The podcast for David Stuart‘s appearance on WYSH this morning hasn’t been posted yet, but you’ll find it here when or if they get around to it. The topic of discussion was his challenge of the election results, based upon a little-known law that was apparently ignored.
You can agree or disagree with the law, but it is what it is. Although I missed the first 20 minutes or so, most callers seemed unhappy with the problems on election day, but supportive of Stuart’s action.
One of the subtleties here is that while “frank talk,” “frankly speaking,” or “let’s talk frank(ly)” are all fairly common expressions, buying up someone else’s name has generally not been upheld in court… unless it happens to be someone else with the same name.
He claims that the County was the beneficiary of
$120,000 worth of labor and improvements to county buildings last year.
Really? And of course, if there’s no probation alternative, then everyone will just have to serve their time.
The cost of incarceration for thirty inmates for a period of thirty days or nine hundred days per year is a conservative estimate of the annual cost savings. The total financial impact to Anderson County would be between $30,000 and $50,000 depending on whose cost figures you use. The intern program gave more than 150 high school and college students over the past seven years an opportunity to work in different departments of county government.”
Again, if it’s working so well, then just replace the source of the problem: a director with serious allegations of wrongdoing against him, who seems to find time to run two outside businesses (Energy Media and Inside Anderson County) in addition to serving in at least two jobs with Anderson County.
Lynch was quoted in an earlier story as saying that it wasn’t just Alan, but that other probation department employees had been accused of “playing favorites” and similar complaints from their customers. Yet, Beauchamp compliments Lynch as follows:
“I appreciate Rex working to keep them employed with county government. I am sure that whatever private firm operates the probation services they will employ some of our personnel due to their valuable experience”.
Okay… so Lynch says that the county probation department is efficient, yet he’s dissolving it to get away from the scandal-plagued reputation. And he claims it’s not Alan that’s the problem, but has no qualms about having the same employees work for a private firm doing the same job? So, if Alan’s not the problem, won’t keeping those employees keep the rumor and scandal coming?
Which IS it, Mr. Lynch?
“I appreciate Rex working to keep them employed with county government….”
According to them it is already going to cost the taxpayers a lot more money when they shut this program down and now one must ask how much more is this going to cost the taxpayers while Rex pads the county payroll with additional unneeded employees?
I was under the impression that Mr. Lynch was operating county government like a business. It should be pointed out that businesses don’t pad the payroll with unnecessary employees and in government it is called cronyism, not efficiency.
He can’t have it both ways.
I don’t think it can be asked too often; Why is he shutting down a successful program? One gets a feeling that they are attempting to sweep something else under the rug before it becomes public. There should be an independent outside audit of this operation either before or immediately after it is shutdown for a full accounting of its six year operation.