I attended the April 29th candidate forum at Community Hall and was surprised to read the Daily Bee’s account of it. It’s a textbook example of what freewheeling spin and distortion looks like.

I’ll point out just one example that jumped out at me, the Clagstone issue.

First, the reporter describes that proposal as “bizarrely” being opposed by candidates who are supporters of property rights and the timber industry. “Bizarrely?” Elected officials are expected to be good stewards of taxpayer money, and it does not include handing it out to select private companies.

Next came the distortion of Dan McDonald’s objection to the project. In the reporter’s words, “because public funds would be paid to Stimson not to develop a massive housing project.” What McDonald actually said was that it gave him heartburn to pay Stimson, a for-profit company, millions of taxpayer dollars for a conservation easement that provides no motorized access for the public, allows the company to retain ownership and logging privileges, and is additionally in draft form with no indication of how it will look in final form.

The reporter might have more properly applied the term “bizarre” to the notions by candidates who define property rights as paying millions of taxpayer money for property the taxpayer neither owns nor has unrestricted use of. Or how about the claim that no tax dollars are lost in the Clagstone issue because they come from federal sources. Federal taxes are not taxpayer funds?

EMMA CARTER

Sandpoint