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.

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.