It's easy to understand Republicans' umbrage at the appointment of two legislators -- Democrat Sen. Mike Cooney and born-again Democrat Sam Kitzenberg -- to state-government jobs. It's a perfect political weapon, and besides, Kitzenberg is on the GOP kick-in-the-fanny list for switching parties and breaking a tie in the state Senate.

But Republicans have a real point. The appointments do indeed raise the question of whether there was some sort of tacit deal involved, or at least some kind of subtle pressure for the legislators to pay special attention to the administration's agenda in order to keep their jobs. The unlikelihood of such a problem -- in Helena, state employees regularly run for the Legislature without suffering a conflict of interest -- doesn't make the questions go away.

Nonetheless, from a Helena point of view anyway, the whole thing appears a bit overblown. Here in the capital city, the workforce includes many thousands of state employees. If a person, whether a legislator or not, is going to take a job in this community, the chances are darn good it's going to be a state job.

And the type of job should matter, too. Kitzenberg was hired as an outreach officer to explain the Revenue Department's agricultural appraisal rules to ranchers. Not exactly a powerful policy position. And Cooney, as head of the Business Standards Division of the state Department of Labor and Industry, is in charge of such nonpolitical duties as enforcing building codes, checking weight measuring devices used in commerce, and licensing folks like dentists, morticians and plumbers. Once again, not a political sort of thing.

Still, while the bill by Rep. John Sinrud, R-Bozeman, to ban future new hires of sitting lawmakers by the state executive branch -- which means the vast majority of state jobs -- might curtail a few legislators' job choices, it would be an effective way to prevent the arching of suspicious eyebrows. And it isn't very different in spirit from preventing outgoing legislators and top state executives from stepping immediately into lobbying jobs.