Yes, please get Doerting under oath!!!

A couple of weeks ago, the Courier-Journal reported on another potential dustup between the executive branch of Gov. Ernie Fletcher and the Department of Democrat Strongarm Tactics -- we mean, the attorney general's office under Greg Stumbo -- regarding some cases currently under review by the Personnel Board.

Attorneys for the Personnel Cabinet and other agencies want to take the testimony of Transportation Cabinet retiree Doug Doerting, who started the anti-Fletcher snowball rolling by turning over "evidence" of hiring improprieties, gathered by questionable means, to Stumbo's partisan political enforcers.

The AG's office doesn't want Doerting to be put under oath and made to testify. They claim that he has already given all the relevant testimony he properly can, and they also say that forcing a whistleblower to testify will serve as a chilling effect upon other whistleblowers coming forward to reveal governmental improprieties.

As for that last argument, we call BS. Any whistleblower who claims to have evidence of wrongdoing ought to have the courage and integrity to go public with it and defend the allegations they make. And they ought to be willing to testify under oath as to what they claim has happened.

However, we would love to see Doerting put under oath. And we'd love to see Andy Barr or David Fleenor (the Governor's Office's counselors) ask Doerting a few questions and force truthful answers out of him, under pain of perjury:

1.) Mr. Doerting, did you try to leverage your high school scholastic connections with the governor into an appointed position in the Transportation Cabinet?

2.) Were you personally offended or did you feel slighted when the governor told you, in front of a group of Transportation employees, that he did not remember you from Lafayette High School despite the fact that you were in the same graduating class?

3.) Why did you tell Dick Murgatroyd and others in Transportation's personnel office that the decisions they were making were entirely legal and proper, if you subsequently claimed to the attorney general's office that they were illegal?

4.) How did you obtain the evidence you turned over to the AG's office, including e-mail records? Were these records obtained in a proper fashion, and were you a party to these conversations, or did you abuse and misuse your authority and access to these records to obtain them?

5.) Why did you never provide evidence of patronage hiring within the Transportation Cabinet to other attorneys general in the past, despite widespread knowledge that such practices were common in the administrations of Patton, Jones, Wilkinson and others? Why did you wait until a Republican governor was in office before you became a whistleblower?

To our knowledge, Doerting has never been asked these questions, either in any legal proceedings or by the media. It's time he was made to answer them, given the trouble he's caused and the money he's cost the state and a number of individuals.