"Turn in your weapon, badge, duty belt and police vehicle," says the U.S. Office of Special Counsel
Interesting afternoon development on thee Emerald City political red meat news front. Regular readers will recall the 2006 general election sideshow, wherein Ogden Police Chief Jon Greiner's Senate District 18 election campaign was nearly derailed, by accusations that the Chief's simultaneous occupancy of the Ogden Police Chief/Senate District 18 positions would constitute a violation of the Hatch Act of 1939. Although Chief Greiner temporarily suspended his 2006 campaign, later consultations with legal counsel led to the decision to re-engage in the campaign. Somewhere along the line Greiner also filed an appeal, although the outcome was never publicly revealed. Ultimately, Greiner was elected to the Senate seat, and as late as June of 2007 had reportedly heard nothing further from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, who originally prosecuted the complaint. Believing, (perhaps justifiably,) that the the Feds had backed down, Senator Greiner's been serving in the Senate since January of '07, while simultaneously acting as the Police Chief of Ogden City.
Well lo and behold, the Standard-Examiner has just now posted a new Ace Reporter Schwebke story (nice job, Scott) on its live website this afternoon, indicating that the matter now appears to be on the verge of being formally and finally resolved. We link this afternoon's story below:
• Feds seek removal of Ogden police chiefJust goes to show you that's there's no such thing in Emerald City as a slow news day, so long as we remain patient, we guess.
You'd better believe we'll be following this story closely as it develops.
We'll also note in passing that the U.S. Attorney's Office has been particularly active over the past few days. Does this perchance signal a change of prosecutorial attitude on the part of career U.S. Attorneys, on the eve of the inauguration of a new presidential administration?
So what say our gentle readers about all this?
Update 12/11/08 5:45 a.m. MT: The Std-Ex has now posted an expanded version of yesterday's StandardNET live story to its paid Digital Edition website this morning:
• Greiner's job on the lineWe congratulate the Standard-Examiner for breaking this story immediately in its free online edition yesterday, thus making this information available in a timely manner to subscribers and non-subscribers alike. For the past three years our home town newspaper has all too often followed an unfortunate policy of hiding its "red meat" material behind its "paid" firewall. We'll interpret this as a positive move on the Std-Ex's part, as the Std-Ex struggles to assume its rightful place among active, informative (and hopefully profitable) online news sources.
