A Few Good Reasons to Vote for Joe Morey

My name is Joe Morey and I am a candidate for the LCO tribal council. Some of you may know me from my days as editor of the LCO Times and Ojibwe Times over the past 20 years. It was during that time I gained vast experience in dealing with the tribal council and learning how our tribal government functions. Those 20 years prepared me for my next chapter in life, that as a tribal governing board member representing you, the membership.

Because of my background as a watchdog reporting on stories over the years you otherwise may have never known, it is one of the strong points that makes me the best candidate for the council. I know how important it is that our membership is informed of the activities of the governing board. I strongly believe that there shouldn’t be any secrets unless it is dealing with personnel issues, otherwise, you the members have every right to know what’s going on. As a tribal council member, I won’t forget that I am beholden to you, the membership because it is you who I will work for. This was a philosophy that I held as the news editor for LCO over all those years and I’ll carry that mentality with me always.

I pledge to maintain openness and to hold the other governing board members accountable to openness as well. How do I plan to achieve this goal? Simple. As many of you know I write a blog on a regular basis that has been a whistleblower of sorts about the corruption that grips our current council. Well, I will continue to write that blog focusing on all activities of the council while I am a sitting council member. There will be no more secrets and that’s a promise. I have no big family to own me. You, the membership will get me elected, not a big family, and so it will be you that I account to through openness and being approachable. I also pledge to push our council to hold at least one of the weekly meetings each month in the Peter Larson Room so that you can come and see the council in action. The council is very uninviting behind two sets of doors and rarely do regular tribal folks come to a meeting because of this. It is my hope that if we have at least one of those meetings each month in the Peter Larson Room, you will feel welcome to stop in a meeting and express your concerns or questions at any time. It’s the way it used to be and it’s the way it should be again.

Over the past two years there has been a lot of suffering on our reservation through deaths, homelessness, losing jobs and the pain continues to grow. Our tribal council has aided in this despair throughout our reservation by shifting jobs away from our members which I’ll talk about it in a minute, but also by refusing to acknowledge the serious housing problems we face from shortages of adequate housing to mold-infested homes making our people sick. Several years ago FEMA gave our tribe another batch of trailers totaling 41 homes but those homes never made it to our reservation. They were never even transferred here but instead stored down south and eventually members of our tribal council, unbeknown to others members, sold them all just this year to mobile home dealers to make a profit. Norma and Little Guy signed the document to sell the trailers. Those trailers were given to our tribe free of charge and were meant to provide housing and shelter to 41 different families in need here at LCO. They weren’t meant to be sold. This is another sad example of the care less attitude our leadership has towards our suffering members. When you elect me to the governing board I will find the funds immediately to clean up the mold-infested homes and begin improving the health of our people here at LCO. The sale of these trailers was meant to be another corrupt tribal secret you weren’t supposed to know about, but the information was leaked to me, and I will be writing a separate story in the next couple of days about these trailers.

And in my mission to improve the health of our people, I will fight for our people’s right to have a job at home instead of traveling to other reservations for work, and I’ll fight for your right to feel secure in your job. This starts with filling in all the executive jobs on our reservation with our own tribal members who are qualified through years of experience or education or both. We need to start with a change of management at the LCO Casino as well and at the same time we need to return jobs to everyone who lost their jobs this past year. I will also get the TERO office here so that our tribal workforce is protected and all businesses and contractors operating within our boundaries or on any of our contracts has to hire at least 75% tribal members and then pay them equal wages to non-tribal members. It’s the right thing to do.

And I will fight to repeal the social media in the workplace ordinance that our council recently passed. Our council has no right to intimidate the tribal membership from speaking out against the actions of this council through fear of losing their job. The council is elected officials and they should have some tough skin, I know I do. You have a right to speak out, especially now during election time.

I have many other ideas that I’ve shared with the membership through my blog at lcotoday.blogspot.com where you can read about my campaign platform and where I stand on all the issues. If there is any candidate you know, who isn’t part of your family, it’s me because I’ve been writing news for you and sharing my opinions with you for the past 20 years. I’m an open book, always have been and always will be. Remember, you can vote for up to 4 spots and I’d appreciate your vote of confidence in one of those four spots on May 16 in the primary election for LCO Tribal Council.