Cabinet turnover unusually high as Brownback enters end of year three

After Gov. Sam Brownback was elected in 2010 he plucked Floridian Rob Siedlecki to lead the Kansas Department for Social and Rehabilitation Services.

Siedlecki swept into the secretary job with promises to refocus the social welfare agency around conservative Christian values like marriage and fatherhood. The Senate confirmed him 34-1 in March 2011, with Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, providing the lone "no" vote.

I told the media at the time, this guy wont last a year, Hensley said.

He was right. After several minor controversies, Siedlecki announced his resignation in December 2011 and returned to work in Florida state government.

An unusual number of Cabinet heads followed him out the door.

Deb Miller, the lone Democrat in the Cabinet, left her post as secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation at the same time as Siedlecki left his. Karin Brownlee was forced out as secretary of the Kansas Department of Labor in September 2012. Dennis Taylor stepped down as secretary of the Kansas Department of Administration to be interim leader of the state lottery in January, but no longer heads that agency. Dale Rodman announced this month that he wouldnt finish Brownback's first term as secretary of the Kansas Department of Agriculture, and would make way for replacement Jackie McClaskey.

Almost half of Brownback's 11 permanent Cabinet secretary appointments will turn over in the first three years of his tenure, a percent that outpaces that of predecessors Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, and Bill Graves, a Republican.

In addition to changes in Brownback's Cabinet, a slew of other high-level appointed posts that pay at or near $100,000 a year have also been vacated.

Those include Securities Commissioner Aaron Jack, who flamed out amid multiple controversies; information technology chief Jim Mann, who lasted a week before word got out that his resume included a degree from a diploma mill; and, most recently, Kansas Corporation Commission chairman Mark Sievers, who resigned one month after the agency paid a $500 fine for violating the Kansas Open Meetings Act.

Asked Thursday at the Statehouse about turnover, Brownback declined to comment.

Continued here:
Cabinet turnover unusually high as Brownback enters end of year three