Werner Instructs Phillips to Stay Off WAEB

Bob Werner tells Hayden Phillips to Stay Off Radio

After being the sole No vote for $698,000 in open space projects that included improvements to a miniature golf course in Pen Argyl's Weona Park, Northampton County Council member Hayden Phillips recently took his case to conservative talk radio. Appearing on Bobby Gunther Walsh's show on WAEB, the lone dissenter explained that the money went for a miniature golf course, walking trails, playground equipment and preserving open land. He was irate that the County would spend this money right after Executive John Brown had announced a $13 million structural deficit in 2013.

"Do we really need the government building a miniature golf course?" asked Walsh. In all of their comments, which are available online, Walsh and Phillips both made clear that this was a miniature golf course.

Yet at the March 6 meeting of County Council, an indignant Bob Werner complained that Phillips had misled the public. "I want it changed. I want it corrected," he demanded. He accused Phillips of falsely stating "that our County is building a golf course."

"I take a great deal of offense when things are misrepresented in public," Werner huffed.

Werner took it one step further. "I don't believe you should go on radio," he lectured Phillips, "and I don't believe you should allow people to say things that are not correct."

Phillips stood by his radio remarks.

The taped radio transcript reveals that, at all times, this golf course was described as a miniature golf course. So in reality, it is Bob Werner who misled the public.

Perhaps what really upset him is that Phillips actually told the truth in public. In the course of instructing Phillips about misrepresentations, Werner made several of his own.

(Updated 11:12 am to included how Phillips reacted to Werner. A reader asked me to include his reaction.)