The Strickland Administration Orchestrates the Departure of the Plumbergate Three

Helen Jones-Kelley quit the Strickland Administration yesterday over the “Joe the Plumber” scandal. She still did not apologize or admit that she did anything remotely wrong.

She will be joined in unemployment by two of her lieutenants who participated in the snooping.

According to the Associated Press, Jones-Kelley issued a statement, but did not respond to interview requests.

"This decision comes after a time of pause, in which I realize that I continue to be used as a political postscript, providing a distraction from urgent state priorities," she said in her statement.

That’s a remarkable sentence. It explains why it took her so long to respond (she took a “time of pause.”) It paints her as a victim, not Joe the Plumber. (She’s being “used.”) This issue is not one of citizen’s privacy and her abuse of power – it’s merely a “political postscript.” (That is, her favored candidate, President-elect Obama triumphed, so get over it, already.) And, her foremost concern is “urgent state priorities.”

Does anyone think that highly crafted statement was produced by Jones-Kelley, whose native language is bureaucratese?

The two lieutenants involved in the scandal are also leaving. Fred Williams will resign effective Jan 31, and Doug Thompson’s position is being “revoked” according to an agency spokesperson.

The departures were all announced on the same day. Make no mistake: these were resignations only in the sense that Marie Antoinette committed suicide. It would have been nice if the Governor could have engineered an apology as part of the package from at least one of them. But he soon will have another chance to go on the record and side with the people of his state instead of his political cronies.

Substitute House Bill 648, which makes unauthorized access of government databases a first-degree misdemeanor, was approved by the Senate yesterday and goes to the House for concurrence. Gov. Strickland should sign the bill.

Getting the story straight: The scandal widens

Vanessa Niekamp, a 15-year state employee, wants to know why she was ordered by political appointees to dig for dirt on Joe the Plumber in government databases, and then cover it up. She told an Ohio House committee yesterday that she doesn’t understand.

The dirt, as it turns out, is in the Strickland Administration. The Columbus Dispatch has done a great job covering this story, and reports new details that came out during Niekamp’s testimony Thursday before the House State Government and Elections Committee. Those details provide the answer to the question of “why?”

The political appointee who actually conveyed the order to snoop in the database is named Carri Brown. Doug Thompson was the one who dictated the cover-up email that the Inspector General described as deceptive. But here’s the odd thing: Niekamp told the committee that both of them had access to the databases, and could have conducted the search themselves.

So, why order a lower level employee to do the search?

Because most government databases track who accesses them. And although political appointees have access, they do not spend their days and nights toiling over individual case files. It sticks out like sneakers at a wedding when a top bureaucrat accesses a file.

If it’s just business, then checking a file is no big deal. But the datadive on Joe the Plumber wasn’t business – it was pure political dirty tricks. To keep the search under the radar, it had to be done by someone who wouldn’t look like an Obama supporter. Let’s see, 15 years ago, when Niekamp was hired, the governor was… George Voinoich, a Republican.

And both Thomson and Brown knew what they were doing was wrong. Niekamp said that Brown claimed Joe the Plumber had contacted the child support agency about a dispute about how much child support he owed. (He didn’t, and Director Jones-Kelley later claimed she ordered the search because it was routine practice for the suddenly famous – which the Inspector General found was also untrue.)

And Thompson, Niekamp said Thursday, was “shaking,” and his neck was “bright red,” and he closed the door before dictating the cover-up email to her.

According to Ohio’s Greatest Home Newspaper:

"He then told me that we needed to make sure that we answer questions about what happened the same way, so that our versions were not different from each other. Before he said that, he reminded me that I was an unclassified employee -- which, as you may know, is someone who can be fired without cause."

On the street, it’s called getting your story straight. Ohio deserves better than this.

First, practicing to deceive

A high-ranking Strickland Administration official tried to cover up his boss’s improper snooping on Joe the Plumber. The boss, ODJFS Director Helen Jones-Kelley, has received her slap on the wrist – a 30-day suspension – for her abuse of government power. Her acolyte has received neither sanction nor attention for his misdeed.

His name is Doug Thompson, and he is Deputy Director of Child Support. He worked for Jones-Kelley in Montgomery County. His action is buried inside the Inspector General’s report.

Joe the Plumber had his fateful meeting with then-Sen. Barack Obama on October 12. Four days later, Jones-Kelley, Assistant Director Fred Williams, and Thompson were discussing Joe the Plumber. It is unclear why three powerful state officials were discussing a private citizen – child support enforcement and welfare benefits are handled at the local county level, not at the State level, and certainly not by the head of a mammoth state agency.

Onward. On October 24, the news media broke the story of Jones-Kelley’s check for dirt on Joe the Plumber. The Governor did not request an investigation -- the Inspector General’s investigation was undertaken by his own initiative.

The actual check was performed by an administrative assistant, who had no idea who she was looking up. As things began heating up, Thompson came to her and ordered her to send a cover-up email. From the report:

“She said Thompson dictated to her the exact wording of an email that she was to send and “literally demanded” that she send the email to Rick Copley, Chief Privacy Officer, explaining that this SETS inquiry performed for Brown was for child support purposes. We believe that this email orchestrated by Thompson was an attempt to deceive as there was no agency function or purpose for accessing Wurzelbacher’s records.” (p. 7).

Who was Thompson attempting to deceive? The Inspector General, the media, you and me. It’s called a coverup, and it’s morally in the same class as the original act.

More importantly, why was he lying? Why order a junior subordinate to send the deceptive e-mail? No one would expect her to know the reasons she was told to perform the inquiry. If the original inquiry was justified, why not explain it over his own signature?

The answer is obvious: he knew it was political, unjustified and contrary to law. He wanted to be as far away from it as he could, and he wanted to keep his boss away from it, too.

Governor, he tried to lie to you. You will not be able to successfully govern if your subordinates believe deception is OK.

The IG report is available at at: http://watchdog.ohio.gov/investigations/2008299.pdf

Ted Strickland's Lonely Vigil: Waiting for All the Facts

Gov. Ted Strickland wants to wait for all the facts before he decides what to do about Helen-Jones Kelley, accused of abusing her position and her state computer to raise money for the Obama campaign and to investigate Republican posterboy Joe the Plumber.

Of course, Gov. Strickland didn't “wait for all the facts” on former Attorney General Marc Dann before he demanded his resignation. “All the facts” are still not in on Dann, who was an independently elected Constitutional officer.

But there’s no real doubt about what happened with Jones-Kelley. Gov. Strickland cites “technical” matters. What he’s talking about is routing information contained in the header of an email. It is possible to send out an email that looks genuine, but is not. But that’s not at issue here, because the content of Jones-Kelley’s emails shows they are real.

The emails are about a big-ticket Obama fundraiser in Dayton, Jones-Kelly’s home town. The emails went back and forth between the Obama campaign and Jones-Kelley at her state e-mail address. Remember, these emails were obtained by the Dispatch from the State, so they at least went to Jones-Kelley’s email account. If someone was spoofing her email, why didn’t she notice the emails flowing through her account?

Because they were hers, and they are genuine.

The emails included the names of 17 potential donors, according to the Columbus Dispatch. At least one of those donors wrote a check for $9,600. If someone was trying to set up Jones-Kelley, and the emails aren’t real, why would they put solid donor leads in the email?

They wouldn’t. Jones-Kelley mined her hometown contacts to help Obama – which is perfectly proper, except she used her government email account.

And there’s more: the Jones-Kelley emails promised she would make a $2,500 donation – and she did. Corroboration anyone? And she also offered to host a reception for Michelle Obama. That personal detail has the ring of truth.

We're not talking about a criminal case that requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt here. We're talking about whether there's enough evidence that would justify a governor firing an at-will employee who broke his own rules.

Gov. Strickland did not wait for "all the facts" on Marc Dann, and he was right to speak out. He should speak out -- and act -- in the case of his own appointee.

Gov. Strickland also told the press that he didn’t have any reason to look into whether anybody else did what his Cabinet officer did, and he had no intention to checking. But there’s a very simple, cost-effective way to make sure, so the governor can tell the people of this whether or not anybody else was campaigning with State resources.

In my next post, I’ll explain how.

Why The Strickland Administration Excuse Doesn't Hold Water on Joe the Plumber

There’s a hole in the argument about Joe the Plumber.

Joe, of course, was the subject of an impromptu investigation by the Strickland Administration. Government employees – at the direction of a cabinet officer! – took a look-see into government databases for dirt on Joe.

They looked at the CSEA dbase, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles dbase, and the records over in what used to be called the welfare department. Make no mistake: you can't get into those databases on your own. You have to have clearance, and then there are strict rules about your access that basically add up to this: official business only. You can't check up on your ex-girlfriend, or your daughter's new friends... or what your poltical opponents might be up to.

The cabinet officer who order the investigation of Joe the Plumber, Helen Jones-Kelly, is the director of Ohio Job and Family Services, the state's largest agency. She said it’s not unusual for your government to check up on people who are “suddenly” in the news. She pointed out the example of lottery winners as justification.

But here’s the hole in the argument: lottery winners have money. Lots of money. So, if they owe back child support, the CSEA should get some of it. And if they’re on welfare, the checks and foodstamps should stop.

But Joe the Plumber didn’t win the lottery. There was no new money to go after. So why where they looking at his personal information? Either Helen Jones-Kelly is really badly logic-impaired …. Or there was another reason for her order.

So, here’s a couple of facts… According to her own website, Director Jones Kelly earned her juris doctor at the University of Dayton. She’s a lawyer, and an experienced executive.

The Akron Beacon-Journal reported that she contributed $2,300 to the campaign of Barack Obama, the maximum contribution allowed by law for an individual.

My guess is she’s not logic-impaired. My guess is she thinks we are.