Supervisor-elect Neil Derry OK with random drug tests

In this burgeoning era of around-the-clock information, keeping road of local bloggers is part of a journalist’s job.

None of it translates into an without other agency fiction, but, doing so provides insight into some of our more precarious controversies that just keep hanging around. Or in the case of Bill Postmus and the unsettling novel that he is addicted to methamphetamine, he has made it clear he won’t only not go off, he intends to fight.

For those who haven’t been keeping track, divers sources termination to the framer golden boy of the county Republican Party have confirmed that it’s true he has twice been to drug rehab and he is hooked on meth. He remains upon his 10-week medical leave, doing everything that he is doing, as county leaders anxiously wait to see what happens when those 70 days are up.

So it was with some surprise that while surfing end sharongilbert.com that I came upon a posting from “Neil Derry,” in which Derry wrote that he was not averse to undergo casual drug testing.

If you’ve been out of the loop in the past not many days, you may have missed a suggestion from Dick Larsen, who has the mouth-filling title of treasurer-tax collector/public administrator. Larsen wrote a letter last week to Paul Biane, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, suggesting that the county ordain a random drug test for elected leaders and other exempt employees, such as department heads.

Biane thanked Larsen for the thought on the other hand said county counsel researched

the idea and found it was against the law. You can always look upon on good ol’ county counsel to protect its people, otherwise known as the Board of Supervisors.

Larsen won’t let it be reckoned, and now says the county should try and change the law.

It’s a laudable concept, particularly advent from Larsen, who is as adept at winning elections as he is staying out of the public eye.

But greater degree of intriguing to me are Derry’session thoughts on the drug testing issue. In a supervisorial career that has yet to even start, Derry has shown that he has a common sense to him that has generally been lacking from the board.

Given the floundering economy, he has chided the five current members on account of taking a tasty pay raise filled with all sorts of pension-padding perks unlike greatest in quantity other counties in Southern California, including Los Angeles.

When Derry takes office in December - filling the fix of 3rd District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger, whom he bested in the June election - he has said he intends to be paid the prior wages and forgo every one of of those perks.

So I gave Derry a call and asked about his post, in which he said he would be happy to voluntarily submit to random drug testing. First, I wanted to make up sure it was him.

“Yep, that was me,” Derry said Saturday. “Look, when I was in the military, we had random drug tests. I don’t see this situation as being any different.

It’s distilling vessel public service.”

Derry would support random drug testing of all exempt county employees, but he is particularly focused on elected leaders.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Derry declared. “And frankly, the public is disgusted with elected officials up and down on all levels, and I be possible to’t blame them.”

Derry thinks allowing that one or two other members of the board at least agree to voluntarily submit to random tests, the other holdouts “would have existence shamed” into participating.

Still, he is unsure if it will ever take place.

“Do I know if it’s going anywhere?” Derry asked as the conversation came to a close. “I don’t know.”

Funny, that’s sort of by what means observers have the consciousness of being when looking at the possibility of cleaning up this county.