Last week, I wrote about the outrageous behavior of a certain Republican member of the Erie County Council of Pennsylvania, Ebert G. Beeman. Tonight, I present the outrageous behavior of another member of the Erie County Council, Joe Giles, a Democrat.
Unlike Beeman, Giles has served on the County Council for many years, and he has done some very good things. For example, he supported the initiative to make discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation illegal. (I actually went to a couple of County Council public meetings on this--they were overflowing with wingnuts, but the good guys prevailed.)
However, the accounts in the Erie Times-News of a couple of recent antics have caused some eyebrows to be raised. More after the orange doodle-thingie...
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Joe Giles has been on the Erie County Council for more than 30 years now. During most of that time, he has behaved more or less in a reasonable way. From the Democratic point of view, he has done much good. Supporting the anti-LGBT discrimination law for Erie County is one example. He has become one of those pols who can more or less expect re-election no matter what; in his last re-election, he didn't even have an opponent. It's perhaps this air of invulnerability that has sparked his recent pattern of erratic behavior.
This item is from the Erie Times-News, November 6, 2011:
At about 3 a.m. on Aug. 8, a bluish-silver SUV stopped next to a used-car lot at East 12th and German streets, where the windows of two vehicles had just been smashed.
The passenger in the SUV leaned out its window and, according to a witness, yelled "I got you now" toward the lot.
The SUV drove off, only to be pulled over by Erie police about five minutes later on East 21st Street, between German and Parade streets.
The passenger, police said, was a man with a bleeding hand -- the same man witnesses said vandalized the cars.
Police filed three misdemeanor charges, including criminal mischief, against the SUV's passenger, Juan C. Rodriguez, then 19. Rodriguez was out on bond, awaiting sentencing for five house burglaries in 2010.
The driver of the SUV was Joe Giles, 68, an Erie County councilman for 31 years.
Giles claimed he did not see what Rodriguez was doing, and had no knowledge of his actions. While Rodriguez faces charges for vandalism, Giles was not charged. There is an almost Romney-like weirdness to Giles' account of what happened. It's not credible; there are multiple inconsistencies. I'm not the sort who would want to pry into the lives of public officials, but why would someone in his position be driving around at 3:00 AM on a Monday with a felon with a bleeding hand? And why did it take three months for Giles' involvement in this incident to come to light?
Well, if that weren't enough, here's another item from the Times-News, dated November 12, 2011:
Erie County Councilman Joe Giles has relinquished a key that gave him access to the Erie County Sheriff's Office at the County Courthouse after Giles took a shower in a women's locker room there on Oct. 16 -- and steam from the shower set off a fire alarm.
The incident happened on a Sunday afternoon, while the courthouse was closed to the public, and Sheriff Bob Merski and others told the Times-News they had no idea Giles had access to the Sheriff's Office.
City of Erie firefighters, sheriff's deputies and county maintenance supervisors were summoned to the courthouse that afternoon when the alarm went off.
It turns out that Giles had a master key that made all rooms in the Courthouse accessible. He has since given it up. One has to wonder, though, to what use he may have used his unlimited access while he had it, beside the showers in the Sheriff's Office. Despite the fact that he lives less than 3/4 of a mile away from the Courthouse, he says he chose to shower in the Sheriff''s Office for the sake of "convenience," in order to "freshen up" before a social function that afternoon. But why the heck did he use the women's shower?
It seems to me that Giles' recent strange behavior could be explained in one of two ways. First, it could be that he's always done stuff like this, but he'd never been caught before. After all, he had that master key for 20 years. The other possibility is that we're seeing the erratic behavior of a late-career politician. (I'm thinking of New Mexico Senator Pete Dominici arriving for work in his PJs.) In either case, I think it's probably time for Giles to consider retirement.
I'm also a bit disturbed by the fact that Giles has been able to evade any kind of charge for his misbehavior, but I chalk that up to chumminess between County Council and law enforcement. (On the other hand, Ebert Beeman, my Republican example from last week, clearly lacks this level of chumminess, having spent a week in the slammer).
So, have any of your local pols done anything outrageous lately?
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