My favorite politician

A major league "Thank you" to my good friend Shannon Jones, who is also my Ohio Senator, who removed a huge rock from our path Friday with a quick (and terribly effective) phone call to the Ohio Dept of Job and Family Services.  They were sitting on some paperwork we desperately needed to keep our adoption moving forward.


I was trying hard (and failing) to keep a positive frame of mind and let the system work.  But, they had our request for more than 100 days, and processing it should have taken about 40 seconds.  In my opinion, they were laying down on the job, and it was creating a serious problem for us.

So, Shannon called (or more precisely, a very nice girl named Megan from Shannon's office, called ODJFS Tuesday and remarkably our paperwork showed up at our agency's office today.  Being a politician myself, my emotions are mixed: somewhere between thrilled that someone in office can make such a difference in an important situation (and one that's wholely appropriate for a politician to be involved in) and ticked that it takes political intervention for government employees to actual get something done.

Now, this is clearly not an indictment of all government workers, but it certainly doesn't speak to the kind of efficiency, public service and customer focus I try HARD to instill in the government that I lead.  But, it's a classic example of a poorly run, centrally driven government that's riddled with unfunded mandates; like the one that requires every adult who's planning to adopt, foster, teach, advise, coach, counsel, or otherwise interact with a child on a regular basis to have one of these certificates, but doesn't provide additional funding sufficient to actually perform all those searches.  I swear, every politician should have to stand in line, and live the misery that they've instituted with stupid rules like these...before they go into effect.

Bottom line is SOME POLITICIAN dorked this one up, and MY POLITICIAN managed to get it fixed for me.  So, YAY SHANNON! and I'm taking this one as a learning point.  One that I will carry it with me as I continue to strive to make my town a better place to live, learn, work and shop (....and deal with the government).