Mr. Lockwood has a short video posted to his social media account. In it he claims that the raises the elected commissioners received, after successfully trimming tons of waste from the budget, are out of line with the average pay of an Idaho commissioner. In fact, he claims the new salary of the commissioners is about double what it should be. There’s just one glaring problem: The $39,000 and change Mr. Lockwood cites as the average pay rate is for either a part-time commissioner, or for commissioners who oversee counties significantly smaller than Bonner County.

Dan McDonald has done an outstanding job as commissioner. The board refused the pay increases until they were certain that the rest of our fiscal house was in order, and only then did they accept the recommendations made by an outside third party who provided them a wage study outlining where pay for elected officials as well as county employees should be. They made the pay increases transparently, taking the salary recommendations made to them only after successfully bringing county expenditures back in line with our revenue stream.

Mr. Lockwood either doesn’t do his homework, or he’s intentionally trying to mislead us, begging the questions: What else is Mr. Lockwood misleading us about? And is that what we can expect were he to be elected to office?

I’m not taking that chance. Please join me in voting to re-elect Dan McDonald.

VICTORIA ZEISCHEGG

Sandpoint