Lazy Gopher Pachyderm

Today the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has many good things to say about recently resigned St. Paul U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose. The story contains forceful praise for her work from various local law enforcement communities.

Two things strike me about this story. The first is, why are all these things being printed now and not reported during the midst of the controversy? Did Strib reporters only this week have the time to contact the people who knew best about her work and put their thoughts in the paper? To be fair, I have not read many of the stories the Strib may have published on Paulose, but can't imagine the STRIB would repeat themselves in such a fashion. So I asked someone who turns each page of the thing daily. While she could not be assured of having read each story that may have been published, she did read those of the past week and the article today. She does not recall any Strib story, or portion thereof, containing the sort of positive comments seen today.

Second, I’ve always been leery of the “turmoil that her management practices ignited” charges that have appeared in the press without a given basis or substantiation. Today’s story may yield a clue:

"Miller [executive director of Civil Society, a nonprofit agency that helps trafficking victims] said Paulose worked with her organization for nearly two years, helped it secure funds and made sure that someone from her office was available around the clock, seven days a week...

"Lt. Andrew Smith, head of the Minneapolis Police Department's Violent Offender Task Force, has praise for Paulose and her staff…'We've gotten very good service from her office. Attorneys have been available to us on weekends, holidays and at night.'"

Color me suspicious, but it sounds like Paulose required her staff to be ‘on call’ 24-7 in ways that they weren’t before. Let’s also throw in her (rightful) emphasis on D.C. Attorney General priorities instead of letting office goals be set by local prosecutors. That can certainly result in leaked-to-the-press charges of ‘bad management practices. Is that the case here? With the sorry state of local reporting on this issue from the ‘dead tree/boob tube’ media we’re not like to get any solid search for answers.

Powerline has more, including this observation:

"Rachel Paulose gets reassigned under a cloud for the way she ran her office while Amy Klobuchar, who had many, many more intra-office management issues, is in the Senate."

# posted by Ricard : 6:22 PM