To those who are distressed that the county commissioners changed course and decided that maintaining a viable local airport is a tool for business growth, take heart: If I read the news correctly, the money that would have come to the county may go instead to help get Congress out of the ditch it plowed for itself with the infamous sequestration vote.
Congress is telling the Federal Aviation Administration that it's OK to use airport improvement money to pay salaries to air traffic controllers.
It's just like the ill-advised practice of local government to use a surplus from this year - what is called one-time money - to pay for teacher salaries. Who are you going to rob in next year's budget?
Just about everybody except a couple of Tea Party sycophants in the House now acknowledge that the whole sequestration charade was a bad idea. What they will never agree on is whose idea it was.
Regressives (I can't call them conservatives because they aren't saving anything) point the finger at President Obama.
Obama is guilty of believing that even the most entrenched, intransigent, bull-headed Tea Party type was too smart to let sequestration happen. He gave them too much credit, and he has to account for that. It won't happen again - unless the Republicans are right in saying that the President plays to the crowd too much and then can't back up his own words.
For example, did Syrians cross the red line with chemical warfare, or does Obama need more proof? Or both? Or is he sorry he ever brought it up, like President Bush being photographed with a "Mission Accomplished" sign on a ship before another several thousand American troops were killed and maimed in Iraq, not to mention thousands of civilian casualties.
Less talk and perhaps even less action when it comes to fiddling around with other countries' politics might be in order, but that's a hard call in this age of instant info and demand for answers now.
As a reporter, I was chagrined to hear some of the questions being posed on air by journalists in the chaotic hours following the Boston bombing.
They demanded answers before the echoes of the explosions had faded.
Don't tell me it's their dedication to public service, either. It's about ratings, which is about money, and a little bit about bragging rights, which is about ego.
Ratchet things down a little, and get it right. Try to get it first, but don't throw gas on a fire.
Getting back to the airport issue: That whole controversy was blown out of proportion when the previous board, of which I was a member, acted to move the runway and extend it, rather than shut the airport down for the better part of a year.
Misinformation and lies were tossed out there by some news media in the name of free flow of information: It is not in the public interest to scare people with totally unfounded stories about terrorists using the new facility, planes dumping fuel on houses during landing, or huge increases in danger levels both from additional air traffic and car traffic on nearby roads.
Well-researched information about each of those concerns was available, but virtually ignored by both the news media and the public. Hysterical residents near the airport were their own worst enemies, and did more to damage property values around them than the airport work as proposed.
But the worst offenders were those who knew the info was wrong, but found it a convenient tool for a political agenda.
Similar tactics were used to muddy the dialog about having five commissioners by district, which has turned out to be a mess.
Several critics of the airport plan then are now commissioners, and have changed their minds about the need for airport runway improvements.
Just exercising freedom of speech is not enough. Restraint and responsibility are important, too.
Another issue hanging fire - no pun intended - is the agreement between Carroll County and Frederick County on building and operating a waste-to-energy plant in Frederick County.
If turning yard waste and kitchen food scraps into compost is a good example of reduce and reuse, how can it not be good to take what cannot be composted and turn it into electrical power, instead of using high carbon fuels like coal and oil to do the same job?
It'll be interesting to see what this board of commissioners decides, now that they have both the responsibility and the opportunity to do something right, even if the real pollution has been in the information flow.
