Scott Yost: "Barber Takes Perkins To Mat" on the White Street Landfill

"Perkins...started the brawl when he said he sensed "a lot of distrust"
on the part of the community over the way the City Council has been handling the issue,
and Perkins said that – due to the size or the project
– there's going to be "an extraordinary amount of lobbying" related to it.

Perkins also said he wanted there to be a requirement during the RFP
that contacts with elected officials and all lobbying efforts regarding the landfill
be revealed in detail so there could be full disclosure about the process.

...Barber proposed a substitute motion that the new full disclosure rule
not just apply to White Street, but also to any real estate dealings that involved councilmembers.

...Barber said that Perkins was bringing up this suggestion for White Street
but added that the full disclosure of dealings had apparently not been an issue
for Perkins' own dealings.

Barber jabbed that when Perkins, a developer,
had engaged in questionable deals with Project Homestead and Michael King
there was no such disclosure, and then Barber delivered a right cross
when he said their was no such disclosure when Perkins favored incentives for a Wal-Mart
that Perkins stood to gain from, and then followed up with a haymaker
over an incident last year in which Perkins represented Lincoln Financial Group,
a group attempting to sell the old Pilot Life Headquarters on High Point Road
– and Perkins introduced a potential buyer to county staff,
which later suggested incentives for the project.

After the meeting, a still agitated Barber said it was ironic that,
after all of Perkins' real estate dealings and personal involvement with various matters that had come before the City Council,
suddenly Perkins was for full disclosure on this one issue.

The word Barber used was "ironic"
– but a more appropriate term might be "hypocritical."

He said that Perkins had an extreme desire to be mayor
and that much of the discussion had to do with Perkins's courting of votes
in a future mayoral race, but Barber said he mostly found it baffling.

"I don't know what he's thinking right now," Barber said.

Scott