Why won’t Mayor Mark Stodola and members of the City Board simply tell the truth? Robert Webb wasn’t reappointed to the Housing Authority Board last night because he was a leading critic of the city’s sales tax proposal.
We’ve been down this road before. I’m reminded of when Stodola defended as all but routine his reappointment of airport commisisoners after the swell job they’d done overseeing Little Rock National Airport — Parisian wining and dining of the mayor and his chamber pal Jay Chessir among other excesses. At the same time, though, he ousted Ken Richardson from the Advertising and Promotion Commission. One term was ENOUGH, for him and, now, Robert Webb. Richardson, you see, also had been critical of the mayor. The airport commissioners? Not so much.
CORRECTION: I originally wrote erroneously that Chessir was among the chamber types whose appointments by Stodola to the economic development slush fund authority were ratified last night. Chessir already held the chamber’s by-right seat on the authority. The chamber, not the general public, got its own seat on a public agency through the law they wrote and the city helped pass. Morning paper says Stodola objected to the need for city board ratification of his pick. He does not see this city taxpayer-funded entity as a city agency. It’s further evidence that Stodola will shroud this operation from public accountability to the greatest extent possible.
I expect Stodola’s retaliation against tax opponents isn’t done yet.
