The Martin Chronicles just loves the internet. It provides a treasure trove of information that proves history provides the strangest twists and turns. “I can’t believe all this stuff is going on” is a quote from who then-Enquirer reporter Patrick Crowley described as “Villa Hills resident Mike Martin" in the Saturday, December 30, 2000 article Crowley wrote “Turmoil Engulfs Villa Hills”.
Martin was expressing shock that he was unable to attend a press conference held by then-Villa Hills Mayor Steve Clark. Clark’s press conference was a “media only” event held to explain his firings of two city employees. The firings led to the hiring of Special Counsel Phil Taliaferro and the eventual resignation of Mayor Steve Clark.
Flash forward more than a decade. Villa Hills is once again engulfed in turmoil. Who is the person responsible for the turmoil this time around? You guessed it. The same fellow quoted in the Patrick Crowley article, now-Villa Hills Mayor Mike Martin. As Edgar Bergen’s (Yup, the father of TV’s Murphy Brown) wooden-headed dummy Mortimer Snerd used to say, “Who’d have thunk it”?
Yes, Villa Hills is once again engulfed in turmoil. No, Martin hasn’t fired any city employees. He’s just made their lives a living hell. Martin has created an environment so bad that one lawsuit has been filed along with multiple complaints. The Martin Chronicles has also heard that more lawsuits and complaints may be in the pipeline. Maybe the Tea Partiers, Liberty Leaguers, Civic Clubbers and other tri-cornered hat wearing pinheads are happy. But a lot of other people are very upset.
Employee unrest is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. In a year punctuated by the inability to get a budget passed, no financial reporting, the decimation of the police department, cronyism, endless lying, destruction of city property, admitted Open Meetings violations, the abject failure to fill Open Records requests and the hiring of Phil Taliaferro to serve as Special Counsel yet again, Mike Martin has sparked a controversy that could eclipse anything Steve Clark ever dreamed of by the, at best wrong-headed, at worst criminal, burning of city documents.
How can Martin cry that he came to office left with not even a paperclip or a Post-It Note and then decide to burn “old payroll records” and a large volume of other documents in the middle of a serious lawsuit and pending Open Records requests? Despite Councilman Mike Pope’s foolish e-mail attempt to minimize the crisis, the flame ordered by Villa Hills’ version of the wooden-headed Mortimer Snerd threatens to consume not only him, but the city attorney and six councilmen and, finally, a few employees. All could be held responsible if it is determined that Martin improperly destroyed city documents while they did nothing.
Everything old is new again. Past is prologue. What goes around comes around. We can’t believe all this stuff is going on.
