Tony Quinn emails:

I had not intended to response to Bruce Cain’s post but after the latest from the Secretary of State, I feel it necessary to respond.
I appreciate the washing of hands on what increasingly appears to be a sordid bit of business, first by Bruce and then by the Secretary of State, but I fear some hands may be soiled because they have been caught in the cookie jar.
It always helps to read the law, which says “The Secretary of State shall provide support functions to the commission until its staff and office are fully functional.” Period. It says nothing about conducting a staffing process. But the Secretary of State, a partisan office, did post the job openings, with the Secretary of State, not the Commission, as the contact point. Listing of the job applicants and their resumes were never made public, and are not to this day. Go onto the Commission’s website (We Draw The Lines) and see if you can find out anything about the hiring process or who was hired; names and resumes of the staff have never been posted. The last press release is dated December 16, 2010.
Again the law: It says, “The commission shall hire commission staff, legal counsel and consultants as needed.” Just how am I to have confidence that the Commission did indeed do the hiring when it is all in secret?
And again: “The records of the commission pertaining to redistricting and all data considered are public records that will be posted in a manner that ensures immediate and widespread public access.” Nothing “pertains to redistricting” more than the hiring of the staff, and nothing about that was transparent in the least. The only “public record” we have at all is the pious denial of Ms. Winger that the Secretary of State ever made any decisions for the Commission.
So what am I to think of a secretive process conducted by the office of the Democratic Secretary of State that results in a self-identified partisan Democrat being selected as executive director, who then tries to convince the Commission to hire a redistricting firm with long time partisan Democratic ties on a no bid contract rushed through on a Friday afternoon, perhaps without the Commission even knowing of the partisan history of the firm it is about to hire.
Time for some hand cleanser.