Recall that the Lake County Auditor's office almost torpedoed Charlie Johnson's bid for District 8 Senate by writing "Lake County" instead of "District 8" in the "We, the undersigned qualified voters of" blank on his nominating petition. Fortunately, Judge Barnett rectified that error and put Charlie back on the ballot.
Now Johnson politely avoided laying any blame on his "friends and fellow citizens" in the Auditor's office. He said they followed procedure. He even contends it wasn't really an error: grammatically and factually, the preamble to his petition is perfectly correct in saying that we the voters of Lake County want Charlie to run for District 8 Senate. One can make a reasonable argument that the only person who screwed up was Secretary of State Jason Gant, for throwing the petitions out without sufficiently clear statutory basis.
But wait: what's this I read in the May 1 Lake County Commission minutes?
EXECUTIVE SESSION:
Motion by Bohl, second by Wollmann, to enter into executive session with Roberta Janke, Auditor, in attendance. Motion carried.
REGULAR SESSION:
Motion by Bohl, second by Hageman, to return to the regular session. Motion carried.
GRADE CHANGES/AUDITORS OFC:
Motion by Hageman, second by Wollmann, to change Linda Walker, Grade 8 $16.20 per hour to Grade 6 $15.70 per hour and Paula Barrick, Grade 10 $16.10 per hour to Grade 12 $16.60 per hour based on recommendation of the auditor. Motion carried.
One Auditor's office employee gets a 3% pay cut. The other gets a 3% pay raise.
The commissioners and Auditor Bobbi Janke discussed this action in executive session, so we don't get to hear why we moved some of our chips from Walker's pile to Barrick's pile. But I wonder: can we connect the top half of this post with the bottom?