Matt Coker: Silber, Sylvia feel their own rules don't apply to them

To The Daily Sun,

County Executive Council members Norm Silber and Mike Sylvia who have, for years, ruthlessly nickel and dimed every inch of our county budget forcing commissioners to run departments on intentionally underfunded budgets, gave themselves a $20,000 budget for their self-induced legal issues with the Gunstock Area Commission. Recent documentation shows they’ve spent upwards of $40,000 in their efforts for a hostile takeover of the Gunstock Area Commission not supported by their constituency. If this over spending was in any other department they’d undoubtedly force management to cover it by cutting from another line. They set unmanageable restrictions on others and feel their own rules don’t apply to them. They ask for background, budget files, and tax records from agencies that apply for county funding but so far have failed to share the content of the emails these taxpayer funded legal fees paid for.

Reading through the bill it’s apparent that Reps. Silber and Sylvia were aiming to remove Gary Kiedaisch from his post even though there’s no evidence of wrongdoing. Reps. Sylvia and Silber racked up at least an additional $10,000 in legal fees for emails to/from their legal team alone. They frivolously spent taxpayer money on a dead end case. Considering these are the same representatives who cut $10,000 from the oxygen budget line for the nursing home last year these emails must be extremely important. Rep. Mike Sylvia also sponsored a house bill last year to increase government transparency. I genuinely hope he’ll be making the $10,000 emails public for the sake of transparency. Reach out to your representatives to let them know you want to see what our tax dollars were spent on.

Matt Coker

Meredith