Record Right on Telephone Voting

Sometimes elected officials unavoidably miss meetings because they're out of town, e.g., due to family emergenices.
In a letter last week, former St. Augustine Republican Club Chairman Robert T. Smith attacked Jeanne Moeller -- the ougoing three-time Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission Chairman, nearing he end of her second term and running fo re-election in a non-partisan race -- for proposing a policy to allow them to attend an entire meetng by phone.
Note: There are to be no phone-only meetings, as with some state boards and commissions that often conduct themselves by conference call.
The new policy passed 4-1 last week and the Record yesterday supported it, after giving valuable print space to Robert T. Smith, former St. Augustine Republican Club Chairman, an ex-Texan, ex-Georgian, ex-lawyer demagogue.
Showing contempt for democracy on a board for which he ran and lost as a Tea Party candidate in 2010, former St. Augustine Republican Club Presdent Robert T. Smith misrepresented the policy, and as a make-weight argument, and -- horrors -- actually accused Ms. Moeller of having been "Democratic County Chair" (untrue).
This canard was along the lines of LBJ once accusing an opponent of engaging in bestiality with farm animals. When an aide said it wasn't true," LBJ replied, "I want to hear the SOB deny it." Naturally, St. Johns County Democratic State committeewoman Annette Cappella, former Democratic Chair, took bait from the baiter: she actally wrote a letter to the editor and denied it -- Ms. Moeller never was County Chair. (The letter was otherwise intelligent.)
Yesterday the St. Augustine Record supported the policy of letting absent members attend by phone with good cause, including family emergencies and disabilities. The Record called for other boards to adopt similar policies. This left Robert T. Smith and his silent handler, fellow Republican/Tea Party hack, Mosquito Control Commissioner Gary Howell, with egg on their faces. (Howell voted against the policy but never spoke a word against it.)
Mosquito control elections are non-partisan, but Smith and his "Mosquiteers" -- Tea Partiers -- tried to make it otherwise. One, Gary Howell, got elected. Two others, includng Robert T. Smith, were defeated. Robert T. Smith was reported by two newspapers in 2012 to have stiffed a local small business owner $3200 for signs Smith ordered, supposedly on behalf of Newt Gingrich in the Republican Primary.
There is no Democratic or Republican way to kill skeeters.
Mosquito control has done an excellent job with natural pesticides (Gambusia fish and Bti bacillus), vastly reducing use of organophosphate poisons (and cancer risks) and proving that no helicopter purchase was ever required and no massive new building is required, either. It's our money.