Journal coverage of school board, bond issue, and mill levy elections

The Journal can be counted upon for at least one piece with feeling, about the upcoming elections. The day or two after the elections there will be an editorial lamenting the disinterest of voters.

It begs a fair question, does the press, in this case the Journal, have any obligation to drum up interest in elections?  I believe they do.

It is already too late most likely, for the Journal to drum up any interest in people who might want to run for the board.  Filing day is less than two weeks away.  They already missed the opportunity to help recruit some really good candidates.

If you examine their past, the record of Journal coverage of school board, bond issue and mill levy elections, you will find bare minimum coverage.

In the two elections in which I ran for the board, I could not get the Journal to investigate and report upon credible allegations and evidence of the corruption and incompetence of incumbent candidates.  The Journal wouldn't tell voters that school board enforcer Marty Esquivel, against whom I was running, had unlawfully banned me from school board meetings and was lying about it to the press, link.

The Journal refused to investigate and report upon credible evidence that board members running for re-election were complicit in or complacent about the unlawful suppression of evidence of felony criminal misconduct by senior APS administrators and the leadership of their publicly funded, private police force.

By the time the election rolls around, voters still won't know about the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership, their suppression of evidence, their denial of due process for whistle blower complaints, and their abdication as role models of student standards of conduct.  Voters won't know the entire board, including the four who are running for re-election; David Robbins, Paula Maes, David Peercy, and Lorenzo Garcia, are guilty as sin of complicity or complacency about the lack of honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence for administrators and board members.

Unfortunately, the folks at the Journal who decided to help cover up the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS, are no more accountable to voters than are board members and administrations.

Any interest in holding the Journal accountable for its failure to do due diligence in this or any other election, might just as well written down, rolled it up tightly, and stuck where the sun don't shine for all the attention the Journal or anyone else, will pay to it.

We're all kind of screwed in that respect.