Public service is a business where people try to convince others to elect them to oversee the money, policies, and operation of government at the local, state and national level. Elected officials create a written record during their term in office that is evaluated by the voters at the next election. Challengers seeking election must convince the voters that something is wrong with that record and a change is necessary.
Ravalli County has 10 years of recorded legal and financial records on Commissioner Greg Chilcott. These are available to any citizen in the county.
Isn’t it curious that claims have been made that he is out of the office 40% of the time in the last year when the written record shows that in the last year he was gone a total of 34 days (commissioners do not get vacation by law). Additional claims allege that he received $10,000 in travel expenses in 8 months of 2011. The written records show that he received $ 3,400 total and 100% of this was on county related business approved by the county commission.
The news media claims that they are not required to fact check these ads, they only publish paid for ads.
It seems to me that any candidate would take the time to review the written record and get the facts if they wanted to serve the public.
My grandfather once told me that figures never lie, but liars always figure.
Get the facts. Review the figures. Then you decide.
J.R. Iman
County Commissioner, District 3
Marci Mansfield says
Dear Mr. Iman,
I am the author of the ad you are referencing. In regards to reviewing the figures, you came up with $3,400 in gas reimbursements, Mr. Chilcott calculates $2,694.16 (as published in the Republic). A $705.84 discrepancy. It seems to me that Mr. Chilcott needs to ‘review the written record and get the facts’.
Below is a link to the *actual* expense files provided by the County and used to calculate the number in the ad. Also, please notice when you review these documents, there are two months out of eight where Mr. Chilcott was in the office only 6 days.
I would also remind you that the $6,409.12 MACo and NACo meeting charges in these documents are indeed paid with TAXPAYERS’ MONEY. As a public servant, please take the time to “review these written records and get the facts”:
Please note it is a zip file containing about 30 megs of pdf’s and most pdf’s contain multiple pages: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/39674828/Chilcott.pdf.zip