KyKurmudgeon

1. For more than three years, Kentuckians have watched Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s administration stumble through one legislative session after another, fumble the ball on health insurance so badly it nearly caused a teachers’ strike and bumble its handling of the BlackBerry Jam hiring scandal. So, we all should be immune to surprises in regard to the administration’s frequent displays of ineptitude. Right? Well, maybe not. If the documents released yesterday by the Executive Branch Ethics Commission and cited in John Stamper’s story in today’s H-L can be believed, this is an administration that couldn’t even manage to rig a bridge design contract when it tried. The favored company still didn’t get the contract. How bad is that?

2. On May 11, the state Personnel Board voted 4 to 1 with one abstention to approve an order reinstating Mike Duncan to his former position in the Transportation Cabinet. (Duncan’s 2005 firing was a central element in the hiring investigation in which a special Franklin County grand jury indicted 15 people in open court, including Gov. Fletcher, and returned 14 other sealed indictments.) The order the Personnel Board approved in May said, "Analysis of the several hours of testimony and the well-reasoned arguments of counsel yields the following: … the selection process under which (Duncan) was hired was not tainted nor preordained …" Yesterday, however, the Personnel Board voted 5 to 1 to open an investigation of Duncan’s hiring based on arguments presented by Personnel Cabinet Secretary Brian Crall. The administration clearly does not want Duncan to get his job back. It has appealed the May order from the Personnel Board, and these belated questions about the validity of his hiring is just another hurdle the administration wants to put in his way. But none of that explains why members of the Personnel Board would vote to investigate a hiring that they have already concluded "was not tainted nor preordained."