Updating yesterday's ILB entry, an editorial today in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is headlined "Cookiegate a crummy deal." The editorial begins:
Citizens want elected officials to be above reproach and uphold the public's trust. But even to a demanding public, the recent firing of court record clerks over a good-natured joke seems like overkill.Perhaps Therese Brown, who as Allen County clerk has become the public face of the episode, had good cause to fire two employees in her office and give a written reprimand to a third after they accepted a bag of cookies from a resident. She alleges the employees were using their office for personal gain. But the employees say, and the evidence seems to back them up, that a joke and a misunderstanding were at the root of the incident, not an attempt to use their positions for personal gain.
