Our heartiest congratulations go out to Rahm Emanuel and his Chicago mayoral transition team for a new Chicago corruption land speed record.
He was elected mayor on Tuesday, appointed his transition team on Thursday and an ethics violation forced his co-chair to resign on Friday.
The Chicago Tribune tells the sad tale:
A veteran politician Rahm Emanuel named to his mayoral transition team resigned her high-level state job last summer and paid a fine for conducting political business on state time, according to a newly filed ethics report.
Judy Erwin, a co-chair of Emanuel’s mayoral campaign, said late Friday night that she would resign her new post on his transition team after the Tribune contacted her and the campaign. She said she hadn’t informed Emanuel of the ethics violation.
Erwin, the former executive director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, admitted using her office e-mail and phone while working on a campaign committee for presidential candidate Barack Obama, using staff resources to plan her trip to the 2008 Democratic National Convention and engaging in campaign fundraising activity while on the job, the state’s Executive Ethics Commission ruled in a decision filed Feb. 16…
In an interview with the Tribune, Erwin said she got careless while she was very busy at work, cooperated with investigators and hoped her 30 years of history in state government would outweigh the ruling.
“I’m not corrupt, I’m just careless.” Isn’t that the same one-size-fits-all Democrat excuse Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel used when they didn’t pay their taxes?
Source: Chicago Tribune
