Bridwell: Vote reform, vote Palmer and vote Acton

Dear Editor,

Pinal County’s good-ole-boy, or in this case good-ole-girl, system couldn’t be better defined than the path by which County Recorder Laura Dean-Lytle and County Treasurer Dodie Doolittle both rose to power.

For decades now when an elected official in Pinal County had reached a point in their careers where they would qualify to retire with full benefits, they set upon a path that would permit themselves to hand pick their successors and vacate their posts before fully serving out their elected terms. The process included getting a clearance from Stan Griffis and the Board of Supervisors so a rigged deal could be made that guaranteed the appointments would be approved in time so that the appointed office holders could run for election as if they were the incumbents.

This process permitted the county to avoid their own resign-to-run policy that is only enforced on county employees who are not part of the elite club that has run Pinal County for decades. Mayor Daley would be proud. The names and faces have changed, but the tired, old big government, high taxes and autocratic control by left-wing liberals has never changed. Finally change is on the horizon.

Rayna Palmer is running to defeat Dodie Doolittle and break up the cozy nest of Griffis appointees who share a bedroom at night and report to Florence as our County Treasurer and County Manager during the day. Apparently not an illegal arrangement, but it certainly should be.

When the investigation by special prosecutor Rick Romley was finished and Stan Griffis was hauled off to jail, Romley wrote a memorandum detailing 24 changes that needed to be made in Pinal County’s government to better safeguard the public’s interest. The majority of those changes were in the Treasurer’s office and in money handling procedures.

Rayna Palmer’s record of civic responsibility, managerial expertise and her years of fiscal responsibility speak for themselves, and under her leadership no one would have to come in from the outside and tell her how she should be managing our affairs or safeguarding the taxpayers’ money. Considering Rayna’s record of accomplishment alone makes the issues of conflict of interest, cronyism and nepotism irrelevant. We deserve Rayna Palmer as our next Treasurer.

John Acton is running to replace the other Griffis appointee, Laura Dean-Lytle, as our County Recorder.

Laura is the recorder who became infamous when she decided to send six people from her office, out of the entire 40-person delegation from across all 15 counties in Arizona, on an all-expenses-paid trip to the National Association of Counties convention in Hawaii. Pima County sent one representative.

Virtually her entire staff went on the trip because, as Laura explained, they worked so hard and had been dedicated to their jobs for years. The problem is we, the taxpayers, paid for the trips. To make matters worse, they were permitted to take their spouses. She also is the candidate campaigning that she is proud of the fact that she has recently given her employees healthy raises, at an economic time when cost-cutting should be the highest priority for any elected official.

John Acton is a fiscally responsible conservative who believes that our county needs to reduce the size of government, stop wasting our hard-earned tax dollars and implement policies that will reduce the tax burden on our citizens. John Acton has vowed to implement a system that transmits information automatically between the Recorder’s office, the Treasurer’s office and Assessor’s office. The new system will reduce the current 6-8 week delays in posting recording information into the public access files and the two to three year delays in bringing properties onto the tax rolls. We deserve John Acton as our next Recorder.

Bill Bridwell, Casa Grande

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