On the Misuse of Office — A Column by the Shard of Benjamin Franklin

Reason Magazine brings us the case of Laurie Moore, a senior investigator with the Albany County, New York, Sheriff's Office, now facing misdemeanor charges of official misconduct. The details are spare in the lead, but the shape of the thing is ancient and familiar: a person clothed in public authority appears to have turned that authority to private and improper ends.

I spent years as a postmaster, and I understood from the first day that the mail was not mine — it belonged to the people who trusted the post. The moment I touched a letter for my own benefit rather than theirs, I would not merely be a thief; I would be something worse, a thief in a coat borrowed from the public. That coat makes the crime compound.

This is why I have always held that the accountability of public servants is not a courtesy extended to the citizenry — it is the structural foundation on which all other public trust is built. A bridge that looks sound but has a cracked pier will carry traffic until the day it does not. A constabulary that polices everyone but its own is the same bridge.

I will not pretend to know the full facts of Ms. Moore's case; Reason offers only the headline and the charges. She is, by the laws I helped to shape a republic around, innocent until proven otherwise. But the existence of the charges, properly brought and publicly reported, is itself the system working as it ought. Transparency is not the enemy of justice; it is justice's first instrument.

The lesson for any working person is this: the officials who carry a badge over your neighborhood are spending a portion of your civic credit every day they report to work. When they spend it honestly, the account grows. When they spend it for themselves, you — not they — are left to settle the debt in diminished safety and frayed faith. Demand audits of your public servants the way a careful merchant demands audits of his ledger. The balance matters.