On Commissioner John Reisert’s lamentable choice of words.

In today’s Tribune, County Reporter Kyle Lowry writes:

The Floyd County Board of Commissioners is no closer to making a recommendation to the County Council on the Scribner Place downtown revitalization project following a public hearing at the council's meeting last week.

County Commissioners John Reisert and Steve Bush attended the public hearing.

"I was very disappointed with citizen response," Reisert said. "We had people who spoke in favor of it but they were all hired guns.”

Hired guns?

All of them?

Of the twelve citizens who rose to speak for the Scribner Place project at last week’s meeting, one was Steve Bush, Reisert’s fellow commissioner.

Is he a "hired gun"?

Of the remaining eleven, a case can be made that six have some degree of professional interest in the project’s completion: Maury Goldberg, Bill Koehler, the director of LifeSpan Resources (I didn’t get her name), Jane Alcorn of DNA, Mike Ricke, and John Rosenbarger.

But does having a professional interest mean they're "hired guns"?

The five others speaking in favor of the project were Randy Smith, Curtis Peters, Jennifer (sorry, didn’t catch her last name), Greg Roberts and Ruthanne Wolfe.

Perhaps Commissioner Reisert can explain the creative sense in which these five residents are “hired guns"?

Is he implying that they were paid to speak?

Although Commissioner Reisert has as much right to utter unintelligible drivel as councilmen Dan Coffey and Steve Price, he’s plainly wrong to insinuate that proponents of the Scribner Place project are mercenaries.

Reisert doesn't neglect the other side of the ledger:

"We had people who spoke against it, but those are the people who speak against anything."

NA Confidential will leave it to David Huckleberry, Carol Lamb, George Mouser and Susan Johnson to defend themselves against this Reisertian nugget of … accuracy?

Public hearing sheds no light on Scribner Place, by Kyle Lowry, Tribune Staff Reporter.