Monday, August 9, 2010

Can the Governor get out of firing Murray?

Last week yet another scandal exploded out of the Governor's office as his Director of the Ohio School Facilities Commission, a man in charge of billions of taxpayer dollars, was raked over the coals for abusing his position to benefit unions. As if the Richard Murray IG investigation wasn't bad enough for the Governor, now we find out Strickland ignored his legal responsibilities as well:
Strickland’s office is required by state law to notify the Senate of its appointments so the Senate can begin a confirmation process. But the Senate never received paperwork from the governor’s office, and Murray was never confirmed, said Maggie Ostrowski, spokeswoman for Senate President Bill Harris, an Ashland Republican.

"They are required to send over this paperwork and they didn’t do it," Ostrowski said. "It’s kind of astonishing with everything that happened with other gubernatorial appointments that they missed this one too."

This guy served for two years on a state pension council. It's not like the Governor didn't have time to walk over the paperwork.

As you'll recall, Strickland was able to get out of firing Cathy Collins-Taylor because he failed to get her confirmed. After Troopergate, she was finally sent over to the Senate for confirmation and was soundly rejected.

Well now there are public calls for Richard Murray to be fired.

From the Dispatch:

Murray’s actions were grossly unprofessional and unacceptable for the head of a state agency in charge of billions of dollars in public money. The governor faces a choice: Remove an administrator who has ill-served the public, or keep him and thereby choose to serve labor’s interests rather than those of Ohio students and taxpayers.

As the Dispatch states, the Governor is to blame. He has two choices, get rid of Murray and risk pissing off a whole lot of labor that have given him millions over the years. Or keep him and risk alienating the hoards of Independent voters that are disgusted with this kind of politics. Either way, it's a lose-lose.

At least some good came out of all this. Maybe now we have a way to find out all the people within Strickland's administration that have committed some type of malfeasance. Do a review of all the appointees that the Governor failed to get confirmed.

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