Toxic Campaigning 3.0: My response to a reporter's attack on committee members

Here we go again with election-time muckraking by yellow journalist and hypocrite extraordinaire Mr. B.C. Kowalski. This time he is attacking citizen members of a Kronenwetter Administrative Policy Committee for making a simple and very common procedural mistake.

Kowalski is quick to jump on the "illegal"claim, but I doubt  that he can interpret law any better than he can write an unbiased article. So, unless he has a qualified legal opinion,or case law to back up his claim, I wouldn't take his word for anything. I would preface his claim with the word "allegedly" which any reputable reporter would have done to begin with.

In his perpetual zeal to paint this Village in a negative light, Kowalski comes on like journalistic commando  who just cracked a case, with his headline - “Kronenwetter committee fails to disclose administrator candidate, but we found out who it is”. Yes, outstanding investigative reporting -“we found out” alright, but it was not by journalistic detective work. Kowalsi simply requested the names, and the interim administrator provided them.  I see nothing illegal,no harm, no wicked intent, no "failure" of any kind..

So  then, what is Kowalski's problem? Why would he treat this like a federal case, other than to  sucker in more subscribers, generally embarrass the Village, and to berate citizen volunteers on a committee who are not even expected to know details of the law that they are working under? The committee simply followed a procedure that former Village Administrator Downey established years ago. Now that Downey is gone, Kowalski is suddenly on the war path to nit-pick innocent volunteers for doing something commonly done before. What is he even trying to accomplish? 

I see this sensationalizing of a human mistake made by people doing the best they can, as yet another attempt by a biased reporter to stir up election-time mud slinging in some misguided effort to help candidates Voll, Vedvic, and Eiden gain a few much needed votes. In other words - using "news" articles as weapons and tools to manipulate public opinion  in a predetermined direction for political purposes..

Kowalski's latest antic also has the effect of discouraging any good person in the village from  volunteering to serve their community. Who would ever want to be put under a microscope like this by any clown with a keyboard and an internet connection?

Where was Journalist Kowalski for the past several years when a number of Village officials were involved and took part in un-posted meetings and other activities much more “illegal” than the issue that he now raises?

Where was he to report on issues and contention involving the Village Attorney's questionable performance? Or to report on criminal allegations currently under investigation, relating to document alteration and forgery by Village employees?

Where is he to report on the current scandal of misrepresentation, and false pretexts surrounding the “Voting Committee” and the “Candidates' Forum”? Or candidate Alex Vedvic obtaining and disseminating privacy-protected closed session documents; isn't that illegal? It certainly is not the kind of "ethics" that I would want in a trustee.

Where was Kowalski to report on Chris Voll, Dan Lesniak, and Richard Downey's conspiratorial act of retaliation against someone for filing ethics complaints against Voll's friends? As I told these three, this  would be a felony rap.

Most importantly, why does Kowalski turn a blind eye to Kronenwetter's elephant in the living room, which is Chris Voll's consistent failure as Village President to take a leadership roll in any of the above? As I see it, Voll has rarely done anything noteworthy about anything important, other than to avoid, ignore, or cover up such situations. This by itself is a violation of state statute.

  Kowalski 's reporting is nowhere to be found on any of these newsworthy issues.Yet he delights in pounding a few citizen committee members trying to do a job.

It is obvious to me that we are seeing selective reporting based on the reporter's personal political affiliations, as well as an unacceptable bias when he does decide to write. This is more commonly known as a "political hack".

It is bad enough that we have characters like Tony Daino engaging in low-life personal attacks to help the Voll/Vedvic political campaigns. Now we have Kowalski plying his trade as well with his junk reporting. Who would ever have thought that things would sink to this level over a local election?

As chairman of APC (the committee targeted by Kowalski), I know these members and I know the work they have done in the past few months. They are good people who don't need this kind of  politically based harassment, and neither does the rest of the Village.