Get the duct tape, friends...this one will make your head explode!Some of you regular readers of WMD will know some of the background I am about to re-tell here for completeness, so just bear with me or skip down to the BREAKING NEWS...
I moved to Butler County nine years ago and thought that I really didn't have to pay too much attention to local politics or the party because Butler County had a stellar reputation as the reddest of red counties in the Great State of Beautiful Ohio.
I got a weekend teaching job at Buddy Rogers on Route 4 when the Butler County Republican Party was still in the same shopping center. Both are gone from that location, but the story of where the Butler County Republican Party moved to and how that move caused the party severe financial stress is key to the reason why I wanted to join the Central Committee.
It turns out that then Chairman Carlos Todd had made the decision to acquire this palatial estate for our new headquarters and made this decision by consulting with...near as I can tell...nobody.
Not too long after this move, the Dynus Debacle reared its ugly head...
Then County Treasurer Carole Mosketti decided to hire relatives to work in her office...and not just for a summer gig...
Okay...about this time, I'm beginning to think I need to start paying attention to what is going on in Butler County in general and with the Republican Party specifically.
Remember that all of this started -- for me anyway -- with the new Butler County Republican Party headquarters also known as the Todd Mahal.....
BREAKING NEWS: Intrepid Reporter Josh broke the news today that current Chairman Tom Ellis made $25,500 off the sale of the Todd Mahal. Now that may only be 3.5% of the sale price, or whatever, but recognize that $25,500 represents roughly 85% of the base, yearly salary I get at my day gig...Now, my friends, I ask you: Is it right for the Chairman of the Party to make this much dough on the sale of a building we should never had built in the first place? Note that I didn't ask whether or not it was legal. Because it is legal. I am asking if it is right.
I don't think that it is...
That building put the party on the path to financial ruin and it is sickening to think that our party chairman would profit from the poor decision made by the prior chairman.
Furthermore, I would like to know who signed off on giving the chairman this money... Why? Because I don't think we got our monies worth.
Ellis represented the buyer in this transaction. Think about that for a minute... Ellis (or more likely, the party administrative assistant) picked up the phone and arranged to hire a Realtor to sell the building. Lo and behold, that Realtor didn't have to do too much work to find Tom Ellis in his office at the Todd Mahal...
I just got my packet from the party with the changes to the by-laws that we are going to be voting on at the next meeting and one of the changes deals with increasing the number of Executive Committee members. Why is that important? Think about the $51,000 we just flushed down the drain after the $800,000 we spent on the building. Executive Committee members are assessed dues for membership.
Why on Earth do we keep electing these people?
Okay...now this one is likely to get me in to trouble with my friends, but it simply has to be said. Here is a quote from Central Committee Chairwoman Judy Shelton:
“I thought he deserved it,” she said. “Because of the fact that in these tough economic times, and real estate being off and him having the ability to secure a good buyer, I was really happy with that.”Judy, my dear woman, listen carefully here: Tom Ellis was NOT working for us in this deal. He was working for his client. Maybe the real question is why wasn't the Butler County Republican Party the client instead of whomever we hired for that assignment, but Ellis certainly did nothing of benefit to the party that he wasn't already supposed to be doing as Chairman of the Executive Committee.
It's like none of these people have ever even heard of the concept of the appearance of impropriety...and it is well beyond getting old. Ethical issues like this are part of the problem and I don't know what it is going to take before we start realizing that we need to take back our county from the developers, Realtors, and lawyers, but we had better wrap our heads around this one pretty soon.
We're being fleeced, my friends, and the culprits are claiming to have our best interests at heart...
