It was one of those moments when the little voice in your head goes,
"Did she just say what I think she said?"
"Please direct your questions to Liz Boyd" who is media secretary to
the governor. Dishing out the unsolicited advice was Sharon Bommarito
who is the state employer which is just bureaucratic-eeze for the
governor's chief labor negotiator.
Bommarito's been virtually invisible during her time on the job.
Calls to her office are routinely met with the same stone wall the TV
crew bumped into with the "please direct your questions to liz Boyd"
bunk.
In fact when she showed up at a Civil Service Commission meeting
this week, that same little voice went, "Oh wow. That's what she looks
like!"
Ms. Bommarito was out in public to defend the administration's
notion that the live-in and unwed partners of state government workers
should get health care benefits.
Suffice it to say, not everyone in the room nodded in approval.
"It's a cost we can't afford," huffed Rep. Rick Jones (R-Grand
Ledge) who has been a constant thorn in the governor's you know what.
Problem is the benefit was negotiated fair and square at the
bargaining table and now the commission was being asked by Ms.
Bommarito to cough up the votes. It did not not and tabled it instead.
Reporters encircled the bashful Ms. Bommarito and with TV cameras
rolling she tried another dodge when the "contact Liz' stuff didn't
work. "I'm in a meeting," she went grasping for straws as she stood in
the middle of a public hearing room.
She finally recanted and granted an interview and actually she did
quite well. She took all the pointed questions about fraud possibility
being in the program and the cost being too much and when it was done,
the reporters said thank you.
And her little voice said?
One can only guess.