To the Editor:

If honesty and competence were the criteria for public office, Jo Butler would win in a landslide.

Were Jo inclined to brag, she could boast that she is the only member of the Council who once had Warren Buffett as a client. She might also boast that she once traded interest rate futures on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade — for her own account. Those are extraordinary credentials for a municipal official. Her demonstrated financial acumen is well suited to the task of finding responsible ways to reduce the expenses that have driven our property taxes to frightfully high levels.

Today Jo helps institutions identify and hire talented administrators. Staffing being perhaps the most important duty of a supervisory body, one might have thought that Jo’s expertise would be valued — and her opinions eagerly solicited — by her fellow Council members.

Instead, we have the ugly spectacle of an attempted purge. We are told that Jo is not a “team player” (i.e. she doesn’t think Council members were elected to be rubber stamps). We are told that she is “divisive” (i.e. she asks inconvenient questions — and persists with her questions until she receives complete and truthful answers).

My own experience with Jo has been quite different from the caricature presented by her antagonists. I was her opponent during her first run for Borough Council. When a neighbor suggested that I join Jo’s Citizens Financial Advisory Task Force, Jo welcomed me without hesitation and thereafter made no distinction between her Republican adversary and the other members of her team. She was interested simply in finding solutions. It did not matter that the idea was hers, only that it was a good idea.

Jo epitomizes the ideal of a selfless public servant. She is honest. She works hard. She has blue chip credentials in finance and staffing. She prizes openness and good sense. She does not resort to lies and subterfuge. She has no ambitions for higher office. And she views herself not as our minder but as our representative.

Fifty years ago, a precocious neighbor coined the phrase “power mad midgets” to describe officious, self-important administrators. The term seems to me to suit Jo’s adversaries, many of whom played leading roles in the scorched earth campaign that uprooted the Borough by treating its defenders as cretins.

I sincerely regret that I am barred by party affiliation from participating in the upcoming primary. I implore all fair-minded Democrats to come out in force for Jo on June 3. And I promise that I will myself be voting for her, enthusiastically, in November.

Peter Marks

Moore Street