Apparently U.S. Representatives are allowed 18 paid staff members.  Sounds like more than enough to me.  But Artur Davis just couldn’t manage to get by with 18.  So he managed to get one paid for not by him, not by a Democrat organization, not even by the federal government.  He got an Alabama two year college employee “on loan” to work in his office.

The article also mentions that the employee in question, Gina Bailey McKell, worked in both Bob Riley’s and Don Siegelman’s offices while on the two year college payroll.  I can *almost* understand that since she at least is still working for a state agency.  It still smacks of a publicly funded institution using their money not for the intended purpose of instructing students, but rather using it to extract more from our wallets.  But having an employee on the payroll of a state entity working for a federal office holder is absurd and patently unjustifiable.  It doesn’t serve the interests of the state and most certainly doesn’t serve the interests of the two year college system - unless she was a de facto lobbyist, which the schools shouldn’t be engaged in to begin with.  Her salary?  Over $76,000 a year.

Maybe Davis should hire some better staffers so that he can get by with the allotted number.  Of course, he does have to restrict his pool of candidates to Democrats, which makes it a bit more difficult, though not impossible, to find hard workers.  Too many pro-union folks who demand guaranteed breaks and balk at working a minute over forty hours.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Alabama, Ethics Scandals, Government Waste. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.