Ruth Larson: Delegation's request for remote hearing is cynical request

To The Daily Sun,

Nightmare headline of the week: “CDC warns Americans against travel to New Hampshire due to COVID concerns.” This couldn’t come at a worse time for ski resorts just starting the winter season. As if Gunstock wasn’t having enough trouble having to fend off attacks from the power hungry Belknap Delegation.

As it turns out, the actual headline was about France, not about New Hampshire. Americans are being advised to stay away from France, where the COVID positivity rate is 7.2% and and not New Hampshire, where the rate is 11.6%. (France is in the moderate 5-8% level, and New Hampshire is two levels higher, at the high, over 10%, level.)

The headline may not have been real, but the health crisis certainly is with Gov. Chris Sununu providing no leadership, afraid of alienating his libertarian extremist off-and-on allies. This has been a pattern starting back when Sununu narrowly won his gubernatorial primary over right wing Frank Edelblut, and then named Edelblut commissioner of education as a consolation prize, and offered up the public schools for him to destroy. With COVID Sununu has been unwilling or unable to make or sustain the hard decisions needed to keep us safe and to prevent the virus from getting the upper hand. Even the very mild measures taken against businesses that flagrantly violated COVID restrictions were later undone by the governor when he forgave their fines.

At the more local level, we have the Belknap Delegation consistently favoring the virus over people by insisting on in person meetings, by refusing to implement mask or social distancing measures and by voting against anything that would restrict their freedom to infect. Let us all hope that the two or more delegation members currently or recently infected with COVID have a full recovery and use their experiences as a lesson to all.

The one instance where the delegation pretends to care about COVID consists of the delegation trying to avoid a public court hearing concerning Gunstock, seeking instead to have the hearing be entirely remote. Considering the number of Gunstock supporters who showed up at the delegation meeting, and/or who signed the pro-Gunstock petition, no wonder the delegation is running scared. Their hypocrisy is on full display in this cynical request.

Courageous, honest and competent leadership would be a welcome change both at the state and the county level. It’s a shame we have to wait until the 2022 elections to accomplish that.

Ruth Larson

Alton