Will Jack Johnson's Guilty Plea Change the Culture of Corruption?

Jack Johnson, former County Executive for Prince George's County, Faced with a Government case involving hours of recorded phone conversations and the like, Jack finally decided he'd rather just face the music rather than pay tons of money for his legal team and then face the music anyway.

Will this be the end of it?

Well, Jack's wife, of $90,000 bra fame, is still sitting on the County Council. Even though she was almost in court, ready to enter into a plea deal, she seems to have dodged the bullet, at least temporarily, and continues to pick up her County paycheck.  There seems to be no way, short of a voluntary resignation or criminal conviction to get rid of her.

Now, I'm sure that like any good wife, she was just following instructions from her husband and didn't realize that the almost $100,000 in cash she was stuffing into her lingerie was bribe money.

Well, ok, I'm not that sure.

Still, will that fact that our former County Exec and his wife got caught with their hands in the cookie jar be enough to keep our other County officials on the straight and narrow?

I have my doubts.  The culture of corruption is too deeply ingrained in our politcal system and it is wrecking the quality of life in Prince George's County. Residents decry the lack of high quality shopping and dining venues but what developer or retailer would want to come into a County where the cost of business includes paying off any number of officials in order to set up shop?

I'm hoping the new ethics legislation that made it through this last session in the State Legislature will help create the change in the way our County Government approaches economic development. I have my doubts.