Ramsey - another quick forest vs. seeing only the trees note.

Good government and the things that can counter it form the point of spending extended time on the Emily McGlone situation. The Coleman and Abramoff posts were about money and influence questions. DC has a revolving door problem that Abramoff played for favors for clients. The situation with spouses of legislators in DC having business interests is a difficulty. The McGlone situation raised questions that should be of public concern because a process that should be trouble-free and having integrity beyond question is an abstract thing that human nature can fail to live up to. But that is not cause to say everybody does it and move on it is cause to resist and wish to reform a thing when flaws appear.

The public being able to ask and get answers is the entire point of the public data disclosure law. It is the intent. The "privatization" proviso was added exactly because loophole exploitation was expected and the intent was to close it off as wrong, and to try to make stonewalling and withholding of disclosure more difficult even if human nature in instances might move the other way.

Emily McGlone having a job is not a wrong thing - it is helping a household prosper. Colin McGlone being on council means it is his job to make decisions, and we can agree or disagree. Yet when the McGlone job is with Flaherty and the McGlone council decisions have favored Flaherty's pecuniary interests greatly, and one follows the other the thing simply appears wrong in a host of ways and needs exposure and that means officials have to go public and the "privatization" proviso of the Data Disclosure Law must be honored in practice, or we have bad government.

With a bit known, that the employment exists and assertions were made that detail is private and "They said I do not have to tell you a thing" is intolerable as a response to wanting to know all, as being in the public interest; and a public entitlement. We have the right to know. It is that simple.

Who knew what when, and what earlier understandings were (vs might-have-been guessing) in bringing the Flaherty process to breaking ground and then the McGlone employment being right upon breaking ground - all that raises a host of questions over unsavory possibilities and there either is an email trail and paper trail that the public can examine and use in reaching understandings vs. inferences, or if none, major questions appear and worries cannot be avoided.

If there is nothing to hide then there is no motive to hide, and vice versa. That's a basic premise to start from.

If either there consciously is no paper/email trail, i.e., one was avoided; or if one as in the normal course of things exists but is denied, withheld, lied about, again major questions arise.

Clean as Caesar's wife, clean as the driven snow are phrases that arose in wanting things better than they too often are.

__________UPDATE - A THOUSAND WORDS__________