Brunner’s Slushie

As the Ohio legislature is considering regulations for the transition accounts used by statewide officeholders, one has to wonder how Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner feels about the issue?

These unregulated accounts led in part to the fall of former Attorney General Marc Dann.  Dann was using his transition account as a “slush fund” according to Ohio Inspector General, Tom Charles.

So why should Brunner’s opinion be a factor in all of this?  Brunner had a family affair with setting up Marc Dann’s transition “slush” account.  You may recall this from the Columbus Dispatch:

[Ohio Inspector General Thomas] Charles questioned whether any statewide official except the governor has legal authority to set up a transition fund, although almost all of them have in recent years. Two of the original trustees for Dann's were Brunner's daughter and husband, who also did legal work for Dann's campaign.

Or the Cleveland Plain Dealer who also helped drive-home the point in this editorial:

Gov. Ted Strickland, Dann and other Ohio Democrats won statewide office in November 2006 by railing against scandals during Republican Bob Taft's governorship. So Dann's fellow Democrats forced him to resign. The Democrats even expelled Dann from their party, an action more reminiscent of a Balkan politburo than Ohio politics. Their real goal was to let nothing get in the way of delivering Ohio's presidential vote to a fellow Democrat.

Earlier, however, other Democrats had enabled Dann. One of Inspector General Thomas P. Charles' discoveries was a Dann "transition" fund that amounted to a legal but off-the-books slush fund. Helping Dann create the "transition" fund was Columbus lawyer Rick Brunner, husband of Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner - who just happens to have jurisdiction over Ohio campaign-finance laws.

So does Brunner praise this legislation as another weapon to fight scandal (which she helped create) or does she keep her noise down and try to avoid more mention of her name in connection with this issue?