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The question isn’t whether the Jackson County Fair Board made the right decision late last week when it withdrew a job offer to the candidate proposed to be the next manager of The Expo.

Given the information that emerged after the announcement it had hired Pamela Fyock — particularly the findings in a pair of California state audits over financial mismanagement during her reign at two previous jobs — the board’s decision was prudent and proper.

Rather, the real questions that public officials and taxpayers should have answered are obvious:

How did the fair board decide to offer Fyock the job in the first place? And, how much due diligence was done examining her professional background?

Fyock was dismissed in 2022 from her job as acting chief executive officer of the Sacramento County Fair by the California Department of Food and Agriculture for what the adult said were “weaknesses and deficiencies” in that fair operations — including $107,230 in reimbursements to her for which supporting documentation had been discarded.

That experience was recounted in a Feb. 28, 2022, article in The Sacramento Bee Newspaper. A week later, a story in the Sun-Gazette News in Tulare County, California, cited among numerous other issues the audit’s findings of undocumented payments of $73,973 to Fyock during her time of the fair in that jurisdiction.

Both stories about the audits of Fyock’s management were published more than 18 months prior to the Jackson County offer, and easily were accessed by a basic internet search.

For her part, Fyock said in an interview with the Rogue Valley Times after accepting the now-rescinded job that her financial dealings with both fairs were on solid ground.

“It was a compliance audit, not a financial audit,” she said. “All my financial audits have been stellar and have been accepted by the CPAs and the state.”

Even if that is the case, the easily available details of alleged mismanagement found in the audits should have given the Jackson County Fair Board pause before going forward with the offer.

In its statement announcing the appointment, the board backed the hiring process:

“The selection committee did a great job finding Pam to lead us moving forward,” the statement read in part, “and provide everything the community expects from their Jackson County Expo.”

Reached late last week after the offer was withdrawn, fair board president J.D. Dimick expressed disappointment with the way the situation ended, and said the search to fill the post vacated by Helen Baker in September will have to start from scratch.

County Commissioner Rick Dyer told the Times that, while that search process is rebooted, the “county will continue to help run the day-to-day operations and financial considerations” at the Expo.

In the 2023-24 adopted Jackson County budget, Baker’s report on The Expo referenced challenges ahead:

“The never-ending challenge facing the Expo,” the budget item reads, “is the ability to financially maintain the facility AND upgrade its infrastructure to today’s customers’ expectations as an event facility.”

As for the fair board, Dimick said the new search will begin in January.

“The fair board’s trying to do the best job they can,” he said, “to make sure we have the right person in the position.”

Here’s hoping that, next time, they do.