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Was checks-and-balance system at fault in Dann case?
Sunday, May 18, 2008
COLUMBUS — When the watchdog started barking and investigators swooped into the attorney general's office, Marc Dann finally got the message and resigned hours later.
The system of checks and balances worked. Or did it?
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It took special action by the Republican-controlled legislature and Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland to temporarily unleash Ohio's watchdog, Inspector General Tom Charles.
Charles' office normally has no jurisdiction to investigate wrongdoing involving the attorney general or the other constitutional offices: secretary of state, auditor and treasurer. The oversight function is so limited that a top aide to the attorney general led the investigation into sexual harassment charges involving another top aide to the attorney general. Any call for an outside probe would have had to come from Dann.
It raises a question: Should Ohio have a more aggressive system for monitoring governmental mischief?
Some favor expanding the IG's authority. "If a citizen sees a drunk employee staggering out of the attorney general's office at 6 in the morning, who do they call?" asked David Zanotti, president of the Ohio Roundtable citizen advocacy group.
But Steven H. Steinglass, dean emeritus of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University, fears partisan witch hunts if the IG is given broad powers.
"My biggest concern is the potential for abuse with an IG appointed by a governor from one political party investigating constitutional officers from the other party," he said.
