"To fear to face an issue is to believe the worst is true."

quoth Ayn Rand.

The editors of the Albuquerque Journal have decided that the leadership of the APS' (abject lack of) good stewardship over the people's trust and treasure, should not be the deciding issue in the Ground Hog Day elections.

The editors argue; link, the collateral damage from holding the board accountable by rejecting bond issues and a mill levy, is too great to bear.  Noteworthy; neither APS nor the Journal has reported what are exactly; the real consequences of a voter rejection.

Is it a one or two year hiccup in their spending spree?
Maybe it isn't all that bad after all.

The editors promised that if voters will just let the leadership of the APS slide just one more time; they can get even with (three of) them in the next school board election.

The editors cannot point to a previous election in which they made stewardship an issue.  One could argue; well, that was up to the school board candidates, not the editors.  It was candidates responsibility to make stewardship an issue, if in fact it was one.

I will testify from personal experience that the Journal did not allow me to make stewardship an issue in any of the three elections in which I ran.

Instead, they are helping to cover up the very cover up I was, and am still, trying to expose; the cover up of an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.

There is or is not a standards and accountability crisis.  That does or does not constitute a stewardship failure.

If there is not a crisis, if in fact the leadership of the APS are honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence within their public service, they would not be hiding their standards and accountability.  They would not fear to face the issue of stewardship; of standards and of accountability.

They would be celebrating their proof of character and competence in their stewardship.  They would be parading them in front of voters in order to reassure them that their $575M investment is protected by high standards and honest to God accountability.

They are not, and that has to say something.




photo Mark Bralley