Here’s the most substantive counterattack to Attorney General Swanson’s accusations against Amy Lawler:

You have been quoted in the press that I was put on leave because I didn’t follow the proper channels in reporting my “ethical concerns.” Your statement ignores the point that I have repeatedly raised with you: there are currently no channels in the office by which an attorney can raise concerns, ethical or otherwise, about issues they have on the job. My numerous attempts to raise this issue internally, through “proper channels”, were met with silence and retribution.

All of this is, of course, a red herring that arose in the context of the union organizing effort at the office. The issue is not, and never has been, about my concern over how cases are selected at the office, but rather ensuring that professional staffers in the office can do their jobs and serve the people of Minnesota in a healthy and productive workplace. It appears that I have been singled out for attention because of my active and open role in the union organizing effort, which I describe further below.

This is gigantic. Ms. Lawler just told us that the Swanson OAG doesn’t have anything in place to deal with ethical questions.

Most importantly, she’s accused Ms. Swanson of targeting Ms. Lawler with retribution for attempting to organize a union in the AG’s office. (I wonder what the average rank-and-file union member would do if they learned that the chief law enforcement officer in the state was undercutting attempts to establish a union.)

This raises another question for me. Why would Ms. Lawler’s superiors cite her not using proper channels? Certainly, they had to know that Ms. Lawler could quickly reply that proper channels didn’t exist in the Swanson OAG. Are they that arrogant that they think nobody would notice? Did they think that they’d intimidated Ms. Lawler so much that she wouldn’t retaliate by mentioning this office ‘defect’?

Any sane-minded jury knows that supervisors often avoid firing an employee by assigning them to undesirable projects in the hopes of getting them to quit. This highlights the fact that Ms. Swanson used supervisory retribution to chastize Ms. Lawler for organizing a union. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that.

The next logical question is this: What will Jim Nobles’ reaction be to the AG’s retributive behavior? Actually, there’s another couple questions that dovetails off that, too, namely (a) why didn’t Ms. Swanson establish an ethics inquiry panel and (b) did Mike Hatch have an an ethics inquiry panel during his time in office?

We’ll know alot more when those questions, and others, are answered by Jim Nobles.

Technorati: Ethics, Amy Lawler, Jim Nobles, Investigations, Lori Swanson, Mike Hatch, Corruption