Greg McCloskey got a $5,000 bonus this week for running the Westmoreland County elections process.

This was definitely money he earned. McCloskey already has his own job for the county as head of public works. That’s at least a full-time job doing things like making sure the county’s crews are taking care of things like roads, parks and buildings. Did you know Westmoreland County is responsible for 52 miles of roads and 44 bridges? Then there are six parks, several trails and a smattering of other recreational facilities. And that’s all on top of the courthouse itself.

But proving you can do the work often gets you other people’s unfinished tasks. That’s what happened to McCloskey when the county fired JoAnn Sebastiani as election bureau director in June, shortly after the May primary. It was only her second election process. The first came about 10 weeks after she took the reins of an office that has seen no stability since Beth Lechman, now running elections for Centre County, left in August 2020.

Lechman’s duties were handed to her deputy, Scott Sistek. He was abruptly dismissed shortly after Sebastiani took over.

McCloskey has definitely earned his $5,000. Sebastiani was making $52,770 a year. Lechman made $69,000. Greg Kline was brought in to supervise the office without actually supervising it, making $80,000 as a quality assurance manager.

The real question is this: When will the commissioners actually find someone to do the job? The position hasn’t been listed on the county’s employment opportunities page for some time, while other jobs such as juvenile youth worker or deputy sheriff or pretty much anything at Westmoreland Manor have been open for months. Another comparable position, director of human resources, has been open since October.

“We have to resume the search in 2022, and all options are on the table to see what we are going to do,” Commissioner Doug Chew said.

The search apparently was abandoned in September so the bureau, including a new office manager and Kline, could focus on the election.

But that’s an explanation that doesn’t really work. There will always be an upcoming election. They pop up twice a year like clockwork.

If that’s what the issue was, shouldn’t the search have started in November, after the general election, instead of waiting until January to start talking about it? The May 2022 primary, after all, will be another big, important one, with a large number of people vying for governor, reorganized legislative districts that could become logistically complicated for the bureau and a hotly contested U.S. Senate seat that’s attracting candidates from outside Pennsylvania.

Maybe if the commissioners are having trouble getting the job done, they could just ask McCloskey to run the search. Apparently he works pretty cheap.

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