Are Senate Republicans — including Rodney Tom — telling top nonpartisan staff to get lost?

This is dis­turb­ing news. From Andrew Gar­ber at The Seat­tle Times:

Sen­ate Democ­rats raised con­cerns Fri­day that the GOP [Republican]-led major­i­ty in [the] Sen­ate is get­ting rid of top non-par­ti­san com­mit­tee staff managers.

Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Sharon Nel­son, D‑Maury Island, said it was her under­stand­ing there was pres­sure from the GOP [Republican]-led major­i­ty cau­cus to “hire some polit­i­cal-type indi­vid­u­als into the non-par­ti­san staff. Inter­views were done. Those indi­vid­u­als were not hired … I’m very con­cerned that may be the under­ly­ing cause of this” action to let the man­agers go.

Sen. Karen Fras­er, D‑Olympia, sent an email to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus Fri­day after­noon say­ing, “I am stunned to let you know that the MCC [Repub­li­can] Lead­er­ship have advised (the com­mit­tee ser­vices direc­tor and deputy direc­tor) that their ser­vices are no longer need­ed and they should find oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties by ear­ly Jan­u­ary. My under­stand­ing is that Sen­a­tors Tom, Par­lette, and Fain con­sult­ed in advance and made this decision.”

Gar­ber says he reached out to Rod­ney Tom and Lin­da Evans Par­lette to ask them about this. They both declined to com­ment. Gar­ber also report­ed that he left a voice­mail for Joe Fain which has not been returned… at least not yet.

The News Tri­bune has post­ed the full emails from Nel­son and Fras­er.

Tom and Par­let­te’s silence says some­thing in and of itself. If they felt what Sen­a­tors Nel­son and Fras­er were say­ing was wrong, mis­lead­ing, or inac­cu­rate, they’d sure­ly want to cor­rect the record. But they had noth­ing to say.

We can only con­clude, then, that they are indeed telling non­par­ti­san staff to get lost. Pre­sum­ably this is because they want peo­ple more loy­al to them and their agen­da in sev­er­al of the top jobs. This is dis­turb­ing because the non­par­ti­san staff is sup­posed to be, well, non­par­ti­san. The cau­cus­es have their own staffs, but the Sen­ate also has a non­par­ti­san staff so sen­a­tors from both major par­ties can get answers to ques­tions from a neu­tral, pro­fes­sion­al source. Non­par­ti­san staff con­duct research and field inquiries, but they do not advocate.

Democ­rats are jus­ti­fi­ably con­cerned about Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’ per­son­nel moves, par­tic­u­lar­ly since it appears they weren’t con­sult­ed. The notion of non­par­ti­san staff serv­ing at the whims of the major­i­ty — any major­i­ty — does not sit well with us, giv­en that the non­par­ti­san staff are sup­posed to serve all legislators.

Per­haps state law needs to be changed to give House and Sen­ate minori­ties more input into hir­ing and per­son­nel over­sight decisions.