Richardson City Council Voters Guide
The League of Women Voters of Richardson has published its Richardson City Council Voters Guide. Like The Dallas Morning News own guide, it gives the candidates the opportunity to answer a series of questions unedited, unfiltered, uncensored. The questions address candidates' qualifications for office, top priorities for the council, proposals to create jobs, policies to encourage young families to move to Richardson, and steps needed to balance the budget.
If you read the News questionnaire, attended either of the two candidate forums held already, or read my previous blog entries on this election, there's not much news in this voters guide. Once more, all of the candidates talk about focusing on the budget during the recession, attracting quality retail and corporate business to Richardson, and renovating our aging public infrastructure, private housing and commercial buildings.
One or two of the challengers make a call for a code of ethics and financial transparency in government. None criticize any of the opponents directly. There's not even much in the way of indirect criticism, either. Credit the candidates for campaigning, at least publicly, by laying out their own positive vision for Richardson, not by driving up the negatives for their opponents. Judging by previous comments on this blog, by flyers circulated at the last candidates' forum, and by unconfirmed reports, there's too much of the latter going on behind the scenes by the candidates' supporters.
There are two candidate forums remaining. Be there!
American Muslim Alliance
Council Candidate Forum
7 p.m., Thursday, April 16
Dallas Central Mosque, Multi-Purpose Hall
840 Abrams Rd.
League of Women Voters of Richardson
and Richardson Chamber of Commerce
Council Candidate Forum
7 p.m., Tuesday, April 21
Richardson Civic Center, Grand Hall
411 W. Arapaho Road
4 comments:
Ed, thank you for your continued coverage of the Richardson City Council election. I agree that there is nothing much new in the LWV's guide, partially because they were careful not to ask leading questions that would lead to negative responses.
Sadly, there have been many responses to your various threads in which the authors hid behind the veil of anonymity of the Internet to sling unproven and unsubstantiated mud at various candidates. To my mind, when someone makes an anonymous posting praising one candidate and criticizing another, an educated electorate will probably react in the exact opposite manner than the anonymous mudslinger intended...we could hope so, at least.
I publicly support John Murphy, and I am not ashamed to say so. Among many things I am proud about John is that I am proud of John's website, which not only contains the usual bio and whatnot, but has started to build a Q&A, where the candidate can actually spend some time discussing the issue, in a way that is not possible at most forums. For example, see the Q&A on "Transparency in Government" at John Murphy Q&A. I think the amount of information about Richardson's finances openly available to citizens would astonish some people, if they would stop slinging the mud long enough to notice...
Bill
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, thanks for the feedback. I agree that the DMN and LWV guides are too skimpy to give the candidates much room to talk about their positions. The forums are even more constrained. I encourage voters to check out the candidates' Web sites, where they can expand at length on whatever issues they care to emphasize. You an find links here.
Are there any penalties for filing a financial report late? All reports were due April 9. I noticed Mr. Murphy's report was turned in April 10 - LATE.
Linda Sue
Linda Sue, I don't know what the legal penalties are for late filing, but they probably don't rise to the level of penalty that irate voters will exact over this outrageous behavior on a matter of such huge importance to the future prosperity of Richardson.
</sarcasm>
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