To the editor:

In response to the recent guest editorial in which The Manhattan Mercury questioned Gov.-elect Laura Kelly’s use of the word ‘devastation’ to describe the Brownback-Colyer administrations’ toll on state agencies, I have a request. Please ask the writer to reach out to his community’s mental health center, its homeless shelter and its programs for adults with developmental disabilities, frail seniors, and abused and neglected children. If there’s time, maybe he could call a couple of school superintendents and, perhaps, someone with the county’s road and bridge department.

I’d like to know if these folks think ‘devastation’ is too strong of a word.

Likewise, I wonder if the reporters in his ever-shrinking newsroom think their workplace has been similarly “trimmed back in some areas, and cut deeper in others,” and that current conditions are “either a problem or progress, depending on your political point of view.” I bet not.

Dave Ranney,

Lawrence