Shawn Vestal: Commissioners promise, honest they do, that new hire wasn’t cronyism

Obviously, there is nothing fishy whatsoever about the county quietly hiring Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ brother two months ago for an important new job without advertising the position or considering other candidates.

It’s just totally appropriate and aboveboard.

If there’s anything the past year or so has taught us, after all, it’s that the three members of Spokane County Board of Commissioners operate with complete honesty in matters of hiring and firing.

They’re real straight shooters.

So we can rest assured that the all-Republican commission’s support for hand-picking the brother of the region’s highest-ranking elected Republican official for a job without a competitive process is completely, utterly aboveboard.

No cronyism here. Take their word for it.

In August, the county hired Jeff McMorris, the brother of McMorris Rodgers, to be its policy adviser and public liaison at a salary of more than $96,000. The job had previously been a contract position held by Cindy Wendle, the former candidate for City Council president; commissioners decided to make it a permanent job, but Wendle left to head up efforts to bring a women’s professional soccer team to Spokane.

Commissioners directed Scott Simmons, county CEO, to take a good close look at McMorris, and Simmons hired him, according to county spokesman Jared Webley. Commissioners were strangely unwilling to tell a Spokesman-Review reporter whether they voted on the hiring or not, emphasizing only that they were in full support of it.

I bet they were.

The job was not advertised or opened to other candidates. None of the transparency an organization might apply to demonstrate that a hiring process is fair and free of political patronage was applied.

If anyone thinks that looks sketchy at all, however, rest assured. These county commissioners did it right. How do we know? They say so.

“What does that matter?” Commissioner Al French told an S-R reporter with regard to the family connection. “Should somebody be disqualified because they happen to be related to someone else? Seriously? Is that the criteria we should use before we hire and fire somebody?”

Or ask Commissioner Josh Kerns.

“He’s an asset to the county, regardless of who his family is,” Kerns said. “His last name could be Smith or Jones; he does a great job for the county.”

Or ask Commissioner Mary Kuney.

“I know the elephant in the room is that he’s Cathy’s brother,” Kuney said. “That has absolutely nothing to do with it.”

And if that’s not good enough for you, Jeff McMorris himself is in absolute agreement with the commissioners. His last name could be Smith or Jones for all it matters.

“I don’t for a minute believe I was offered this job because my sister is a member of Congress,” he said. “I’m a unique individual and I think if my résumé wasn’t as strong as it was, then yes, people would have a reason to say, ‘Oh, this is political favoritism.’ I honestly believe that has nothing to do with this.”

See? These three commissioners and the guy who got the nearly six-figure salary with no competitive process agree: Nothing to see here.

Should be good enough, right? After all, there’s no reason to distrust these three commissioners when they make public statements about hiring and firing. There’s no reason at all to think that these three commissioners would ever, I don’t know, tell falsehoods to the community about the employment status of someone who held an important public position at an important public organization like, for example, the health district.

These commissioners would never stage a Kabuki drama of a health board meeting, in which they all jointly pretend that a health officer had not been illegally fired by the district administrator and in which they go through the motions of firing him properly. They would never repeatedly make false public statements about that illegal first firing and staged second firing.

They would never have participated in replacing that health officer – a well-respected, experienced public health doc – with a hand-picked pal without public health experience as the interim health officer, and then gone on give him the job permanently, with a huge raise, via a secretive process in which no public information about other candidates was revealed and even other health board members were left in the dark.

They would never, ever do such things.

That’s why we can put our complete trust in what they say with regard to the hiring of Brother McMorris.