Now mind you Skip and I butt heads on a lot of issues and if you scroll through the many posts labeled Skip Alston you'll see I've accused him of nefarious deeds on various occasions so I decided to get to the bottom of this by contacting 2 current Guilford County Commissioners, Justin Conrad, a Republican and Raymond Trapp, a Democrat and ask both of them to look into this matter.
Neither wasted any time.
In an e-mail on Sunday, Commissioners Conrad and Trapp sent the following to Marty Lawing:
"Marty-
A constituent emailed me over the weekend with a concern that the county was still providing cell phone service to a former commissioner. Do you know anything about this? Thanks"
You'll notice no names were mentioned. Today came the following reply from Marty Lawing:
"I have checked with Reid Baker in Finance and they have reviewed all of the cell phone bills for the county and there is no evidence that the county is paying for cell phone service for a former commissioner. We are also not continuing to pay a stipend for a previous commissioner. We do know that many of them have the same cell phone number as they did when they were on the Board. Maybe that is why someone thinks the county is still paying for the service.
Thanks,
Marty"
I think it's pretty safe to say Skip didn't do it this time. It was simply a matter of transferring ownership of a telephone number.
Our thanks to Commissioners Conrad and Trapp, Marty Lawing, Rick Baker and the folks in Guilford County Government for straightening this out.
Now please share this just as if I'd actually caught Skip at something. Prove to yourselves you're better than the folks who depend only on those other places for news. Don't worry, I'm not going soft on Skip, I'm just trying to be fair.
And folks, does it make you wonder why I can get questions answered by our County Commissioners in a single business day but City Council members avoid my questions altogether? Yeah, me too. That's why I write so very little about the County Commissioners, while I might disagree with them they seem to have little to hide.
