Most of you have read of the traffic fatality caused by a mud flap and bracket that fell off a county truck on Woodmen Road. Words cannot adequately express my sorrow at the tragic loss of life, nor can money alone ever adequately compensate a victim’s family. In addition to tactfully expressing my sympathy to the husband privately, I promptly and publicly insisted at the next board meeting that the county disclose actions it is taking to prevent a recurrence. At first, the response was that it was too early. I disagreed, as did the Gazette editorial that followed my request. Now, finally, corrective actions that have been taken are being disclosed.Everyone knows I am a budget hawk, but you will understand why I also stated the county should not “lawyer up” or throw legalistic hurdles in the path of a just settlement for the victim’s family, preferably without lawyers’ fees reducing net compensation. The county is self-insured for the first part of any cost; insurance pays only after a $250,000 deductible. This tragedy must not be twisted into a cold effort to save money, but rather remain focused on doing right by the victim and her loved ones. Like any individual, the county must accept personal responsibility for its actions. That is how we must honor here our common sense of morality.*****************The clerk and recorder brought back a proposal for conducting this fall’s election by mail ballots only (no polling place). His early pitch was rejected by the board, 5-to-0. (I want to thank Mr. Balink for allowing me to vote with the majority!) The same fate befell his second good-faith effort. I am adamantly opposed to mail ballots for at least a dozen reasons, including that one must sign the envelope and the government can find out how you voted, in contradiction to our state constitutional guarantee of a secret ballot (Article VII, section 8). I hope you like my defense of traditional elections, with reduced opportunity for fraud and coercion, and with results citizens can trust. No government role is more important than conducting honest elections. The goals of voting convenience and increased turnout pale in comparison. I will NEVER dishonor those who died to defend our most precious right as Americans.********************This report is late because I was on vacation in June. Other board members went to a Colorado Counties conference at a mountain resort. Keeping my public vow not to take trips at public expense, I went to Europe. In Amsterdam, I went to Anne Frank’s house and saw the attic in which she and her family hid from the Nazis for so long before being captured and sent to a concentration camp, where she died just weeks before the war’s end.On June 6, the 61st anniversary of D-Day, I was in Normandy, France. One wing of the museum in the city of Caen was a moving tribute to the world’s liberators, but the other wing was a promotion of pacifism, socialism and feminism! If that limp-wristed philosophy had prevailed in World Wars I or II, the French would be speaking German now! If, during the Cold War, they would be speaking Russian! I left a note for the museum director, expressing my disgust at that appeal to appeasement. I hope you approve.The next day, I took a tour of battle sites and the American and Canadian cemeteries. I was again shocked, this time to see that the French had built private vacation homes ON Omaha Beach, one of the five landing sites (Juno, Sword, Gold, and Utah are the others). Even worse, there was a bar at the bottom of the cliffs, selling German beer on that sacred sand. What contemptible ingrates the French are! I hope that someone builds a Burger King under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Maybe then, they will “get it.”Both the Anne Frank house and the Normandy pilgrimage renewed my life-long dedication to freedom through limited government. Both sites visibly show the cost when power-hungry government expands beyond its proper and traditional role.*********************Closing on a lighter note, all commissioners received two memos from the director of human resources in May. The subject was sexual harassment. Perhaps I was the only one to read them, but I saw the unfortunate name of the program to prevent that misconduct. It was the Sexual Harassment Interactive Training class.The initials were an embarrassing distraction from a worthy goal, to say the least.When I pointed out this hapless result to my humorless colleagues, their response was not to laugh, or even to agree it was a thoughtless memo, but rather to fault me for bringing the public document to public attention and urging we change its acronym. But 20 minutes after the minute, the county attorney said the program had been changed to S.H.O.T. So the board took its best SHOT at me, but was again off the mark and firing blanks. Another bull’s eye by the right guy.Contact me at (719) 520-6412, by email at DouglasBruce@elpasoco.com, or by writing me at 27 E. Vermijo Ave. Colo. Spgs. CO 80903. Audiotapes of all BOCC meetings, both simulcast and in archives, are available at www.elpasoco.com.For liberty,DOUGLAS BRUCEYOUR county commissioner
