County Commission Chairman Craig Stephenson is a man of strong opinions and he is not shy about expressing them. We respect that, even when he criticizes the Journal, and even when he's wrong.
Both of those situations popped up during a League of Women Voters public forum Tuesday. The league had invited Saline County Commissioners to answer questions and discuss local issues.
At one point the discussion came around to the relationship between the Salina City Commission and county commission. League member Ann Zimmerman said she was troubled by how members of both bodies treated each other.
County Commissioner Stephenson said the Journal, and this writer in particular, had distorted the nature of the relationship between the two commissions. Stephenson pointed out an Oct. 31 editorial about the last joint city-county meeting, which said three city commissioners did not say a word, "apparently seeing the futility in trying to change the mind of any county commissioner." The discussion regarded converting a storeroom into a city office, a plan that the county commission had scuttled.
Stephenson said he thought that meeting went well, and that the Journal "wants to probably make this issue into something more than what it really is."
Indeed, discord might be exaggerated or distorted in Journal editorials. But apparently the Journal was at least one-third right in the editorial mentioned above. City Commissioner John Vanier told the Journal Wednesday that his silence in the city-county meeting office space issue was accurately portrayed by the editor, at least in his case, and then added this:
"God has only given me so many breaths in my life and I'm tired of wasting them on this subject and the county commission."
Contrary to Stephenson's assertion, Journal editorials are not intended to exaggerate problems in city-county relationships. We'd rather write about cooperation, which we've cheered in the past, and which we'll cheer in the future if our community is fortunate enough to see it.
-- Tom Bell
Editor & Publisher
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