Good job, Ben Holland.

The Butler County controller is denying payment of invoices totaling $40,000 to the Housing Authority of Butler County because questions persist about the indefinite leave of its executive director, Perry O’Malley.

In a letter to the county commissioners and county solicitor Michael English, Holland said he’s withholding the funds on “reasonable grounds to investigate.”

It’s within Holland’s authority to withhold the funding. And he’s right to do so.

Without any explanation, the authority board put O’Malley on paid leave Jan. 15 — 47 days ago — after the authority’s former comptroller, Dave Schnur, resigned a week earlier. The board then put operations manager Sandra Reges on a two-week paid leave, also without explanation.

That’s three of the top executives sidelined from a multimillion-dollar government program — all without any reason made public in the nearly two months since the first ripples of trouble broke the surface.

The stock response by the authority, of course, is that personnel matters are confidential.

The taxpaying public doesn’t have to know the specifics. But it has been 45 days without any explanation, and the county’s taxpayers might be wondering why they should go on funding an apparently dysfunctional government agency.

It’s the controller’s job to oversee payment of funds from the county treasury. As controller, Holland had 30 days to approve payment of invoices to the authority.

“I purposely waited 30 days with hopes that the board would come forward with any explanation of what has transpired,” he said. “At the 30 day point, I felt it was in the taxpayers’ best interest to deny the payment.”

Holland’s salvo seems to be having its desired effect. Authority board members say they’re willing to sit down and talk with Holland and county officials.

Republican majority commissioners Bill McCarrier and Dale Pinkerton have objected to Holland’s gambit, saying they’re willing to wait patiently while the independent authority works out its own issues without the county getting embroiled in an internal agency action. It’s likely for that same reason they won’t challenge Holland’s authority to withhold payment of the invoices — which they have approved.

But in this instance patience is not a virtue. A protracted delay in the resolution of this issue might signal a deal in the works — a deal under which the particulars of O’Malley’s situation would never see the light of day.

And such deals among public officials tend to make a mockery of the democratic process.