There’s a story at the Gazette from 1.5.13 about how Walworth County Administrator David Bretl’s columns started.
The story’s odd, but the title’s odder: ‘Bretl writes columns as a self-check on county government.’
That’s funny, as the true check on government isn’t a so-called self-check from an administrator, but a check from the newspaper itself, and from residents, generally.
As for a self-check on his administration, Mr. Bretl should be performing that each and every day, with or without a twice-monthly column. An administrator’s self-check (such as it is) comes from within, not from another’s offer of a helping hand.
Mr. Bretl is quoted toward the end of the story joking that he has a small readership. I’ve no idea.
Readership, however, wouldn’t be low because of what he writes; it would be low because those who cover Administrator Bretl and other officials write as though they were officials’ biographers & press agents.
One reads that the county administrator started his column years ago after requesting equal time in reply to a reporter’s coverage. Fair enough: coverage then did involve a certain measure of scrutiny, and newspapers have always been free to give officials whatever space they want to give.
It cannot be true, however, that Administrator Bretl is still writing to get equal time in the print press: there’s scarcely any scrutiny of government to be found, and there has been none whatever from the story’s reporter.
It’s all County Administrator Bretl’s time now, so to speak.
How telling that these gentlemen can’t see that.