Every Rose Has Its Thorn

Sunday night I was watching The Good Wife when a campaign manager was telling his client "the truth is not respected." I guess you could say I had an ah-ha moment. I was wondering why I was getting so much resistance in my hometown; am I the only one noticing what's going on? I keep ringing the alarm but no one is responding to the call. It can be an exhaustive process but I refuse to give in. One of my favorite scriptures comes from Psalm 27:13-14

"I had fainted unless I believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord, be of good cheer, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."

I'm waiting on the Lord but in the meantime I'm still filing papers with the Ethics Commission, the Attorney General and the Secretary of State. The mayor, city clerk and board members may have no regard for the ordinances, comprehensive plan and code charter municipality but I take comfort in knowing there's no statute of limitations regarding these matters and personally, I hope they're prosecuted after they leave office because they will not have the cushion of their bonds.

While we're speaking of violations, Richard Rose has been indicted for perjury. If you recall, the City of Lumberton unofficially hired Rose to prepare our current budget. Rose was never hired via a board room vote. As a matter of fact, Rose was allowed to poll the board to approve his work on the budget. There's no record showing when Rose was hired but there's a canceled check showing he was paid. Despite the fact that Rose was never "officially" hired, he had total access to all the records and accounts at city hall, including our personal information.

A Harrison County grand jury indicted former Diamondhead City Manager Richard Rose on a perjury charge Tuesday. It accuses him of lying to a state employment-review board when he said he did not demand a year's salary in exchange for keeping silent on incriminating allegations about the city's mayor. His denial was "a material fact" an administrative law judge considered to rule in Rose's favor, the indictment said. The city fired Rose in June and he filed a civil complaint with the state Department of Employment Security. The judge agreed Rose was caught in a political struggle and granted him unemployment benefits. The city appealed the civil case. Rose declined to comment in a phone call Tuesday and referred questions to his attorneys. Attorney Jim Halliday called the charge "a political vendetta to defame Richard Rose." "He won, they lost and now they're trying to get him through this trumped-up criminal charge. The city is trying to use a criminal charge to win a civil case. That's wrong. That's improper." The charge was filed in Harrison County because the alleged perjury occurred in Gulfport on Aug. 8. That's when Rose and attorneys for both parties had a conference call with the administrative law judge, Halliday said. The indictment said, "Rose willfully, unlawfully, feloniously and corruptly swore that he had never made these demands for one year's salary in exchange for not releasing incriminating information about then Mississippi Mayor Tom Schaffer."