William Marvel: Corruption in Miniature

On at least two occasions over the past dozen years, we’ve stopped in the “city” of Marion, Kan., (population 1,922), on our way back from visiting my in-laws. It sits near one of the east-west U.S. highways that we prefer to the interstates, in the sparsely settled country west of the Mississippi. There used to be an inexpensive little diner on Main Street that had good food and a piano, and we ate breakfast there once, but it was gone the last time we passed through. It’s a quiet town, but it’s also the seat of a county with about the same number of people as Conway. All the municipal and county officials are clustered within a couple of blocks of each other. On Aug. 11, many of those officials turned against the local newspaper, a 154-year-old weekly called the Marion County Record.

The principal culprits in this municipal hit were the police chief, Gideon Cody, and the district judge, Laura Viar. Both were new in town, and both came with skeletons in their closets that are no longer secrets. Viar started in January, barely a decade after collecting two DWI convictions in a single year, under another name. Chief Cody was newer still, having been hired late in May. Cody had been a captain on the Kansas City Police Department, but the Kansas City Star reports that he was being demoted to sergeant for sexual harassment of at least one female officer. Instead of accepting humiliation and a lower pension, he dodged to Marion, where city officials never wondered why he was willing to take a job for half his recent salary.