LETTERS: PETITT IS SEASONED POL

To the editor:

I hope that the age of Wayne Petitt does not become a campaign issues in this year's race for Scott County District 2 commissioner. Unfortunately, Mr. Petitt's would-be successors have already begun to tout their own superior experience in thinly veiled attacks on Mr. Petitt's age, as your March 11 news story pointed out, "Novice pol seeks public confidence and election."

Mr. Petitt is, in fact, anything but a novice in the fields of politics and public service. He began working in political campaigns at an age when most of his contemporaries preoccupied themselves with pimples and the prom. This January, the Scott County Democratic Central Committee rewarded Mr. Petitt's decade of energetic service by nominating him to succeed Joe Spalding as District 2 commissioner. Gov. Carnahan approved the appointment in short order.

Serious issues will confront Scott County officials in the near future: a dramatic decline in sales-tax revenue, and infrastructure incapable of meeting the needs of new industry and the likelihood that many programs now administered by the federal government will be shifted to the county level. Let us hope that the aspirants to Mr. Petitt's job choose to address these and other important concerns. The voters have already been given an overdoes of negative advertising and reckless demagoguery in this still-young political season.

LARRY D. LAW

Cape Girardeau