Health & Fitness
How the Kane County Chronicle Lost What's Left of Their Credibility with One Editorial
Jeff Ward is an ex-columnist with things on his mind!
How did those Clapton lyrics go, "You're fooling around, I can't stand it!" That pretty much sums up what's been going on at the Kane County Chronicle—fooling around.
So now I have to take yet another break from my book (Chapter 2: Barack Obama is a Conservative President), to deal with yet more of those folks' stupidity. As if Brenda Schory wasn't bad enough.
If you've read today's sad excuse for a local newspaper, you will have noted that someone on their editorial board wrote an editorial castigating Kane County Chairman Chris Lauzen for threatening to hire a $25 per hour Community Outreach Coordinator and a $12 an hour assistant to that position.
Find out what's happening in Genevawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
And you'd [expletive deleted] think the sky was falling. Though this utterly disparages the use of the word, their "logic" was this:
1. This was just like hiring a county administrator, which Lauzen promised he wouldn't do.
Find out what's happening in Genevawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
2. This hire would be even more heinous than Lauzen's Deputy Chairman proposal.
3. Lauzen was circumventing the hiring freeze.
4. The position of Outreach Coordinator is too vague and Lauzen will likely hire an ally.
Really? Really!! Apparently the fine folks at the Chronicle think we all live in a vacuum where external events are to be selectively ignored and never considered in any sort of linear fashion. Well, either that or they're just bleepin' lazy.
So with that thought in mind, let's examine their sorry excuse for an argument:
1. The fact they could even write this potential hire is a fine example of a hypocritical and hands-off chairman belies a complete ignorance of what the job truly entails. Even when her highness, Queen McConnaughay, was filling that role, I repeatedly wrote that the Kane County Chairman should be making AT LEAST $150,000 a year, if not more.
You're taking 12 to 15 hour days — including weekends, dealing with a cast of county board members who all believe they can do a better job than you, and an endless parade of constituent concerns. The fact that the Chronicle even promoted this contention is absurd and shows just how far they've fallen.
2. The whole deputy chairman idea came out of Lauzen's Springfield legislative experience. It may not have been one of his best thoughts, but it certainly wasn't a nefarious undertaking.
And speaking of nefarious, where was the Chronicle when McConnaughay was hiring the unborn children of her political cronies and contributors? That's right — nowhere!
They completely ignored the then Animal Control director, the fact that Phil Bus clung to the county payroll like a tenacious barnacle, those 50 percent raises until they were the subject of a lawsuit, and a myriad of other questionable hires.
Yes! You do have to hold Lauzen to a higher standard because he ran on that standard, but when the second McConnaughay said she "would not and has not engaged in pay-to-play," the Chronicle should've picked up that gauntlet and proved her wrong just like I did. And I was a fricken' freelancer, for god sakes.
3. The county hiring freeze is as worthless as the paper on which it's written. Again, if the folks at the Chronicle weren't so allergic to hard work, they may have noted that, during the freeze, and under Ms. McConnaughay, at least 30 resolutions seeking to circumvent it were approved with nary a peep from the board.
People were being hired all the time and no one gave a flying you-know-what about it. And thus, the hiring freeze was even less meaningful than the Kane County Chronicle currently is.
4. Again, where was the Chronicle when McConnaughay was hiring an Animal Control director for $94,000 a year with absolutely no experience? Where were they when Ken Shepro was a Deputy State's Attorney, the County Board Attorney, and McConnaughay's attorney all at the same time? Where were they when Phil Bus was hired as the county's Fit For Kids consultant at $30,000 a year?
Have you seen Phil Bus?
Where was the Chronicle when the former chairman was raking in $1,500,000 in campaign contributions — more than five times what her predecessor, Mike McCoy, brought in — primarily from folks with county contracts?
So now the Chronicle suddenly decides to [expletive deleted] wake up? Right!
And let me say that this blog post has nothing to do with Chris Lauzen, and is not an attempt to defend him or this new county position. It's solely about the most disingenuous and hypocritical piece of writing I've ever seen come out in any newspaper — ever. And I've seen a lot.
(If you want to read the unexpurgated version you can do that right here: http://thefirstward.net/)