Bloggers: 

The premise is this: The Citizens Petition Initiative of the Clay County Charter is broken. Members of the 2005-2006 CHarter Review Commission wanted to amend it during the Charter Review Session but yielded to those loud voices of CTLAC. We decided to pick a fewer number of fights to fight so we could focus on what was important to us: the 5+2. Whether another amendment would have passed or not is not relavent. What is relavent is what is happening this election cycle.

Catching up this weekend on my reading I came across this letter to the editor published in Clay Today on Thursday:

"...This group (Citizens for Term Limits and Accountability) portends to have the citizens best interest at heart. And they are the first to complain when they think taxpayer money is being wasted. However, there is a major hypocrisy at work here."

And then the author goes on to explain:

"Case in point: Check the treasury reports for this group. You will not see expenses related to verifying petition signatures. The reason you will not see those expenses is because the political action committee files waivers so they do not have to pay them. The Supervisor of Elections submits a request to the Board of County Commissioners asking to be reimbursed for those fees."

The point the author made was this:

"Bottomline: Taxpayers are paying for a small group of people constantly changing our charter - the most sacred document in our county. When they make mistakes, like when they had to void 5,100 signature petitions because they failed to follow the rules as defined by Florida Statutes, we pay. We all pay the legal expenses the Supervisor of Elections incurs in order to clean up their business. And now we will pay for their do-over amendment."

Wow!

This demonstrates the kind of abuse our charter has been under. I hope in two years when the BCC convenes another Charter Review Session, this is one of the provisions that is thoroughly reviewed, debated and discussed because we (taxpayers) do not deserve to be paying for their mistakes nor their activities.

Bottomline.

Karen Lake