BENNETT NOW A PUBLIC OFFICIAL: WILL HE ACT LIKE HE IS STILL AT HAMMONTREE AND BLOW OFF THE SCPR'S QUESTIONS?

The Stark County Political Report has learned that Keith Bennett was sworn in as the successor engineer to Mike Rehfus who tragically passed away on November 10th.

The Report has a lot of video on file of Rehfus answering any and all questions posed by yours truly about the operation of the Stark County engineer's office.  Mike was accessible to the SCPR via his cellphone.

Will Keith Bennett follow suit?

Doesn't seem like it.

When the SCPR learned that Bennett was to be appointed county engineer by the Stark County Democratic Party, yours truly called him to ask him questions about the transition from being president of Hammontree & Associates, Ltd to being the county engineer.

No response to the call made over two weeks ago.

Now that he is a public official, the SCPR will be pushing him to answer questions about potential conflict-in-interest problems he may have given Hammontree's integral role in providing engineering/surveying services to Stark County (for past projects) and to Stark's political subdivisions (villages, cities, township and boards of education).

The public should be playing close attention to Bennett.  How he responds to incisive questioning by the likes of the SCPR (do not expect such questioning from The Repository), should go a long way towards the Stark County voting public determining whether or not he is a worthy successor to Mike Rehfus.

So far, he is off to a bad start.

Hmm?