Don't you dare ask Commissioner Wendland about Oil and Gas Exploration in Hill County

The Hill County Commissioners held a county officials meeting Thursday morning where the Department heads were told things don’t look to rosy financially for this next year. Each was asked to tighten up where they could and was warned that there was no extra money to be had. Basically the meeting continued along the “gloom and doom” theme and the commissioners said they could find no extra money for this year.

What I find ironic is that when one of the Department Heads started asking about what the commissioners could do to expand oil and gas exploration and thus our local county revenue Commissioner Mike Wendland went into a wacky tirade about “crime and corruption” that follows the drilling industry. We were told Wendland said “We can’t have that in our community”

I find it very interesting that we still have a commissioner that doesn’t remember the “good old days” when oil and gas revenues provided the bulk of our county budget. What would the county currently do without the tax revenues generated by those “scourges of corruption” like Devon Energy, Klabzuba Oil, Ocean Energy and etc? Or for that matter even side-sector beneficiaries of the industry like Patrick Excavating and competitors or the building contractors that generate tens of thousands of dollars worth of business in the oil and gas field every year?

Leave it to Commissioner Mike Wendland to again spout off something bizarre like he is becoming noted for at most public meetings. This guy comes off as a very angry person that always looks at every topic with a negative outlook in every meeting we ever hear anything about. Instead of worrying about all this theoretical nonsense the Commissioners should have learned their lesson after we lost the new Prison to Shelby because of a few  nay-sayers like Wendland that thought the prison too would bring that “corruption" to Hill County. Funny thing is Shelby looks like a boom town to me and I am yet to find that “seedy” element when I visit their town.

It is readily apparent to me that now that Commissioner Anderson is gone I am going to have to dust off my Monkey Suit for the new Negative Mike Monkey.