WHAT WRONG WITH TRANSPARENCY?
Public officials like to talk about transparency but don’t always practice what they preach. In an editorial you can check out below, I examined three recent instances of the problem here in Hamilton County. I talked about the distribution of federal American Rescue Plan funds by Hamilton County, about the pending change in governance of Erlanger Health System and about the plans for a new baseball stadium in the U.S. Pipe/Wheland Foundry site in the Southside. All three projects – no matter how worthy they might be – lack the openness of which I believe they are deserving.
Last week, Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly rolled out his plan to end gun violence. We hope it succeeds like nothing ever before, but even the mayor was honest in saying it was nothing new. The difference might be, he said, in continuing to fund the plans and staying the course. In an editorial you can read below, I dug out similar proposals by his predecessors, Andy Berke and Ron Littlefield. I’m skeptical of the long-range success, but we should all hope it happens.
When I saw Facebook photographs of mailers that were going to residents in Hamilton County’s District 6 that made it seem as if County Commissioner David Sharpe were wanting to make school children unsafe, I did a slow burn. Although I endorsed his Republican opponent Ruth Jeno (who had nothing to do with the mailers) in their race, it reminded me of the mailers that were sent to voters about Hamilton County mayoral candidates Sabrena Smedley and Matt Hullander by friends of Weston Wamp in the primary campaign. It’s scurrilous, it’s wrong and such tactics have no business in a campaign. You can read my editorial below.
In addition, check out satirist Ron Hart’s musings on his trip out west to South Dakota and Wyoming, and a commentary by Bret Stephens of the New York Times on how he was wrong to denigrate voters of Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections.