Strickland’s Fiscal Policy – Ask for forgiveness rather than permission

The Columbus Dispatch reported that Gov. Ted Strickland exercised his right to spend money that he doesn’t have, when he gave the OK for a law firm, working outside the realm of public records requests, to help develop his “top-secret” education plan. 

Strickland hired the law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey (whose employees donated $29,525 to Strickland in ‘05 and ‘06) to serve as special counsel for the development of his evidence-based education plan.  The problem was that Strickland put the cart before the horse, and hired the firm BEFORE the Attorney General made the hiring official.

The Columbus law firm helping to develop Gov. Ted Strickland's school-funding proposal had already run up a bill of $49,275 before it received written authorization to do the job.

But, as they say in the infomercials, “wait there’s more…”.  The billing came just shy of the $50,000 threshold to trigger the public approval of the State Controlling Board.  Not to mention that $40,000 of the bill was billed late… after the December approval had been signed-off on.

Then-Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers signed the paperwork officially hiring Squire, Sanders & Dempsey as special counsel on the governor's proposal on Dec. 5 and 31, 2008. By then, the law firm's bills had almost reached the $50,000 threshold that would have required the Strickland administration to obtain approval from the State Controlling Board, a bipartisan legislative spending panel.

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Gregory W. Stype, a lawyer with the firm who performed much of the work, said he recently became aware that the $40,142 bill for November had not been submitted for payment due to an "oversight."

A conspiracy theorist could, by these circumstances, surmise that in Strickland’s crusade to keep the lid on his education plan, he did whatever he could to reduce the paper trail.  Could it be that Strickland purposely kept the billing below the controlling board threshold so as to keep quiet about hiring an outside law firm?  Could it be that Strickland arranged with the law firm to wait until after the signed approval to submit their billing? 

Much like the quandary of the number of licks it takes to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop, “the world may never know.”