Scott Maxwell: Why do we elect tax collectors, anyway?

It’s almost as if Joel Greenberg thought: You know, I haven’t embarrassed myself or Seminole County in a while. I’m overdue.

So, over the weekend, the tax collector — who was previously investigated by the local prosecutor for playing traffic cop and who tried to ban a county commissioner from entering a county building — took to Facebook to see if he could stoke some Muslim-bashing. Of course he could! Greenberg’s post turned into an angry, meme-filled melee that led to calls for his resignation — and him claiming he needed taxpayerfunded protection from all the people he upset.

There are two things we can take away from this:

1) This is what happens when people spend too much time consuming fringe viewpoints inside an extremist bubble. They lose touch about what’s acceptable in decent society.

2) This is more proof we don’t need elected tax collectors.

Seriously, do you know what we need to pay our taxes? A check. Or an escrow account. Not a high-paid politician who only makes news when he’s making people wince.

I first made the case to ditch this waste of a political position 10 years ago when Orange County had a Democratic collector who’d been in office nearly five decades and wasn’t even showing up to work.

I’m making it today when we have a Republican in Seminole who makes more headlines for scandal than office efficiency … a guy who replaced another tax collector whom voters tossed out of office for the questionable way he mixed his personal finances with his public job.

It’s like the only qualification for this job is to be a hot mess.

Greenberg’s latest hubbub involved parroting a question from the bowels of America’s Muslimtrolling movement, former radio commentator Neal Boortz, who asked: “Name just ONE society in the developed world that has benefited in ANY WAY from the introduction of more Muslims. Just one.”

If you have trouble seeing why that’s a problem, imagine asking if anyone could cite any Jews who’d ever benefited society. Or blacks or Latinos.

A few sincere souls made the mistake of trying to earnestly respond to Greenberg with evidence that proved his premise flawed. But they were trying to combat fearmongering with facts … and that simply wouldn’t be tolerated in the verbal brawl that ensued.

Greenberg seemed taken aback that his question had stirred such controversy. This is what happens when you submerge yourself in indecency. You forget how the civilized world functions.

Many years ago, I listened to Boortz regularly. I like to hear varying perspectives. But then I learned his perspective was sometimes a steaming pile of factually errant garbage.

I watched Boortz on CNN during the 2004 Democratic National

Convention, claiming that Democrats were changing their stripes — as evidenced by the fact that Jimmy Carter was there.

“Up until this convention, they wouldn't let Jimmy Carter in the same

state as the Democratic National Convention,” he said.

It was a lie. An easily provable lie. Not only had Carter been at the last convention in 2000, the Democrats spent a night honoring him.

It wasn’t the most nefarious lie. But it just showed me that this was a man with little regard for the truth. So I tuned him out.

But much of his audience doesn’t care. They aren’t seeking facts. They simply want to bathe in the warm, comforting waters of confirmation bias. They don’t like facts invading their safe spaces. In fact, this very column will inevitably send some into a frenzy. I’ll be deemed a MUSLIMLOVING, AMERICAN-HATING TRAITOR!!!

Stirring up that kind of vitriol may serve Boortz well. Not so much an elected official who’s supposed to serve — and whose salary is funded by — citizens of all walks of life.

Even if that tax collector brags about how much money his daddy’s “family business” gives him to go after his critics.

Interestingly, Greenberg wouldn’t even be in office if the last tax collector had just stayed focused on his job. Ray Valdes had been in office for 28 years and could’ve stayed there for life. But after the Sentinel exposed him for pocketing “thousands of dollars on real-estate transactions involving his office,” voters tossed him out.

My guess is that Seminole residents will toss out Greenberg at their next chance in 2020. But who knows?

There may be some who truly believe that Muslims are worthless or evil … that Jimmy Carter wasn’t somewhere he clearly was … and that taxpayers should continue spending $150,000 a year on a political job that a competent office administrator and and a direct-deposit system could handle.