The following letter is from Michael Hinchman, president of the Fairness in Taxes community group, regarding an April 7 candidates debate at the Ocean City Free Public Library.
Two men — incumbent Mayor Jay Gillian and challenger Ed Price — are running for mayor in the May 13 municipal election, but only Price attended the debate.
Read the counterpoint letter from Gillian campaign advisor Drew Fasy.
Below is the letter that was dropped off at Mayor Gillian’s office on Friday, April 4 prior to the scheduled “debate” on Monday, April 7 with challenger Ed Price.
Subsequently on Tuesday, April 8, I spoke to Mr. (Drew) Fasy, the mayor’s campaign manager, asking the mayor to reschedule any time he wanted. Mr. Fasy said the mayor wanted to do only the Ocean City Community Association and the Democrat/Republican forums.
It is abundantly clear the mayor did not want to debate Mr. Price — just say the truth — time and place did not matter.
The next chapter in this unfortunate game of tag was Jim Tweed’s. He was instrumental in organizing both the April 7 and April 14 events, and he asked Ocean City Business Administrator Mike Dattilo on what grounds the April 7 Q-and-A would not be telecast on the city’s public access channel.
Mr. Dattilo responded by email to Jim Tweed with the adopted policy for Government Access Channel Section D-1-II-a stipulates that: “All properly registered candidates shall have an equal opportunity to participate.” In my judgment (Mr. Dattilo’s) that does not seem to be the case in Monday evening’s event.
The mayor was given every opportunity to participate at any other time and his campaign manager admitted the Mayor just didn’t want to do it. I think that makes it very clear the mayor was given every opportunity but declined for his own reasons. In addition, did Mr. Dattilo do any diligence by contacting mayor’s campaign manager.
One interesting bit of conjecture on my part was citing the section in the policy for Government Access Channel seems that Mr. Dattilo sought Solicitor Dorothy McCrosson’s input on this matter. She being the former campaign manager in the mayor’s first race should have recused herself, if I am correct, because of a conflict.
The underside of America’s Greatest Resort just doesn’t look so great. All I ask for is a level playing field. We had joint sponsorship with the Sentinel of our April 7 and April 14 events and left the questions solely up to two professional journalists.
Michael Hinchman
President
Fairness in Taxes
