Tomorrow is another one of those ridiculous stealth elections for King County Conservation District Board, and thus yet another golden opportunity for an anti-conservation conservative to grab a seat he could never otherwise win. Paper Noose has the details over at Blogging Georgetown, and… well… it’s just plain depressing.
I’ve received a bunch of emails urging me to write in Mark Sollitto, and that’s exactly what I plan to do, assuming that is, I manage to vote at all. Voting is conducted in person at only 13 polling places set up throughout the county; the nearest ones to me are at the main branch of the Seattle Public Library or at the Renton Community Center. Neither is very convenient, which helps explain why so few people actually vote in these bullshit elections.
If local Republicans had their way, this is how all our elections would be run. So let’s try not to let them have their way on this one: get out there and vote tomorrow for Mark Sollitto.
The long-term solution has to be changing the way KCCD conducts these elections. It shouldn’t be left up to them. We need to go to the Legislature with this. KCCD elections should be put on the general election ballot with everything else.
And, it is round One of the NCAA tourney!
By the way, why isn’t Sollitto’s name on the ballot? Does KCCD decide who can be a candidate?
That’s what happened at REI, the outdoor co-op. Some years ago, the system was changed so that petition candidates couldn’t run for the REI board of directors. The board itself chooses candidates, and there’s no route to the board except through board selection. This makes REI’s board self-selecting, and not surprisingly, the REI board now consists entirely of CEO and business owner types, and there’s not a reformer or public representative among them.
The late Seattle Monorail Project also had a self-selecting board. The public got to elect only a couple of the board members, and the board selected the rest, and used this power to exclude anyone who might be less than fully committed to building the project at any cost or who might question how it was being managed. At least REI is still in business, still meets payroll, and still pays dividends to its member-owners (even if they have no say in how their “co-op” is run), but SMP collapsed in an ignominious heap of cost overruns, bad decisions, and project mismanagement.
In the world of private for-profit corporations, many boards are now effectively selected by company CEOs, and the predictable result has been massive salaries paid to CEOs for running their companies into the ground, massive losses of shareholder value, and massive corporate frauds.
If KCCD is choosing the candidates for its own board, and keeping public candidates off the ballot, we need to get the Legislature to do something about that, too.
Roger: from the link…
The GOP’s Abstinence Policy: A Report Card
Let’s see how the GOP’s taxpayer-financed billion-dollar initiative to replace teen sex with abstinence is working in practice:
“ATLANTA — More babies were born in the United States in 2007 than any year in the nation’s history, topping the peak during the baby boom 50 years earlier, federal researchers reported Wednesday. … [B]irths to unwed mothers reached an all-time high of about 40 percent, continuing a trend begun years ago.”
(Quoted from Seattlepi.com under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Holy shit! Unwed teens are popping out babies like never before! Another idiotic GOP idea bites the dust.
Wait, can anyone vote in this election? I’ve never heard of this.
I have to admit blissful ignorance on this position.
Next time a right wing nut tells you he’s for smaller government, show him this.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITI.....index.html
Now I know none of the resident Publicans on HA can take that big dildo out of their ass long enough to actually read something that contains facts, but those of us on the left should be aware of them so we can bitch-slap the traitors around a little more.
What is a conservation board, and what can they do?
It’s ridiculous how many elected positions we have in this state. We might as well be electing the local dog-catcher.
I am going to vote for DAVID MAUK, who FILED PROPERLY and is listed on the BALLOT. He is a DEMOCRAT who caucused for OBAMA in the February 2008 presidential caucuses.
The other properly filed ballot candidate, Preston Drew, appears to be a Republican. At least he voted in the Republican presidential primary in 2000. No participation by Drew in the presidential selection process in 2008.
Why are Democratic bigwigs bothering to get people to waste their votes on a write-in candidate who couldn’t even be bothered to gather the petition signatures required to file for this office, when we already have a legitimate DEMOCRAT on the BALLOT?
If we split the Democratic vote on this frivolous write-in campaign, we will elect a Republican for sure.
Oh, the write-candidate Mark Sollitto does not appear to be a Democrat at all. Sollitto has never voted in a presidential primary for either party or participate in the presidential caucuses.
Three of Sollitto’s first four endorsements listed on his campaign site are from Republicans: Former EPA Director Bill Ruckelshaus, former King County Council member Louise Miller, and businessman Jim Ellis.
So go figure. We put a good solid DEMOCRAT on the ballot, and some backstabbing party bigwigs are trying to get us to waste our votes on some careless bimbo write-in (who isn’t a Democrat, and is mostly endorsed by Republicans). Either way, the Republicans are probably going to win this thing.
Is this bizarre excuse for an election covered under the odious “top two” methodology? If so, and if Sollitto had had his act together and filed, would it have gone to a second round after dropping all but the two highest votegetters?
If it isn’t a “top two”, why not?
Richard,
Two points-I was out of town for the caucus othewise I would have been there.
Unlike any other candidates in this race, I bring 30 years of experience in conservation to this important job.
Your opinion about my political background could not be more wrong.
Democrat ?
I have also been endorsed by Larry Phillips, Dow Constantine and Charlie Royer. Last I checked they are democrats that like me supported Obama. They plus Ruckelshaus, Ellis and Miller demonstrate a broad coalition of support unlike any other candidate in the race.
The KCD election process, with it’s 13 polling sites in a County of 1.9 million people, obviously needs some serious surgery. Lets start by changing the filing or election dates to give the public say two months to learn about each candidates qualifications.
Meanwhile, given the byzantine RCW election requirement for Conservation Districts, the Snohomish County Conservation District holds an election tomorrow with ONE polling place that will be open for a grand total of two hours. They comply with the state law.
Thanks,
Mark Sollitto
Mark,
Why don’t we change the state law? The current process benefits Republicans. They happen to be the large landowners who conservation districts impact the most, and those folks actually bother to turn out and vote in this sparsely participated election.
I don’t see the need to elect these folks anyway. The county council or commissioners could do just as good of a job simply by appointing them. Any political bias in this appointment method will at least tend to reflect the overall politics of the county.
13 polling sites? Precisely 1 of them in Seattle, where a little over 1/3 of the county’s voters live. And there is no free parking available to go to the downtown library to vote in Seattle.
The other 12 polling sites are in suburban or rural areas, and pretty much all tend to have free parking. So a much stronger possibility that a voter in the suburbs will turn out to vote, as their polling locations are a lot more convenient.
Oh, and I think that two of the commissioners are appointed — by a group consisting of all of the commissioners statewide. This pretty much tends to ensure two appointed Republican commissioners in every county. And since only three are elected, it is pretty much impossible for Democrats to control the CD boards in any county.
I am really PISSED with the financing mechanism. $10 per year per PARCEL, regardless of size or value. I pay the same thing on my $350K assessment as Bill Gates pays on his $125M or so assessment. I pay the same for my 1/4 acre lot as a farmer who has a couple of hundred acres. Seems like this ought to violate the state constitution provisions regarding property taxation, to tax all property the same, regardless of size or value.
Why hasn’t anyone proposed to change state law? There is an almost 2/3 Democratic super-majority, and this easily could be done. At least allow CD’s to be governed in a more democratic manner if the county legislative authority chooses to do so.
Nevertheless, you didn’t file correctly. That is really unfortunate. Not only does it greatly diminish your electability, but do I really want someone who is not able to deal with the BYZANTINE (and you have the word correctly!) laws governing CD’s?
If you are on the BALLOT next year, I will vote for you :)
@9 Of course we should elect the dog catcher! Vote for Roger Rabbit! I wanna be the dog catcher! I’ll make sure all the stinkin’ dogs are locked up where they belong — the the dog pound!!!
Lets hope the new board can:
1) make the conservation district more accountable and transparent to the tax payers.
2) explain why in a time of recession the conservation district is spending money on moving to a new office space, what was wrong with the one they had.
3) explain what the staff actually do ???
4) Publish the salaries of the staff on their webiste, because my tax dollars pay them, i should know what they make.
5) leave partisan government at the door
There needs to be some house cleaning of board members at that agency and a better process to have representation on the board.
From a gentleman farmer.
So, I really enjoyed driving my Jag to town, (Enumclaw) parking for free, picking up some books at the library with my wife and legal kids and vote for Preston.
My land belongs to me, it is not for your enjoyment.
MSRedneck @ 17.
Your rights end where mine begin.
If we want to get rid of government waste, then run the election on the general ballot, instead of a separate one, with a separate process, a private consultant running the (electronic balloting??) process. And what was wrong with the old office? At a time when everyone else is cutting expenses, the KCD is increasing theirs, all under the watchful eyes of GOPers. Interesting.