SOMETIME before his term as Johnson County district attorney runs out, Phill Kline should really get some help with his anger issues.
Kline may be smiling, smiling, smiling, but his behavior since taking office betrays a deep need to take vengeance on the man who ousted him from the attorney general’s office.
Kline can’t touch Paul Morrison, who now outranks him in the state’s legal hierarchy, or Morrison’s family or pets. But Kline now has unfettered command over the office that was Morrison’s for so many years.
Kline’s mass firings in the district attorney’s office were not a matter of political house cleaning. The office was not, at least by any design, a hotbed of Democrats. Morrison was, after all, a Republican every time he was elected in Johnson County, only becoming a Democrat when it became apparent that it was the only way he could rid Kansas of the continuing embarrassment that was Phill Kline.
No, the firings were not political, nor were they professional. The office had a fine record and was filled with experienced, dedicated prosecutors and investigators.
And, as Kline has insisted, there was nothing personal in the firings. He had nothing against the people he fired, they just happened to be the the most convenient means of causing pain to Morrison.
For Kline, the best revenge seems to be destroying the office that Morrison had spent so many years building.
Where does that leave the people of Johnson County? With a district attorney who has his own agenda — an agenda which apparently has little to do with carrying out the duties of his new office.
Kline seems determined to conduct himself in Olathe the same way he conducted himself in Topeka. He has already tried to pull the same stunt with the Johnson County Commission that he pulled with the Kansas State Board of Education. Unwilling to publicly discuss the conduct of his office with county commissioners, he offered to meet with them individually in private, below the radar of the Kansas Open Meetings Law. The county commissioners wisely declined.
Unless the law intervenes, Johnson County is going to be stuck with its unelected district attorney for another year and a half.
That is ample time for an angry, spurned politician to do plenty of damage.