Opinion: Yolanda Goldsack a "political appointee"

A reminder that all opinions are welcome on RB for DV. If you have a letter to the editor, please email it to me at ryan@ryanbalton.com. The opinions posted on RB for DV do not necessarily reflect my own.

Reading the news reports of Yolanda Goldsack's self-exoneration campaign, I find to my surprise that I and other members of the Pike County Democratic Committee (PCDC) are in agreement with much that she says. For example, members of the PCDC have said for years they doubted Mrs. Goldsack's qualifications to hold the job of Director of Elections (DOE). She says she had her doubts too.

Members of the PCDC have long complained of Mrs. Goldsack's inadequate training. She now confirms that with the benefit of but one day of training she was in fact inadequately trained.

Mrs. Goldsack points out that the County Board of Elections (BOE) was and is in violation of State Law. Members of the PCDC have made the same claim for years and particularly, as Mrs. Goldsack points out, with regard to purging voter rolls. There remain members of the PCDC who wonder even now why the voter rolls have not been purged again since 2007.

Mrs. Goldsack complains of being "muzzled" by the Pike County Commissioners. While this is doubtless true, it is her own fault. As a political appointee, Mrs. Goldsack seems to have viewed herself as a political operative with an obligation to obey the Party bosses. Hence being "muzzled" was acceptable, even required, if resented.

What Mrs. Goldsack did not appreciate was that despite being a political appointee, once in the chair of DOE, she was no longer a political operative, but a public servant. What she failed to understand was that her salary was paid not by Harry Forbes but instead by the taxpayers of Pike County. Had she realized this, she would have known that as a public servant she had an obligation to speak out when the electoral process in Pike County was threatened by anything or anyone.

Amazingly, Mrs. Goldsack and Commissioners Caridi and Forbes maintain that there were no proven, documented improprities during her tenure as DOE. This is not true; and is a claim contradicted by the public record.

Her husband's petition to be listed on the Democratic ballot in the most recent Primary Election was ruled by the Common Pleas Court to be flawed, and that Petition was set aside. Mrs. Goldsack, in violation of her responsibilities under State Law, accepted her husband's petition even as she rejected the petitions of others with similar flaws. In accepting her husband's petition, while rejecting those of others, Mrs. Goldsack displayed a favoritism which made whole and true the PCDC's long-time prediction of a "corrupting conflict of interest represented by her (Mrs. Goldsack's) presence as Director of Elections." I personally stand by that now self-evident assessment. For those interested, a copy of Judge Kameen's Order and Elizabeth Forrest's Petition to Set Aside are available at the PCDC website, www.pikecountydemocrats.org.

In her public statements Mrs. Goldsack has spent a lot of time vilifying Commissioner Forbes. Here too I find myself in agreement with her. I have long maintained that Yolanda Goldsack is not the problem, but instead a symptom of the problem. The real problem lies in the BOE and specifically, as most Democrats and many Republicans now agree, that Commissioner Forbes is the problem.

With Mrs. Goldsack's resignation; the County Commissioners having turned away $1,000,000 in federal aid; the County Auditors and Commissioners locked in what appears to be extended, expensive, tax-payer funded, hand-to-hand combat; and the Federal lawsuit brought by Dawn Metzger, it is past time for Commissioner Forbes to take a page from Yolanda Goldsack’s book—resign; and then go on a self-exoneration campaign. For it surely seems that the wheels are coming off Pike County government.

Julius Litman
Milford, PA