Remembering the past, wondering about the future

Dear editor:

I have read with interest various articles about Mr. T.A. (Tracy) Bass, who is challenging Ron Forster in the state representative race.

In The Catoosa County News March 16, 2004, Mr. Bass says he joined the race “primarily because he disagreed with Forster’s position that a referendum should be held before changing the Catoosa Board of Education elections to partisan elections.”

I question his reason for disagreeing with holding a referendum on something that so many people spoke out against. He goes on to say that “School board elections should be partisan, and Forster should have joined the Catoosa County legislative delegation and signed the proposed bill to change the elections.”

According to whom?

I applaud Mr. Forster for taking a stand on this issue even though he was in favor of it, but deciding that it would be better to let the people, whom he was elected to represent, have a say in this decision.

I became familiar with who Mr. Bass was in March of 1999 when I joined the group Citizens Against the Dump Expansion. Mr. Bass was, at that time, director/manager of the Catoosa County Landfill.

Mr. Bass resigned from that position on Jan. 4, 2002, after news was released of two separate incidents of leachate discharges at the Catoosa County Landfill. The United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated Catoosa County and Mr. Bass in regard to the leachate discharges.

Catoosa County agreed to plead guilty to specific violations of the Clean Water Act and paid a fine of $75,000 in an effort to avoid federal charges against the county and Mr. Bass. Part of the agreement mandated by the federal government was that Mr. Bass could no longer have any involvement in the management or supervision of landfill activities.

If Mr. Bass did not follow regulations mandated by federal law while director at the landfill, can we as voters expect him to make sound decisions concerning many matters affecting our lives as a state representative?

Carol Mason,

Ringgold