01 Apr Dave Eychner Responds to the Ludicrous Daily Interlake Editorial of 4/1/18
On April 1, 2018 the Daily Interlake’s besotted editorial board published an editorial siding with the law abridging county commissioners and their intellectually challenged ruling denying the Egan Slough Zoning District Expansion, a ruling found gravely wanting and deficient by an objective District Court Judge. The editorial board votes for anarchy. Dave has a better idea.
You may read the editorial here: http://www.dailyinterlake.com/editorial/20180401/can_an_unpopular_decision_still_be_right_one
Buckle in and hang on to your seats as you read Dave’s response below:
It is clear that the editorial board of this paper has lost sight of the fact that we are a nation of laws and not of men. To suggest that an elected official or officials can make decisions which are in contravention of the law and then can not be challenged under the laws that govern decision making by said officials is ridiculous. The Montana legislature has passed laws that set legal standards for political/governmental decision making and they must be followed. When a County Commission acts against the legal standards, which require that they consider public need along with other factors in their decision making, AND NOT ACT ARBITRARILY AND CAPRICIOUSLY, those decisions are subject to legal review by our courts. It appears that this editor needs a solid civics lesson in how our democracy was set up. One wonders whether he would have said that the decisions of the British Parliament and King George in the 1700’s was beyond reproach and that we should just have accepted those decisions and not created a better democracy here in America.
And the suggestion that the public was demanding something that was “after the fact” is equally ridiculous. No final permit had been issued and this entire matter was working its way through the established review process. Weaver clearly acted at his own risk in any investment he made to set up a plant that was so overwhelmingly opposed by the citizens of this county. For the editor to side with this unparralleled greed is not surprising. Mr. Weaver has paid a lot of advertising dollars to the Interlake in order to convince the readership that he is just setting up a small family business to leave his grandchildren. If so why has he written to national bottling corporations asking if they want to own and operate a bottling plant in Montana. Does that sound like a small family business to you?
And let us all remember this: the water underlying this Valley belongs to all of us. Not to one person to suck it all up and sell it out of state for a profit.