Helen Jones-Kelley: How to make sure she's the only one in three easy steps

Gov. Strickland said he has not looked to see whether there’s any evidence to suggest other political appointees have used government resources for political fundraising, like his director of Jobs & Family Services, Helen Jones-Kelley did.

Governor, you will never find what you don’t look for. Don’t wait to see if the media turn up any more examples. Here’s how you can do it, quickly and cheaply.

First: It is a simple matter to identify the people in the Obama and McCain finance operations. Shucks, the Obama folks are probably in your contact manager (or rolodex, if you still use one of those).

Email is routed through servers. Second step: Perform a search on those servers for those fundraisers’ names, and a few keywords that shouldn’t normally show up in government emails, like “fundraiser.” You may have to look back on the backup tapes, depending on how often mailboxes are purged – but you really only have to go back to January.

This search will produce a limited number of emails that warrant further review. which is the third step. The search can be done very quickly by your data technicians, and the only cost will be staff time.

And then, you can either clean house or reassure Ohio that all is well.

And if you don't do it, you can be sure one of the newspapers will.