To the editor:

This is in response to the well-written letter from Bill Getz (Feb. 18), in which he concluded the picture of Mr. Brownback that the Journal-World uses is not dignified enough for someone in the governor’s office, and that the office itself deserves respect whether earned or not.

I think most would agree that a good governor is someone who makes a state a good place to live for everyone, not a national mockery, as we’ve become. Mr. Brownback has led a relentless drive to undermine, in your wise words, the state systems for everything that makes a state desirable: public education, social services, fair taxation, the arts, safety, job negotiations, equal rights and, frightfully, most every area of our lives. Trying to promote business, I wonder if Mr. Brownback realizes that businesses small and large have families who want a good state to live in. What businesses would come to Kansas now?

In my opinion, the person in an office, not the office itself, is what earns respect, and I think our governor’s office does not deserve Mr. Brownback, no matter how he looks in a picture.