How would you like to be able to sleep on the job, show up late and leave early, use your company vehicle and cell phone for all of your personal business, plus receive a nice salary, great benefits a state pension as well as a “golden parachute” after being forced to resign?
Sounds like wishful thinking, huh? Not if your name is Scott Flood and your daddy is Sam Flood, the former St. Clair County Clerk and liaison for former governor and current inmate Rod Blagojevich.
And, despite state investigators’ revelations of these infractions committed by Flood during his employment in his $70,000 per-year position with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the IDNR allowed matters to be drawn out until Flood was officially vested in the state pension program.
Flood was allowed to resign and, later, recommended for a $56,000-per-year building maintenance supervisor position with St. Clair County by none other than St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern.
Kern even admitted to knowing about Flood’s horrific work history. But did it matter? Nope. After all, Flood is political royalty and in St. Clair County who you know always trumps what you know or how bad you screw up.
In fact, St. Clair County political cronyism is a religion practiced by all aspiring wannabes and political powerbrokers, with a convoluted gospel which appeals to all political sycophants and lackeys.
And even part-time political cronies receive full-time benefits in the St. Clair County political kingdom.
Take, for example, a recent investigation by KTVI reporter Elliot Davis in which it was revealed that St. Clair County Board members receive full health insurance benefits (worth $10,279 a year) at taxpayer’s expense for a part-time job which only meets once a month.
When questioned about such an obviously ridiculous arrangement, County Board Chairman Mark Kern stated that voters can always vote out their representatives if they don’t like it.
What a smug, pompous and inelegant statement of the obvious.
Mark Kern is relying on the complacency and political apathy of St. Clair County voters; and why shouldn’t he?
Unfortunately, with only a 13 percent turnout by East St. Louis voters and a (worse) 10 percent turnout among Belleville voters in the recent elections, Kern has nothing to worry about.
The real tragedy is that as long as the Kern, Flood and other political royalty can rely on the voters to abdicate their power by refusing to vote, they will always thumb their noses at the voters and exploit an electorate that has rendered itself mute by not participating in the process.
Email: jtingram_1960@yahoo.com Twitter@JamesTingram. If you like my column, then you will love my radio show on WGNU-920am every Sunday from 4-5 pm. Please tune-in and call-in. I love to hear from my St. Louis American readers.
