The Sun Journal headline on the front page of the Feb. 20 paper is only part of the story, “Lawmakers: Senate leader ‘abusing’ power.”

In my opinion, the Senate leader is using her power to protect her party and that’s exactly what she should be doing. Her fellow Democrats should be rallying around her in the effort.

The only reason the Republicans want accountability in government all the sudden is because there is a Democratic governor in office. Unfortunately, the lack of accountability in government is not due to the absence of another layer of government, and any serious student of politics knows that. The lack of accountability is due to a lack of measurable outcomes, and measurable outcomes are missing not by default but by design.

Everybody wants everybody else to be accountable but few politicians or bureaucrats want to be held responsible for the failures of government. Where government programs have measurable outcomes, accountability is fairly easily assured. It is where outcomes are not articulated in measurable ways that accountability is lacking and that is not going to be remedied by tinkering around with more layers of government structure.

Sen. Daggett should be applauded for her efforts and her colleagues should be embarrassed for not doing so.

Beverly Daggett should be applauded for having the courage to resist the implementation of yet another government structure for accountability when we are not effectively using the accountability capacity we currently have.

James Tierney, Center for Government Functionality, Auburn