Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Move Along Now -- There's Nothing to See Here

Well, this doesn't sound suspicious at at:
Tom Nardelli abruptly quit his state job with Gov. Scott Walker in late July, pulling the plug on his $90,000-a-year position just days after accepting the post.

That ended more than 3½ years Nardelli put in with Walker, including three years as his chief of staff when Walker was Milwaukee County executive. Nardelli was alderman for a northwest side city district for 18 years until he retired from that job in 2004.

Nardelli said Tuesday he resigned as administrator for the state Division of Environmental and Regulatory Services because he decided it would be unfair to keep the job knowing he planned to resign soon anyway.

"I was toying with leaving at the end of September," he said. He picked that exit date because it was the 100th anniversary of another state division Nardelli led - Safety and Buildings. He held that job for the first six months of Walker's tenure as governor.
You've got to be fucking kidding me. The 100th anniversary of the Safety and Buildings division? That's like saying he's waiting for Taurus to enter the fifth house of Saturn -- after all, there's nothing like a henchman for a small government Republican celebrating the birth of a regulatory agency.

But after what essentially amounts to Nardelli's astronological mumbo-jumbo, the JS digs a little deeper:
Shortly after accepting his last appointment July 18, "I began to have misgivings about my decision," Nardelli wrote in a July 21 resignation letter to Dave Ross, who heads the state Department of Safety and Professional Services. Nardelli said in the letter it wouldn't be fair to him or the Division of Environmental and Regulatory Services "for me to assume this assignment for only a couple of months."

In an interview, Nardelli said "other little things" related to the internal operations of his former state agency also led to his resignation. He declined to say what those were.
For a guy who's been in public life for over two decades, you'd think Nardelli would know that he's just supposed to say that he wants to spend more time with his family. But no, he instead he suggests that there were circumstances that gave him "misgivings" and that the specifics therein aren't something he wants to discuss publicly.

I sincerely doubt we've heard the last of Nardelli.

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