Happy Valentine’s Day, Dann Lewis. It appears the Baldacci administration still loves you, as even while they shoved you out the door with one hand, they cleared a new seat for you with the other.

Lewis, the state’s long time tourism chief, was deposed in the regime change inside his parent agency, the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development. The new director, John Richardson, unceremoniously dumped Lewis in late January, ending a career that started under former Gov. Angus King.

Or so we thought.

The Portland Press Herald revealed Tuesday that Lewis landed softly as a tourism consultant for the Maine Department of Transportation, although the DOT official quoted by the paper, Dale Doughty, said he wasn’t quite sure who inside the department had hired him.

The ILOVENY license plate fiasco, for which Lewis was lambasted nationally, was at least somewhat humorous. The kind of overt patronage within government that has occurred is not. Lewis, as a veteran employee suddenly terminated from his position, did deserve some severance, but probably not another State House salary.

Lewis’ re-assignment is the latest quizzical human resources turn by the administration; our eyebrows were raised by Chuck Dow, the spokesman turned judge, and have stayed skyward through the nominations of Patricia Eltman and Anne Jordan as the new chiefs of tourism and public safety.

Republicans are grumbling about spoilage, but to be frank, patronage in government isn’t exactly a new concept. Compared to Tammany Hall or the Daley years in Chicago, the Baldacci political “machine” is choirboy honest. Dow, Eltman, Jordan and Lewis are all intelligent professionals, not political hacks.

And to be fair, Jordan is a Republican. But her lack of criminal justice experience is apparent; her six years as a prosecutor in the York County District Attorney’s office is half the time her predecessor, Michael Cantara, spent in that same office as the elected district attorney.

Inexperience is also a hallmark of the Eltman selection, as her tourism background is nominal compared to her lobbying and political work. Tourism officials have described her as “credible,” “well-placed politically,” and a “great listener,” none stirring endorsements.

But those swallowing hardest, right now, must be school officials, who are facing forced consolidation from an government seemingly unwilling to shed its own excess. Shuffling expensive positions and anointing inexperienced insiders is a poor play when trying to force others to make the “hard choice.”

Patronage, by itself, is not a dirty word. Cronyism is, and the line between the two is job performance, and results. In their positions of power, these scrutinized nominees and employees must prove their ascendancy has everything to do with their ability, and not their elbow-rubbing.

Or in Valentine’s terms, it’s not enough for the administration to love them. They must make us, the taxpayers and citizens of Maine, love them too.