Wednesday, January 23, 2002
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Wednesday, January 23, 2002 |
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Mayor who ran on ethics needs to be investigated I read with great interest and dismay the article regarding Mayor Steve Brown's City Council meeting Jan. 10. Mr. Brown made his name known by constantly haranguing the previous mayor and city council, etc. in this newspaper. Indeed one of his letters resulted in a libel suit against him and The Citizen. He was always screaming about ethics in the city government and never failed to point out anything that he deemed unethical. In fact he deemed almost everything accomplished as unethical. When Mr. Brown declared his candidacy for mayor he ran on a platform including bringing integrity and truth to the administration. In fact, other than opposing development, integrity and ethics were the biggest part of his campaign. His website still carries the following in his vision section: "We are looking for integrity. We want leadership that stresses open government and a higher ethical standard. We are looking for leadership that demonstrates honesty and truthfulness with all issues." It was with great dismay therefore that I read that Mr. Brown had lied regarding developer support for his moratorium. He stated that three major developers were supporting this, when the attorney for one, Ram Development, stood up and stated with no hesitation that RAM was opposed to the moratorium! I suspect that both the others, Wieland Homes and Cousins are also opposed. Why, then, did Mr. Brown lie? Does this live up to his campaign promise quoted above? Of course not. This isn't the only example of Mr. Browns deceptiveness. A few days before the election a mailbox flyer was put out with a number of quotes of "supporters" of Mr. Brown. In fact at least one of those quotes was without permission of the individual, and the individual indeed supported Mr. Brown's opponent! Truth? Integrity? Ethics? I suspect not! If Mayor Brown is to live up to the promises of his website, he needs to do a lot of soul-searching and start differentiating between fact and fiction. Maybe the first act of the new Ethics Committee should be to investigate the new mayor and his statements and actions. Jim Stinson Peachtree City
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