Outgoing Winder Mayor Chip Thompson seeks to slap at Journal

Outgoing Winder Mayor Chip Thompson apparently plans to use his last public meetings with the city council to try and get a resolution that would slap at the Barrow Journal, which he blames for his recent election defeat.

On Monday night?s council agenda is an item called ?Barrow County News/Barrow Journal Ads.? Thompson is reportedly planning to ask the city council to discuss adopting a resolution that would say the city?s legal and other advertising would not be run in the Journal, which was recently named the legal organ for Barrow County.

Instead, Thompson reportedly wants to name the Barrow County News as the city?s ?official advertising source.?

Thompson blames the Journal for its investigative stories that showed the city had mishandled the town?s voter registration list by attempting to cull nearly half of the registered voters? names. Thompson subsequently lost the mayor?s seat to challenger David Maynard.

Meanwhile, three Barrow County Constitutional Officers ? the sheriff, probate judge and clerk of court ? named the Journal as Barrow County?s official legal organ newspaper in early November.

Thompson, along with board of commissioner?s chairman Danny Yearwood, strongly lobbied against the naming of the Journal. Yearwood was angry, among other things, that the Journal supported changing the county government to a manager system, a move that was approved by voters in early November. The change in government effectively puts Yearwood out of a full-time job in 2013.

After the Journal was designated as Barrow?s legal organ, Thompson and Yearwood teamed up with Barrow County News publisher Dennis Stockton to try and have the constitutional officers change their vote. Those behind-the-scenes efforts failed.

Now Thompson and Yearwood are reportedly looking for ways to end-run the Journal?s status as legal organ with city and county public notices. In the past, Winder officials have said they only run their public notices in the county legal organ.

?It just a petty move by an outgoing politician,? said Journal co-publisher Mike Buffington. ?State law dictates what kind of public notices have to be published in what newspapers and even sets the rate newspapers can charge for much of that public notice advertising. Certain kinds of notices do not have to run in the legal organ, but about 90 percent of all city and county public notices do have to be published in the county legal organ. The outgoing mayor can?t change state law; and the Winder city council has bigger issues to deal with than this kind of personal pettiness.?

Thompson also has added to the agenda of his final meeting as mayor a proposal to give city employees across-the-board, cost-of-living raises. No details apparently have been given to the city council members, who must approve the raises but only received their meeting packets late Friday.

Sources say the percentage increase likely would be about 3 percent, which would cost taxpayers about $200,000 that has not been budgeted. It also could make it difficult for Maynard, who takes office in January, to complete the current fiscal year in the black.

In the past, the mayor has authorized Christmas bonuses for city employees without the approval of the city council.

Source: http://www.mainstreetnews.com/archives/21706-Outgoing-Winder-Mayor-Chip-Thompson-seeks-to-slap-at-Journal.html

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