(A News and Sentinel Op-Ed - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

With everything going on at the federal and state levels of government so far this year and the impact those things are having on my day-to-day life, I have so far chosen to stay out of local political skirmishes, for the most part. Many incredible voices more powerful than mine have risen to address these local issues and I really felt no need to weigh in. I no longer feel I can sit it out and feel compelled to add my voice to that powerful chorus.

I’m a resident of Parkersburg City Council District 6 and therefore a constituent of Council President Mike Reynolds. I’ve tried to get along with Mike. I respected him for coming to my door during the election even when his general election opponent’s sign was in my yard. I engaged him when I had some garbage collection issues and he was responsive. I appreciated it when he said, after the city lost a lawsuit to myself and a co-plaintiff on its unconstitutional prayer invocation practice at public meetings, that the Council just needs to get down to business when it meets and not mess with invocations.

Then I saw Mike arbitrarily and capriciously remove Wendy Tuck, councilwoman for Parkersburg City Council District 4, from committee assignments and publicly castigate her. Wendy is a devoted public servant who works tirelessly and with compassion and integrity in the service of her constituents and the city as a whole. I’ve known Wendy for about a decade and know with absolute certainty that Wendy is a consensus-builder and peacemaker who listens to understand and genuinely puts others’ needs and desires above her own. If only every public servant were as sincere in their caring and empathy and willingness to help without expecting anything in return.

What’s worse, Mike didn’t even have the wherewithal to face Wendy as he removed her from committee assignments or to respond to her face-to-face about things he alleged publicly and the insults he hurled from a keyboard. That’s pure cowardice. Witnessing all this, my wife and I have signed a petition for the recall of Mike Reynolds. I respect the will of the voters and would only ever sign such a petition under what I consider dire conditions. I feel Mike’s cowardly abuse of power and animosity toward an exceptional fellow councilmember justifies my signature.

All of this arose from, or at least in conjunction with, Parkersburg City Council’s decision to limit comments offered during public forum to subjects on the agenda only. While my understanding is that lawmaking bodies may legally set such restrictions on public engagement during meetings, doing so is still anti-democratic. It creates a patrician vs. plebeian antagonistic atmosphere at meetings where people take time out of their busy and stressful lives to engage their local government.

Speaking of patrician-like behavior, I was absolutely disgusted by a recent op-ed in the News & Sentinel by Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce. The words “who does he think he is” came to mind after almost every sentence as I read it. A sitting mayor who felt it appropriate to make a tongue-in-cheek reference to lynching from the dais during a public meeting had the audacity to lecture this community about personal responsibility and an alleged decline in general morality. I had to wonder if the remarks pertaining to a decline in general morality weren’t in reference to my successful prayer suit against the city or the backlash to the city’s refusal to pass a non-discrimination ordinance in 2017 that would have protected city inhabitants from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, veterans’ status and genetic information.

Whether the mayor considers it “moral” or not, this time of year three years ago Federal District Court Judge for the Southern District of West Virgina, Thomas Copenhaver Jr., who turned 97 years old that year and was appointed to the court by President Gerald Ford, handed down a 30-page ruling that was a master class in constitutional jurisprudence. Parkersburg also scores a failing 26/100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index every year, though the mayor has (immorally) declared he doesn’t care.

Some will argue that the HRC MEI score is irrelevant following a 2020 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia) but as HRC points out on its website, “On June 15, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are prohibited under federal sex-based employment protections. Nevertheless, it is imperative that localities continue enacting explicitly LGBTQ+-inclusive comprehensive non-discrimination laws since it will likely take additional litigation for Bostock to be fully applied to all sex-based protections under existing federal civil rights law. Moreover, federal law currently lacks sex-based protections in numerous key areas of life, including public spaces and services. Lastly, there are many invaluable benefits to localizing inclusive protections even when they exist on higher levels of government.”

We deserve better municipal leadership, Parkersburg. We need more leaders like Wendy Tuck. Let’s do better together.

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Eric Engle is a resident of Parkersburg.