As the Jan. 31 Columbian story reported, “Madore wants to hire former campaign manager as his aide,” I applaud Commissioner David Madore’s desire to limit the expense to the county in hiring an administrative assistant to support his county work efforts.
However, people performing county work should be county employees hired through the proper merit-based process. The administrative assistant would be conducting the public’s business for the county — not personally to Madore. This employee must be accountable to the public, through the appropriate civil service regulations. This protects not only the employee, but also the public. Madore’s hiring his own assistant at his own expense to do the county’s work is a serious conflict of interest and is antithetical to the government transparency he supposedly champions.
Craig S. Dewey
Vancouver