The Election

Sometimes when voters speak it can be with a mighty roar.

So it was Tuesday when voters turned from office the two longest-serving members of the Board of County Commissioners.

The losses by Commissioners Billy Traylor and Nathan Peters, Jr. – the longest-serving elected official in the county – are open to plenty of interpretation, but some facts are clear.

This was no north-south election.

Traylor’s district is on the north end of the county and Peters’ on the south. Both were roundly defeated.

There was also no debate about the outcome from the initial results on, as both commissioners quickly trailed challengers by significant margins which held up throughout the night.

But the failure of each man to come close to beating back a challenge can also be seen as a broader statement about county government, one that the remaining members of the board, coming up for re-election in two years, would be wise to hear.

That statement can be broken down into several parts:

Responsiveness

Voters want a county commission that is responsive to the desires of the whole rather than a narrow few.

In 2004 taxpayers flooded the county commission meeting room to plead for tax relief as the real estate market roared, property values shot through the roof and commissioners simply raked in the proceeds based on wants not needs, with taxpayers footing the bulging bill.

Taxpayers were ignored, though as time proved the budget was in need of a fiscal Jenny Craig course.

Later that same year voters overwhelmingly supported what they had overwhelmingly supported for more than a decade – county-wide voting and an end to a broken system that seemed less about the serving the public than serving re-election odds.

Commissioners made a cynical mockery of that outcome, flipping and flopping, starting and stopping on moving to county-wide without ever making a substantive step forward.

In the end, the voters were ignored, the concept of a binding referendum tossed on its head.

There were other issues such as a six-minute mute on public comment at board meetings, citizen committees whose recommendations for a better county were ignored and the flexible interpretation of local preference in awarding contracts that seemed to steer projects to a select few.

Citizens had become jaded to the concept that they had any say in county government.

BP

As one Wewahitchka voter said after learning of the results, “BP has spoken.”

As much as Mr. Traylor and Mr. Peters might want, it is impossible to take BP and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill out of this equation.

Some were outraged that two commissioners — including Traylor — as well as Peters’ son, went to work for BP within days of the commission voting to hire a litigation firm for future lawsuits against the oil giant.

The outrage grew when those two commissioners abstained from a vote one week later firing that law firm and again and again from subsequent votes concerning the county’s response to the spill.

For many in the county it was impossible to shake the idea that signing on with BP – which required being on call 24/7 – was a conflict with their duties as commissioners.

There was no shaking the perception of commissioners putting themselves first and the county second, that influence and position were factors in securing plum well-paying jobs – on top of their salaries as commissioners – while many in a county with unemployment in double-digits were relegated to the back of the line.

 The episode seemed the final straw for voters who had suffered silently too long under commissioners who seemed more interested in a place on the podium and to the victor the spoils.

 County-wide voting

Peters has always possessed the ability, with a single swipe of the pen as he brought the lawsuit that resulted in single-member districts, to wipe away that abomination that voters want no part of in the future.

More to the point, though, Peters and Traylor were two of three votes in granite that blocked any movement on county-wide voting from taking place.

Voters long understood that the county operated behind that three-vote block and the third member of that majority, Commissioner Carmen McLemore, should absorb the lessons of last Tuesday over the next two years.

So too should Commissioners Warren Yeager and Bill Williams, who ran on platforms of moving to county-wide voting. The clock is ticking. The third vote is coming if campaign pledges can be believed.

Last Tuesday was a historic election in the history of Gulf County; voters wanted their county government back.

They deserve a round of applause for enacting change in the most fundamental fashion offered any citizen – at the ballot box.