Editorial: Elected officials donate to drug court, but Doug Chew isn't one of them

Westmoreland County Commissioner Doug Chew seems to be having commitment issues.

On Monday, it was revealed that once again Chew has not fulfilled a financial promise to the people.

When running for office in 2019, he pledged 60% of his salary to help support and grow the county’s drug court program. In December 2020, he reiterated it, saying he planned to write a check for the amount every year. Then in September 2021, his tune changed.

The program needed no money, he said. It had all the funding needed and wouldn’t be growing, so his pledge was unnecessary. That same week, the program lost a $50,712 grant and was coming up short for night and weekend drug testing. At $750 a weekend, the total cost would come to about $39,000 a year.

Chew’s pledge was 60% of his $81,000 salary or $48,600 — more than enough to cover the loss.

After the broken campaign promise was revealed in a Tribune-Review story, Chew made another pledge. This time, he said he would cover the cost of the weekend testing. Not forever but at least until a new funding source could be found.

The program has kept going with money from elected officials’ pockets making it happen. Those pockets just don’t happen to be Chew’s.

Instead, it’s the combined effort of Commissioner Sean Kertes and Treasurer Jared Squires, who each put up $1,850, as well as attorney Scott Avolio, who chipped in $500.

“I was unaware we were short,” Chew said in a text message, claiming ignorance of a problem he had previously acknowledged would require time and money.

“This may not be solved overnight,” he wrote in September.

Apparently he thought it was. Either that, or he was once again promising something only to hope people ignored that he didn’t get it done.

On Monday, Chew said he was applying for a $5,000 grant on the county’s behalf.

Lovely. He should do that. He should apply for lots of grants. Get all the grants for all the Westmoreland programs that you can. That will certainly benefit the people of the county.

But doing that does not negate the promise made. It does not mean he didn’t obligate himself and his money to the task that he pledged in 2019 — and 2020 and again in 2021.

If Chew is unable to fulfill that campaign promise, he should say so. That’s a big chunk of money to turn over. Being commissioner is a job and has a paycheck for a reason. For that matter, if he just doesn’t want to make the contribution, he should say so and take the political heat.

What is upsetting is not that the money hasn’t been given. It’s that lack of consistent and reliable information. Chew’s campaign promise has become three years of changing stories that are never fulfilled. And it’s just embarrassing that other people who didn’t make such a public pledge are picking up his slack.