Missed opportunities

TO THE EDITOR

County Commission Chairman Wade Johnson has missed several opportunities to follow through on promises he had made and last week he let another opportunity slip past him. First and foremost has been his failure to make good on his number one campaign promise - "A tax freeze." The chairman has not even breathed these words in public since January 1st, except to say that he made no promises about a tax freeze. Where are the Concerned Citizens?

His second missed opportunity was to make good on a promise that he made at a called county commission meeting on February 12, 2009, that he was giving back part of his county salary to ease the burden on county employees that he furloughed. I checked through an Open Records request and as of June 26, 2009, there are no county records that show that the chairman has ever given back any part of his salary. The chairman's promise can be heard on the commission video available on the county website and in a editorial correction in The Lincoln Journal in the February 26, 2009 edition.

And finally, last week Chairman Johnson missed an opportunity to make good on another campaign promise to reduce property taxes by voting to break a 2-2 tie and casting the deciding vote to pass the county's FY2010 budget. The chairman could have reduced property taxes by an estimated 0.5 mills had he required the sheriff to accept the same budget reductions that he forced on the other elected officials. Instead, he increased the sheriff's spending. I might add that he even decreased the budgets of the county's volunteer fire departments, apparently in order to fund part of the increase to the sheriff's budget. Again, where are the Concerned Citizens?

In the words of H. Jackson Brown, Jr., "Nothing more expensive than a missed opportunity." Let's hope for the sake of the Lincoln County taxpayers that County Commission Chairman Wade Johnson does not miss too many more opportunities.

ERNIE DOSS