Former Reno Mayor Bob Cashell has endorsed Victor Salcido for city council, which is all the information you need to vote against the young lawyer.
BREKHUS BREXIT: BAD MOON RISING OVER CITY HALL. The good ole boys are still smarting over losing Reno City Hall. They have taken the first step toward repossession by hatcheting Councilmember Jenny Brekhus who upset one of their anointed developers in 2012.
Veteran Reno Gazette-Journal city hall reporter Anjeanette Damon noted that Cashell’s support “was more a rebuke of Councilwoman Brekhus than an endorsement of Salcido,” an immigration attorney and lobbyist.
Laughably, good ole Bob blamed Brekhus for “a substantial portion of the dysfunction” at city hall.
Diplomatically, Ms. Brekhus responded that when she served under Cashell during her first two years, she asked a lot of questions “about how the city got into (this financial crisis) and I could understand how, in Mayor Cashell’s perspective, that may be perceived as an attempt to level blame on him and the council that served when the debt was taken on,” she told Damon.
“My motivation was never to place blame,” she added, “it was my astonishment of just how dire the financial situation was.”
Councilmember Brekhus won’t place blame, but I will and often have.
Thanks to years of copious and copulative corporate welfare tax giveaways, Reno teeters on bankruptcy. Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank can foreclose anytime they want and force tax increases to reimburse them for hundreds of millions in debt.
I’ve recommended deeding over city hall and calling it even, but the value of the black tower won’t even cover the interest.
Councils under Cashell and egomaniacal Jeff Griffin before him rolled over and played dead for any out-of-town hustler in thousand-dollar suede shoes pitching some grandiose deal to raid the city treasury. (Union Pacific railroad trench, Cabela’s, Reno Aces, downtown corporate welfare redevelopment agencies: the list is both expensive and endless.)
This is a major reason why schools, parks, roads, police and fire protection have starved. Salcido blames Brekhus, not his patroon.
Mr. Salcido’s election literature states he wants “solutions for schools and traffic.” So does he want to unwind much of the corporate welfare Cashell caused? Go ask.
Bob Cashell is a born leader who started out humbly as manager of Bill and Effie’s truckstop and built it into Boomtown.
Alas and alack, once in power, stars got in his eyes. He walked into the oval office a Democrat and came out a Republican after facetime with King Ronald the Vague.
Bob just forgot where he came from and has no credibility in trying to return city hall to the days of disgraced City Manager Andrew Clinger, a Cashell hire. Clinger brought what insiders have told me is a typical anti-government approach to governance. (For instance, eroding civil service hiring protections and conducting testing which screens out minority police applicants.)
When Bob Cashell accuses Brekhus of causing dysfunction, he’s actually looking in a mirror.
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Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com/ E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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