The Blair County John Galt Society, named for the able protagonist in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, is a political action committee made up of county conservatives demanding limited, fully transparent, accountable local government. Many of us were active in the Blair County Taxpayers' Alliance, which challenged the botched property tax re-assessment of 2016, and later worked to elect Amy Webster as County Commissioner in the 2019 county election. Others are veterans of the Blair County 2nd Amendment Sanctuary Referendum campaign, which won overwhelming popular support in the 2021 election, only to see their efforts betrayed when County Commissioners — including Amy Webster — approved an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) that directly repudiated the fundamental idea of a 2nd Amendment Sanctuary.

In 2019, the Blair County Taxpayers' Alliance was determined to elect at least one County Commissioner ready to act in the interests of County homeowners. They wanted someone ready to stand up to an entrenched local power structure, mired in patronage & cronyism, that had long ceased to be responsive to the electorate. Alliance members also wanted to see specific steps to reverse the injustices of the botched property tax reassessment of 2016, and measures to correct the systemic flaws in local governance that had led to the debacle.

The Alliance resolved to support a single commissioner candidate in the 2019 Republican primary. It had raised an unprecedented $85,000 for the effort. In 5-2 vote, the Alliance board chose Amy Webster over Bruce Kelly, after Webster made four explicit promises to the group. She also made more general promises to the electorate of transparency, integrity, tax skepticism and resistance to entrenched interests. All of these promises were broken — not because Webster was in the minority, but because she was entirely ill-suited to the task. Instead of fighting, Webster rolled over. Faced with business as usual, she remained silent, rarely communicating with her constituents, never issuing statements asserting or defending the agenda she was elected to pursue.

Even after it became clear that Webster was not the fighter we voted for, we at least hoped she would refrain from supporting, or covering for, policies that offended the populist conservative voters who elected her.

Those hopes were dashed soon enough. First, we learned that Webster had bought into keeping the specifics of federal money flows into broadband internet development a secret. She should have publicly opposed this at the top of her lungs, as any real conservative would. Then, after promising the 2nd Amendment Sanctuary Referendum organizers that she had their backs, she suddenly betrayed them, capitulating to the county solicitor and making sure that the people who crafted the referendum had no voice in drafting the implementation agreement. Unforgivable, in our view.

We really wanted Amy Webster to succeed. We still respect her as human being, but as a commissioner she has failed. We must accept the fact that she simply isn't cut out for the job.

For her erstwhile supporters in the Taxpayers' Alliance, the biggest frustration with Amy Webster wasn't her failure to investigate the company responsible for the botched property reassessment of 2016. Nor was it her broken promise to open up the county solicitorship – held for years by the firmly entrenched Nathan Karn – to competitive bidding. When after two years in office, Webster had developed a reputation as low-energy & ineffectual, her supporters were disappointed, but still not ready to abandon her.

What changed disappointment to outright opposition was Webster's betrayal on transparency, most poignantly illustrated in her unforgivable failure to oppose a move by local governments to keep critical details about the flow of federal money into local broadband internet development secret. Under Webster's watch, Blair County Commissioners are supporting an effort by Southern Alleghenies Planning and Development Corporation (SAPDC) — one of the largest conduits for federal spending in the region — to exempt itself from Pennsylvania's Sunshine Act and Right-to-Know Law. That would make it impossible for citizens to hold the agency, controlled by the commissioners from six counties, accountable for its spending. Worse yet, SAPDC has set up a state-sponsored "charitable" entity called Alleghenies Broadband Incorporated (ABI) not only to dole out federal broadband internet money in secret, but also act as a private company in its own right with a full public utility license granted by the state. As far as John Galt can tell, every dime of the money flowing through ABI has gone to a single favored company, one that specializes in building 5G cell towers rather than fiber-optic cable hubs.

In a 2022 ruling in favor of a local anti-corruption group, the Office of Open Records called ABI an "alter-ego" of SAPDC, which is obviously a government-affiliated body. But Webster and the other two Blair County Commissioners are endorsing an a court appeal pushing the fiction that ABI is a private charity and, like SAPDC itself, should be exempt from the Right-to-Know Law. Webster is even touting the government-centric approach as part of her a campaign platform, obliquely referring to it as the "broadband infrastructure project."

Is setting up a state-backed enterprise to develop and control the marketplace in secret a conservative way to govern? Not really. Webster should have known better.