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When Sean O'Kane left his job as general manager of The Center of New Hampshire in 2004 to become commissioner of the Department of Resources and Economic Development, he knew the DRED mission would be a challenge. But he had no idea how quickly he would come to hate all that agency's acronyms with his whole heart, his whole mind and even, or a time, with his bladder.
"My first day there I asked where the bathroom is," he recalled. "I was told 'Well, you go down the hall past DED (the Division of Economic Development), take a left at OBID (Office of Business and Industrial Development) and...' I said, 'I just want to go to the bathroom! Can't anyone here speak English?' "
O'Kane's successor at that job, who began work April 1, did not gave any problem finding the bathroom. That's because the successor, George Bald, is also O'Kane's predecessor.
Bald held the post from 1998 to 2004, when he returned to the Pease Development Authority to work as executive director there. But O'Kane and Bald agree that the name of the agency Bald now heads is, well, DREDU.
"What a terrible name for such a wonderful agency," Bald has said.
But while O'Kane proclaimed a goal of getting rid of all of the agency's acronyms (he succeeded at least in doing away with OBID), Bald is resigned to living with DRED
"On the list of things I have to do, changing the name doesn't rank very high in the four years I have here," he says. "I think the best way to help the agency is to keep it a top-notch agency and make sum everyone knows that while it may have a negative name, it really is a top-notch agency for the state."
Bald seems to have made a career out of heading agencies that are generally considered topnotch and...