Guzzling Timmy’s kool-aid in The Pilot’s newsroom

 

 

 

Very few people outside of The Pilot’s newsroom take county commissioner Tim Lea seriously. That became crystal clear in the 2008 GOP primaries, when Lea barely eked out a victory against an unknown underfunded challenger.  (He was saved by the absentee ballots.)  What was the key to Timmy’s narrow election victory that year? A local politico offers this explanation:

“Tim would have lost if George Little had not been so publicly backing his opponent.  He caught a break when the voters started hearing George’s mouth singing the praises of his opponent.”

The Pilot’s John Lentz, who took over stenography duties from Florence Gilkeson, apparently has not gotten the memo that Lea pretty much lives and operates within a fantasy world. Lentz fell for Tim’s tired old PowerPoint, which we thoroughly discredited HERE LAST YEAR.   In his latest stint as Lea’s stenographer, Lentz starts off with some real fantasy in the VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH:

“Few things are as hotly contested in Moore County politics as the state of the county government’s debt, and the debate couldn’t be sharper within the Board of Commissioners.[..]”

What debate? Timmy runs his mouth and his colleagues ignore him.  That’s pretty apparent if you watch any of the videos shot by Bill Cochrane over at his site.

Lea runs around the county waving this PowerPoint presentation — prepared on county time by a county employee, according to my sources — suggesting that his colleagues are busting the budget and mortgaging the county’s future.  The real dishonesty in Timmy’s spiel is that he presents numbers including ALL of the interest and principal that WOULD be paid if county government actually took the whole 20, 30 or 40 years to pay the loans off. If you pay a 40 year loan off within ten years, you are saving more than 30 years of interest payments.

Recently, we detailed a leaked email from the assistant county manager to all of the commissioners and some other county leaders. (I know Lea saw this info.  He was listed as an addressee on the email.) Why doesn’t he discuss that info — instead of his dubious, sneaky PowerPoint?

Answer:  The PowerPoint fits the agenda of his long-running feud with and vendetta against fellow commissioners Nick Picerno and Larry Caddell.  It’s pretty clear Lea stirred up that Bojangles nonsense to embarrass Caddell.   Lea is also aiding the campaign of Picerno’s Democrat challenger — Ellen Marcus — in the November elections.

Timmy was close to Cindy Morgan — wife of Richard The Evil — who lost her seat on the county board in 2010 to Craig Kennedy.  The Morgans and Lea believe Picerno recruited Kennedy to run against Morgan.  So, Picerno is being targeted this year.  (Sources tell me Lea has already lined up a challenger to Kennedy for 2014.)

We do have to give major props to The Pilot’s editorial page for at least taking a stab at cleaning up Lentz’s mess in today’s edition. We sure wish Lentz would stop peddling Lea’s fiction and start focusing on more substantive developments in county government like — say — THESE.  Or how about asking alleged fiscal conservative Tim Lea why he only votes for budgets that include tax increases?

Don’t think we’ll hold our breath waiting for that …