Dan Kelly gets blogged

Another conservative blogger I read is Doug Petch. Several posts down from the top today, he's got a reaction to Ralph Long, a liberal Lexington blogger I read.

This Merit System battle began when Dan Kelly, state senator from Springfield, said this to the Courier-Journal:

"The question is, if the merit system is working as intended then there should be a representative number of Republicans that have been hired in previous administrations," Kelly said after the task force's second meeting.

Then Ralph Long said this:

First, this is the MERIT system. That means people should be hired by ability not by quota. I don’t care what someone’s party affiliation is, I care whether they are competent to do the job and so should Kelly.

Now, Doug Petch says that Kelly's comment...

implies nothing more than, if the process were truly blind to political affiliation, there should be a proportional number of democrats, republicans, and independents in merit positions regardless of which political party is in power. It has nothing to do with quotas - regardless of how Mr. Long chooses to interpret it.

I don't know what the breakdown is of pre-Fletcher Merit System employee political registration. I'd like to. But Petch is right that "representative number" does not mean the same thing as "quota."

And Long, for his part, should hesitate the next time he throws around the word "yuppie" as a derogatory term. As a 50-something consultant, no matter what party he belongs to, he's the poster-child for yuppies. Just look at his picture.