Board Member Matt Gladney has blogged about the Tony Fabri-as-Auditor appointment.
For any job, you can only hire from the pool of applicants that have come forward. The situation with the Democratic candidates for the auditor's position was no different and, to my knowledge, none of the candidates were CPAs. The Democratic Central Committee put forth who they thought was the best candidate. The board voted for that candidate. It has been the custom (some us the word "tradition") for the board to vote for whomever the nominee is in these cases. I voted for Tony, and think that he will do a good job in the role.
Now, we come to the nitty gritty. I'm curious to know what you all think of the way things are set up. Should the auditor's office be a partisan position? Does that encumber the appointment process, or even the election process? Or are "non-partisan" politics truly feasible in a county where there is definite partisanship? What about the "tradition" of voting for the nominee? Just because something is a tradition, does that make it ok? What should we do to try and generate more candidates coming forward to vie for positions needing to be filled? Would removing partisan labels help to that end?
Fabri and Gladney ran together in November 2006, so finding a replacement for Fabri will mean finding a district colleague for Gladney as well.
Head over to his blog and give him some opinions. And thank him for blogging about it while you're at it.
The News-Gazette article is here.
Fabri said after the vote that he thought Republicans were already working to tarnish him before the 2008 election. He indicated he will seek a four-year term as auditor then.
As for his attendance, Fabri said that during his six years on the board, his attendance was over 95 percent. He admitted that it slipped quite a bit in 2005 after a leadership struggle put Wysocki in the county board chair's position after she struck an alliance with board Republicans. He also had a death in his family that year, he said.
There is a CPA on staff, who can certainly do all the auditing that needs to be done for the county. To have an elected leader is strictly partisan and a complete waste of TAXPYERS dollars. The CPA easily do all the office management/leadership necessary. Plus-------to call this elected leader an Auditor is an insult to the audit profession.
Given the state law requires an elected auditor, make it non-partisan with a CPA requirement for background and save the tax dollars now used for two people where only one is necessary.
This may be a little too straight forward, effecient and 'non-traditional' for the professional politicians on this blog but the rest of us non-politian taxpayers would like to see more tax savings than spending, just for a change.
<i>The Democratic Central Committee put forth who they thought was the best candidate</i>
Who is he kidding? No one qualified bothered to apply because they knew it would be a waste of their time--the fix was in.
The Auditor should be an elected official, because the Auditor works for the public. Not the county, the public. The Auditor does not need to personally perform the accounting functions, but is the administrator who supervises the auditing process in order to insure proper expenditure and stewardship of tax dollars. It is an important "check" in the checks-and-balances structure that good government strives for. We cannot simply "appoint" an accountant--who would be asked to be the watchdog of their employer! The independence of the auditor's office is ensured only by the fact that the auditor is an elected official.
Fabri's absolutely qualified to be County Auditor. He's not a CPA, but given the Auditor is an elected department head, not a staff accountant, that's sort of like saying he's not blonde. It's true, but irrelevant. Fabri's a smart, educated guy with years of experience in County government, and those are the qualifications that actually matter.
So why all the criticism of this appointment? Fabri certainly has his critics, but most of them are partisans with an axe to grind. If not for Fabri, Republicans wouldn't have lost the CB majority in 2000, wouldn't have lost control of the map, and wouldn't be the perpetual minority party today. More recently, he opposed Beckett & Wysocki's Republican-backed leadership -- if not for Fabri, Wysocki would still be Board Chair, not Pius Weibel.
Is it any surprise the only votes against Fabri's appointment came from a handful of pissed-off Republicans and Beckett & Wysocki?
Don't judge Fabri too quickly, especially when those criticizing him are partisans with an axe to grind of their own. Give the guy a chance to do his job -- it's in everybody's interest for our County Auditor to succeed. There will be plenty of time later to throw mud at him before the next election.
Gordy: In attempting an ill-advised edit, I appear to have inadvertently deleted one of my earlier posts in this thread from this morning. Any chance that it might be restorable?
It's pretty clear from the posts on this site that the auditor election will be hotly contested in 2008. It's also pretty clear that there are some Democrats and Republicans who dislike (to put it mildly) Tony Fabri -- for his support of Kirchner-Bell, his support for Avery as chair of the County Board, and his challenge of Wysocki to chair the board in 2006 until he voluntarily stepped aside to support Pius Weibel as chair.
That said, how about folks give him a chance to perform his duties as auditor -- respond to requests for information and documents from county board members, other county officials, the public, and otherwise exercise the duties and responsibilities of the county auditor before folks go attacking him for his political positions or his real or perceived past.
Not only is Tony a smart guy (bronze tablet (top 3% of graduating class from U of I)), but he's also a nice guy and willing to help out others. And as Kevin Sandefur put it, he's a team player. He works well with others and I believe will be responsive as the county auditor to the requests and suggestions to make the auditor's position a true watchdog of the county's expenditures of the public's dollars.
...I realize that I inadvertently omitted two key contributors to the 2000 campaign I summarized above. Both Gerri Kirchner and Laura Appenzeller (later to become Laura Frerichs) had significant professional experience in marketing and advertising, and were gracious enough to freely share their expertise with us.
Early on in the game, I had assembled a comprehensive demographic and statistical analysis of likely voters in the general election. Gerri was able to key on this info as she prepared an extensive market survey detailing the various media options available to us. This greatly facilitated the Executive Committee's decision making process as they determined the overall mix of advertising for the campaign.
Finally, Laura used this input from both Gerri and I as she developed and implemented the extremely sophisticated schedule of media buys that proved so effective in the final two months. Both Gerri and Laura were invaluable players in that 2000 campaign.
I've no doubt forgotten others as well. For that, I humbly apologize in advance. It's been over six years ago, and I've slept since then. My original point, however, just gets stronger: far from a one-man show, the 2000 campaign was a stellar example of what Democrats working together as a true team can accomplish. I miss those days...
I certainly didn't mean to minimize the role Kevin Sandefur, Gerrie Parr, Gerri Kirchner, or anyone else played in any of the Democrats' past successes. Of course they were team efforts, and of course Tony was just one part of a team. (Apparently, a rather trivial part, too, if Kevin's recollections are correct.)
Actually, I really only meant that without Fabri winning his own seat in 2000, Democrats wouldn't have gained the majority and thus wouldn't have been able to redraw the map at all. The same could be true of any of the Dems who won that year. And, as Kevin points out, many, many others who weren't candidates themselves that year.
My point wasn't that Tony Fabri deserves sole credit for Democrats' 2000 victory. My point was that Republicans see him as someone who played a big role in their losing the Board, and a big role in why they haven't been able to win it back, and that this should be remembered when you hear Republicans attacking Tony Fabri.
None of the contributions I mentioned were trivial. Quite the opposite, each of them, including Tony's, were vital to the overall effort. Hopefully, Gordy can restore the post I accidentally deleted so that will be obvious.
(Note: This is my original post from around 10:30 am this morning, before I accidentally deleted it. Thanks to Gordy for pulling it out of oblivion. Sorry for getting the thread so out of sequence.)
"If not for Fabri, Republicans wouldn't have lost the CB majority in 2000, wouldn't have lost control of the map, and wouldn't be the perpetual minority party today."
It's a pretty story, but also grossly oversimplified and exaggerated. This revisionist history to make it appear that Tony single-handedly wrested control of the board from the Republicans is particularly galling to the people who were actually there.
Yes, Tony participated in the effort, but always as part of a team. Many people played a role in that process. Tony's contributions were no greater than anyone else's. In fact, there are several people who played more significant leadership roles.
Above all, the leadership and vision of Gerrie Parr as party chair was the key ingredient to the Dem's success in 2000. She had faith in us from the beginning, and it would never have happened without her support. That victory in 2000 is generally attributed to the unprecedented multimedia ad campaign, which was largely due to the impetus of Mike Frerichs.
Once Mike had convinced the party to move forward, I wrote over half of the TV ads (Mike wrote the other two) and created all but one of the News-Gazette ads (Steve Beckett put together the other). Someone will have to help me out on remembering the radio ads; I think they may have been lifted from the TV soundtracks.
Tony was present with Mike for the filming of the TV spots. He was also present with me for the editing sessions to produce the final cuts. His largest contribution was the selection of background music, where his instincts proved to be dead on.
In similar fashion, the drawing of the map was accomplished by a three person team. Each of us contributed every step of the way in the collaboration, but there were naturally informal roles to which we all gravitated.
Al Klein was the de facto team leader, and guided the overall strategy, as well as supervising logistics and production technologies. I provided technical assistance, making sure that all of the diverse technologies we used worked smoothly together. I also prepared the initial drafts of the map, as well as the principal variations that followed.
Tony served as our political liaison to the stake holders, and did the fine tuning at the end to make the districts as equal in population as possible.
Finally, none of this would have been possible without the support and loyalty of the members of the Democratic Executive and Central Committees, and the Democratic members of the Champaign County Board. Making history requires the help and cooperation of a lot of people. Pretending that it was otherwise does them a tremendous disservice.
You guys are having way to much fun on this conservative site. Tony is who you picked I am sure he will do ok (if he doesn't we will make fun of him). I like Tony he's always been freindly and is willing to talk. I am not so sure about that Kevin fellow it's a good thing he has Laura keeping him straight.
The Democratic organization should be a shameful lesson to the Republicans.
Sandefur speaks of organiztional teams, stragegies, and implementations that seem to be lacking in the Republican Party.
It seems the local Republican Party has descended into a party of minor squabbling, and grumbling about "the libs" and "nanny-staters".
What are the positives, what organization is there, what is the vision of the local Republican Party?
We figure that if enough of us come in here and just pretend like it's ours, the really right-wingnuts will get confused and shut up already.
Besides, where else are we going to go? You guys are the only ones worth dancing with The uber-extremists at both ends of the spectrum on other local blogs just have no sense of humor.
You're right about Laura, though. I'd have been institutionalized decades ago without her...
You mean that Tony Fabri (top 3% of graduating class from U of I) is so bright that he failed the bar exam 4 times?
The same bar exam that John Piland, Jim Dedman, Brian Silverman, Tim Johnson and all the other vilified Republicans passed?
I recognize that the CEO of th hospital doesn't need to know how to perform surgery, but there are not many folks in the Auditor's office and it would have been helpful if someone with a related background or life experience had been recruited to fill the position.
The fact that a political hack got it as a reward for political work proves that the Dems are just like the GOP, and it was all BS when they claimed things would be different with the Dems in charge.
Why didn't they appoint Linda Abernathy? She has a proven aptitude with numbers.
We Democrats need to work at getting our disparate and not wholly compatible factional groups to realize that we need EVERYBODY if we want to continue and to implement our programs. A concerted effort to get precinct committeemen in Districts One through Four, so that we have a force in the field out there. Movement of city folks to the small towns is making a significnat change in the electorate out there. Some of the less doctrinaire Greens might move into the Democratic Party if we engage in sensible dialogue with them. Ditto with Republicans who increasingly cannot go along with Bush-type policy. . Just a few general thoughts. Ralph Langenheim
Quick, someone name for me the last Champaign County Auditor with a financial background before assuming the office? And please don't try Laurel Prussing, her background was in Economics not Accounting. What, can't think of one? Ralph, since you started voting (what was your first election, 1932?), do you ever remember voting for an accountant for County Auditor?
We Democrats need to work at getting our disparate and not wholly compatible factional groups to realize that we need EVERYBODY if we want to continue and to implement our programs.
I have to admit that the local Dems and Greens remind me a little of the "People's Front of Judea" scene in Monty Python's "Life of Brian."
http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-07.htm
Anonymous, I hope your comment about LInda Abernathy was a joke. She didn't even supply a management letter and analysis for her own audit of the township.
I have to admit that the local Dems and Greens remind me a little of the "People's Front of Judea" scene in Monty Python's "Life of Brian."
Ha!!!!! Too funny!
"Splitters!"
Ten years old is a bit young for voting, even in Oklahoma; marriage perhaps. I have voted in Champaign County, however, since 1959 and, so far as I can remember, was never offered the opportunity of voting for a professional auditor. Lauarel Prussing is the only Auditor whom I remember was challenged on the conduct of the office and, as we all know, she won that fight hands down.
When did Linda Abernathy audit the Township? How does one audit one's own work? What are you talking about?