Lame duck periods need to be reduced to protect citizens

Joe Biden will not go gently into that good night.

The lame duck president seems to be doing as much damage as he can before Donald Trump is sworn in Jan. 20.

To learn the true character of someone, see how they act when they know there are no repercussions for their actions. There are sayings designed just for this scenario, like “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.”

It’s one thing to have the kids running amok at home when mom and dad make a quick trip to the grocery store.

It’s something quite different when it is an elected official doing something similar when they are no longer beholden to the people who put them in office.

Elections take place in early November, but the new office holders do not take their seats until January, leaving a two-month period of unchecked actions.

We’ve seen this happen in Liberal, Kansas, when Connie Seigrist and Taylor Harden were elected to the Liberal City Commission years ago.

While they waited to be seated, the majority of the existing commission under the leadership of then Mayor Joe Denoyer opted to create a new contract for embattled City Manager Mark Hall. Denoyer worked up a contract with city staff that had no termination date and would have provided a $400,000 golden parachute if Hall was fired. This was done when Denoyer no longer had to answer to the voters since he chose not to run for re-election.

The new commissioners in front of a packed room opted to terminate Hall anyway on their first night in office, and thank goodness the court agreed with the new commission that Denoyer and his fellow commissioners could not tie the hands of the next commission with such an outlandish contract.

Also during the lame duck period Denoyer took part in an accusation that county citizens Don and Nancy Parsons were bribing candidates like Harden to run to fire Hall.

The Parsons basically had to prove their innocence to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation by providing financial records proving they had not provided any bribes to candidates.

The investigation concluded that the changes in city government occurred because of a shift in the political winds, but the chilling effect of being investigated by the KBI was accomplished with the hope of silencing anyone else who may want to challenge elected officials or future city management.

This all occurred or was initiated during the lame duck period. If the lame ducks had their way, new commissioners would have been intimidated from making any changes in city management, and the public would have been afraid to challenge leadership for fear of being accused of bribery and being investigated by the KBI.

There have been no apologies for these actions that would have cost the taxpayers almost half a million dollars.

That’s the danger of the lame duck period on the local level.

At the national level, it’s even worse.

Biden unilaterally decided, two weeks before his single term comes to an end to prevent any offshore oil drilling in 625 million acres of federally controlled area.

Why?

He wants to make it as hard as possible for Trump to reduce fuel costs for you and me. He wants to do anything he can to make the next administration struggle.

And when did he decide to take this action? During the lame duck period when he is beholden to no one.

Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has stated that the next two weeks will be very busy for the White House as they continue to undermine the incoming president.

Instead of accepting the will of the voters, Biden is using unchecked power to take executive action in every way he possibly can.

Not only did Biden go back on his word about not pardoning his own son, but he has also pardoned 1,500 others and commuted the sentences of all federal death row inmates because he thinks we should reconsider the death penalty.

If he believes that, fine. But the proper way we discuss issues in this country is through the political process. He should have made his case to Congress to repeal the death penalty law.

The presidential pardon power is generally reserved for cases in which the president believes there was a miscarriage of justice, or that someone was convicted in such a way as to erode trust in the process. Biden’s pardon had nothing to do with a wrongful conviction but rather his feelings on the death penalty law.

He claimed the same political grounds when banning offshore drilling, saying the environmental risks were too great.

Again, if he believes that, make that case to Congress to change the law allowing drilling.

But he didn’t do that. Biden instead chose dictatorial action, something that Democrats have claimed Trump will do once he becomes president.

Usually very little action takes place during the lame duck period, or at least that is what people of honor would do.

But we no longer have that in politics, and that is why we need to cut down the time between elections and the newly elected officials taking office.

Or we need local units of government to pass home rules that limit any actions in the lame duck period to only affect those proposals that have already been considered by the commission. No new employee contracts should be negotiated during lame duck periods.

No presidential executive orders should be allowed during the lame duck period, either.

And people should always feel free to challenge management and elected officials without fear of being investigated by the KBI.

The nation will always experience periods where they reject the current leadership. When they do, that decision should be respected the moment it is made.

Sometimes that involves newly elected officials who want to take the community in a different direction than the current office holders.

Or even a nation.

We once lived in a time when those decisions were honored. Now we live in a time when having power justifies poor action, and it must be limited.