would make a whole lot more sense.
As Bernard J. Rabik, a Beaver County-based attorney, wrote in the Beaver County Times in 2019:
“For offices such as prothonotary, recorder of deeds and register of wills, which process thousands of pages of vital documents, you want somebody who understands information technology and has some knowledge of the law, someone who’s a good administrator and well organized.”
Rabik added, “You don’t always get that in county elections.”
In the recent election in which several row offices were up for grabs, at least two Fayette County candidates positioned themselves as the “conservative” candidates in their races.
This may be good politics in Fayette County, but it’s irrelevant to the jobs they were seeking. What in the world do abortion and gun rights have to do with the recorder of deeds’ office?
The answer is nothing.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.