Mason County’s Employees Only Club

 

Mason County government has fallen into disrepair due to the “Minimum Work – Maximum Pay” mentality of the County Commissioners.  It is fairly obvious that the Commissioners are perfectly content to allow their top level employees (John Gerlach, Co. Comm. administrator, and Chuck Blake, 911 dir. OES dir EMS dir.) and some employees of other agencies to make policy for them away from the public then, gladly and without question give rubber stamp approval to whatever comes across their desk.  I have watched this happen for years and a friend of mine coined the “Employees Only Club” moniker to describe the situation.  There are few if any actions taken by the County Commission that have been discussed in public.  The usual course for such items is:  a member of the Employees Only Club gets the item on the Commission’s agenda or gets a letter included in the Administrator’s “Correspondence Section” of the agenda (it’s rare for the public to see this section) and the Commission gives its unquestioning approval.  God forbid, any of the Commissioners would do any outside homework on the matter. The more inconsequential the matter before the Commission is, the longer and more inane the discussion.  High dollar/high impact items usually get no discussion.  Gag on a gnat and swallow an elephant comes to mind.

 

The voters of this county elected three Commissioners to make policy and see to it that those policies are enforced.  I don’t ever recall seeing John Gerlach’s or Chuck Blake’s name on a ballot..  Yet the Commissioners defer to the Employees Only Club as if these select employees outrank the Commission.  If a citizen ever questions one of these Employee items, the citizen can be assured of an angry, abusive or denigrating attack from the affected Employee’s domain and maybe even some intimidation by a Commissioner.  The public can be certain that the PP(piss poor) Paper will not report any negative happenings at a County Commission meeting.

 

I have reams of examples of the Employees Only Club’s control of our county’s policies and few, if any, examples of County Commissioner initiative.  As time allows I will add more to this commentary.

 

Who elected these people?