Hired leaders to aid ours?

We will go to the polls in a month to vote on $72 million in new taxes requested from local government agencies.

That’s millions of new money on top of existing millions — all entrusted to people we choose to put in office.

I’m hopeful, yet always cautious, that those leaders are the best with cents and sense.

Twice last week, we’ve been shown that the best sense is not being employed, and outsiders arrived to deliver government for the people we elected who could not. With just a month to go till we vote on $72 million in new taxes and install folks into positions, perhaps last week was nicely timed to inspire us to vote smarter.

On Thursday, the academic commission that has been charged with running the Youngstown School District further tightened its belt around the system.

And also Thursday, a visiting judge brought closure to a four-year murder trial that tragically was ignored by Mahoning County Judge James Evans.

The academic commission’s decision was stunning in how little authority it left the elected school board in regard to the millions of dollars in the district bank.

In short — the board can, um, sit at tables. Yep.

I guess it can turn on lights, too.

And, well, it can hear fourth-graders talk about their Christmas projects.

Everything else, in essence, is the state commission’s authority after Thursday. The commission let the board know:

The board no longer has a role in any administrative hires.

It has no say in any curriculum or instruction decisions.

It cannot determine any student-support initiatives.

The board even was limited to two paid meetings per month. They get paid to sit at full board meetings — $125 per person per meeting. In July, they met nine times.

It’s a continuation of what can only be termed a board purge. In the years that the commission has been overseeing the district, it’s weighed in several ways:

Limited school board spending over $5,000;

Assigned a new treasurer;

Threatened the board if it did not renew Superintendent Connie Hathorn.

Last week all but sealed the panel as lame duck for the foreseeable future.

In another part of the city Thursday, justice finally was handed out in the Vivian Martin murder.

It was probably one of the few times you will hear a presiding judge talk of ending the case being more vital than the punishment. But that’s the tone that reverberated.

“My [No. 1] goal was to give you all some closure,” said visiting Judge Lee Sinclair.

He closed in 10 weeks what Judge Evans failed to do in four years with the horrific murder of the real-estate agent.

It was an embarrassment for the county judicial system — from Evans as boss of the case, to the county prosecutors who permitted him to be so aloof.

In a world that all too often struggles with issues of race, we could all learn from the example of the Martin family. They marked this too-long delay in justice with calm, while diligent, decorum.

I have no problem pointing out what they did not:

If Martin was a white real- estate agent from the suburbs and her two assailants were black, do you think justice waits four years? Do you think the prosecutor’s office sits on its hands while witnesses grow old, forget things and die off? Do you think a judge sits on it like Evans did? And do you think the white suburban power structure quietly lets the judge sit while they all attend golf scrambles?

The answers, sadly, are: No, no, no and definitely not.

Evans should have tried the case in the spring of 2011. By not doing so, he cost Mahoning taxpayers approximately $200,000 more because they sat here and not in state prison.

He stalled. He shimmied.

Ironically, he did the same with his retirement — first saying he’d leave Sept. 1, then switching to Oct. 1 — last week.

It seems to be justice, then, that his retirement news last week was overshadowed by the simultaneous closing of the Martin case he did not work hard enough to see finished. That is his legacy he gave himself.

We decide who sits in these offices.

Too often, we decide wrong. And worse, we repeat our mistakes with re-elections.

Carry these episodes with you to the voting booth in a month, and forever.

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on vindy.com. Tweet him, too, at @tfranko.