Riecken Will Appoint Evansville Residents To Act on Evansville Issues

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    Democratic Mayoral Candidate Gail Riecken believes Evansville residents should hold positions on boards and commissions making regulatory decisions and impacting Evansville residents lives.

    “I have every confidence that the nearly 120,000 good citizens of this city have the expertise and passion to make decisions that affect how government conducts business,” she said. “In addition, residents are directly impacted by the actions of the boards and commissions, so they have the best perspective. They have the greatest interest in acting for the good of every resident.”

    Riecken made her comments today in the wake of a hearing Thursday before a judicial panel. The judges heard oral arguments on Mayor Lloyd Winnecke’s legal challenge to a proposed city ordinance that would require mayoral appointments be city residents. The judges took the issue under advisement and indicated a ruling would be made soon.

    “Regardless of the judges’ decision on the proposed ordinance, I pledge that my appointments will be residents of the City of Evansville,” she said.

    She also called attention to the confusion, attorneys’ fees and time spent by the panel of judges that has resulted from Winnecke’s change of heart over the ordinance proposed by the Evansville City Council.

    “He was for it before he was against it, and now he’s for it again,” Riecken said. “But he continues to pursue the issue in court. The Mayors lack of ability to make a firm decision has resulted in confusion and legal fees at this point.”

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    19 COMMENTS

    1. If the court finds against the residency requirement, is candidate Riecken saying, even if she has the latitude to pick a more able and qualified person living outside of Evansville, she will chose the Evansville resident anyway?

      • if they are spending Evansville city tax dollars they should live in Evansville not New Harmony. There are plenty of qualified people who actually have a dog in this fight.

          • It sounds like Mrs. Riecken believes she won’t HAVE to look outside of Evansville to find a ‘more able and qualified person’.

            I’m trying to think of which boards and commissions require such a high level of subject matter expertise that literally no adults in Evansville could handle it, and you would need to go headhunting to find a people to fill them.

            What ‘qualifications’ are needed for particular boards, anyway, and who determines that any one individual is ‘more able and qualified’ to serve on them? Arguably, a tenured professor of civil engineering from MIT (bonus points for post-doctoral work in urban planning and possibly experience as a consultant in the public and private sector) would be utterly qualified to sit on our local Board of Public Works, but is that level of expertise really needed? How far should we go to find these ‘more able and qualified’ people?

            Put another way, I’ve been a practicing EMT for over 15 years. My nephew has earned the Boys Scout First Aid merit badge. I could make a strong case that we are both equally able to provide adequate first aid for a broken finger, despite me being on-paper ‘more able and qualified’…

            • In the past and for many years there have been very well qualified individuals on various boards, appointed by both the mayor and the city council, where the appointed board member was a resident of the unincorporated area of Vanderburgh County (outside the city limits).

              Many of these non-city resident appointees were extremely well qualified in highly technical trades and professions specific to the position they held on the city or city/county boards on which they served. That’s why the city council and the mayor appointed such individuals – to have the most qualified persons serve in technical and professional capacity when other potential appointees, whether equally qualified, possibly passed on the opportunity or were unavailable for whatever reason.

              In at least one case, I can think of an individual who lives in Darmstadt, but who arguably is more qualified than any other resident of Vanderburgh County to serve on the City Tree Board due to his training, profession, dedication, and willingness always to serve the Evansville and regional community.

              Additionally, in many cases, the non-city appointees own property inside the city, but chose to live outside the city. They also own business inside the city, or work at businesses, professions, or trades inside the city of Evansville.

              Is Gail pledging to pass over for board members those Vanderburgh County residents, property owners, business owners, professionals, and otherwise highly qualified, technically and professionally trained individuals who have or will gladly and faithfully serve on the several important boards that need their participation?

              Or is this just a pre-election opportunity for Gail to pander to certain elements of chronic negativity who are most likely to read and agree with the unprogressive and reactionary politics shared at this blog?

            • “Is Gail pledging to pass over for board members those Vanderburgh County residents, property owners, business owners, professionals, and otherwise highly qualified, technically and professionally trained individuals who have or will gladly and faithfully serve on the several important boards that need their participation?”

              It appears the answer is ‘yes’. That said, i believe her campaign literature would read thusly:

              “I pledge to appoint citizens, property owners, business owners, professionals, and otherwise highly qualified, technically and professionally trained residents of the City of Evansville to faithfully serve on the several important boards that need their participation.”

              See what I did there? 🙂

              As irreplaceable as the Darmstadt tree expert may appear, I suspect that there is not truly such a shortage of competent biologists, naturalists, botanists, and professional landscapers or arborists within the city limits that the work of the City Tree Board will grind to a halt without them.

              As an aside, thanks to the invention of the internet and telephone, it IS possible for members of a board to find expert advice on outlier topics they might not have specific knowledge of. Who knows, your Darmstadt Tree Expert might even be willing to share THEIR knowledge with appointed board members, even if they themselves don’t sit on said board!

      • Yes, that is exactly correct. Unless, of course, an exception needs to be made so that we can employ the valuable judgments and reflexive leftist ideology of local progressives who have fled to Newburgh or other surrounding towns because Evansville has a little too much diversity and poverty for their tastes when it comes to actual living situations. The only other exceptions will be when the local Democratic party or the state Democratic party or the national Democratic party or the Central Committee of Organizing for Idiocy orders her to do otherwise.

        Qualifications and ability are vastly overrated, anyway. What really matters is blind, unflinching loyalty to the party, although visceral hatred of Republicans helps too.

        J. Coddington “Comrade Hugo” Fetlock IV
        Maximum co-coordinator
        Organizing for Idiocy
        Evansville Cell

      • Disaffected, *cough* Steve Schafer, would you rather have all of Winnecke’s donors from Newburgh back on the boards?

    2. Ah But Billing Ted and his billing attorney friends are loving this. They are making fist fulls of money on this court challenge. But Does State Law trump local law? And for that matter is the State Claims that the State Law trumps local laws then should they not also agree that Federal Laws trump State laws? Or do these State Power people want it all? If so then, are they greedy or not? When it comes to Federal Laws dealing with the Environment the States have argued that they can do that better. Yet the States are were most all the Pollution is coming from. That is to say the industry and business located in the states as well as the people and their vehicles are the main sources of environmental pollution.

      I saw yesterday where Loretta Townsend, Chief of Evansville’s Weights and Measures Department, was upset because the Post Mater in Darmstadt, IN refused to let her inspect their postal scales. The Post Master claims that the Federal Government can’t be inspected by local or State Government employees or something to that affect. I will be watching for the outcome of this stand off. Does the Federal Government have the right to refuse entry to local officals who are trying to perform their duties? This reminds me of a movie I saw once where a local lawman was trying to solve a local murder which had connections to a military base or facility. It was one of those Peyton Place type TV shows that is no longer with us these days. Still they brought up an interesting point that’s still pertinent today. Which has always made me wonder why we have so many different Government Jurisdiction in these United States. Would we be better off just having either local government or a single big federal government and not have so many different state and local governments. Would that not be cheaper in the long run?
      There must be a better form of doing things in these United States. Our present form of government works but barely. We could probably do much better.

      • Seems this political blog has taken a hard turn toward the Tea Party elements of the local Democrat party by serving as a venue for selected Democrat municipal candidates to print their campaign literature, uh, and without the standard authorization disclaimers appearing at the bottom of the texts.

    4. I think Ms. Riecken’s son-in-law would make a fine appointee to the board that oversees the Fire and Police dept.

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