Public Service Commissioner Randy Pinocci has had a lien filed on his property by the Braden Tract Sewer Association and Braden Tract Water Fund for non-payment of bills in the amount of $1,720.  In addition, the districts are claiming Pinocci is responsible for moving a fence which is encroaching on its property at an estimated cost of $5,500.  

Perhaps the greatest irony in this chapter of the long, sad saga of Pinocci’s behavior in public office is that, as a Public Service Commissioner, Pinocci is responsible for regulating public utilities similar to these two small local utilities. One of the biggest problems these businesses face is deadbeats not paying their bills.  When that happens, other ratepayers pick up the tab. Pinocci either doesn’t understand that or he doesn’t care.  Probably a bit of both.

As the Public Service Commissioner representing PSC District #1, which includes Cascade County, Pinocci earns an annual salary of $111,179.  That does not include benefits like state retirement and health insurance.  His wife, Svetlana, works in the elections office.  She gets a good salary and county benefits.  In addition, Pinocci has real estate appraised at a total value of  $1,006,303.  You would think he can afford to pay his water and sewer bills. . . like the rest of us.  But Randy isn’t like the rest of us.

Pinocci seems to want to play politics more than do his job with the PSC.  In the last election, he ran for Lieutenant Governor drawing his big paycheck from you and me the whole time.  Then there is the fact that he was prosecuted for intimidating witnesses in a dispute over one of his rental properties last October.  https://wtf406.com/2023/10/more-republican-police-blotter-pinocci-arrested-again/

A few weeks before that, he was arrested on a warrant for failure to appear.  When he is not being arrested or prosecuted, he is galavanting around the state promoting bizarre conspiracy theories.

Thanks, in part, to an organized effort to get Democrats to “cross over” and vote in the Republican Primary here in Cascade County, voters got rid of some of the far right leaders in their party.  Legislators Steven Galloway and Lola Sheldon-Galloway lost.  County Commissioner Rae Grulkowski also was turned away by the voters (though the rumor mill is predicting she will be hired by Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant).  Both Pinocci and Merchant also lost their bids to be elected as Republican Party precinct people. Maybe there’s some hope for sanity in the local Republican Party.  

Pinocci’s term on the Public Service Commission ends in 2026.  Who knows what he will run for  next.  Whatever it is, we can only hope he is defeated.