Joe Venosa has often stood at the podium during public comments to criticize Wicomico County government. Now he has decided to enter the race for District 7. In this excerpt from this week's Delmarva Today Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with him about his campaign and the issues before the county. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM.
RUSH: Joe Venosa can often be seen delivering sharply worded remarks before the Wicomico County Council. But now he has decided to jump to the other side of the lectern running as an independent for district seven. This is Don Rush. His democratic opponent is Megan Outten, who was appointed to the Salisbury City Council and then left in a fail bid for mayor. Venosa is also an associate professor of history at Salisbury University. In this excerpt from this Friday's Delmarva Today, we sat down and talked with him about his candidacy and the issues facing the county.
VENOSA: Well, I have been very involved, as you've said, in local government for quite a few years. I attend almost all county council meetings and about half the city council meetings as well. Being a professor of history, I've been particularly fascinated by politics in general, and especially in the context of local government where I think things are actually much more meaningful and have an effect on our everyday lives. And so being a parent who's lived in the neighborhoods and seeing these things, it's given me more motivation and really more of a sense of urgency to step in to what I feel is I think, a very large set of challenges that our county is facing.
RUSH: Why do you think it's urgent?
VENOSA: Well, I think we have some serious institutional and economic (and to some extent) cultural challenges. Wicomico County is a very big diverse county in terms of lifestyle, backgrounds, racial groups, and yet I would argue, and I think others would too, that there is a sense that we've become very disjointed, not only in our political worldviews, but in our lifestyles. Somebody who lives in the Camden neighborhood in my district, district seven versus maybe somebody who's out in Parsonsburg, we're in the same county, but to some extent, I feel like there are people who operate in different realities, and I don't think that's good for the larger sense of community.
RUSH: Aside from the general issues, we also talked about his call for ethics reform, and he focused on the county executive position, now occupied by incumbent Julie Giordano.
VENOSA: A lot of my concern is what happens in the executive office. Now, again, for some context, I was the chairman of the "Vote yes on question A" campaign from two years ago in which 48% of the county, more or less voted to abolish the executive position. I think a lot of people were at the point where they wanted to get rid of the position because it was created 20 years ago in such a broad, haphazard way where there are these massive gaps in the law, in ethics, in what the executive's office can do as far as hiring, firing, and a lot of my concern with ethical issues in the need for reform emanates from the executive office and other council members will tell you, ever since the executive office was created, there have been attempts to regulate it and put some guardrails on it. I think more guardrails are needed, especially now from what we've seen of the current executive and her actions. And I think when we look at it from that perspective, we really do need to put in policies where we have to make sure that campaign contributors are not given access to information... where friends of an executive aren't given preferential treatment on hosting events on county property. I mean, these are things that have way more oversight in other counties with executive offices.
RUSH: Joe Venosa, independent candidate for Wico County Council District seven. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
