The press got a bad rap for this, that, and the other thing. I hate it when government tries to tell newspapers what to say. Commissioner David King called attention to critics who will always say negative things. We did actually hear some good news for the first time about how Commissioner Joe Belcher negotiated the selling price for school land. He said it was the first time those with whom he was dealing had ever heard of such a thing. He managed to save the taxpayers $220,000 on that deal, and he saved $380,000 in negotiations with GE. That was great to hear how Belcher was going to bat in a savvy way for his constituents, but sad to hear nobody was doing it before.
Anyway, how can we give good press when we don’t know about these things? The staff reports printed with the commissioners’ agendas are as informative as a game of tic-tac-toe. On another bright side, we can rejoice in that the county doesn’t support a huge propaganda machine to toot its own horn.
