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In all of the furor over the Adams "scandal", there were a couple of tiny sidebar references that really bothered me. There was the young woman who went from being a reporter at one of the newspapers that investigated the story to a position in the urban planning department for which she had no prior experience or training. Most recently, there was a young man who seems to have garnered his $50,000-year position almost entirely through his personal connection to Adams and "time served" as a volunteer in the campaign. Here we are in a city facing cutting the school year by a week and asking teachers to go without pay because of budget shortfalls, and that kind of sketchy cronyism really rubs me the wrong way. People with years of experience are out of work, people are taking on debt returning to school to get training they hope will put them in a better position to find jobs, and the vetting process for city jobs is as ambiguous as hiring some one with no relevant experience over candidates with degrees in the field simply on the strength of her "smarts"? We're talking about closing our already overworked courts one day a week yet among other "research projects" Adams' former campaign helpmate was paid our tax money to spend his unsupervised time at the library studying was whether or not wealth impacts happiness?These are the kinds of stories that undermine my confidence in Adams' ability to lead this city fairly. Am I the only one bothered by this?

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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