By Mike Thayer
Supervisor Rod Sullivan, a liberal, is running for re-election to the Johnson County Board of Supervisors. His background is in social work, but he's become a career politician since his days as Chairman of the Johnson County Democrat Central Committee. First elected supervisor in 2004, Sullivan has established himself as intolerant to opposing points of view. Check out his stated accomplishments, keeping his social work background in mind:
I am running for reelection to the Johnson County Board of Supervisors. I am proud of my accomplishments over the past term. Since I joined the Board, Johnson County has:- Successfully dealt with flood response and recovery;
- Passed a Human Rights Ordinance, the first County in Iowa to do so;
- Passed a Sensitive Areas Ordinance, the first County in Iowa to do so;
- Signed on to the Sierra Club Cool Counties initiative, the first County in Iowa to do so;
- Passed the Conservation Bond Initiative;
- Created a Trails Committee and for the first time created a line item for trails in the budget;
- Created a Commission for a Livable Community for Seniors;
- Instituted a highly successful Earned Income Tax Credit program;
- Dramatically increased funding for Shelter House;
- Begun a program for upgrading gravel roads to chip seal;
- Started work on Oakdale Boulevard between 12th Ave. & Dubuque St.
Using a semi-colon as Sullivan did is totally unnecessary when using bullet points but I digress...
Key word, unnecessary.....
Dealing with flood recovery? Ok, fine, although one could argue against what he proposed in going about that (buying up property). And for the most part, the cities of Coralville and Iowa City took on the bulk of flood recovery, because that's where the bulk of the damage was. Sullivan's claim leans on the side of substance free chest beating.
A human rights ordinance? Why? Really? The county is not a third world country.
Passed the Conservation Bond Initiative.... Yes, using taxpayer money to do the bidding of the non-profit Heritage Trust, buying up green space instead of say, building a new jail? The green space tab was $20 million.
And the list of unnecessary goes on. Basically, Sullivan has pushed an agenda of nice to haves, not true needs and definitely NOT an agenda of minimal but effective government. A majority of Sullivan's list could have and SHOULD have been taken care of by private enterprise, non-profits and charitable organizations. And they would have done a better job and been less expensive than Sullivan's government solutions.
You see, In Sullivan's eyes, government in the first and only solution to whatever ill we might face. Sullivan has pushed a social agenda during his eight long years as a Supervisor - as in more and more government in your life - not an agenda as designed by our Founding Fathers that minimizes government intervention in your daily life. Our Founding Fathers believed, that government should be a LAST resort, at all levels of governance.
If you really take a hard look at Sullivan's list, he doesn't have much of a record to run on. It's a spending and overhead list, not a list of accomplishment. His roadwork claims have always come a day late and a dollar short over his eight-year tenure, just ask some county road residents. And about those chip seal improvements, he likes to squeeze money out of county residents to pay for those projects, some would say so he can focus on bridges to nowhere. Sullivan has spent a lot of taxpayer money on projects that really aren't proper roles of county government. He has pushed to create overhead and oversight where more overhead and oversight is..... Unnecessary. His intolerance for seeking alternate solutions to problems has cost us and not just financially.
Give the new candidates on the ballot a close look, we're better off without Sullivan.
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