Tell Me Again Why You Ran For The Office?
Front page of my Denver Post this morning, a story about the newly elected Secretary of State (Scott Gessler – R) who’d decided that he can’t live on the salary the job pays. His old job was with a law firm that represented clients on elections and campaign law issues, and apparently paid him a lot more than this new public service job pays him.
I get that – he decided he wanted to go into public service. It’s a tough row to hoe these days, as we’ve gone through a few decades of demonizing public employees and reducing their pay dramatically in relation to the private sector.
Was somebody twisting Gessler’s arm to make him spend all that money to run for Secretary of State? He was (presumably) smart enough to check into the salary he’s make before he spent all that money convincing the voters that he was the best guy for the job, right?
But now, he says he can’t live on a paltry $68,500 / year, and he wants to moonlight with his old firm to make more money. Hey, I agree that’s not much money. So why’d he run?
Aside from the issues of conflict of interest when he’s working for this private law firm who represents clients who he’s likely to oppose, I have some more basic problems with what he’s doing. Like issues of accountability.
Hey Gessler, you ran for the office, and unless you’re willing to tell us you were too stupid to check out the salary ahead of time, I think you need to be accountable to your decision to ask us to entrust the office to you. Do your job. It’s a full-time job. As one Colorado voter, I expect you to do the job I elected you to do, and not to be working a second job.
Don’t like the pay? I get it. So either try and get the salary raised, or quit. Hand the job over to whoever took second place in the election. These are public service jobs you’re running for, and these days, that means you don’t make much money at it. If you don’t like that, then change it, but don’t slap the voters in the face by getting us to chose you, then telling us you were just kidding – you really can’t live on what we were offering to pay you.
Can we get a little accountability from our elected officials? The Secretary of State is the one I’d expect the most accountability from for crying out loud.
