Recently, a former Carmel City Councilman
posted a piece on a local blog, in which he did two things: he tried to explain
how the council reacted to the investigation and the final report of City Hall
issues undertaken by the Monterey County grand jury in 2014-15, and he
attempted to rebut a local attorney’s letter published in the Pine Cone
criticizing the qualifications of Ken Talmage to be elected mayor of Carmel in
the upcoming election.
At the beginning of the piece, the councilman
stated that the attorney’s letter was wrong about Talmage. However, he then
switched gears and spent most of the remaining submission focused on what he
observed regarding the grand jury investigation.
Without personal knowledge, I can only
summarize what was stated with respect to the city’s strategy in responding to
the grand jury’s efforts to obtain certain documents viewed necessary (and, in
part, supported by a judge who issued an order to produce), described by the
grand jury’s report as “reject and deny.” In his last paragraph, he states that
both the mayor and vice-mayor (in this case, Mr. Talmage) worked diligently to
fight off any request for documents relating to employee terminations, internal
IT investigations, etc., and that, in the end, they also led the charge to
throw transparency to the wind.
We all know that the chaos created with the
citizens of Carmel in large part was created by speculation and gossip that
spread because of lack of communication to the public and the fact that the
Carmel weekly paper jumped all over those speculations to further inflame the
already doubting public.
If any of the above is true, then it does not
bode well for Mr. Talmage to argue that he will bring open, creative and true
leadership, all in the best interests of Carmelites. Because, if any of the
above is true, he has already proven he can be persuaded not to do so. It would
be in Carmel’s best interests to get a clarification right now. It appears that
the former insider councilman can’t really make up his mind.
April 2, 2016
Monterey
County Herald
By Bill Hood, Guest
commentary
No comments:
Post a Comment