An Ohio House Democrat wants answers about the alleged ouster by Gov. John Kasich’s administration of a veteran environmental regulator. She should get them.

But while Athens-area Rep. Debbie Phillips hasn't gotten the data she wants, her query seems to have attracted ire, not data.

And that in itself may be telling.

Sept. 13 is expected to be George Elmaraghy’s last day on the job at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, where’s he’s been chief of the Division of Surface Water. Elmaraghy, an engineer with Ohio State University degrees, has worked at Ohio’s EPA for almost 40 years; he was paid $103,926 last year.

In a mid-August email that Elmaraghy sent EPA co-workers, an email obtained by The Columbus Dispatch, Elmaraghy said Kasich's administration wanted him gone because of pressure from Ohio's coal lobby.

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The Statehouse coal lobby is, and for decades has been, nearly omnipotent, and about as politically subtle as it is environmentally sensitive. Because Elmaraghy’s job is in Ohio’s unclassified civil service, he’s an at-will employee.

The Dispatch also reported that coal interests have donated about $1 million to Ohio politicians, with most coming from Ohio’s Boich and Robert Murray families, who own vast coal properties. (Phillips asserts that coal interests have given Kasich “nearly $130,000 in campaign contributions.”) Last year, a Murray Energy Corp. mine in southeast Ohio’s Beallsville provided the stage for a Mitt Romney presidential campaign event.

A Kasich aide, the Dispatch reported, offered a waspish retort to Phillips’s request rather than address her request itself. That response drew predictable cries of outrage from Phillips’ fellow Democrats. But the really telling feature of this affair is that Phillips’ request, by itself predictable, has generated a response that's anything but.

If, as Kasich’s administration suggests, this is much ado about nothing, then it has no reason not to provide the evidence to bolster that claim. If the administration doesn’t or can’t, that too, may be evidence – of something else.