Stop the presses: Douglas Bruce is mad at the city. Again.

Bruce, the small-government campaigner, was invited to write a message opposing Issue 2C, a proposed $46 million tax increase for the city of Colorado Springs. The message, along with one supporting the measure, will be mailed to voters, who will decide whether to approve the tax increase in the Nov. 3 city election.

But the mailing won’t include the entire Bruce message. The city clerk, Kathryn Young, removed a passage attacking Penny Culbreth-Graft, the city manager, for her tax and mortgage problems in California.

Sue Skiffington-Blumberg, spokeswoman for the city government, said Young removed the passage because the City Charter requires that the pro-and-con statements be relevant and cannot mention individuals by name, or allude to them in a way that their identity is obvious. “No summary shall include names or implied persons or private groups,” she said, as if reading from the charter.

“If I had said, ‘The moon is made of green cheese,’ that would have been irrelevant,” Bruce said, adding that Culbreth-Graft’s personal finances show “that she’s incompetent as a fiscal administrator.”

“They can’t decide that it’s not relevant just because it’s the boss that we’re criticizing,” Bruce said.

In fact, the city has no relevance standard, nor does it bar indirect references. Here’s the applicable passage from the City Charter, in its entirety: “No summary shall mention names of persons or private groups, nor any endorsements of or resolutions against the proposal.”

In any case, Young left intact an obvious reference to Jerry Heimlicher, whose last day on City Council was Wednesday:

“A councilman voted for this 234 percent tax increase ballot issue because he ‘loves’ this city. He announced a week later that his is moving next month to Tennessee, which has lower taxes. He won’t be paying this tax!”

Young left the Heimlicher paragraph intact “because that had relevance to the issue,” Blumberg said.

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Photo by Christian Murdock, The Gazette

Christian murdock