The N&R continues to lean on Guilford County Commissoner Skip Alston as he oversees yet another round of layoffs. Which is fine, though close observers of local government here can’t help but note the difference between the way they’re dealing with Alston and former Greensboro City Manager Mitchell Johnson, who could do wrong in their minds.

N&R editor John Robinson weighs in, remembering the days when Alston “did not have the power of the chairman’s gavel, when he was a member of the board who asked tough questions in public about how the board itself operated.” And the back and forth between Alston and N&R reporter Gerald Witt has been entertaining.

But what strikes me is the way other commssioners —aside from Billy Yow and Linda Shaw — aren’t saying much. Yow has criticized Alston’s secrecy, while Shaw says “people she’s spoken with say they ‘don’t give a flip’ about how the county conducts its business.” At best there’s been mild protest from other commissioners, which tells me that they were aware of the state of county government pre-economic meltdown. What else can we assume?

Here’s my question: How did the director of MWBE contracts survive the first round of cuts? Nothing personal against the individual, but MWBE policies serve as one more bottleneck in government construction projects, something this economy definitely doesn’t need right now.