COLUMBUS: Because Gov. Ted Strickland and Marc Dann are Democrats, there were no high-pitched squeals of protest when Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles was given $250,000 and the legal authority on a one-time basis to investigate the former attorney general and his office.

Charles was reappointed to his position by Strickland last year.

The inspector general's office was created in 1989 after a series of scandals in then-Gov. Richard Celeste's administration, and the office has never, until now, been authorized to investigate an independently elected state officeholder.

Consider, however, if Republican Kenneth Blackwell were governor. Or worse, what if disgraced former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, had realized his dream and made it to the mansion?

Then, this would be quite a different situation, politically and constitutionally.

On Friday, Ohio House Republicans, sensing they were wading into constitutionally murky waters, proffered legislation to extend the inspector general's authority to all statewide offices permanently and to give the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, rather than the governor, the appointing authority beginning in 2011.

This raises as many separation-of-powers questions as it addresses, and politically it has problems. too, but at least it is a progressive step toward a gaping hole in the oversight of a large portion of state government, namely the attorney general, auditor, treasurer and secretary of state offices.

And it is good to see House Speaker Jon Husted, R-Kettering, putting on scrubbing gloves and demonstrating an openness to finding ways to cleanse state government.

While bent over the proverbial sink, consider the following, Mr. Speaker:

Focus attention on your own House and the Ohio Senate, too, and find an outside party to appoint the legislative inspector general.

Disband the 12-member Joint Legislative Ethics Committee that you sit on, along with Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland. You are charged with monitoring your own members' behavior and your efforts are exempt from Ohio's sunshine laws.

You meet in secret, you deliberate in secret, you keep your agenda secret and you only let the public know what you want it to know.

This is worse than Marc Dann launching an internal investigation to uncover charges of sexual harassment in his office and then publishing the results and holding news conferences to answer questions.

Dann's probe suffered credibility problems because it wasn't independent, so you, your legislative colleagues and Strickland brought in Charles.

Your legislative inspector general, Tony Bledsoe currently, needs that same independence. Currently, he is hired by lawmakers and can be fired by lawmakers at any time. This is the sort of job security that inhibits rather than emboldens a watchdog.

Bledsoe is the Sgt. Schultz of state government. He hears nothing. He sees nothing. It's not his fault.

He, like his one-time predecessor Tom Charles, is muzzled and masked by the laws the legislature enacted in the wake of the ''honoraria'' scandal.

In the '90s, legislators were allowed to accept up to $500 in an honorarium without reporting the
payment. To elude reporting the fact that they received thousands of dollars from special-interest groups and individuals, lawmakers would make a ''speech'' and get ''pancaked,'' which meant stacks of checks, none amounting to more than $500.

Just like Celeste in the '80s, lawmakers, their pockets stuffed with pancakes, responded by creating their own inspector general.

Maybe Dann should have announced he was creating the attorney general's inspector general and he would still have a job.

And while you're cleaning House, Mr. Speaker, have a long look at your Legislative Service Commission (LSC), responsible for taking your members' ideas and putting them into legalese to conform with the Ohio Revised Code.

Bills carry the names of their legislative sponsors, but the public has no way of truly knowing how a law was written because LSC files are . . . drum roll please . . . private, secret and rated ''R,'' as in restricted and not recommended for the general public's consumption.

On too many occasions, House and Senate committees adopt omnibus amendments that number hundreds of pages with scores of changes in the law and the public, including the media, has no way of tracing the origins of those ideas.

Your colleagues introduce a bill, hear testimony and when they decide to make changes to the proposed legislation, they just unveil a brand-new proposal, called a substitute bill, with dozens of amendments that just magically appear and cannot be tracked.

Want good government? Put a tracer on each amendment, allow the public to look at the e-mail, telephone records and meetings between lobbyists, lawmakers and your Legislative Service Commission so everyone will know how a bill really becomes law.

You could use this opportunity to disprove the allegations that FirstEnergy Corp. lobbyists and consultants wrote the substitute version of Senate Bill 221, the electric utility re-regulation bill, by showing the public how hard you worked to draft each and every line in the legislation.

Otherwise, you may be open to articles of impeachment.

The charge?

Plagiarism.