Well, well… the Burlington Free Press today published an editorial harshly critical of Wendy Wilton for her baseless charges of malfeasance in the Treasurer’s office. Here’s the first paragraph:
Republican candidate Wendy Wilton is showing the kind of state treasurer she will be. She will be accusatory and she will poke fingers in eyeballs.
And that’s just the warmup. The Freeploid then points out that Wilton’s request for a state investigation isn’t a compilation of evidence; it’s just a list of unanswered questions. THe evidence, says the editorial, consists entirely of
…a single opinion of a former employee in the treasurer’s office who commented on a story on a web site and three years of overtime in the treasurer’s office.
… This specious support falls well short of constituting a valid reason for making these serious accusations.
And the conclusion::
Without offering any evidence other than conjecture, this tactic comes across as nothing but a mean-spirited attack from a candidate whose primary leverage is to drag down her opponent with innuendo rather than run on her own merits.
Congratulations to the Freeploid for taking such a strong stand in the heat of a campaign. It’s too bad that most media sources, including the ‘Loid itself, have given so much ink/airtime to Wilton’s attacks. And it’s too bad that most journalists feel constrained to simply present both sides in a case like this — Wilton attacks, Pearce responds, and we’ll have to leave it there — rather than searching for the truth and drawing conclusions where appropriate.
Wilton is likely to continue her attacks because they’ve drawn a lot of attention to her campaign. (And because her only option is to “run on her own merits.”) WIll the Freeploid’s news pages continue to report her attacks, in spite of the paper’s own judgment about their validity?
Sadly, it may not be enough to offset the simple name-recognition factor that is benefitting WW even through this scurrilous tactic.
It is very distressing to work the phones only to have people who are supporting both Shumlin and Sanders say that, in the Treasurer’s race, they are voting for (of have voted for) WW simply because they recognized the name and didn’t really know anything about Beth Pearce!
I think it would be a very good idea for those popular guys at the top of the ticket to shine a whole lot of light on Beth right about now.
And while they’re at it, a major pitch for Doug Hoffer and Cass Gekas could do wonders, too.
http://vtdigger.org/2012/10/19…
Just looking at beth’s answers to galloway in the article above should give all of us pause, especially those publicly in Beth’s camp….like Jeb.
Beth acknowledges charging the big overtime off to the pension funds and that she didn’t post the positions in whatever project they’re working on. Politically this is dynamite and will be exploited for gain by the nut jobs. Wilton’s been pressing on these question, read the Salmon letter and now her charges are true. I sense real political problems for Pearce, taking money out of grandmas pension type stuff.
I wouldn’t want to be on Appropriations and be asked by my local pub “when did you sign off on a million bucks worth of overtime coming out of state employees pensions?”
I’ve met beth and think she’s wonderful, she’s really is the best one for the job, but the reality is her campaign isn’t ready for prime time with some of this stuff imho. I think we’ll see some people jump ship to protect themselves if this story gets traction.
I’ve never voted for a repuglican in my life, but that shouldn’t matter. But I do think it’s naive to not identify flaws and “concerns” among our own. If people on this page don’t see the political target that transferring money from our (MY) pension funds to pay for a problematic IT project with a zillion hours of overtime – you have better bath salts then I do.
What I see on this page and from my other dem friends is a certain level of complacency. We know the VTGOP is on deaths door, we know their candidates suck, so we just continue on with the notion we are infallible and will always enjoy the majorities we have now. I’d like to think we’re smarter then the others.
If you can’t offer honest and sometimes critical assessments of our own, then let’s just have a blog where everybody just jams the other guy without looking in the mirror.
Lastly, I’m a retired municipal employee. I don’t post my last name on blogs for privacy reasons. You can just call me troll.
I am not sure if Wilton does not know how to read her own audit reports or if she is simply loose with the truth. One or the other must be true. A review of the audit reports on the Rutland website does not reveal a $5M deficit at any time and never shows a $3.8M surplus. Both claims are complete fabrications. Unfortunately, it appears that no one in the media can read audit reports either as they have completely missed these two facts.
The Free Press should slam Tom Salmon and his Deputy Joe Juhasz.
Peter Hirshfeld followed the bouncing ball to the Auditor’s office where he found that the Deputy is a supporter of Wendy Wilton. http://www.vermontpressbureau….
Not surprisingly, this raises some questions which I addressed in a comment.
“It is disappointing to hear Mr. Juhasz say he is ‘unconcerned about even the appearance of a conflict of interest’ because Government Auditing Standards are very clear about this.
The credibility of auditing in the government sector is based on auditors’ objectivity in discharging their professional responsibilities. Objectivity includes independence of mind and appearance when providing audits, maintaining an attitude of impartiality, having intellectual honesty, and being free of conflicts of interest. Maintaining objectivity includes a continuing assessment of relationships with audited entities and other stakeholders in the context of the auditors’ responsibility to the public. [Section 1.19, Government Auditing Standards, GAO, Office of the Comptroller General, 2011 Revision]
In addition, Auditor Salmon attended Ms. Wilton’s campaign kick off, is quoted on her website, and wrote a letter in support of her candidacy that was published in a local paper.
Taken together, these actions have completely compromised the objectivity of the office. The Auditor’s Office should acknowledge the impairment and hire an independent auditing firm to review the claims.”
The politicization of the Auditor’s office has gone on long enough.
Deputy auditor overseeing Pearce probe is supporter of Wilton’s
Posted on October 19, 2012 by Peter Hirschfeld |
http://www.vermontpressbureau….
Doug Hoffer comments:
Since the ‘investigation’ won’t be complete until after the election, WW campaign can now claim Pierce’s office is being ‘probed’ & Wendy Wilton can now be rightly called a smear-monger. How very Rovian.
Daaa-dunnn
Never a dull moment in the backwoods of the backwater…