Second Candidate for County Executive

We have a second candidate for Washington County Executive, Adam Gitter, and from an initial look he seems like he will be a good, viable candidate.  From my perspective, this is excellent news, as we will have 2 good candidates for this position.  I have been accused of being a “good government type” (not sure how that is a bad thing), and from a good government perspective this gives our voters two good candidates to choose from.  Switching to County Executive is already a success!

Adam is starting out his campaign by raising 2 good issues.  The first is how to fund the parks.  I voted for the park fee, as a way to secure the future of our park system.  At that time, the only alternative was to keep the parks on the tax levy, which is risky.  Parks are a non-mandated service, so leaving them on the tax levy makes the park system a target to be sold off or defunded.  Finding an alternative funding source, like park fees, secures the future of our parks.  I want us to always have good parks.

The second issue involves sales tax dollars.  Adam wants to share the sales tax with municipalities.  There are several inherent issues he will need to tackle in order to get this done.  1) We should be focused on how to get rid of the sales tax.  This is a tough challenge.  This sales tax, when it was put into place more than 20 years ago, was supposed to be temporary.  2) Too many County Board Supervisors who have a conflict of interest.  It would take 2/3rds of all elected Supervisors to get this done, which means 18 yes votes (out of 26).  Any combination of 9 Supervisors who are absent, vote no, or abstain means it fails.  I know of at least 8 current Supervisors would likely have to abstain, as they are also elected to Municipal boards and would likely have a conflict of interest.  Consequently, there is almost no way this proposal can pass the County Board.  3) How to make up the funding.  If he wants to share 25% of the sales tax with municipalities, that creates a $3 million dollar per year budget shortfall for the County.  How does he plan to make up that shortfall?

I look forward to hearing his answers to these questions.  I am absolutely open to good answers and thoughtful discussion.  If he has a good, fiscally responsible plan for addressing these 2 issues, that’s great.  Since he has just declared his candidacy, I certainly want to give him time to flesh out his ideas, and how he plans to fund them.  We have 5 months until the votes are casts. 

As a side note, we also have 2 more months in which other candidates can decide to run, and wouldn’t it be nice to get a 3^rd good candidate to enter this election?

So who is going to win?  That's easy, Washington County Voters will win.