Blog: The Smugglers

Don’t you just hate it when someone tries to smuggle something into the room past the rest of us by being less than honest?

For those who keep a close eye on the weekly mechanics of our local government, a big ole whistle went off when we noticed an item on the Commissioners agenda for this Thursday in the afternoon session, “Discussion regarding Public Relations Contract”. Whoa! Hold the phone. Where’s the accompanying briefing paper from the Chief of Staff on this one? I ran my agenda through my secret decoder ring to figure out what was up with this one since no explanation was attached.

Of course there isn’t a briefing paper or any pre-discussion document for the public because the intent is to slip ole Agenda 21 boy Jim Simpson into a full time job from that bogus $6,000 a month contract that Richard Rothschild arranged for him just weeks ago. We all knew it was coming but golly so soon after the guy has yet to substantiate his mettle as a public relations anything much less an expert. So far his knowledge seems to be limited to a discordant understanding of global warming, sea level rise, stewardship, the United Nations, planning in general as a practice, Maryland political realities, and an established hatred of anyone proven to be a less than full wing nutty conservative. A rather strange resume but then, let’s face it, we have yet to see anything that looks like a job description for what appears to be a forthcoming job offer from the Board of Commissioners to him.

Not unlike the Commissioners decision to neglect offering the Public Relations contractual opportunity to Carroll Businesses, it appears that they are also of a mind to not post the job position and make it available to any number of qualified Carroll residents who might like to work where they live, unlike Mr. Simpson, who is a Baltimore City resident. There might also be some qualified Carroll residents available for a PR position who don’t carry the political stench, er baggage, that Jim Simpson does.

But then I may just be jumping to conclusions and the agenda just a matter of not being quite clear in what is intended for this Thursday afternoon. Maybe the Commissioners really don’t intend to smuggle one of their political cronies into a county job as at least one of them once accused the previous Board of Commissioners of doing with me when I was hired as its Zoning Administrator, popular job as it was.