THE GLOBE’S Dec. 18 editorial (“Amid cabinet shake-up, Patrick dismisses criticism too easily”) properly questions the sufficiency of the governor’s explanation for his administration’s hiring of politically connected Sheila Burgess as the state’s highway-safety director despite a long list of driving violations.

Calling this hiring a “breakdown in protocol,” as the governor did, leaves the public with far too much uncertainty about how this shameful hiring occurred. One has to wonder what exactly the proper “protocol” is in the Patrick administration for hiring political cronies. This protocol does not appear in the hiring guidelines published by the state’s Human Resources Division.