Saturday, December 29, 2018

In a unanimous decision, NAC's New Albany "Person of the Year" for 2018 is Jeff Gahan's Money Machine.


It’s time once again for NA Confidential to select New Albany’s "Person of the Year." As in 2017, there'll be no run-ups and time-wasting teasers, although our basic definition remains intact, as gleaned from Time.

Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year."

In 2018 there was a consistent theme in the governance of the city of New Albany. As such, what do these occurrences have in common?

  • David Duggins' unpunished threat to taser a public housing resident
  • Riverview Tower and the recent self-inflicted electrical system damage, as blamed on others 
  • Jeff Gahan's Reisz Mahal luxury city hall boondoggle
  • The city's neglect of the Moser Tannery, leading to the fire that destroyed it
  • Automobile aggrandizement projects being built throughout the city
  • The ongoing idiocy of Gahan's cult of personality 
  • Summit Springs corporate mud slide and franchise theme park
  • Spike in the popularity of Rice Krispies Treats
  • A shared use pedway leading straight out of town, rather than linking to the Greenway
  • Gahan's bizarre mishandling of the Human Rights Commission

Managerial incompetence, for one thing; for another, shamelessness on the part of people who haven't read books since faced with the imminent failure to graduate high school.

However, they're all connected to greater or lesser extent to the overarching theme of Gahan's seven years in office: the construction of a self-aggrandizing political patronage "pay to play" system unprecedented in the modern era of New Albanian political malfeasance.

Photo credit.

With municipal elections just around the corner in 2019, New Albany has become a banana republic -- or maybe that's a Bud Light Banana-O-Rita Republic.

Gahan's face is on everything, as is his chosen symbol, the anchor. A steady stream of political propaganda proclaiming Gahan's flawless brilliance emanates from City Hall, while the compromised local chain newspaper ducks, covers and cowers over at its Jeffersonville headquarters.

But little of this would have the wherewithal to stick if not for Gahan wetting his beak on each and every expansion of the city's budget. His campaign finance/re-election fund invariably receives a piece of the action on these expenditures of taxpayer money -- and, of course, we only see the transactions he bothers to report on the public forms. 

The emperor and his cash are tied together by the propaganda, and if you think I'm exaggerating, consider this one question: At any point during the past seven years, have you heard Gahan or any of his minions concede to making a mistake or committing an error?

Mull this for just a moment. They're human, and humans are fallible. How can they ever be perfect? And yet, like the Kims in North Korea, we're supposed to believe that a former veneer salesman exemplifies perfection.

It's revolting -- and it's time to revolt. Do we need a mayor whose primary interest is self-deification, or do we need a mayor whose policies make a difference for ordinary citizens, like me and you?

All things considered, there can be only one choice as New Albany's Person(s) of the Year for 2018. It's Mayor Jeff Gahan's Money Machine, and all the people currently benefiting from it. If you're not one of them, please consider voting for one of his challengers next year.

Previous winners:
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