Mr. Todd Franko
 
In regard to the page B1 article/editorial “With this example-------,” what, pray tell, is new? This sort of thing has been going on in one form or another for years, decades, and centuries. At least, this time, someone caught on.
 
I worked as a reference librarian at the Warren library from 1969 to 2001. At the time, the Ohio state government published its roster in book form. I was always amazed at the number of useless positions to be found in that book. My theory was, and is, that those positions were created as a means of rewarding the less than competent party faithful with jobs where any damage they did would be minimized.
 
One question I do have. Are these people near retirement? One ploy, or legal scam, among the local yokel politicos is to advance a friend who is near retirement to a fancy sounding sinecure position with a jumped up salary for their final years so that they can get a larger OPERS pension than that their salary for the previous several years entitled them to. It was supposed to have been 67% of the average salary during the last three years of employment after they had worked for the local and state governments for 30 years.
 
Such characters are an abomination to those of us who played by the spirit of the rules. And since the state retirement systems are dependant on the returns from investments, that legal scam is today especially obnoxious, as are those useless positions with those salaries.

++++

 I liked your article about faith in government.I retired in August 2008 from the state with 31 years as a parole officer.There were jobs in Columbus that I never knew what functions they served.One of my criticisms was that there were too many "chiefs"and not enough "indians ".The "indians" took all the risks and dealt with the people but those in  Columbus had the titles and the top salaries.Add to this the patronage jobs,the "liason' postions and there is a lot of waste.Ohio does not need full-time professional politicians.I think that there should be term limits for all elected offices(including judges).There are a few good elected politicians but the special interests and lobbyists have corrupted the system.The people need to vote and not elect the same people over and over .Taxpayers should demand (includes the bank bailouts) accountability for every penny of taxpayer money.I too am frustrated by government.