When I was in my early 20s, I lived in a shared house with some other early 20-somethings. They were all off the beaten in some way, but more or less had their shit together. When I moved in, I certainly did not have my shit together. And I had never lived with other young adults who did.
I had been in the bad habit of leaving my dirty dishes in the sink, as had all of my former cohabitants. But these new roommates did not operate this way. One of them confronted me about it. I apologized, cleaned up my shit, and… repeated the whole behavior.
Again I was confronted. I apologized again, and next came the more important confrontation (paraphrasing, no way I could recall the exact wording): we already talked about this, you know what the expectation is, you just didn’t respect that. Well, that was true. It stung, and maybe it was a bit blunt, but it was inescapably true.
I didn’t even intend to leave my responsibilities for other people to take care of. But I was definitely, knowingly, leaving a mess they’d have to work around. Because I was prioritizing my own time allocation without regard for others.
Anyway, how all of that’s relevant: this township has done this before. It’s implausible that they’re ignorant of it, the second time. Especially as a cohort, where some will have better recall and a stronger inclination to improve than others. That leaves only the possibility that their motive falls within the range of motives for knowingly disregarding an election result, again as a cohort. Maybe I lack imagination, but I think the only reasonable conclusion is corruption.
Name one supervisor or manager of this township whose background explains my post history. There's a lot there, including some SQL code earlier today if I remember and probably a bunch of stuff about the field in which I have a PhD if you dig long enough.
So. Anyways. The township supervisor/admin who can pass coding interview questions and has a phd in a math-heavy field. What's their name again? Go ahead. I'm waiting.
Could it be possible that I have a genuine distaste for conspiratorial nutbags who turn local government into bored single rural white dude version of the instagram influencer game?
I do not expect any sort of personal or professional benefit for developing a reputation with this handle.
In fact, I change handles every few years in case someone decides to "stalk me" and "beat my face in". As is happening in this thread, for example.
I do think it's astounding that anyone could look at my post history and conclude I'm one of these township supervisors. I'm clearly not.
One poster, that is an obvious throwaway, created 3 hours ago. (all posts flagged)
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=gofkurself
On the other hand you've complained about this no less than 3 times in different threads. why? How is an obvious troll account relevant to other posters issues with your own behaviour? This feels like what-about-im, but the difference is it's pretty clear that the other guy isn't being tolerated.
If you are just as abrasive in real life as in this thread I can believe it.
It’s not that I don’t understand the frustration, but at this point it’s a bit past the point of being reasonable.
I imagine they’ll get it sorted through swearing in twitter guy and then ignoring him as much as possible for the next 6 years, after which they’ll make sure to get someone one of their friends to run.
But who knows, maybe they’ll get along.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I can think of 0 valid reasons to ghost and undermine your elected auditors.
So he turns up one random day to do his job and is surprised that he isn't on the agenda. I repeat, he never even talked to these guys after his election, never checked in with them to even properly organize things. Instead he just assumed "they would know".
> and undermine your elected auditors.
Given how much he just assumed will happen and failed to properly plan and ensure will happen he is doing quite a good job at helping them with it. And after all that his idea of fixing things is to write a 20+ tweet complaint on twitter. If these people are as corrupt as some here think they must love that guy, they couldn't have found a more superficial incompetent guy for the job if they tried.
I’m sure it happens, probably in my locality as well. That doesn’t mean it’s acceptable or that it shouldn’t be scandalized. The big fishies in the small ponds apparently need to be reminded of the standards they’re held to from time to time.
From the outside, we certainly had plenty of folks calling us corrupt for not always getting 3 closed bids on every project or paying Joe under the table for cutting grass. Were these true allegations? Yes, but it wasn't corruption. What do you do when the grass needs to be cut because if it's not, we'll get rats in the town hall and no one responds to you calls? You call Joe who cut just your personal grass the other day and ask him to please just get it done asap because no one has time. This isn't done because we're trying to get a favor, we just needed it done quickly and reliably.
After all, there’s no ulterior motives in racial or sexual bias when it comes to hiring either, right?
Of course it’s easier and feels better to let the scant public funds go to people you know. That doesn’t mean it’s not corruption.
> This isn't done because we're trying to get a favor, we just needed it done quickly and reliably.
You still seem hung up on that there needs to be some form of quid-pro-quo or personal gain going on to count. That is not the case.
And well, there’s a clear difference in scale between asking Joe to cut the grass and not proactively putting the offer out (which still counts but is what it is) vs actively denying authority (however little) of your own publicly elected auditors for several years.
You are quite literally admitting to corruption. You’re justifying it for a common good, which… is emotionally understandable but also basically how well-meaning people justify interacting with every level or scale of corruption.
When laws are followed, people tend to be much more careful on the laws they write.
But that doesn’t make it right. If you are dealing with elected offices you need to deal with whomever is elected.
The part that was missing from the twitter thread is a reply stating the scope of the auditor role not covered by the CPA, and an affirmation that they seek to carry out this duty.
I guess my take comes down to Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. The council doesn't know what he wants to do after election and he didn't spell it out for them. It seems that they want to be (1) publicly sworn in and (2) change township processes somehow so that they can be a more effective community watchdog.
Humans tend towards greed and lining their own pockets, just look at any dysfunctional government that has ever existed. I would not be surprised that half the politicians in office in thw US are taking bribes or dealing under the table. There are numerous public examples, you can guess that its only the tip of the iceberg.