Mark Bralley
Ched MacQuigg
COMMENTARY: Imagine you walk into Sen. Michael Sanchez’s law office to meet with him.
You explain that:
- you are in charge of an endeavor employing 30,000.
- you have a code of ethics and specific standards of conduct and competence.
- you are interested in holding every employee, from the least to the most, actually and honestly accountable to those ethics and standards.
You ask the senator and long-time lawyer:
If I paid you enough money, can you design a system that provides honest to God accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence while those employees are at work?
Then you ask him:
And will you?
I’m going to suggest that Sanchez’s answer to the first question would be; oh yeah, hell yeah, I can do that.
The answer to the second question, after it occurs to him that he himself would be held accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence under his system, would be different.
He’d show you the door.
Sen. Sanchez can reform government and end the cultures of public corruption and incompetence in state government. He just doesn’t want to.
And the people aren’t ready, yet, to rise up and make him.
Ched MacQuigg is a retired shop teacher and blogger. He has been a longtime advocate of honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct for politicians and public servants — in particular for the leadership of the Albuquerque Public Schools.