Tag: ethics

Beating that ethical dead horse

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It’s summertime. Many of us have been relaxing on beaches, seeing the roadside sights,  dining al fresco on fresh and abundant summer veggies. BAM: Farrell Keough dumps all the logic you would find in a lumpy bowl of split pea soup into this LTE about the get rich quick schemes of our educators on the county council. It’s like he has no idea how the budget to the BOE even works.

Do you suppose they might see 12 more cents through some happy accident if they expanded the budget allocated to the Board of Ed, and after buildings and buses and divvying up of money for everyone from crossing guards to cafeteria ladies, it magically trickled down out of all the other stuff they need to pay for? Luckily, we have a handy dandy visual guide all ready to recycle. This easy-to-understand matter should have been filed away as DONE and WELL DONE months ago.

Imagine if you had to be Farell Keough's teacher. Does that illustrate how hard this job is?
Imagine if you had to be Farell Keough’s teacher. Does that illustrate how hard this job is? (Click to enlarge image).

Return to your happy place everyone, lest you find yourselves in a picked over Target trying to find a purple folder WITH BRADS (or, in the case of our teachers, spending countless dollars from your own bank account to prepare your workplace for the commencement of the school year). Our thoughts are with ya, teachers.

The water vapors are weighing the council down

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I do declare the humidity must be affecting some members of our esteemed county council. Tis the time of year when it is common to fall out from the stickiness that surrounds us like mud on a hog. Mr. Shreve in particular was a tad testier than usual. Makes us want to pull him under the shade of an old Magnolia that our great grand pappy planted back in 1907 and give him a good talking to. Alas, what difference would it really make?

Our first point of bewilderment with Mr. Shreve is this:

Billy

Why every week, before the pledge, does he do this? And notice he’s the only one. Does he not want to face the public? Does he worship at the altar of the American flag? What in a donkey’s backside is the meaning of this?

Now particular to this week, Billy goes right in for the no when voting on whether or not to approve the consent agenda. On the consent agenda this week were various budget transfers for departments such as: The Child Advocacy Center, Agricultural Preservation, Housing and Community Services, Planning and Development, Fire and Rescue and Community Development. His particular beef, from what we could tell since we cannot fathom getting in that head of his, was he was really bitter about the council not approving Trout Run and still not getting his budget liaison. Logic of course dictates that he then mess with everyone else’s budget. Thankfully, Billy has no one else on board with his interesting style of governance and all budget transfers were passed 6-1.

Moving on to the approval of minutes for the last three meetings. A unanimous vote! Still Billy cannot bring himself to say Aye. Must be that oppositional disorder rearing its ugly head again. A note to be made about Kirby. He did not seem to want to turn on his microphone this evening. We later discover it’s working just fine. But through all the votes we can barely hear his little “aye”. What’s up with that?

On to everyone’s favorite commission: Ethics. A motion is put forth to appoint four new members. Of course Billy isn’t going to let this go without making some kind of declaration. “It’s sad that 3 of the 5 members of the ethics commission resigned and we are in this position.” Really, really sad.

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6-1 approved! Even Kirby. Billy seems to be losing all his playmates. On to Jessica and M.C.’s bill to repeal the English only ordinance. We heard some nonsense earlier in the week about Billy going on WFMD and saying this:

“You either have to stay all English or not all English. And as soon as you open up yourself, you have to provide absolutely everything.  If you have someone from the jungle of Brazil from some tribe of 20 people, and they come in and want a document translated, you have to be able to translate it for them.”

With great poise Councilwoman Fitzwater introduced the bill and we know, just know he’s going to say something and of course he does! He insisted that we don’t have to throw out old Blainey boy’s ordinance, we can just modify it. Jessica then snaps at him (Oh the humidity, but how can we blame her? I mean really.). If you have something in writing, she quipped, you can share it with me. Right now all we are doing is reading the bill. Properly chastised he shuts the microphone down.

The next order of business is something we have wanted to see happen for quite sometime. We here at the Local Yokel love our festivals. The 4th of July, In the Streets, special events at Rose Hill Manor count us in! What we do not love is seeing the mountains of trash that are full of recyclables. Our fair State passed a law requiring that all counties pass ordinances that require event organizers, within certain parameters, to provide recycling. Yay!!! Now keep in mind THIS HAS TO HAPPEN! It is a State law and Frederick County must comply. The Department of Solid Waste Management presented a lot of information to the council. And they underlined the fact that THIS HAS TO HAPPEN. Well, looky over to the left, who is going to make this difficult? That’s right Billy. He tries to make the poor solid waste people give him an estimate as to how much recyclables would be generated at a picnic or a soccer tournament. And these poor souls. Silence falls and then a response of, “There is really no way we can estimate that.” He then wants to know what private companies charge to haul this stuff away. They don’t know. His point, I suppose, is that he thinks this will put an unfair burden on people. But hey, this isn’t for little outings. It’s for events that are expecting over 200 people and take place on public property. Why can’t this man see the big picture on this or anything else for that matter? Thankfully passed 6-1.

Next oddity on the agenda. Kirby wants a lobbyist. What for? To send to Annapolis, because according to him we are missing out on millions of dollars that are either sitting in some secret bunker or being distributed to other counties. Bud rightfully asks if this is not the job of our elected delegates and state senators. Aren’t they not the ones elected to bring back money to the county? And if Kirby’s contention, for which he has no proof, is correct, then we have a problem. It was agreed that they would meet with the delegation to see if they were in fact missing out on this secret stash of cash.

It was within this conversation that our good buddy Bud almost gave us a fainting spell. He called Kirby Congressman Delauter! And oh my stars do not even joke about such a thing Bud! He quickly and quite loudly added: “Sorry about that”! Wouldn’t we all be sorry indeed?

Dear FNP Editorial Board, Are you new here?

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We are scratching our heads and winding our butts over here digesting the editorials from Tuesday and Sunday. Or whenever they are from, the dates online and the shuffling of the deck makes it hard to keep track. His own, worst enemy is from Friday or today, and it kind of piggybacks on the Sunday editorial they published online on Friday, possibly. At the time it wasn’t chronologically challenging, just chock full of dubious logic. Maybe this is some sort of device to round out the feeling of being shaken like a martini while trying to follow the thoughts here, which can now be summed up as, “Everyone is right. Also, everyone is wrong.”

Oh, say can you see...? Because we're not seeing it.
Oh, say can you see…? Because we’re not seeing it.

For our part it seems a lot like they need a reason over there to try and sympathize with Kirby, because some of the people they’d like to have read and buy the paper think he is the bee’s knees. But, it’s such a stretch especially to call Jan to task because they have so lately noticed that the executive role is pretty powerful.

According to county attorney Michael Chomel, the power to issue an executive order is inherent in the position. However, it is not specifically addressed in the charter.

Gardner shouldn’t be using a power without first having a public discussion about what that power entails and its scope. As it is, she appears to have claimed for herself an alarming amount of authority under a nebulous, unspecified provision, not approved by those voters who supported charter government.

The nerve of this woman: deciding that the ethics commission’s opinion was inadequately ethical, then doing something about it in alignment with bipartisan support – notably public support from our hero Bud Otis (R-easonable) in the office of Council President. Checking the newspaper comments section and social media, it’s also clear that Jan is doing what people on both sides of the aisle have hoped from her. The FNP is coming alarmingly close to the insinuations that Billy and Kirby and Co are using. They go on to say that none of her supporters would be comfortable with Blaine Young and this kind of power. Oh hahahahahahaha, we are going to laugh til we cry about that. On that point they are correct, but in what sense is this Jan Gardner’s fault? It is almost as though this role was tailor made for him and Kirby (and the usual suspects) to abuse to mutual benefit, and then the dynasty failed to coronate the chosen son.  If one can imagine such an absurd scenario. It’s like this was written by someone who has only seen the beautiful Frederick County in pictures.

Now, gracious me, Jan is acting like a queen! We wonder from whence such notions come!

If they wanted to criticize her actions, they should have stuck to the obvious point that she should have known Kirby would respond to this like a starving bear being poked out of his winter slumber with a stick Slim Jim. However, there’s nothing Jan Gardner will ever do that won’t evoke that reaction from some people around here, so it’s a point that doesn’t count for much.

NB: while we may disagree with the contents of these editorials, we are ardent supporters of the local media. Do imagine what kind of advantage the cronies would have with a vacuum in the local media. These things keep us locals up at night.

Good Queen Jan, Her Royal Highness, Our Lady of Immense Patience

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The story in which Billy calls Jan a queen because of ethics. Which sounds kinda familiar, but much more fun and fanciful than that earlier ugliness about tyrants and dictators. They’re just not so sparkly and glamorous, and imagining a Good and Lovely Queen makes us think of Glinda the Good Witch, and gives us warm feelings about her kind and wise guidance. Amidst personal attacks, she stands by and keeps her comments to the situation at hand, which makes it that much more a pleasure to sing her praises.

You have no power here! Begone, before somebody drops a house on you, too!
You have no power here! Begone, before somebody drops a house on you, too!

Kirby D had this to say:

Delauter said Gardner’s decision to issue the order is “par for the course.” With the decisions she is making, he said, the county will go back into the same hole that it was in when the last board of commissioners last took office, which was after Gardner’s last term as commissioners president.

Yes indeed. We all remember the utopian vision of the BOCC under Blaine Young, with Billy and Kirby to boot. We could go out to eat with the hundred bucks, and they got to “trim the fat.” You know, county workers who do all the things to make our county the place we call home. County employees who might have liked to afford to go out to eat themselves, we have to suppose.

This all makes us think of con-men, tricksters and cheats in so much detail. In the end they are supposed to turn out to be good. Is that only in old movies? Not to draw out this conceit and suggest Bud Otis has ever been such a bad seed, but at least in him we see that our first impressions were wrong. It’s sad to feel so hopeless in regards to some.

And another word about tricksters. Does it seem a mite strange that if you are on an ethics panel that believes politicization has run amok that the decision would be to resign? That sure strikes us as an odd way to ensure ethics are maintained. It almost sounds like b.s.