Full Time County Row Officers

Much has been made of the hours we expect these elected officials to work every day. Several of the candidates that are running are pledging to work 8:00 until 4:30 every day, Monday through Friday. A few of these candidates are either retired or run businesses that are one person operations that do so little business that if they get elected it would be a significant pay raise. Not only that, but they'd get to finally close their all but non-existent businesses which would save them all the costs associated with keeping them open. We know who these people are and the only reason they are making such a pledge is they think it's a hot button with the voters.

If we look at it rationally, does having the office hours they propose to work make sense? I firmly believe the answer is no. For one thing, people like myself that go to work every day during those hours cannot go to the courthouse to conduct business without burning a day off. Unlike certain candidates that routinely call radio shows and brag about how much time they've spent at the courthouse being a "taxpayer advocate" in one sentence and bragging about how successfully they've run their business in the next. A question pops into my mind; If you are a one man operation, how much business are you actually doing? More importantly, how well have you done it? The answer isn't a good one.

One of these candidates that has made this point his main contention is actually running for 4 offices. I ask you, Walter Griffith, how you will be a full time controller, if elected, as well as all those other offices, do you intend to work all those jobs? The answer is about the same as you've apparently run your current business. Before you get all huffy and pissy, consider this; You haven't run it well enough to even grow to need more than just yourself and I've heard you contract out work to another local repair shop. Taking that a step further if true; How much extra are your clients paying for that work when not only are they paying you a profit but they in effect are also paying the other shop a profit as well? With advocates like that who needs a Jill Moran or Ross Scarantino? By the way Wally, calling Corbett and intentionally misquoting a candidate makes you a flat out untrustworthy liar.

Do you know what hours I want my controller to work? Forty hours per week for sure but I want some of those hours to be evening and weekend hours so that those of us that actually work every day can conduct our business with the county in our free time. The only candidates that have offered this are Alice Coffman and Nanda Palissery. Makes sense to me, how about to all of you????