It looks like Jennifer Brunner and Marc Dann always find time for partisanship. Jennifer Brunner’s staff can’t bother to answer a simple question on the phone. And Marc Dann can’t bother to find out if anyone on his staff was criminally involved in someone’s death, or if his “top cop” was sill collecting a paycheck from the Youngstown police department while working for the AG’s office. But they somehow always find time to be partisan hacks and beat up on Ken Blackwell:

Attorney General Marc Dann has decided that former Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell did not have the legal authority to award $80,000 in bonuses to employees before he left office.

Jennifer Brunner, Blackwell’s successor, is asking Auditor Mary Taylor to declare that the bonuses were an illegal expenditure of public money so Dann’s office can seek to recover it.

A number of the staffers accepted the bonuses as severance payments, as some accepted the money instead of putting the Secretary of State’s office from having to pay unemployment compensation.

And while Democrats will still continue to kick and scream about this, they might want to remember that plenty of Democrats also received bonuses in other offices. And, when the Ohio legislature selectively gave bonuses to a select number of staffers, the current Chairman of the Ohio Democrat Party Chris Redfern even defended those bonuses!

Associated Press
Friday, December 30, 2005

BONUSES FOR SOME OF OHIO HOUSE STAFF CAUSE HARD FEELINGS
70% of employees didn’t get share of one-time incentives that totaled $89,500

COLUMBUS - Merit bonuses ranging from $500 to $4,000 handed out to 59 Ohio House employees have irked some of the 70 percent of staff members who didn’t get them.

The one-time bonuses totaled $89,500.

Scott Borgemenke, House Speaker Jon Husted’s chief of staff, said he understands some people are mad, but that’s what happens in a merit-based system.

“I hope it incentivizes them to work next year and do a better job,” he said.

House Minority Leader Chris Redfern agreed.

“If we’re going to say government should be run in a similar fashion to business, you have to award people on merit from time to time,” he said.

“And if that makes someone unhappy, no good deed goes unpunished.”

So if Chris Redfern supported bonuses as incentives for government employees as a means to increase productivity, then why wasn’t Ken Blackwell allowed to do the same?

When you consider the pay and the benefits given to state government employees, they are certainly paid more than enough. But this situation is nothing more than selective outrage by a couple of hyper-partisan political hacks.