Pete Buttigieg Called Out for Neglecting Details of Job
Apr 3, 2018

As National Press Fawns Over Potential 2020 Presidential Candidate, County Officials Say Buttigieg Put the "Cart Before the Horse" on Local Partnership 

INDIANAPOLIS - During a recent St. Joseph County Board of Health meeting, county health officials called out South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg for publicly announcing a partnership between the county and the city on a lead poisoning test before working out the details -- or even notifying members of the local board.

"It looks like Pete Buttigieg's busy national campaign schedule is getting in the way of actually doing the job that South Bend residents hired him to do," said Kyle Hupfer, chairman of the Indiana Republican Party. "True leadership is about making sure everyone has a seat at the table and is involved in finding solutions to real problems. As Pete Buttigieg's ambition takes him away from South Bend more frequently, it looks like important items are slipping through the cracks. South Bend deserves a full-time mayor, not a part-time mayor and part-time candidate for president."

According to reports by the South Bend Tribune, members of the county health board first heard about the partnership, which was presented as a done deal during Buttigieg's State of the City address, in an article published in the Tribune -- and not from Buttigieg or members of his staff with the city. They said that he clearly put the "cart before the horse."

In the report from the Tribune, the health department's administrator, Nick Molchan, said, "We said we wanted to be involved in the conversation [with Buttigieg]. And then it came out as a political item, a political statement, as if it was a done deal. And nobody involved had the conversation nor the commitment as to what was going to happen."

This news comes as Buttigieg is receiving fawning coverage from national media, including multiple profiles in Politico in the last two months, and as his political action committee is spending money in states far from Indiana including Kansas, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Colorado and Iowa.


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