Tim Burchett has finally publicly announced his interest in “Metro Government”. Now he says don’t call it metro government, but my East Knox County raising tells me, if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a damn duck.
You ask, Why would Burchett want to take this issue on? Here’s a couple or three reasons in my opinion and why I believe these are a couple or three reasons.
1) Job Protection: Burchett along with his Chief of Staff Dean Rice and the NOT Spokesman Mike Grider are thinking about 2018. You see Burchett is term limited after he takes office September 1, 2014 and in eligible to run for County Mayor again in 2018. However, if Metro Government is passed, the current position of county mayor will not exist. Burchett and his two guys would run for the Metro Government Mayor. Because there is no other position that he could step up too. If he steps back down to State Senate he doesn’t have a Chief of Staff or a NOT the Spokesman position for his pals.
2) Lacks Conservative Principles: Burchett is an example of a guy that talks Conservative but operates as a Grow the Government Operator. Down in Loudon County in April, County Mayor Herron was exposed as a Grow the Government Operator and was defeated in the Primary.
Burchett has already said that he would combine the departments but not eliminate positions, that does not produce the results that a metro government should accomplish.
Burchett came into office in 2010 and almost immediately tried to take over the Constitutional fee offices and put them under the Mayor’s office. This is Exhibit A to a Grow the Government operator. He was unsuccessful, he has waited a couple years and will use his lack of an opponent on the ballot to say this is a mandate.
Burchett will take credit for the county having reduced a communications employee in a couple of county departments. What he will not say is like the chairs on the Titanic, he moved them to the Mayor’s Office.
3) Lacks Confidence: Burchett doesn’t deal well with others that are equals. His clowning “take that Rogero” antics demonstrates his inability to deal with an equal (in particular a female equal) Thankfully, Rogero has simply ignored the 3 male circus tent act that is Burchett, Rice and Grider. Burchett in his work, political and personal life has a failed record in dealing with members of the opposite gender.
For years, Burchett has stated to me and many others that a group of people “love me” However, he hasn’t been there to hear people mock and make fun of him.
Disclosure: I discovered before the May 6, 2014 Knox County Primary that Burchett has told at least one maybe more people that I have been critical of him due to a personal friendship I have that resigned his own position in the county government. As I explained to the individual that said this to me. That is absolutely wrong, Burchett has always had to create a reason someone disagrees with him. He simply can not accept that someone has a personal opinion with any proposed policy he proposes.
Motion: BrianHornback.Com reserves the ability to revise and extend these remarks throughout the crafting and campaign for “Metro Government Burchett Style”
