By Dawn Fantasia
First of all, the bill is ABYSMAL.
So I listened to today’s hearing. DEMS BEHAVING BADLY.
Sen. Andy Kim was grandstanding, Sen. James Beach was struggling to maintain dominance, and between the nonstop “Trump bad” jabs flying across the room, many Democrats spent the entire hearing flexing instead of dealing with the actual problems in front of them.
The SCI, OPIA, and the AG’s Office have each failed the public in different but equally serious ways, and instead of addressing any of it, the hearing collapsed into a fight over who gets control.
The Office of the State Comptroller is not in the same boat as the rest of these agencies. The Comptroller has a fixed six-year term and cannot be fired at the whim of the Governor, and he doesn’t report to legislative bosses either. That independence is baked into the law so the OSC can do real oversight without fear of political retaliation. Meanwhile, leadership at the SCI, the AG’s Office, and OPIA all sit within political appointment chains that can be reshuffled at will, which is exactly why their oversight collapses whenever the politics get uncomfortable.
The SCI has been a disgrace, a watchdog that barely barks, caught up in political currents, inconsistent and uneven in its investigations, slow to respond when the public needs real oversight, and more interested in producing reports that sit on shelves than in delivering outcomes that actually result in increased safety and greater oversight.
OPIA has been plagued with incompetence, cases mishandled, timelines ignored, presentments that fall apart because of basic errors, work tossed by judges that never should have been filed in that condition, and a pattern of failure that undermines anything the office claims to stand for.
The AG’s Office has been weak and completely unfocused. The AG goes on wild goose chases and practices buffet justice, taking what he wants and leaving the rest, choosing targets based on politics or optics rather than principle, and offering no consistent standard for accountability.
And today was more of the same. Instead of confronting any of this, Democrats turned the hearing into chaos, all jockeying to see who gets crowned King of Dysfunction Junction, reshuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
What a mess.
