U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, right, speaks with restaurateur Frank Rodano during a stop at Rodano’s during a visit to Wilkes-Barre last week.
Roger DuPuis | Times Leader
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Whether you agree with his performance on the job, or with the direction of his boss’s administration in Washington, D.C., the success of the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Commerce and others in bringing U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to town was a very good thing.
Ross visited Wilkes-Barre Thursday, as recounted by editor Roger DuPuis in Friday’s paper. First stop: Rodano’s outdoor patio on Public Square, impressing Frank Rodano.
“This was exciting, and the secretary was a delightful man,” Frank Rodano said. “It just reassures my confidence that we’re heading in the right direction. People need to be safe of course, but at the same time we need to keep the economy moving.”
The visit dovetailed nicely with the county’s move into the green phase of Gov. Tom Wolf’s re-opening plan, and he praised the way local officials are handling it, citing the Chamber’s “respond, return and re-imagine” recovery support plan as a solid example of “how important it is to have an organization like yours connecting local companies to national assets to help them through this crisis.”
It was encouraging to see Ross don a face mask with others while on the square, considering his boss has largely shunned them and even seems willing to turn the safety precaution into some sort of culture war. We may be in a long, slow decline of new cases of COVID-19 in Luzerne County, but there’s no vaccine or cure for the capricious new virus that can prompt no symptoms in some while killing others. Face masks are a simple, science-backed way to keep COVID at bay until there is a vaccine, and Ross’s decision to wear one sent the right signal.
Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown added to that message with a clever touch giving Ross a mask with the city logo on it. If he hasn’t done so already, Brown should consider making such masks available to the public,. Let residents put a little civic pride in their daily precautions.
Ross attended a roundtable discussion at the Westmoreland Club with a veritable who’s who of area business and government, including Brown and Chamber President Wico van Genderen. Ross offered some encouraging statistics about our area, including how the Wilkes-Barre Region has a substantial export business, to the tune of $1.73 billion last year.
The visit was uplifting and potentially advantageous for an area that has made big strides in modernizing it’s economy while fighting off the inevitable — and outdated — labels of “hardscrabble” and “coal country.” Brown put it very well.
“We’re not an old coal mining town anymore. We’re a city of entrepreneurs and we’re looking for people to invest in the City of Wilkes-Barre,” he said. “I’m hoping the message he will take back to the Trump Administration is that this is a city they should be investing in.”