Not Even Trying

An Airport Director needs more than management and administrative experience.   More than financial experience.   An Airport Director needs experience in these areas in airport operations.   So the Democrat and Chronicle's David Andreatta wrote Saturday.   Sounds reasonable.

Let's apply it to other public positions.

1. Office of District Attorney

Adam Bello, Executive Director of the Monroe County Democratic Party, and Democratic campaign manager in the recent election for DA, has just been appointed as Chief Administrator of the DA's Office.

Bello has no experience in operation of a prosecutor's office.

No material administration or management experience at all.   A Party Executive Director is a political strategist who runs campaigns.

By the D&C's "Airport Standard" he's utterly unqualified.

Moreover, why would experience like Bello's be relevant to an office supposed to be totally non-political?   The D&C hasn't asked that question, and won't.

A party chairman puts into the prosecutor's office one of his top political operatives.   The D&C remains stubbornly uninterested.

Instead, it tried to slip quietly past the issue.   It buried news of Bello's appointment in last Thursday's article about Mike Green staying in the DA's office.

Reporter Gary Craig's article described Bello as someone who had been "active with the county Democratic committee," rather than by his title, Executive Director of the Democratic Party.

If the Republican candidate had won and appointed his party's Executive Director -- can you imagine the hue and cry from this impersonation of a real newspaper?

2. Rochester Fire Commissioner

Mayor Duffy appointed Molly Clifford to be City Fire Commissioner.   She holds the job still.

Clifford's only discernable qualification?   She knows how to light a match.

But she was close to Duffy.   And served as his Campaign Manager.

She had been Chairman of the Monroe County Democratic Party.

Yet can you remember any D&C story calling out her lack of credentials in anything more than a perfunctory manner?

Any story asking fire departments in, say, Florida, whether a Fire Commissioner needs fire department experience?  (As Andreatta asked a Florida airport officer about airport directors?)

Can you recall a D&C editorial saying the job requires someone with fire experience?

Just the opposite.   The Clifford appointment, a scandal anywhere else, exemplifies the D&C's "one-off" policy for news embarrrassing to its side.   One story, maybe two.   That way they can say they reported it.

Then that's it.   Nothing like the drum-beat of repitition of anything, however trivial, that it deems detrimental to the administration of Maggie Brooks.

3. Public Defender

The County Legislature, to its credit and in defiance of bullying, in 2008 selected Tim Donaher as the new Public Defender.

Experience as a criminal defense lawyer?   Check.

Experience specifically as a public defender?   Check.

Someone who met the D&C's "Airport Standard" many times over.

Yet the newspaper itself led the ugly partisan and divisive opposition to Danaher's appointment.   And isn't over it yet.

Our point isn't that reporters and editors at the D&C haven't applied to their own side a standard they've set for their targets.   From the dishonorable, one expects dishonorable conduct.

Our point is that they're not even trying, anymore, to conceal the double standard.

Didn't The New York Times call it, though?