chris brugman
New Member
Originally posted by Nodnarb
Eagan lost to Andersen(?)
Now, you're promoting the same thing that happened 4 years ago, and I don't know if that is in the best interest of the county. Leadership needs to be stable. Do we really want to have a learning curve every 4 years? Would an all new board bring in their own department heads and qualified county administrator?
Another question that can be answered from the trenches. How much does that county administrator effect what happens in local government? That position may be more important than the 5 commissioners combined? (I know how important you guys thought that position was, because you changed it several times, removing the person who had been running government for 20+ years and bringing in new expertise. Current board dumped the pro, and hired an attorney.Give us some insight.)
Nod, it is obvious you are extremely informed about recent events in St. Mary's politics. You've peaked my interest (about your identity) by remembering the radio gig and "the Nic." Those were good times!
By the way, Francy Eagan didn't lose either, she decided not to run for re-election. After she made that decision, now get this, Dan Raley called me and asked my opinion on whether he should run or not. He told me that he would have never run if Francy would have stayed in the race.
So for all the Democrats and some Republicans who run around saying that the members of the last board were all thrown out for our poor performance they are dead wrong. I know for a fact Francy would have won because she wouldn't have had any opposition. I believe I could have beaten Mattingly, and with Francy and me on the ballot, I do believe more conservatives would have voted for Larry and he might have remained in office. As it turned out, the most conservative Republican that ran last time was Larry, and although he is conservative on many issues, I wouldn't necessarily say he is extremely conservative, so the conservatives didn't really get energized for the last election because there wasn't much to choose from.
I might agree with you about keeping people around with experience. However, it's a very bad year to start that trend. Afterall, Barbara Thompson was a holdover with our board and she abused her experience by doing things behind our backs, blocking action by our department heads after a majority vote, and she governed with arrogance because as she said at the time, "they are a bunch of rookies and they have a lot to learn."
One way to solve this "clean sweep" issue is to have staggered terms. For example, hold elections every two years when we have mid-term-Congressional elections and vote for three commissioners that year and two commissioners two years later. This is the only solution I see. I would rather have 5 new mentally retarded commissioners than to see any of these rascals return to office. I sincerely had a lot of hope with Mattingly and Raley, but they were so afraid of being confrontational with Randall and being accused of bickering like we were, they were basically neutered. They might as well have cut their own testicles off and put them in a vault for 4 years because they rolled over and let Randall dictate policies and agendas for four years. I was disappointed with both of them but still respect them more than any of the other three (not enough to vote for them though).
What most people don't realize is that the title "County Commissioner President" is just that, a title. It gives the person no additional powers whatsoever. It is simply an at-large seat that has no commissioner district assigned to it. The only thing the president does is to chair the meetings and that is it! They don't have the right by law to set the agenda, decide who will meet with the commissioners, nor do they have the right to order county staff around. The president chairs the meetings, the majority determines policy, and the county administrator executes the policy set by the majority of the board.
Calvert County has it right! They elect 4 commissioners and one at large. The 5 commissioners then vote to determine who their president will be to chair the meetings. This way, if the president got out of line and tried to abuse his/her office by assuming too much power, the commissioners have to power to replace that person. If we could have done that, I would have voted to remove Barbara and put Francy at president. I guarantee that would have solved a lot of the infighting and conflicts we had as a board. Francy would have never let the power go to her head. She was/is one hell of a lady!
The county administrator is basically the day-to-day CEO of county gov't. County Commissioners are elected, part-time positions. The county commissioner form of government is not intended to have 5 commissioners sitting in their offices five days a week giving orders, it would be chaos. In fact, it is chaos with just 1 commissioner showing up to work every day giving orders, especially when it conflicts with what the majority of the commissioners voted on. That is one of the main problems we had with Barbara.
It's simple. The commissioners meet once a week. They decide issues and policies that are on the agenda that need to be decided. The county administrator makes sure that the department heads in each division of gov't carries out the policy set by the majority. So you see, the county administrator position is extremely powerful.
These clowns got rid of two excellent administrators and a county attorney early on purely based on politics. That's fine. But what bothered me was who they replaced them with. You are right, the current administrator was originally hired as the county attorney. They then hired him for $130,000 a year (we got the hell beat out of us for paying our administator $85,000 and he had excellent qualifications) to be administrator. Their guy had never even ran a kitchen at WalMart let alone a $125 million year enterprise like county gov't. He was and is a freakin' lawyer. That's it. No experience, no qualifications, he didn't meet the job description as required by the hiring policies. Makes you wonder if he had compromising pictures of Julie Randall or something
Now, as their terms are winding down, they renewed his contract more than two years into the next board of commissioners' term. Do you see the arrogance here? My opinion of the current administrator is simple...he has no ethics, he is a political hack for the Democratic good ol' boys, and from what I understand, he has a red phone/hotline in his office that only the good ol' boys have the number to. Just kidding about the phone, but the spirit is true enough. This is the same guy who is currently being sued by the former Director of Economic Development for making anti-semetic remarks towards him when they fired him. He has been accused of saying something like, "That's what I would expect from a Jew." I don't think this has gone to court yet, but can you imagine if OUR county administrator had even been accused of saying that. The Emptyprize and Democrats would have been calling for his head. But since he's their boy, they will protect him and sweep it under the rug.
That is a very simple and brief answer to you question. So, not only do we need 5 new commissioners, we need to get rid of the administrator too, no matter how much it costs. The new board will quickly realize that he will be a spy for the good ol' boys as long as he is allowed to remain. Mark my words!
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Hopefully, we'll get at least 3 new Commissioners who will then have the power to make the necessary changes.