Last evening, a post on my facebook feed caught my attention. It was from the sheriff on his personal facebook page. He has his professional one too and didn't post this particular item there so he probably thinks it's ok. I don't. But, maybe it's just me.
Quick review: Sheriff Pat Kelly has a 'Sheriff Pat Kelly' facebook page and a 'Pat Kelly' facebook page. He posts a lot of the same stuff on both. Awhile back, some people were complaining that he shouldn't be posting official sheriff stuff on his personal page so he made the sheriff page so he could do that. I have an issue with some of the stuff he posts on that page because it comes off sounding like the arrested persons are already determined to be guilty when we STILL have innocent until proven guilty in this country. I think. If I were a defense attorney, I'd be all over that for my client. A whole nuther issue.
Anyway, last night I saw this:
Sweet that he's thanking his supporters and all but some of those supporters are "staff, employees and reserves" and "especially Jim Childs".
Stuff like this kinda bothers me. Even if there is no coercion from 'boss' to 'employee', or employee sucking up to boss, it looks wrong.
And that's why we have laws. We have the Federal Hatch Act and the Ohio “Little” Hatch Act. These are not obscure laws that no one has ever heard of. If you've ever been a public employee, you probably know what they mean, generally speaking.
Basically, if you are a public employee, stay out of partisan politics. You can vote, you can have an opinion, and you can be involved in nonpartisan campaigns and run for nonpartisan offices (school board and such), but to be on the safe side, stay out of the fun part of politics.
Christina L. Corl wrote a pretty good overview.
There is good rationale for this going in both directions. An employee can't be forced to campaign for their boss, which used to happen frequently, and employees can't curry favor with their boss by campaigning for him.
What adds flavor is we went through this before. Back when the race was between the current sheriff and the previous sheriff, one of the deputies was fired for campaigning against his boss. Termination of employment is the penalty that is to be paid but since an arbitrator over-ruled the initial finding, the deputy got his job back and 75K besides. And now that deputy is Sheriff Kelly's "
Having employees and other underlings (rumor has it Explorer Scouts too) campaigning may seem rather frivolous to some. I find it quite important because if the sheriff chooses to ignore some laws, how does he enforce any laws? The sheriff is not above the law nor are the deputies.
If this particular issue isn't quite enough to cause alarm, try adding a couple of issues that reveal a pattern of behavior. A county commissioner who beat his wife and had pot in his house was treated much differently than someone else under similar circumstances. The hiring of a convicted felon as a deputy - the son of a friend who campaigned for him. And we'll not get into the money issues from that office - yet.
And I'm going to pay attention when the sheriff says I can't drive my truck in the snow. Hold your breath.
And I'm suppose to follow his orders if marshal law is ever declared. Hold your breath.
If Sheriff Kelly loses the election this fall, is he going to delete his personal facebook profile or turn it over to Mr. Kane? After all, the url is facebook.com/athenssheriff.
