The next Allegheny County Executive will face unprecedented challenges that will affect the future of our region.

Allegheny County voters should conduct rigorous and productive job interviews with anybody who applies for the job.

To help accomplish that, the business-organized labor alliance Pittsburgh Works Together is launching an initiative intended to maintain focus on the most critical issues facing Allegheny County. Our “Our County. Your Vote. Allegheny’s Future” initiative will compile and publicize candidate policy positions, host a candidate forum, and provide extensive research and analysis to help inform candidates, voters, and the media.

We know that others will disagree with Pittsburgh Works’ perspective on the issues and will have other priorities. That diversity of thought is one of America’s strengths.

But anything of value doesn’t come without hard work. We all need to educate ourselves on the issues that we care about, and force candidates to give specific answers on how they would address them.

Don’t just vote based on what your neighbor or social media feed tells you, or on the personality of a candidate, or the slogans on a bumper sticker. Learn about the issues you care about and put in the work to hire the best candidate you can. The future is too important to do anything else.