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And my vote goes to . . . Sheriff — Wayne Hannah District attorney — Scott Ballard County Commission — Peter Pfeifer, Greg Dunn and Bob Fuhrman Board of Education — Marion Key, Dave Houston and Mary Kay Bacallao Probate judge — Steve Kiser Tax commissioner — Linda Wells The legislative races show why district voting within Fayette County is a bad idea. Here you have incumbent Republican John Yates — a long-time reliably conservative state representative — being challenged by airline pilot Rick Williams, who just this year “converted” to the GOP after having managed the local Democratic website. I’d love to vote in that race, but I don’t live in that east and south Fayette legislative district. But whoever gets elected will have a profound effect through local legislation on what happens to me and other Fayette residents who never got to vote on this district race. By the way, purportedly Republican Williams is — surprise! — in favor of taking my vote away from me for county commission and school board. Yates — reliably conservative — is against changing to voting by districts within Fayette for school board and commission. I and all other Fayette registered voters — this year anyway — get to keep our right to vote on all three school board races and all three county commission races. Every voter in the county gets to vote on all the candidates who will run the two largest tax-spending entities in the county, entities that govern every voter in every county district. That right to vote on every candidate is shared by every registered Fayette County voter. I’d hate to see that right taken away and dispensed via ward politics to little political fiefdoms dominated by little ward bosses — kind of like Chicago Democratic politics. County-level is local enough to get our voices heard and our votes counted — all of our voices and all of our votes for all of the county-level candidates. The sheriff’s race has four good candidates running to replace Sheriff Randall Johnson. The best two — I think — are Wayne Hannah and Barry Babb, both of whom hold supervisory positions under Sheriff Johnson. I like these guys despite their refusal to participate in our online political forum. Four years hence, whoever runs again will be doing a lot of online politicking. The man I like best for the future is approachable, unpretentious, thoroughly professional and absolutely principled under pressure. I will enthusiastically cast my ballot for the sheriff’s current number two man, Wayne Hannah. I have qualms about the district attorney’s race. I endorsed Scott Ballard when he ran four years ago, and I remain convinced he is a man who will be a friend to a friend, no matter what it costs him. I am troubled by some of Ballard’s prosecutorial and sentencing decisions. But I also am troubled by his opponent’s take-no-prisoners, bury-them-all-under-the-jail attitude. This is a close call (as likely are a lot of the DA’s decisions, were we to know the whole truth), but I’m sticking with Ballard. I enjoy watching “Law and Order’s” Jack McCoy putting the bad guys away on TV, but I think I would prefer a man of conscience like Ballard in charge of making the big life-and-death decisions in our county. The Fayette County Board of Education spends about three-quarters of every tax dollar you pay in property taxes locally. Yet two of the incumbents — Janet Smola and Terri Smith — want to run the school system with a minimum of distracting criticism from their constituents. Smola and Smith seem to have recruited a third member to their exclusive country club board — Carol Jensen-Linton. The three were thick as thieves in ginning up the boycott to The Citizen’s impertinent questions about their stewardship of our tax dollars and our children. How dare we question their competency? Smola, Smith and Jensen-Linton are saying. How dare we sweaty taxpayers demand some accountability from our anointed betters? Marion Key soldiers on, joined by board member Bob Todd, in trying to get some accurate facts and figures about the actual operations of the school system. Voters should send Smith and Smola home and encourage Jensen-Linton to keep on volunteering at the classroom level. I’m voting for Dave Houston over Smola, Mary Kay Bacallao over Smith and Marion Key over Jensen-Linton and the invisible Mark Aasen. If you want some accountability for how your tax dollars are spent — $200 million of them this next year — I encourage you to vote for Houston, Bacallao and Key. The county commission race features a clear choice between the good old boys against the boat-rockers. Four of the five commissioners have become the next best thing to a county workers’ union with the financially suspect defined benefits plan for workers and big pay raises for all county employees. Did Herb Frady and Robert Horgan get the notice that the rest of us taxpayers are in something called a recession, and that none of us are getting cushy new retirement benefits or pay raises? In fact, many of us ordinary, non-government workers are just glad to have jobs that pay somewhere near what we were making three or four years ago. Some of us non-government workers actually have been laid off or had our salaries cut, but you can bet that our county tax bills will NOT be going down, thanks to Horgan, Frady and fellow giveaway commissioners Jack Smith and Eric Maxwell. Only Commissioner Peter Pfeifer has stood against the tax money giveaway, and for that reason he should be reelected. Greg Dunn and Bob Fuhrman will join Pfeifer in watchdogging our tax dollars, and I’m going to vote for them. Happy polling! login to post comments | Cal Beverly's blog
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