Kim Learnard’s recent letter to the editor reveals that she might be an expert engineer, but she is certainly no legal scholar.
The councilwoman’s impassioned plea that the Fayette County Commission and Board of Education no longer defend the county from the NAACP’s attack on our character misses the mark in several areas. One of the most glaring is that the NAACP initiated the lawsuit, it was not the commissioners or school board members.
Yes, it is often expensive to defend our rights, and no one is happy when those costs start to mount (excepting perhaps, the attorneys involved).
However, for the county to capitulate on a case that it should win, would result in the loss of an additional $750,000 reimbursement of NAACP legal fees.
From an economic standpoint alone, citizens would be better served to continue defending our rights all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.
The quickest and most appropriate way to end the expense is for the NAACP to withdraw its unfounded lawsuit.
Moreover, while Learnard laments the fact that attorneys are paid at a much higher rate than teachers, understand that the school board has only incurred average annual defense expenses of .05 percent of its annual budget — that’s right, five one-hundredths of one percent.
In fact, the average annual defense costs per taxpayer by both boards combined is less than $2 per year. Councilwoman Learnard may be willing to sell her reputation for $2 a year, but I, and the overwhelming majority of Fayette’s good citizens of all races, certainly are not.
Even more important than economic concerns is the imperative that the two boards continue to defend citizens and prove to the entire country that Fayette County is open, inclusive, and fair to all its citizens.
We neither condone nor practice political campaigns that are characterized by “subtle and overt racial appeals” or employ “tactics that impair black electoral success” as the NAACP alleges.
The March 23 bench trial will demonstrate that the real basis of the lawsuit has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with political affiliation.
Pota Coston didn’t win election in District 5 because she was black; she won because she had a capital “D” behind her name on the ballot.
If Ms. Coston were white, she would still have won over a black Republican candidate in that gerrymandered district.
And does anyone really believe that Fayette voters outside District 5 would have elected an admitted non-Christian member of the Free Thought Society to our school board?
Ms. Learnard might truly be happy that Ms. Coston and Mr. Presberg were elected to their boards, and she is certainly entitled to her opinion that “an at-large voting system could not have yielded any better.” But I respectfully disagree.
Ms. Coston’s opponent was the incumbent commissioner who had served with integrity and honesty; a man who treated everyone with respect and dignity. He deserved to be re-elected, and he would have received my vote.
Unfortunately, the right to express myself at the ballot box there was taken away, as it was for 80 percent of all Fayette County residents.
It is time that people stop bowing at the altar of political correctness, and stand up to those who have no shame in unjustifiably playing the race card.
Scott Fabricius
Chairman, Fayette County Republican Party
Fayetteville, Ga.
