Before I begin my explanation of why I will not vote for either incumbent in the upcoming commissioners race I must tell a quick story. It was already getting dark the afternoon of December 31, 2008 when I received a text message telling me almost 60% of the County Road Department were being told they were being laid off over at the Owen Building. Having previously ignored county politics I thought about not going but living only two blocks away, I grabbed a pen and piece of paper and walked in on the meeting.

The bad news had already been delivered by the time I arrived but I was present as the gravity of the situation began to sink in to the department especially the twenty two workers affected and the questions were starting to fly as I took a seat in the back of the room. Kevin Stufflebean was the lone commissioner present and at the time, and despite no qualifications whatsoever, had been acting roadmaster since the resignation of former roadmaster, Larry Van Elsberg. Human Resources Director Steve Allen was also present as was Bobbie Brooks, assistant to the commissioners.

Stufflebean explained he had determined there may be upcoming budget shortfalls and he was reorganizing the department to make it more efficient. Paring it down from 36 to 14 crew workers to maintain 600 miles of county roads, would allow more funds, $1M per year, to be available for asphalt. The soon to be former road workers began asking some good questions and astute comments. They pointed out amongst other things the commissioner/roadmaster had just laid off the entire paving crew and there was no one left who knew how to lay asphalt.

The stunned workers asked a lot of intelligent questions and it was obvious these rugged, burly hard working guys knew their jobs and knew very well what they were talking about. They asked how 14 remaining crew, (11 really actually work on the road) could keep up with mowing and ditching and grading and patching and brush cutting, etc…. Stufflebean’s answer was always the same, ‘… we have done an in depth analysis…’ and this newly efficient, lighter trimmer department will be able to function better than before. He repeatedly alluded to the ‘analysis’ but did not provide one with the press release or the budget and lay off packet provided to the workers. (Weeks later, under pressure, it was admitted the analysis did not exist on paper).

From my vantage point in the back of the room Stufflebean sounded like so many smoothly evasive politicians I have listened to before in city councils, state legislatures and Congress. From where I sat it looked like he didn’t answer questions because he had no real answers or justification for what he had done and the details that came out over the next few weeks, I believe, support this opinion.

But it was one certain moment during that meeting that has forever colored my view of the commissioner. As part of the union contract the union members are entitled to reeducation allowance to help them develop new job skills for work in other fields. One ‘bargaining unit’, as the union refers to the workers in the contract, asked Stufflebean about these benefits, after all most of these guys were in their late forties early fifties, not an easy time to make a career change.

Stufflebean laughed a little, almost scoffed and said, ‘oh yeah, we call that our dog and pony show’. It was that moment, that flippant belittling remark delivered to a roomful of men with families that had just lost their livelihood and meant to imply a minor concession to union negotiators was just so much ink on paper, that I came to really know Kevin Stufflebean. My earlier disgust at his artful skirting and dancing around questions he didn’t have a good answer for was nothing compared to the visceral reaction I had to the man spewing meaningless adjectives together in the hopes of at least giving the impression of a complete sentence. For several moments I was actually sick to my stomach, nauseated, watching Stufflebean perform what could only be described as a classic dog and pony show.

None of the story above except the part about the budget and the analysis has anything to do with why I will not vote for the incumbents but I tell it here to disclose up front my perspective of how the County works has been permanently influenced by my New Year’s Eve epiphany. Previously, I have written how both Nikki Whitty and Stufflebean participated in what The World editorial referred to as the ‘undeniably stealthy’ way in which the road department and the public were kept in the dark about the layoffs until the last minute, here and hereand for more just go here. (Stufflebean, of course, denies obfuscation but you can read more about that here).

So without rehashing whether Stufflebean with the complicity of former Commissioner John Griffith and Nikki Whitty deliberately obfuscated Stufflebean’s intention to lay off the road department while still appearing to comply with public meeting laws as I believe is the case, I recommend reading earlier reporting on the matter, listening to the audio or watching the public broadcasts of the relevant meetings to make your own determination. What is important and cannot be refuted by Stufflebean or Whitty or Griffith is the decision to ‘reorganize’ the road department, a department critical to public safety, was based solely on a budget projection, not an approved, ratified budget that has seen the light of annual public budget work sessions, but a budget projection prepared by one man, the dog and pony show man.

During the New Year’s Eve meeting Stufflebean stated at one point the layoffs were not about money but then spent the next several weeks convincing the public the layoffs were all about the money. The layoff packet and press release contained the budget projection of only $3.5M prepared by Stufflebean and it presented such a dire picture the information he provided indicated the department had been operating in the red for seven of the last ten years!

One could almost forgive the horrible way the county employees were treated with figures like that, except for the fact they weren’t true. Van Elsberg had been roadmaster for seven of those ten years and had always operated with a balanced budget. Public records confirm this. When confronted with this flagrant error in budgeting Stufflebean blamed The World reporter but I and every member of the road department saw the same documents she did and they clearly present, as he publicly claimed, the department operating in the red for multiple years.

Commissioner Whitty should have known. If she read any of the rationale Stufflebean provided for the layoffs, (and surely with something this critical she would at least review the information before casting such a serious vote), she would have known something was wrong with the budget projection from that fact alone. She was commissioner all those years the department operated with a balanced budget! Nevertheless, Whitty didn’t question anything, not even when twenty two family wage jobs were at stake not even when public safety, (remember Dean Caudle), was at stake. Whitty didn’t question a thing.

Three months later during the annual budget work sessions the road department budget miraculously expanded back to $5.8M a 60% increase over the dire unilateral forecasts of the previous December. Stufflebean’s projections were so bad, in fact, it is hard not to speculate they might have been done deliberately to mislead the public as a justification for the layoffs. At the very least this gives substance to the argument no major decisions affecting the entire populace should ever be made from a solo budget projection.

This one example, and there are more, illustrates a lack of fitness to serve in a leadership position. In my opinion, they, Whitty, Stufflebean and Griffith exhibited gross negligence and a lack of critical thinking skills. Whitty and Stufflebean make major decisions on our behalf without understanding the economic impacts to the County budget and the County economy as a whole. They don’t understand how to calculate a return on the taxpayer investment. They don’t know how to evaluate the impacts of potentially reduced property values and stifled residential development next to a strip mine operation, for example, against the jobs that might have come from new homes near a golf resort. They don’t know how to balance jobs expected from one enterprise against jobs lost from another.

I say all this because I have asked them for specific answers to questions like when will the public see a return on the $450K taxpayer investment in W Beaver Hill Road and they don’t answer because they don’t know. They invest huge sums of money without being able to tell the public when they will see a return because they don’t know.

They gamble with the public treasure without the skills to know what they are doing. Both appear to rely heavily on the same small cluster of people, SCDC, FONSI, etc… for guidance and talking points instead of reaching out for fresh ideas and new thinking.

Whitty and Stufflebean don’t have the critical thinking skills necessary to manage public funds and resources and maintain public safety and infrastructure. The electorate can go on as usual on pipeline dream promises and dog and pony shows or they can cut their losses and try something new. My trust in the status quo went out the window one cold New Year’s Eve…