More Fun Than a Root Canal

Yesterday I had time to make a quick post in between two hours of meetings, an Operation Feed event, and an appointment to have a root canal (re)done. My laptop is out of commission, so I often take one of my office's laptops home to doo work while I'm waiting for my personal machine to get functional again, but I didn't yesterday. Yesterday I had to take actual leave time, and it was a gorgeous day, so I reasoned that I had no excuse to work at home or intentionally stay indoors, and I left the machine at the office.

So I missed out on something like twenty bloggable bits. Reacting in real time would have been more fun than the root canal, but I won't make a judgment comparing one blogging afternoon to my first bike outing of the year.

So, catching up, and speaking of sick leave... Frankie Coleman is being investigated for supposedly claiming work hours during which she did not actually do work. I feel a strange connection to Mrs. Coleman, as the last time she was really in the news it was because of an incident that took place two blocks down the street from what was to become my house. In all honesty, I am in no position to make judgments about any of the alleged work issues, as I have had at least one instance in which a superior and I had to clarify accountability standards for work done out of office or during non-regularly scheduled hours. The primary issue, and one that I strongly concurred with, was that my supervisor should always have the ability to defend the hours for which I was being paid, either by pointing to physical presence or alternate documentation of some sort. It's obvious that Mrs. Coleman and her supervisor Ms. Williamson did not have a sufficient understanding as of mid-March 2007. There are numerous reasons to be out of the office for someone employed as an administrator in the department of Workforce Development. It is easy to believe that Mrs. Coleman, a prominent member of the transition team, knew that Ms. Williamson's tenure was ending very soon, and therefore did not bother to establish a good working relationship. So it's quite plausible nothing improper happened at all. It's also quite plausible that an employee might take advantage of such a situation. I'll wait for the investigation.

Which is the part that really ticks me off about the Republican response to this. Complaints against State Workers go through the Inspector General, not the Attorney General. I hope that folks will remember that Tom and Bernadette Noe were private citizens when they weren't involved with Lucas County. I also would like to point out that Marc Dann hasn't "been all over" any Republicans as Attorney General. There's no evidence that he would have been, and given that many of the problem folk are out of government if not out of legal jeopardy, there's been no need. The potshots continue with jabs (heard on WCBE this morning, I believe Bennett was the one speaking) about Dann being to busy cleaning up corruption in his own office. As a matter of fact, when there was a problem in the A.G.'s office, the individual was fired and an investigation started. That's hardly a record of "cover-ups."

As a matter of fact, if the suspicion of a cover-up is based on the fact that the appointed employee, the agency head, and the governor are all members of the same party, and furthermore, that Republicans think that such a situation naturally leads to cover-ups... I have to wonder about how many cover-ups Bob Bennett knows about from the past 16 years that the rest of us never heard about.

One bloggable bit down, many to go. Next up, David Goodman hits the campaign trail again.