THE OBSERVER'S TAKE ON THE "NEW" MECAC

Well overall the Observer's take as written by Steve Kannon is a far more accurate portrayal of events of 2015 than the self-serving and biased take expressed my Mark Bauman in the Observer a couple of weeks back. What a dork with such a self-selective memory of events. "Woolwich signs on to changes in election audit committee" is the title of the front page article.

The Observer advises us that of the ten member pool of MECAC members, five are the same twits as before. That would include Tom Jutzi, Murray Stoddart, Robert Williams, Larry Aberle and especially Chair at the time Carl Zehr. Now there's a professional politician if ever I saw one and that is not a compliment. I am stretching my memory a bit but there was one of that original group who did stray from the pack and vote against all the rest on one issue, likely in regards to whether or not to send young Scott Hahn on to the courts.This vote was taken after the formal, independent and much more rigorous Audit as ordered by MECAC took place. That ordered Audit is much more detailed and comprehensive than the standard audits done by candidates own accountants such as Sandy and other candidates do voluntarily.I believe that it was Murray Stoddart who stood up on his hind legs on that one vote at least. He still voted not to order an independent, formal Audit of Sandy Shantz's cooked financial statement to his shame and everybody else's.

One other tiny issue. On page 4 Steve Kannon suggests that it was Shantz and Bauman who footed legal bills of their own, above and beyond the Township's expenses. While that is appropriate, what about Scott Hahn? He was sending a lawyer to court in regards to the Crown examining the Municipal Elections Act (MEA) and deciding whether to prosecute or not. Crown prosecutor Michael Carnegie advised the Judge that he felt that on the strength of the evidence that he could get a conviction however he felt that it was not in the public interest to do so. Apparently enforcing the MEA is not in the public interest for some reason. Picking and choosing which laws to enforce is not right, even if it is legal. The law is an ass.