If you haven’t been following, here it is in a nutshell.
November 21, 2023. Commissioner Krista Joseph used her Commissioner Comments at the Board meeting to endorse candidates running for three open Commissioner seats and inferred that the woes of the County were the responsibility of three sitting commissioners who are up for reelection and suggested voting for candidates that she was publicly endorsing.
December 5, 2023. Commissioner Dean moved to censure Commissioner Joseph for her remarks and asked for approval to engage legal counsel to determine if election law had been violated. That motion passed 4-1.
In the advisory letter from the attorney engaged to determine if election law had been violated, two options were posed – one was to pursue criminal charges through the State Attorney. The other option was to invoke a civil penalty.
Now Commissioner Joseph has filed a lawsuit in Federal Court claiming that her freedom of speech has been violated because of the possibility of criminal prosecution.
This is a pre-emptive lawsuit. There has been no discussion of criminal penalties as the Commissioners cannot have that discussion until Tuesday’s Board of Commissioner meeting.
Let’s step back a bit here and look at this as objectively as possible. Here we have a commissioner who was elected on a “slow development” platform and has garnered a large following of residents who agree with her.
Truth be told, there are probably more who agree with her than not but recognize that the combative position that she continually takes is not the right way to influence change. In fact, by consistently coming at others in a combative stance, she turns people away from the agenda because they don’t want to be associated with that type of tactic.
Would the Commissioners have pursued criminal prosecution had Commissioner Joseph not come back with a lawsuit?
We’ll never know.
But now, taxpayers will pay for the cost of our County opposing the lawsuit filed against them, our county will continue to be divided and all our energy will go to fighting each other instead of making this County the best it can be. And we’ll fight, even though fundamentally we agree on many things.
That’s the way being combative works. It invokes being combative in response. Riding in on a white horse to save the day is a myth.
That is very sad.
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