What Jamieson Asks For Has Been Done, Repeatedly

WC BOS Supervisor Richard “Wriggly Richie” Jamieson had a full-on meltdown Tuesday night (11/19) in response to the outpouring of community backlash to his continued one-man crusade to take control of Samuels Library against the will of the people of Warren County.

In his 8-minute-long unhinged tirade, consisting mainly of nonsensical word salad, he did say something actually worth noting:

“If you want to effectively oppose this policy proposal, I suggest you address its actual content prior to enduring the public hearing. Show where the financial data is wrong. Point out errors in the event timeline. Challenge the assessment that the public funding and public governance are misaligned.”

Because here’s the thing. This bizarre idea that somehow the library is mismanaged and/or mishandling funds has been a weird personal hobby-horse of his for over a year. A weird hobby horse, which really only he has been complaining about in an ongoing public capacity, although it seems some of his colleagues on the Board are willing to silently support his aggressive misrepresentations as a kind of Trojan Horse in order to advance their long-term vendetta against the Library. (After all, Cook, Butler, and Stanmeyer were all directly involved with the actions of the anti-library CUS group last year, as was Rich himself.)

But ultimately, the reason he’s the only one openly complaining about this is because the facts simply don’t support his position at all.

Now, during that time, many people have done exactly what he is requesting here and very clearly and specifically addressed the contents of his concerns. Over and over again, experts, people who specialize in these topics, a former county supervisor, members of library staff, and its board of trustees have explained to our pal Wriggly Richie point-by-point that he is simply — wrong.

The conclusion of every one of these responses: his numbers don’t add up, and his understanding of how these things work is rudimentary at best.

Here is a list of every time someone has patiently and kindly explained to Rich why his math doesn’t add up, starting with letters to the editor in this very publication:

• Jun 12, 2023: Sonja Carlborg, former library board trustee and WC taxpayer, debunks claims about salary and process;
• Aug 8, 2023: Eileen Grady, interim library director, addressed questions about the library finances/MOA;
• Aug 23, 2023: Sonja Carlborg again debunks the more recent claims with plenty of facts and figures to back it up;
• Sep 10, 2023: this author (Bridget Randolph) broke down why the proposal Rich was such a fan of at the time actually would cost the county more money than agreeing to the (at the time proposed) MOA keeping the library structure as is.

There were also the countless hours that library staff and trustees have spent presenting to the BOS over the last year and a half, including these notable occurrences since his election:

• Jan 30, 2024: Interim Director Eileen Grady and Board of Trustees President Melody Hotek answered detailed questions from the supervisors about the library’s financial status, accounts, and funding parameters;
• Oct 29, 2024: SPL trustees appeared at yet another BOS “work session” and provided plenty of facts and figures addressing Richie’s specific questions and concerns;
• Nov 6, 2024: Tony Carter, former five-term county supervisor, addressed a number of concerns raised by Rich during a public comment session, including those related to the building lease, MOA, the library endowment fund and concerns regarding budgetary oversight.

Ol’ Wriggly was also invited multiple times, even prior to his election as a public official but also since then, to come to library board meetings and/or to set up a private meeting with the Library Treasurer, and get all his questions answered. To my knowledge, he never took anyone up on those offers.

Given this, is it any wonder if people have grown a little weary of his continuing demand that we respond to his delusional “facts and figures”?

Yet still, he continues to bang this drum, a crazed lone figure, babbling about fake news and false narratives (persecution complex much?) from his Supervisor’s bench, taking a stand – for what? His constituents certainly didn’t ask him to.

C. S. Lewis, the well known Christian academic whom our friend Wriggly Rich is no doubt familiar with as a good TradCath, once pointed out that we can’t really talk about Jesus as being “just” a good man. Either his claim to be the Son of God is true or false. If it’s false, he either knows it is false or he doesn’t. If he knows, he’s a liar, and if he doesn’t, he’s a lunatic.

We are faced with a similar trilemma here.

Either Richie’s claims of financial mismanagement and bad governance by the library are true, or they are false. We know they are false because they have been debunked over and over. So what we are left with is the question: does Rich know they are false, or not?

He’s very proud of his doctorate (in Engineering, it should be noted, not in anything relevant to this topic). So, we must assume him to be an intelligent man. But even an intelligent man can be blinded by what he wants to see. We probably can’t know for sure whether he’s lying about his so-called “facts” or just too stupid or egotistical to realize that he’s wrong. (That’s just logic, Richie. Like you asked for in your little speech on Tuesday. It’s called a syllogism, and I learned about it at Christendom, where your daughter also went to school.)

Either way, we know what this is actually about and why he won’t just give it up in the face of everyone, proving just how wrong he is.

Because despite bragging that: “I wrote six published letters to the editor, specifically about the misalignment between public funding and private governance of Samuels Library” in this latest rant, his first three letters to the editor of the Royal Examiner on the subject of the library (dated June 8, 2023, Jul 10, 2023 and Jul 26, 2023 respectively) make it clear that his actual issue with the library is the presence of LGBTQ representation on its shelves.

He shifted his focus to be solely about “financial mismanagement” as a transparent personal agenda-driven tactic once it became clear that the rampant homophobia, lies about pornography and tired old rage-baiting wasn’t working.

So no, Richard. We don’t have to keep responding in good faith to an argument you never intended to have. Thank you for making it clear just how much contempt you have for the people of this community that you think we’re too dumb to notice your frankly clumsy tactics of “abstraction and distraction”. Thank you for yet again publicly hinting that there may be no depth you wouldn’t stoop to, no dishonesty too shady, no tactic too unethical to consider, to progress your deeply unwelcome personal religious agenda on a county that never invited you or your fellow extremists here.

To update a quote from the play “A Man For All Seasons,” spoken to a similarly untrustworthy man named (appropriately) Richard Rich: “For a Library? Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world; but for a Library?!?”

Thomas More would be disappointed.

Bridget Randolph
Brooklyn, NY

(long-time county resident and Christendom College alumni)

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