By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall
Well 2025 started off with interesting changes at the Lake County Commissioners’ meeting. Commissioner Rich Regovich was elected President as the former Commissioner, John Plecnik, wanted to go back to leadership being assigned on a rotating basis.
What was equally surprising was the change in the public comment section of the meeting. For the record, the Ohio Open meetings act does not require a public comments section on the agenda. (So much for transparency in government.)
During the John Hamercheck years there were two public comment sections. A three minute session prior to the agenda items being discussed, and an unlimited time after the agenda items. It was true transparency.
When Commissioner Plecnik took the reigns, he quickly eliminated the unlimited time session, but retained the three minute, unlimited topic, public comments at the beginning of the meeting.
When the feud began between Commissioners Hamercheck and Plecnik, it opened the floodgates for ad hominem attacks by their respective supporters. Honestly, it was very distracting and not helpful to the Lake County citizens.
It appears that the Commissioners’ solution to the attacks is to limit the public discussion to only items on the current meeting’s agenda. There really is no public discussion since the Commissioners appear to be mute when they have to answer questions posed by the citizens. However, Regovich did mention that two “Workshop” public meetings per month will be added to allow the citizens to exercise their constitutional rights for “redress of grievances”.
We will reserve our comments until we experience the conduct of he Commissioners at the “Workshop” meeting.
We have to admit that Commissioner Regovich comes “out of the starting blocks” throwing caution to the wind. One of his first meetings as a Commissioner was to raise the Lake County sales tax by one-half of a percent without a vote of the people. When he assumed the role of President he immediately changed the Public Comment section of the agenda. He changed it so much that we do not see a need to attend those meetings. He has chased the citizens away from the meetings.
That, my friends, is quite a legacy!
Categories: Lake County Politics, Uncategorized