Thought for the Day

Press Release

My Thought on Lt. Governor Phil Bryant

I am asked this all the time. Usually in the form of why am I running for Governor.

To answer that question, I must in all honesty talk of my concerns about one of the other candidates.. That candidate is Lt. Governor Phil Bryant

I know that we should all be civil and applaud one another so as not to run the risk of damaging whatever candidate is selected by the primary system. The problem is that I can't do that and keep my promise not to mislead the voters. So here goes.

As small business owners, Towana and I have been proud of the fact that we have been blessed to be able to provide good paying jobs to our employees. We have over the past twenty years, brought lots of revenue into our great State.

In the last eight years or so we have seen an alarming trend in our industry. As you know, we are environmental contractors. A lot of the opportunity we get from our customers is work that is regulated by the Mississippi Dept. of Environmental Quality.

Several years ago, one of the Managers of the MDEQ left employment with DEQ and went to work in the private sector. Every company he has worked for has been given a no-bid contract by the MDEQ. They have been listed as the MDEQ contractor of choice for environmental projects in the State. The MDEQ as actually functioned as a job finder for one of these companies, ( an out of State contractor ) to the detriment of Mississippi contractors.

The appearance is that if you are a company facing MDEQ punishment, you might look better if you use the Preferred MDEQ contractor.

And by the way, if you have ever been stuck on I-10, waiting for a cleanup crew to clear an accident, one of the reasons why you had to wait so long was probably that the cleanup crew was coming from Mobile or New Orleans. This is despite the fact that there are many local in state contractors that could do the work. They just don't have the MDEQ relationship.

I have been asking elected officials ( including Phil ) to look into what seem to be a good ole boy contractual relationship for a long time, with no success. I had almost resigned myself to the situation when the BP oil spill hit.

I went to a fundraiser for Phil and was disgusted with the number of out of State contractors or their employees who were sponsoring the fund raiser. I was further disgusted when one of those out of state contractors and a very large in state contributor were able to force small Mississippi Businesses off the job. It was very difficult to tell my employees that they were laid off from a good company due to no fault of their own, but to politics.

That was bad enough, but when I later found out that MDEQ had squandered public money by purchasing equipment through their contractor, who normally does not sell equipment and that MDEQ paid a lot more than they should have by buying from their contractor, I decided that this has to stop.

We can no longer tolerate the costs and poor public service that taxpayers must suffer in order to support these "Good ole' boy" contracts.

I don't know who the Final Republican choice will be, from what I can tell with the exception of one candidate, we all have the best interest of the taxpayer at heart.

If I am the successful candidate, one of my first acts will be to look at all the contracts and purchases of the agencies under the Governors' authority and see how much we can cut costs by removing the good ole boy system, and using open market competitive purchasing practices.

I apologize for such a lengthy letter, but the voters need to know the truth.

Thanks
Ron

Source