Childers Takes Ball Away

According to a report this morning in the Missoulian, it appears that our City Council President Ed Childers has totally missed the point of the whole e-mail scandal that has made our liberal-progressive dominated council the talk-of-the-town.

After kicking off Monday night's Missoula City Council meeting...Council President Ed Childers read some rules for councilor behavior during the meeting in light of a current controversy about councilors sending private e-mails during public meetings.

Childers' rules included no e-mailing, no whispering, no hand signals, no caucusing and no leaving to go to the bathroom during the session. Childers, who has said e-mail isn't the only form of communication taking place during meetings, called the rules “crazy.”

No whispering? No hand signals? No leaving to go to the bathroom?

Give us a freaking break!

The public is not mad about council members occasionally whispering or asking each other a side-bar question. The outrage has not been about council members holding a secret meeting in the men's or ladies room during the council meeting.

It's been about a group of council members with a voting majority using e-mail as a way to conduct a secret meeting-inside-a-meeting; covertly discussing controversial city business outside of the view of the public and press.

Oh, and using these computers to call voters "morons" has not gone over very well either.

It is obvious what Childers and his liberal-progressive counter parts are doing: they are attempting to deflect blame and punish the members of the council that spoke out against their abuse of power. And they are laying in wait for the first person who attempts to use a hand signal!

The Real Scoop: Childers is acting like a two year old who has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He responded by throwing a tantrum and taking his ball away.

This is why folks like Childers, who may be a great guy outside of the public square, need to go.

He has fallen into the mistaken assumption that he has some right to conduct business based on his own personal expectations and emotional reactions, rather than to simply conduct the meeting for the goodwill of the community.

And what did long-time council member Jack Reidy have to say about the whole e-mail affairs?

“It's making us a laughingstock of the whole city of Missoula,” Reidy said.

The Scoop agrees. And as long as Childers and other remorseless members on the council continue to deflect blame and act like a bunch of unsupervised second graders at recess, that image will continue.

How about issuing a simple apology? How about just closing the laptops and having a productive meeting where you focus on something else other than chickens, the Iraq War or the pledge?

The obvious is no longer evident for members who have turned this into a personal jihad of one sort or the other. We need a change.

It is incumbent on mainstream voters that we support candidates that have pledged to make a change and are not partisan foot soldiers of a political ideology.

We need to end the rancor on our city council so they can get back to the business of governing the city.

------------UPDATE---------------

Holy crap! It's worse than I thought. Read the "Live" coverage over at Missoulapolis, where Childers now defines any negative comment as one that includes a fellow councilpersons name.

That is one way to keep the public from knowing who does what at these meetings.

What a total joke that they jump on councilman John Hendrickson for mentioning another persons name while TALKING ABOUT ISSUES. How dare he!

Hendrickson is the guy who helped bring the e-mail issue to public attention. You can see the retribution against him in live blogging action!

Thanks Carol. (and next time, pay better attention to the mean coffee lady)