The Man. Bryan Gossage, 38, who served eight years on the Apex Town Council, ran unsuccessfully for the General Assembly in 2008, and is now appointed by McCrory as the director of the newly created Office of Land and Water Stewardship which includes the Clean Water Management Trust Fund. In this job, Gossage makes $78,000 per annum. Last May, he was named as a "deputy secretary in charge of innovation support" (a fancy way of saying "public relations flack"?) at the N.C. Commerce Department. That job disappeared following a reorganization of that agency. But never mind: Gossage had a close personal friend in a very high place.
The Wife. Chloe Gossage, policy director for Pat McCrory. She makes $110,000 a year. And presumably knows how to drop a hint.
The New Job. Not surprisingly, Gossage's appointment to the new job was not publicly announced by the agency and with good reason. By state statute, the director of Clean Water Management must have "experience and training in conservation, protection, and management of surface water resources." Gossage has a degree in sociology and has worked mainly as a press flack
The Tell. Just how woefully unqualified Gossage is to manage clean water conservation in our state became painfully obvious when a spokesman for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources came out with a press release saying, in effect, that Gossage is qualified because he was on the Apex town council during a drought. When the laughter in the press room died down, someone pointed out that Apex, like most towns, is run by professional staff, not by elected council members, and that Gossage knows as much about water conservation as a dog knows his daddy.
1 comment:
The mainstream media, e.g. WFAE, Charlotte's NPR station, reports the qualifications claim about this hack as just as factual as news of the appointment itself. When will the press start doing some digging and get behind the obviously phony PR claims of this administration?
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