Honestly, I’m torn about this one, although it brings me back around to the same place as much political news:

A federal magistrate judge has granted the city’s bid to delay Providence Mayor Angel Taveras’ questioning under oath in a lawsuit involving changes to the retirement system until after the upcoming primary election for candidates for governor.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond late Tuesday granted the city’s emergency motion for a protective order to postpone Taveras’ deposition in the city’s lawsuit against its former actuarial firm, Buck Consultants LLC, until after the Sept. 9 primary. Almond found, without further explanation, that the city had shown good cause to delay Taveras’ questioning and to limit it to three hours.

On its surface, this looks like further evidence supporting the common wisdom that, if you’ve got a lawsuit involving political insiders in Rhode Island, you’re best off getting  it in a federal court.  On the other hand, if the mayor weren’t the mayor, but something else, and was requesting a brief delay of judicial proceedings to the other side of a major work project on which his career hinged, that would seem reasonable in a case with no major urgency.

Of course, the mayor is the mayor, and it’s difficult not to conclude that he’s worried about the ways in which his testimony (and the opposition lawyers’ spin of it, amplified by other candidates for the office he’s seeking).  In that regard, it’s a question of transparency.  After all, his administration brought the lawsuit.

And if it’s a matter of the time preparation for the deposition will require, we shouldn’t accept the notion that government must stop operating because people in office are bucking for a promotion.

At the end of the analysis, put this one on the stack of arguments against fostering a government environment in which politics is a career.  If public office were in fact — as politicians like to claim — a question of service, then the argument for delaying the deposition pretty much evaporates.