A Plan to Protect the Help

All too often in politics, those who climb the ladder will, upon reaching the top, kick it away for safety. Monica Jaye Stabbert proposes leaving the ladder in place and refraining from stomping on the people holding it.

Announcing her campaign for Senate District 16, Stabbert declared that protecting public employees from harassment and retaliation would be a chief priority. She suggests, quite plainly, that elected office is not a license to behave like a small tyrant with a title.

It is a novel theory, though one suspects it was once common practice before job descriptions grew longer than attention spans.

Her proposal would strengthen whistleblower protections, establish clearer reporting channels, and create an independent review process, so complaints don’t get probed by the very people named within them.

The last idea may strike some as revolutionary, though it closely resembles ordinary fairness as practiced outside of government buildings.

Stabbert also promises the usual pillars: support for law enforcement, a fondness for the Constitution in all its numbered parts, fiscal restraint, school choice, and patient-centered care. It is a platform sturdy enough to stand on.

Her résumé is a tale of small business acumen, healthcare, and conservative talk radio, with stopovers in civic groups and animal welfare organizations. She is also an ordained minister, which may prove useful if the legislative session requires last rites.

Endorsements from a respectable assortment of local names, each lending a hand to the enterprise, are gathered. Whether that hand steadies the ship or merely waves from the dock remains to be seen.

Now, it is a fine thing to promise dignity for public employees. The test, as always, is whether such promises survive first contact with power. Many a reform has entered Carson City as a principle and left as a pamphlet.

Still, the notion that government should treat its workers no worse than a private employer is difficult to argue against, unless one has grown particularly fond of double standards. If nothing else, Stabbert’s proposal reminds us that accountability is a splendid idea, especially when applied to those who write the rules.

And if she succeeds, it will mark a rare occasion in public life: a reform that protects the people who do the work, instead of the people who take the credit.