RICHARD MORRIS

Lock Haven

During a spell of boredom I found myself looking at the online version of The Express, revisiting the press announcements of the candidates for county commissioner.

I discovered beneath one of them a message of support so riddled with inaccuracy that I could not help thinking that it was kind of support that the candidate could well do without.

Here’s a sample: Overspending at the prison (which came in almost a half million dollars under budget last year) to provide a gym, new mattresses, and a new kitchen. The candidate in question was at one time a corrections officer there.

Let’s hope that if that campaign is successful we do not wind up with a prison that is a crumbling dungeon, starved of investment, where inmates are deprived of exercise, sleep and good nutrition.

It gets worse.

Now we are served with the old chestnut about senior citizens “booted from their homes due to high taxes.”

Name one.

Given the combination of state rebates for real estate taxes and the ability of the county commissioners to approve payment terms for distressed seniors, I am certain that no sheriff of this county has ever dragged a senior citizen from his home for delinquent taxes.

Next comes a complaint that federal dollars are being injected into the — largely privately financed — construction of senior apartments at Susquehannock Heights.

Apparently on the distant planet from which the author was newly arrived, the elderly are left to struggle on in the homes that they can barely afford and no longer have the health and strength to maintain.

No bleeding heart politicians there to devise a way to provide them with alternative accommodation where they can spend their twilight years in comfort and security.

And finally (almost!) is the complaint that the current commissioners are raising taxes to buy new voting machines.

It seems that the mothership had not yet landed when it was announced that the cost of new machines could be found without a tax increase, even without a contribution from the state.

I understand that it is hard to get elected by saying what a brilliant job the other candidates are doing.

I also understand that from the far right of the Republican party the willingness of the present majority commissioners to lend their support to causes such as fair districting, and their recognition that as the need for county services grows so too must the investment to maintain them, look like a betrayal of conservative values – after all, they even wanted to lift five bucks from us to improve the ability to look after our roads.

But if that’s your view, argue it in the daylight. If you want change, state clearly what you want to change from and what you want to change to.

But, in the name of what decency remains in our political life, don’t rely on inhabitants of the dark web injecting their poisonous, mean spirited and downright false material into the debate.

Because the chilling thought is that it might work.

Which leads me to my last point.

No criticism of the present government would be complete without a reference to the monstrous raises bestowed on county employees, and our web-dweller did not disappoint.

(Of course, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and it will not have escaped the attention of the candidates that the salary of a county commissioner is not small.).

But those county employees will earn every penny of their pay if they have to keep the county on an even keel while fledgling commissioners, with their heads full of the kind of drivel we were just discussing, learn what it takes to actually run a county.