Democrats Frank Sawicki and Vinni Clausi have announced their plans to run for reelection for the Northumberland County Board of Commissioners.
With their announcement the race is now up to four with the two Democrats joining Republicans Richard Schoch of Sunbury and Tom Aber of Miltion.
The News-Item reports about the possibility of more entrants.
Once again Northumberland County Commissioner Vinni Clausi has decided to run for reelection and also with out a running mate in the May Democratic primary.
Vinni's friend and Coal Township commissioner Gene Welsh is pondering a run but has yet to formally announce his candidacy. It will be interesting to see who would be the two survivors in a Welsh, Clausi and Sawicki race. Also, the domain name is still available for www.vinnitellsthetruth.com according to godaddy.com.
In other county business:
Non-union employees granted 3% raises. Although there was a circus in voting on these raises, The raises which total to 69,000 dollars amount to less than .1% of the counties 69.4 million dollar budget. In other words, .1% is 1 dollar for every 1000. The raise will affect 136 employees. However, the war on labor continues throughout the land.
Richard J. Schoch announces candidacy in the GOP primary for commissioner.
Former Northumberland County Commissioner Allen J. Cwalina takes up new residence.
Let the fireworks begin. All three commissioners seats will be up for reelection in 2011. Let this serve notice as the first shots fired during the election season. All three can claim they didn't raise taxes until after November.
While Clausi goes on about a rant and rave about the union contracts, the big bite is the 25% increase in health care premiums. Does walking into a doctor's office cost 25% more on January 1st?
While Clausi threw Masser under the bus just after the November election, Vinni is longing for the days that Masser was a county commissioner taken from the News-Item.
While it is possible to re-open the budget in the new year and consider layoffs and spending cuts, Clausi is convinced it will never happen since he is the minority opinion despite being in the majority party. It requires a majority vote to do this.
He promised Sawicki and Phillips to remind them of their votes when they are struggling to stay within the budget.
"I miss Commissioner Masser today," said Clausi as the budget discussion ended, referring to former Commissioner Kurt Masser who resigned in November after he won the legislative seat in the 107th district.
Northumberland County commissioners plan to adopt a $69.4 million dollar budget with no tax increase at their meeting today. Commissioner Vinni Clausi calls the budget "phony" and plans to vote note.
Once again Clausi doesn't hesitate to throw a commissioner under the bus, hop in, and run over him:
Clausi added, "In my opinion, Mr. Sawicki doesn't care about the taxpayers because next year is an election year for the commissioners and he doesn't want to offend anyone by making cuts. He's agreed to give more money to the unions, while I've fought against union raises. I promise the people of Northumberland County that we will face a $3 million deficit in 2012 because Mr. Sawicki won't sacrifice and do what's right this year."
