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Tag: Condino

Friends of administration making serious bureaucratic bank at taxpayers' expense!

By Nick, Section News
Posted on Mon Feb 09, 2009 at 07:08:05 AM EST
Tags: Granholm, Cherry, Condino, Gaffney, Farrah, lobbyists, bureaucrats (all tags)

"Those who go from the House right into lobbying, that's a problem. But it was never the job of term limits to address that problem," says Greg Schmid, President of a group called Don't Touch Term Limits.

According to this morning's Detroit News, he's speaking specifically of $2 million lottery winner (literally), Democrat Barb Farrah. After being termed out at the end of calendar year 2008 she went to work as a lobbyist at the state's largest multi-client and for once, her former constituents are the lucky ones.

Lobbyists get a bad rap. Wait, that sounds apologetic... let me rephrase. Lobbyists deserve to get a bad rap, BUT, they're a natural byproduct of our system of government and our constitutional right to freely associate with whoever we'd like. If there's an issue we want to see addressed as a group it only makes sense to pool our resources to better petition those in the halls of power.

In that sense, I don't see the same problem that Schmind sees. Far worse, in my mind, is the way so many elected officials simply trade offices at the Capital, switching over their "Representative" ID tags for those of bureaucrats.

Last month Leon drew everyone's attention to Ed Gaffney's recent gubernatorial appointment to the Liquor Control Board, a move that looks as close to a quid pro quo (he was one of less than a handful of GOPers to support the Democrats' $1.5 billion tax hike in 2007) as anything you're likely to see this decade. But Gaffney isn't the only one.

Democrat Paul Condino was recently appointed by the Governor to the 10 member state parole board, an interesting decision since he A) gets a raise (this "public servant" is making nearly $82,000 a year!!!!!) and B) could be obsoleted should the Granholm-Cherry administration get their way and effectively eliminate the need for parole boards statewide.

And no, none of the talk about reducing legislators' salaries includes so much as a mention about reducing those of bureaucrats and gubernatorial appointees. Funny thing about it is, if the Governor wanted to cut the pay of bureaucrats she'd have an easier time. There are (MANY) more of them, often times they make substantially more cake than elected officials and they have ZERO built-in taxpayer accountability (read: they never have to run for reelection).

Read on...

(2 comments, 742 words in story) Full Story