Dear Editor:

On August 13, 2013, an anonymous letter to the Washington Daily News Sound Off column asked who I am and why I have criticized the county’s program of economic development.

I am a resident and taxpayer in Beaufort County, NC.  My purpose in writing a series of letters to the editor of the Washington Daily News, as well as making several appearances before the county commissioners, has been to highlight the failure of the industrial park scheme and its Quick Start II flop, while pointing out the added tax burden created by locally funded matching grants and performance guarantees.  I had also intended to draw attention to the exorbitant salary, expenses and benefits wasted on an incompetent, self promoting economic development bureaucrat who refused to even make Beaufort County his home and, finally, to question the common sense and public spirit of the politicians and cronies who allowed and encouraged this waste to continue.  I had hoped my earlier letters to the editor would have made this quite clear: economic development in Beaufort County has been a harmful, Fool’s Errand from beginning to end.

Throughout this process I have identified myself and cited various public records as the foundation for my criticism. There has been no fact-based challenge to any statement that I have made in characterizing the county’s efforts at economic development as amateur, wasteful, ill conceived and without any quantifiable benefit to the taxpayers.  On the other hand, those who have criticized this position have used irrelevant data gathered after the money had been spent, along with imaginary research and nameless, unsigned letters to Sound Off.

Public debate requires a public presence by those of opposing views and I hold the anonymous grumblings and phony research of the supporters of economic development as evidence of their desire to distance themselves from direct criticism for the obvious costly failures and favoritism of the years between 2002 and 2012.

Warren Smith

Beaufort County