Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Compare and contrast: Coverage of last night's county council meeting.

Two newspapers, reporters and stories, and very different central points. At the Courier-Journal, the bulk of Grace Schneider's article about last evening's county council conclave details the story behind a citizen's demand for an ethics investigation.

Ethics complaint debated in Floyd

In response to a resident’s concerns, the Floyd County Council agreed Tuesday night to examine if it was proper for county government to pay $27,539 for a law firm to handle an ethics grieveance against Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson.

Joseph Moore, of Georgetown, asserted that Henderson told the commissioners last year that the money would be used to fight his removal from the David Camm triple-murder case. Moore asked the council to recover the money and to launch an investigation ...

Am I the only one thinking that any such ethics investigation might lead to the county commissioners? But I digress. Schneider's secondary theme is a pay raise request by the sheriff's office: "Council members seemed receptive and indicated they could vote on the pay increase at a special meeting later this month."

Meanwhile, at the News and Tribune, Chris Morris also notes the sheriff pay increase sub-story. But the most of his article is about the county budget ... and he doesn't so much as mention the Henderson ethics discussion.

Floyd council forced to cut $900K from 2013 budget; Floyd County police officers, county preliminarily agree on new contract

“We have to do more cutting folks,” said Floyd County Council President Ted Heavrin. “If we send it up there the way it is, they will make the cuts for us.”

Finally, there was an intriguing Heavrin aside, one apparently noticed only by meeting attendee Matt Nash, about "splitting" the parks department. I suppose that between these three perspectives, we get a fairly balanced picture.
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3 comments:

  1. Matt Nash10:10 AM

    There was no true discussion about the investigation. It was part of the public comment portion of the meeting at the very end.

    Concerned citizen Joseph Moore,who has done his homework, presented the facts to the County Council after he was told to by the County Commissioners and their Attorney.

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  2. The New Albanian10:14 AM

    Thanks for that clarification. Did the county commissioners vote on the money to pay the prosecutor's lawyer? Somehow I seem to recall Freiberger being against it, but Bush and Seabrook out-voting him, but I might be mistaken.

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  3. Matt Nash10:31 AM

    Mr. Moore's point was that it was presented to the county as a legitimate Camm expenditure but was used for a private attorney representing Henderson against the ethics complaint.

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