A time for every purpose....

I spent a goodly portion of last Monday sitting with a roomfull of past candidates in front of the Indiana State Election Commission. I had been summoned to appear before the commission because a friend of mine had placed an ad in the New Castle paper during the last campaign, asking for voters to elect me to the District 54 seat.

The incumbent, Tom Saunders, who filed the complaint, apparently felt that my friend hadn't received proper permission from the government to place the ad, and that I hadn't, in a timely fashion at least, told on him for placing said ad. The complaints were rightfully and promptly dismissed, but that will be the subject of a later story.

Outside of the inconvenience of missing a days work, there was another aspect of the proceedings that I found troubling, though not surprising.

After the hearing was called to order, the chairman of the commission announced that they would hear the cases of elected senators and representatives first, so that those people could make it to the legislative session as quickly as possible.

I thought it took a lot of arrogance to assume that these public officials' time was somehow more valuable than the other peoples' in the room.

Maybe the commission felt that the protection from arrest the legislators enjoy while the legislature is in session also extends to include protection from sitting through hearings that you really don't want to attend.

But for the life of me I can't figure out what they have to do that is more important than letting working people go back to work.

After all, they've already decided on the official state pie.