[naviga:h3]Cheer[/naviga:h3]

The generosity and kind-heartedness of people is a constant inspiration — as long as you pay attention to the good works going on around you. After last week’s devastating and deadly flash flooding in West Virginia, Butler County residents and businesses have stepped up to collect and donate supplies for people displaced by the disaster.

Gary Karns, the store manager at West Central Equipment, where the items were being collected, said he couldn’t believe the public response as people donated everything from single use items to entire pallets of supplies purchased at Sam’s Club.

“The pile just keeps growing,” Karns said.

Next week Randy Reamer, a volunteer firefighter from Buffalo Township, and his family will drive the supplies to Ivydale W.Va., where they will stay with a volunteer fire company and help distribute the supplies.

Everyone who donated time, money and goodwill to this effort should be commended.

[naviga:h3]Jeer [/naviga:h3]

After last year’s budget debacle people might think that an on-time state budget would be cause for celebration. Instead, it’s just another example for how self-serving our state’s elected officials are.

In a process State Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York, called “total madness,” legislators worked through the night on Thursday and sent Gov. Tom Wolf a $31.6 billion budget that increases funding to education, opioid addiction services, and the state’s Department of Corrections, among others. The budget made it to Wolf’s desk in time to meet the midnight deadline that marks the start of Pennsylvania’s 2016-17 fiscal year. Absent was any explanation of how, exactly, the tab will get paid.

Mission accomplished: State lawmakers can now campaign for re-election while claiming to have turned in an on-time budget.

It’s too bad their mission wasn’t hashing out a spending plan that actually deals with Pennsylvania’s issues — crippling debt, credit downgrades, an underfunded public education system and a state-owned pension system in crisis.

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The Pennsylvania House took a necessary step last week when it voted to criminalize the use of drones to spy on people in private places.

The bill, put forward by Rep. Jeff Pyle, R-60th, makes the crime punishable by up to three months in jail and a $300 fine for first-time offenders — though it provides exceptions for police doing their duties as long as search warrant requirements are fulfilled.

The proposal now goes to the state Senate, where a similar bill died last year.

It’s hard to see why this proposal should meet the same fate. Peoples’ right to privacy should be protected, and the proliferation of small, private drones that are cheap, easily obtained and capable of invading spaces without violating physical trespassing statutes is a real concern.

Pyle’s bill is a common sense proposal and a step in the right direction.