Opinion: Public watchdog needs to have some credibility

Supporters of Curry County Commissioner Chet Spear love his aggressive style of questioning every nickel charged to taxpayers.

They also love his attention to detail — the man checks documents for typographical errors — and his overall obsession with his job as an elected official.

His critics see a conspiracy theorist in a tinfoil hat who chases shiny things and can’t distinguish a forest fire from a backyard barbecue.

Count us among his critics.

Curry County commissioners last week reluctantly released a report from an investigation Spear launched in May into allegations of a hostile county work environment.

The report — they gave it up after our newspaper threatened them with litigation and public shaming — cost taxpayers $2,000. It showed an out-of-control Spear who created hostility by “coordinating an effort to discredit or damage Lance Pyle’s career.”

This would be the same Chet Spear who — just days before making the allegations of a hostile work environment — made the motion to extend County Manager Pyle’s employment contract by a year, through 2019.

Pyle’s new contract was unanimously approved by the commission.

Spear’s quirky behavior is why other commissioners told Pyle last month that he did not have to deal with the dozen or more emails Spear sends him each week.

The investigator — Glenn Thomas, president of Universal Investigation Services of Albuquerque — even suggested the commission chairman place a “barrier” between Spear and Pyle.

Spear’s contention of hostility in the workplace turned out to be frustration over his not receiving a copy of a meeting agenda, according to the report.

“(I)t was a baseless and completely unjustifiable allegation by the Commissioner,” Thomas concluded.

But that document, along with hundreds of others the county has released in recent weeks related to Spear’s bizarre feud with Pyle, also show a man trying to act the role of public watchdog.

He just doesn’t know how.

Spear questions everything from why the sheriff purchased shovels (to dig out cars stuck in the mud or snow drifts) to whether a circus coming to town had a history of abusing animals (every circus faces such allegations).

He hasn’t done a thing to stop the spending of millions of taxpayer dollars for new county offices and renovation of the county jail after voters said no three times.

But when former county jail Administrator Tori Sandoval bought trinkets and a cake for retiring staff, Spear asked the district attorney to launch a criminal investigation. Prosecutors decided that was a county personnel matter (Duh!) and Sandoval did not go to prison; she did quit soon after that, to no one’s surprise, and has threatened to file a lawsuit because of how she was treated by Spear.

Most governing boards of public entities are little more than instruments used to help accomplish agendas set by the managers they’re charged with overseeing.

That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

We need troublemaking watchdogs on those boards, like Spear fancies himself.

But there is a difference between a watchdog that scares foxes away from the henhouse and one that yips every time a tumbleweed blows through the barn yard.

Let us know when Timmy falls in the well, Lassie. Don’t yank us by the shirt sleeve every time Timmy puts a frog in his pocket.

Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Clovis Media Inc. editorial board, which includes Editor David Stevens and Publisher Rob Langrell.