Thursday, May 02, 2013

Watauga BOE Passes Resolution in Support of Director Hodges

At its May meeting yesterday, the Watauga County Board of Elections passed a resolution in support of Director of Elections Jane Ann Hodges, commending her "for her outstanding performance over 26 years of service. We know she could not be replaced with anyone more knowledgeable or more committed to administering elections with complete adherence to the General Statutes governing elections. Accordingly, we believe that Director Hodges should remain Director as long as she wishes, regardless of the composition of the County Board."

This resolution comes out of not-at-all-secret lip-smacking by the local GOP, which wants Ms. Hodges replaced as director. But Ms. Hodges is covered by the state personnel act and can't be replaced without cause, even when the Republicans take control of the local Board of Elections. Appointees to the local Board of Elections are political appointees; the director's position is not.

The local Republicans want a lot of things, relative to the conduct of elections in Watauga County:

A. They want Early Voting removed from the ASU Campus.
B. They want ASU students disenfranchised to the fullest extent of the law Tea Party fantasies, if their Chief Fantasist Nate DiCola can be taken at his word.

The resolution in support of Jane Ann Hodges passed unanimously, which is to say that Republican member Four Eggers abstained from the vote. An abstention counts as a "yes," according to Mr. Eggers, who also happens to be the attorney for the Republican majority on the County Board of Commissioners. Mr. Eggers previously advised Commissioner Perry Yates that if he abstained from the sales tax redistribution vote, over which there were questions of Mr. Yates's conflict of interest, his abstention would count as a "yea" vote.

3 comments:

bettywhite said...

It's getting hard to even read the High Country Press anymore. What does Nate DiCola do... sit around all day hitting the "refresh" button so that he can comment on every single thing that's posted on that site? And usually in ALL capital letters, so we know he's serious!

Anonymous said...

You do realize you don't have to read DiCola's letters, don't you?

Maybe the fact HCP doesn't censor comments for political reasons like this site, the temptation is to great for you.

bettywhite said...

Uh, this is a blog, not a newspaper site. JW owns the blog, so he can do what he wants. If you don't like it, you can start your own blog. Oh, and the same thing applies to you that you applied to me - if you don't like this blog, you don't have to read it OR post here, now do you? You DO realize that, don't you, dear condescending Anonymous?