By Rich

April 4, 2008 2:19 PM | Link to this

As Lord Acton once famously said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It simply is unhealthy to have one-party-rule at any level of government. Period. In the same sense, the decline of true checks and balances at the federal level has undeniably led to disastrous mistakes in recent years. Regardless of whether anything illegal, corrupt or simply stupid HAS taken place in Butler County government, lots of these shenanigans just don’t pass the smell test. Cozy relationships that benefit those already on the inside, but are unavailable to anyone else on the outside, stink to high heaven. One particularly rotten version of this is the way the county GOP swaps off ostensibly elected positions, thereby ensuring election of the new “incumbent” at the next election. The best example of this is probably when an office holder (often one who’s term-limited) swaps positions with another official, thereby almost guaranteeing each will win outright election to his/her new job at the next opportunity — since incumbents are rarely turned out by voters at any level. Just look back to 2003, when then-State Rep. Greg Jolivette (who, incidentally, had switched from Democrat to Republican to run for that position!) agreed to swap jobs with then-County Commissioner Courtney Combs, all orchestrated by the county GOP. It escapes me how elected positions were ever allowed to effectively become the possession of the PARTY to which elected officials belong, so that the PARTY gets to appoint all replacements! I guess it does make for “smooth transitions”, but does completely leave voters out of the mix in such situations, while maximizing party control. Bravo to Don Dixon for daring to raise the issue of the fairness of these employee buy-outs, in the evident face of great pressure from others in the GOP. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in coming weeks.