It’s hard to tell how long the indecision about Francine Boxer would have dragged on if Boxer hadn’t taken Spokane County commissioners off the hook Monday by resigning as the county’s chief executive officer. The commissioners themselves showed no sign they were ready to take the difficult but firm step that was necessary in the wake of Boxer’s second drunken driving arrest in less than three years.

For the record, Boxer has pleaded innocent to the charge that stems from an incident early on Aug. 7. She says she wasn’t driving the SUV in which she was found asleep more than an hour after it reportedly crashed into a tree near Newman Lake. In time, the courts will sort out the facts and answer the question of guilt. Until then, Boxer is entitled to a constitutional presumption of innocence – on the DUI charge.

But enough is known to raise concerns about Boxer’s suitability for a position of such responsibility.

She was first arrested on a DUI charge in October 2001. In that incident she had a blood-alcohol level of .22 percent – nearly three times the legal limit of .08 – and took advantage of a deferred prosecution under which she entered an alcohol-abuse treatment program and would have been home free if she’d avoided alcohol-related arrests or convictions for five years.

At that time she wrote an op-ed column for this newspaper in which she denounced those who had criticized her without knowing all the facts. She also said she’d learned a lesson, and she thanked the county commissioners who didn’t dismiss her for “weighing the current situation against the past 27 years.”

This time, amid confusing and conflicting accounts about what really happened on Aug. 7, commissioners took the matter up behind closed doors. They apparently discussed various options, but they won’t say what they were. They seem not to have included firing her, though. Their public comments reflect an ongoing tendency to give their longtime associate the benefit of the doubt again.

Significantly, Boxer alluded in her 2001 newspaper column to the load she was under, working 10 hours a day plus studying for advanced degrees. This week, she noted she has put in 250 hours of overtime during the past few months as she carried the added duties of running Geiger Corrections Facility.

Officials such as Boxer are held accountable to the public only through the elected officials who appoint them, in this case the Spokane County commissioners. When she links her irresponsible choices at least in part to the pressures of her work, it should be apparent to the commissioners that she needs to be replaced.

Boxer said on Monday that she reached her decision after days of reflection. That’s more than the commissioners can say.