As The Commissioner Fouls It Away ________________________________________________________________ He was so right there. Why did Fayette County Commissioner Vince Zapotosky have to ruin his chance to get out of the situation more gracefully, so to speak? By minimizing the fact that he put the county at risk in a few big ways -- i.e.,  by delaying for 5 months the disclosure of how a little under $15,000 in campaign money was spent between late October and late November last year -- Zapotosky took accountability and first said there was no excuse for his late filing. Then he ruined it by saying in the paper that a lot of political candidates fail to file their mandatory campaign finance reports as scheduled. Why did he have to say something that could be so easily proven to be inaccurate and ruin his chance to get out of the situation with more grace? Why did he have to say something like that to the paper to minimize and dismiss his late filing as a common occurrence? As previously stated in Rants, Fayette County elections staff said loudly and clearly Monday that no other elected official has been more than a few days late with financial reports, at least in the past 12 years. One isn't "a lot of people."   Where is it tolerated, geographically speaking, in this age, when voters or taxpayers too mad or indifferent to vote have rights to information contained in public documents in a timely fashion? 5 months? Where does this happen often? Electronic campaign expense reporting is required for judicial candidates and offices higher in government level than commissioner, so those all have to be completed and timely filed. This is where this happens a lot? Electronic filing? Must be. Sure isn't happening "a lot" with campaign expense reports filed with the county. Zapotosky's released campaign expenses revealed no shockers. It was, as expected, a pretty typical kind of campaign expense list. Only 7 distinct kinds of expenses. A list that should have taken no more than a minute to reproduce after canceled checks and recepits were said to have been lost last fall. Not that this column wants to bust balls over this. The "a lot of people do this" take really ruined Zapotosky's moment and surprised even a few charter members of his fan club. If reader mail here is any indication, his quote dropped more than a few mouths this morning reading the paper. We knew it wasn't so. jt 22 May 12 copyright protected Homepage                                           Rants&Raves