Letter: Why We’re Voting For Patrick Hollinger

John Herzog joined our Curry County Commissioners in 2021, flaunting his experience as a very senior leader and executive with a high-tech industrial enterprise made him a superior candidate for our Curry County Board of Commissioners (BOC). In fact a division of John’s high-tech company was our Curry County vendor supplying computer and network managed services. He was voted into office and hoped for his success as Curry Commissioner.

During one of the first 2021 BOC meetings, which John attended as County Commissioner, John’s high-tech computer and network management division sent an alarming letter to our BOC with a clear warning that Curry County should be on alert for hackers. John and the other BOC members reviewed this letter and all Commissioners agreed, something needed to be done to protect our high-tech systems. Not long afterwards, still believing in the benifit of John’s high-tech industrial executive experience, John was promoted and made President of our BOC.

Early 2023 our Curry County computer systems were hacked. This shut down our County operations for months. Some departments are still recovering and restoring the computer system from this hack. This cost our Curry County Government millions of dollars.

Interestingly, from early 2021 and this disastrous hacking of our Curry County computer systems on 2023, there is not one single recorded incident of John Herzog taking any leadership action to fortify and protect our County computer and network systems. If some action was overlooked in this assessment, obviously whatever action John may have taken was very inadequate.

It isn’t frequent to find such a glaring example of incompetent misguided failed leadership.

This May, we’re casting our votes for Patrick Hollinger, as our new County Commissioner.

Mark and Linda St James

Harbor