I feel for you Mr. Thomasson. I admire your efforts to bring accountability and transparency to Elbert County.
Please understand, your party’s derivative Marxist philosophical basis is deeply flawed. The left’s economic system is doomed to failure, and the left’s theory of historical progress through dialectic confrontation is complete baloney. That doesn’t take away, however, from the honesty of your attempt to improve the political process around here.
In my experience here, no one in politics plays fair. Not the left, nor the right. In Elbert County it is rare that someone gains higher office, be it school board, non-profit, or county commission, through the front door. Most often leaders come in through the back door, occasionally through a side entrance.
The keys to these doors are held by the individuals who sign the checks. This is not an abstraction. The individuals who currently release daily cash from one of the disbursing Colorado state agencies ultimately determine who will become a director or a commissioner in Elbert County. Public leadership in Elbert County is nominal. Follow the money and you will find where the decisions are really made.
Leadership positions carry far too much public scrutiny to trust them with handling money. By the time a financial decision is appropriately framed for an Elbert County leader, the money is often already out the door. The decision that the leader announces is scripted and rehearsed.
It probably can’t hurt to dog Elbert County’s leaders over transparency, except for the time it costs you. But you are mistaken if you think they are ill intentioned or incompetent. They’re just doing the job as well as anyone, including you, can. At the end of the day we’re left with the dismal fact that Elbert County leadership is a veneer designed to absorb public inquiry, take the heat, take the fall if need be, and provide a buffer to keep the public insulated from real financial control.
The tiers where financial decisions are made and implemented are defended by vested bureaucrats who fight tooth and nail for every public dollar they can beg, borrow and steal from taxpayers and the state. When the outcome of a decision might mean less money for them they will mobilize. They are formidable and they are not persuaded by the higher ideals and philosophies that leadership discusses for public consumption.