Per Diem and McGee

I have a post up at the Press Tribune on Senators McGee and McKenzie’s use of per diem and how I think the law should be changed so that lawmakers can’t game the system.

In the meanwhile, Dennis Mansfield calls for McGee’s resignation citing an action with hypocritical undertones:

 I was told today by two very reputable sources that John McGee as a part of GOP Senate Leadership last year agreed to fire a key administrative secretary in the Idaho State Senate because she had been arrested on a DUI. (I am keeping her name anonymous for her sake and for her reputation.) BTW, she did not contact me, nor did anyone connected to her.

So if you’re a legislative secretary, you get caught drunk driving, you lose your job. If however, you’re the golden boy of the GOP establishment, you don’t even a slap on the hand from leadership? It looks bad.

That said, I’m not quite into the call for him to resign camp. While I trust that Mansfield and his sources are being accurate, the information is second and third hand. Is there some aggravating circumstance that somehow made the legislative secretary’s action worse than McGee’s? For example, was she drunk with kids in the back seat of the car? Was she a serial DUI offender?  We need more facts and we need more context.

However, if after we have all the context in the world, it still looks like McGee is a hypocrite who holds underlings to a higher standard than he holds himself, he should definitely resign.