Candidate’s views are extreme | LETTER TO THE EDITOR

To the editor: At his coming out party this past weekend, Jeff Lauderdale, candidate for county commissioner, had this to say: “We have a remarkable environment to protect, roads to build and maintain, laws to enforce, public health to ensure and justice to render. At the same time however, we are at a point in history where we need to cut back the cost of government.”

August 20, 2011 8:00 am

To the editor:

At his coming out party this past weekend, Jeff Lauderdale, candidate for county commissioner, had this to say: “We have a remarkable environment to protect, roads to build and maintain, laws to enforce, public health to ensure and justice to render. At the same time however, we are at a point in history where we need to cut back the cost of government.”

Spoken like a true-blue right-winger — promise the moon, but cut government funding to the bone.

They sure know how to spout platitudes (i.e., the need to protect the environment), but when it comes time to walk the walk, what do righties do? They challenge every bit of science that goes against their core beliefs that the government has no role to play in regulating what everyone does on their own property.

A case in point is Lauderdale’s very vocal opposition to any attempt by Island County to solve the very real problem of fecal coliform pollution. In March of 2010 he spoke at an Island County Board of Health meeting and argued that the county’s new septic inspection program is based on “faulty science.”

There’s that standard “faulty science” argument that the righties drag out whenever they do not like a regulation or program. He made the same argument at the board of county commissioners public hearing before it enacted the clean water utility. Fortunately, the Board rejected his bogus scientific claims and relied on real science when it established the utility.

The message is clear — if Lauderdale is elected as a commissioner, he and fellow ultra-rightie, Kelly Emerson, will have free rein to dismantle all the county’s environmental and public safety ordinances that restrict what individual land owners can do with their property. Does anyone really doubt that they have that agenda? Kelly Emerson is already advocating the elimination of the clean water utility.

Don’t be fooled by the smooth, glib rhetoric of Jeff Lauderdale. He is every bit as extreme as Kelly Emerson when it comes to dismantling government by “starving the beast” and eliminating environmental regulations designed to preserve our wonderful islands. We simply cannot allow them to control the reins of power in the county.

NELS KELSTROM

Clinton