I’m a big fan of checks and balances. You might even call me an evangelist.
When I first heard about the new Arizona Senate Director Nominations Committee, I thought, now there’s a good idea. The new committee might provide more in-depth oversight of nominees to important director positions. In my experience, the old method of screening director nominations in standing committees often led to cursory candidate reviews.Exhibit A comes from last week when the newly formed Committee on Director Nominations heard Gov.
More than 30 medical and public health organizations submitted letters of support to the committee. Dr. Cullen was an ideal candidate to take the reins of an agency that has been sorely lacking in quality director-level leadership for many years. None of that mattered in the end. These positions are not easy to fill. They need a very specialized set of skills and expertise. In some cases, folks moved their families across the country to Arizona, only to get caught in political quicksand upon their arrival. That quicksand hurts our ability to retain qualified staff within these agencies and makes it harder to recruit additional local and national leaders.
If you have bad actors like the current crop of Republicants Ave Maria can be turned into a Satanic ritual