It must have something to do with the times, but in the Elkton municipal election a large cluster of the candidates are running as fiscal conservati
ves. Since there are so many claims out there about being careful overseers of the public levy, we’ll do a fact check focusing on the mayor’s race. Both candidates have a nearly eight-year track record of voting on budgets and taking positions on projects involving the outlay of taxpayer money. Someone Noticed is pulling that data together and we’ll share the findings mined in the verifiable records of government. We’ll concentrate on the mayor’s race first since both candidates have an eight year legacy that is in the public record.
If time permits a follow-up story will drill down to the commissioner’s level, but half of the candidates there don’t have a public record that can be studied. Since time and data may not allow us to be thorough with that one, we’ll share a fact right now. Jim Crouse, the five-term mayor of Elkton, had a well-earned reputation of being careful with the public treasury. In fact, since that was in a different era when you didn’t hear nearly as much about government spending, he was a little ahead of his time. He was criticized by many special interest groups since he held tightly to those dollars. To illustrate, recently when commenting on a town budget that held the line on revenue and cut some costs, he remarked, “Now that’s good government.” I think that is an indicator of his stance since this was long before he decided to campaign for commissioner. There are others in the commissioners race too, with strong credentials related to being fiscal conservatives. Joe Ulrich, a candidate commissioner, was at the recent tea-party in Elkton. Whatever the case, we’ll wait until we gather data for the rest of the story.
