Proper Protocol

eyinvest, you are exactly right in how to deal with agenda items at the county board of commissioners. As a citizen I have had occasion to do just as you suggested on two different occasions.

I believe that is exactly the procedure Mr Wingo initiated back in April 2003. I understand that after his item was entered on the agenda, a clerk called him the afternoon of the meeting and told him there was no need to come to the meeting, it was being tabled because the commissioners had not had time to study it.

It was rescheduled for approximately one month later, and the rest is history. The commissioners claimed to not understand his proposals. Allegedly they had difficulty with the wording of the Resolution the county attorney had prepared, but never once asked the county attorney for help or clarification.

A year later he asked the County Attorney to query the board if they were willing to hear his proposal again. The response was reported as NO, not interested. One even mused that "they didn't consider it good management for taxpayers to use credit cards to pay their taxes".

Anyone familiar with the truth of this has already decided that this board of commissioners has no intention of cooperating with the other branches of county government. If you've been in the county for the last three years and read the local papers, you know it too.

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Proper Protocol
Submitted by thenatural on Sat, 02/11/2006 - 1:12pm.

To clarify twilson. Mr. Wingo did not provide the additional information as requested. When he presented his proposal it would have cost money to the county period. He did not follow up. He is still miffed because he was cited for the gun in the office incident.
Since then, anything he can do to aggravate the situation he will do

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proper protocol
Submitted by twilson on Sat, 02/11/2006 - 2:18pm.

natural, you're not listening, er, reading. Mr Wingo asked the county attorney to follow up with the board in 2004 and the response was an unequivocal, flat out, NO. Go back and read my previous post. It's exactly what Mr Wingo wrote. Board and Pfeifer screwed up, end of discussion.

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Protocol, and showing up!
mapleleaf's picture
Submitted by mapleleaf on Sat, 02/11/2006 - 5:38pm.

Whose proposal was this? It was George Wingo's. Who had the duty to present and "sell" it to the board of commissioners at a properly convened official meeting? George Wingo.

Even though the commissioners' first reaction might have been against George Wingo's idea on the use of credit cards to pay taxes, it was George Wingo's responsibility to present his proposal, to explain its advantages, and to defuse the arguments which may have been made against it.

Taking a seemingly unpopular idea and turning people's thinking around is known as leadership. We see that in court, when prosecutors take a person who's "presumed innocent" and show him to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, or when a defense lawyer turns the tide of evidence against his client by showing all the flaws in the prosecution's case. To do that, you have to have conviction, you have to be prepared, and you have to show up. George Wingo didn't even show up!

The credit card issue is a minor one. The larger issue is whether our elected officials exhibit proper leadership. Somebody needs to try and help them with this, and my lesson on civility was designed to do that.


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Protocol
Submitted by twilson on Sat, 02/11/2006 - 7:25pm.

AHA, still not reading, are you ?

When Mr Wingo contacted the board a second time in 2004, through the county attorney, to further his proposal, the board SLAMMED THE DOOR in his face.

You really have to read all the facts, and keep in mind this board has been pigheaded in virtually all their dealings with county and city officials since they were elected.

Which explains why so many people are expecting a change in 2006.

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Protocol and the Wingo Proposal
mapleleaf's picture
Submitted by mapleleaf on Sun, 02/12/2006 - 9:26am.

(1) While you and I can hire an attorney who would be our "personal representative," in the current context the county attorney is simply a counselor-at-law expert in the preparation of legal documents such as county resolutions and ordinances. Thus any contact by George Wingo through a county attorney is totally informal and in the nature of a "feeler."

(2) All contacts with the board of commissioners as a whole must be at one of their formal meetings. If it considered matters informally outside of a meeting, the board would be violating the Open Meetings Act. There is no record of George Wingo's making a formal appearance before the board.

(3) Since George Wingo was not physically present, no door could have been slammed in his face. This is just a figure of speech, indicating that the county attorney reported to George Wingo that he detected a total lack of enthusiasm from the commissioners for George Wingo's proposal.

(4) At that point, it became George Wingo's duty to present his proposal formally before the board (in other words "to show up"), and to argue its merits to the board while it was officially sitting as a board. He would have known, of course, that the board was likely to be cool to his proposal, so he could have prepared accordingly by presenting all the arguments in favor of his proposal and countering in advance all the objections likely to be made. The board would have been under a duty to listen (for a reasonable time).

(5) Had the board then formally decided to reject his proposal, George Wingo would then be right to resort to the court of public opinion.

Just as replacing an incompetent sports coach with another incompetent coach will not turn a losing team into a winning one, replacing one incompetent politician with another incompetent politician will not help us have better government. Protocol does matter. Our elected officials obviously need assistance in understanding how the system ought to work, and those of us who understand it may have a moral duty to explain it. There's no need to get nasty about any of this. As George H.W. Bush stated in his inaugural address, "Kindness begets kindness."


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Protocol and the Wingo Proposal
Submitted by robert m on Sun, 02/12/2006 - 12:40pm.

Peter, to quote the bard,

"Me thinks the Pfeifer doth protest too much"!

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