Dispatch: Sorry spectacle, Administration to blame for inept handling of highway patrol scandal

What followed was a fiasco of mistakes that illustrate how poorly advised the governor is and draw attention to his own inability to deal decisively with incompetence in his administration. Besides calling into question the governor's judgment, the scandal very likely has ended the tenure of Public Safety Director Cathy Collins-Taylor, who faces a Senate confirmation vote this week, and further damaged the image of the Public Safety Department.

 

In mid-January, the highway patrol was poised to intercept a person who planned to drop contraband - drugs or tobacco - at the Governor's Residence. There, a convict who worked at the residence as part of an inmate work-release program was to pick up the contraband and smuggle it into the Pickaway Correctional Institution. A day or so before the operation was to take place, it was called off.

 

Given the puzzling circumstances of the aborted operation, Ohio Inspector General Thomas P. Charles investigated the matter and found that inmates working at the residence were virtually unsupervised and had been conducting smuggling operations at the house for some time. Charles also charged that Collins-Taylor lied when she said it was State Patrol Superintendent Col. David Dicken, not herself, who called a halt to the bust.

 

Clearly the operation was aborted to spare the governor political embarrassment, despite unconvincing protests that it was done for safety reasons. If Collins-Taylor, Dicken and the others had been forthcoming at the outset and admitted that the aim was to save face for the governor, this incident might have merited one or two days' worth of news.

 

Instead, Strickland's closest advisers and other administration officials chose to be uncooperative and secretive and to impugn Charles and his investigation.

 

For Collins-Taylor, the damage was even worse. Strickland and his advisers forgot to submit her nomination as head of Public Safety for Senate confirmation when Strickland appointed her to the post in September. By the time her name finally was submitted, the smuggling scandal was front-page news. At the conclusion of her confirmation hearings on Thursday, which included lengthy grilling about the scandal, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee recommended against confirmation. The full Senate is expected to render a decision this week.

 

The questions still swirling around the aborted smuggling bust never may be answered definitively. But one thing is clear: The governor and his advisers let a matter that could and should have been handled swiftly and decisively fester and grow worse for months. An early and thorough housecleaning at Public Safety would have ended the scandal. Had this week's confirmation hearing featured a fresh nominee with an impeccable record, the outcome could have been a win for the governor and the first step in restoring the image of the troubled Public Safety Department.