CPA requirement for city auditor

“Lowering the standards for government employees illustrates the City Council’s utter failure to ensure the citizens of Colorado Springs have the most qualified individuals serving in critical positions.” ~ post on the Next Door neighborhood app

I want to register my complaint regarding the city auditor’s failure to keep the agreed-upon condition of her initial employment. How can this individual, who might be a very nice person, who might also be a very good friend of someone on the City Council or in the HR Department, be allowed to continue in their position when not meeting the job requirements?

We have recently witnessed the filling of many of our federal government positions through the appointment of friends who might or might not possess the required credentials for the job. Is this now the model for our local city government, too? All cronies, all the time?

Please consider upholding the laws, rules and requirements. If something needs to be changed, it should be done before hiring applicants.

How could you even consider bringing in someone based on promises of future qualifying factors, and then remake the requirements after they failed to deliver? What kind of service to the citizens of this city can be provided when those in charge play games to ensure their friends benefit? Please rethink your commitments to serving the people of this city with fairness and honesty.

Linda Lawson

Colorado Springs

Consequences are profound

Conn Carroll’s Sunday Gazette piece, “Why Blue-State Cities Are Failing,” lays bare the root of the crisis: public-sector unionization, especially in education.

Even Democratic icon Franklin D. Roosevelt warned that “collective bargaining cannot be transplanted into the public service.” But President John Kennedy ignored that warning, opening the door to federal unionization — a mistake quickly replicated in states across the country.

The consequences are profound. Teachers unions now negotiate directly with elected school boards over pay and benefits — yet those same unions often bankroll the campaigns that put board members in office. This creates a glaring conflict of interest: officials meant to represent taxpayers are instead beholden to the very unions they’re supposed to negotiate against.

Worse still, union priorities center on protecting their power — not on student outcomes.

The result? A generation of students graduating unprepared for civic, economic and personal responsibility.

Erik Lessing

Monument

Wasting time, energy, money

There is much discussion regarding the possibility of federalizing elections, the integrity of elections and even the actions of certain county clerk and recorders and how they conduct elections.

These discussions continue ad nauseam due to the inability of conspiracy theorists and their theories when election results are not to their liking. Where elections officers have broken laws, their cases are and have been addressed through our judicial system.

The amount of wasted time, energy and taxpayer dollars on this issue (locally, statewide and national) is discouraging.

Locally, we have a clerk & recorder, Steve Schleiker who runs about the most transparent government office (not just elections) of which I am aware.

Instead of surrounding himself with a filtering net of employees, he is always willing and above board with his communications to El Paso County citizens. What a concept.

Fortunately, while Schleiker must abide by state and federal parameters for conducting election functions, he is not bound by the nonsensical opinions of Jenna Griswold or certain individuals within the Trump administration.

He has competent legal counsel on whom to rely for guidance when it comes to the issues of elections and other operations of his office.

The mere contemplation of going back to election polling places for strictly in-person voting, hand counting ballots and the process thereby is simply ridiculous. The costs, logistics and possibilities of election tampering are enormous.

Let us hope that individuals and elected officials, such as Schleiker, will prevail in their attempts to do what is right — for us.

John M. Bass

Colorado Springs

A reminder of history

Americans will not stand by or look the other way as a fascist regime runs roughshod over our laws and our democracy. We will not.

Oh, there will be setbacks suffered by true patriots and victories for MAGA, but these will not endure. There will be a day of reckoning, a time when the proverbial “chickens will come home to roost.”

When that day comes, it will be interesting to see how many MAGA officials, low-level bureaucrats, and boot-licking lackies will disavow themselves from the ‘wannabe’ dictator and his regime of hate and the current attempt at the destruction of America.

How many will say, “I was just following orders”? How many will beg not to be thrown into prison? Who knows what extremes these criminals will do to escape the court of law or worse, the court of public opinion. Yes, it will be a day of reckoning. A day of justice. A day when the rule of law will once again shine across our nation.

So, I hope these officials, elected or otherwise, who now spend so much time cozying up to the wannabe dictator and doing his bidding for personal gain, or the promise of favors, take a good look at history. History will, as it always does, repeat itself.

Read the history of the end of World War II and the Nuremberg Trials — the fall of a great fascist regime.

Pleading, “I was just following orders” is not a viable defense.

You will all be brought to justice.

Bear Wilson

Colorado Springs