Not sure if there's any other comment on this, since I've not checked on the other local blogs yet today. I'll do that afterward, but given how Bill Reddish's interview (or maybe inquisition) of Louise Smith went this morning, I thought it deserved comment. And the fact my name came up in the conversation got my attention.
There were three main topics discussed. In order of time spent, I think it worked out this way. One was Smith's ascension to the City Council presidency, another the budget, and finally the "secret meeting" she had with the mayor and a couple councilmen. With all of this, there was an undertone that Smith was hesitant at best about being interviewed and eventually Reddish accused her of ducking his questions.
In Smith's words, originally she backed Debbie Campbell for the council president post but decided to heal the rift in city government by making herself president, as she was a part of neither "team". Smith saw herself as "her own person"; an independent who happened to be lumped in with fellow Councilwoman Terry Cohen and unsuccessful aspirant Tim Spies during the campaign. In her thinking, voting against this grouping would prove her independence.
I can buy the logic of Smith's contention, although it probably would've been better to express it in another way. People were voting for change and in that respect Campbell would have been a better choice. Louise voted as she did to prove herself beholden to no one, but proved to disappoint many of her supporters.
There was a big flaw in her budget arguments though. For the sake of this discussion I'll grant that the 3 cents for increasing salaries and benefits is necessary. But the budget is not a static number, and the cuts Bill Reddish brought up were valid ideas to slash the expenditures. And it's quite possible that cuts that would have offset those 3 cents' worth of increased salaries and benefits were there for the taking. Smith's assumption that the budget just had to go up 3 cents' worth of property tax increase doesn't hold water.
But I'll give Smith the point on her account of the "secret meeting". When Reddish noted that Louise had told him the meeting was set up ahead of time, well, that morning is ahead of time. And personally I have no problem with Louise Smith meeting with the mayor. Yes, she could've set up the Council work session that Terry Cohen requested (and probably should have) but it sounds like she was determined to forge ahead with the budget as she saw it.
As a person who's sat in the "hot seat" before (under much friendlier circumstances), I know Bill Reddish can be passionate and sometimes uses his microphone as a bully pulpit (as in "View Across the River".) However, this was the first time I've heard where he's really lost his cool in an interview - he was practically shouting at some points. I know Bill loves the city and the Eastern Shore and he means well. Because of that I'm sure he's very disappointed that Louise Smith has thrown in with people he considers the folks holding back Salisbury (witness his comment regarding this being a Mike Dunn redux.) It just seemed a bit less professional than normal. (To be sure, I wish he'd hammer Wayne Gilchrest or Ben Cardin like that during his regular interviews with those two.)
Because he was on such a roll, I wonder if he realized that he misspoke, or if the other person mentioned (John Bartkovich) was the real source for this. But Louise didn't come before the Republican Central Committee during her campaign. Where he probably got the quote about her being her own person was this post on the SU candidate forum:
Smith distanced herself from the “three-pack” controversy, saying that her “message is my partner” and that she was “her own person.”
Of course, immediately after that I noted:
Driving home her main theme one more time in her close, Louise said that the city needs to be more responsible with its tax dollars.
Also, Smith did speak at both the January and February Wicomico County Republican Club meetings, and perhaps that's what Bill Reddish meant to say.
The reason I bring this up is not to harp on a misstatement, but because I do get grief from some about my reporting of local party affairs. Except for rare occasions (like noting the fact about Louise Smith not attending the WCRCC meetings above), what goes on at a county Republican Central Committee meeting is something I keep close to the vest.
So we'll see when (or if) Louise Smith decides to sit in the hot seat again. And I suspect it'll be a long time before Bill Reddish blows through several traffic and news breaks again like he did this morning. But today may be remembered as the day the seething rage harbored by many in Salisbury about their city government came to a head. After all, as Smith noted in her own campaign literature:
"Do you have a sense that the city has lost touch with the citizens? I do."
Obviously there's a number of people out there that wonder if Louise Smith has also lost touch with her supporters. This morning's interview did little to assuage those fears.