They just do what ever it takes and then have some excuse or think they should get a pass when they’re caught.
Case in point:
Feb 26, 2011 — Chicago —”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.
The ethics commission said she cooperated with the investigation by the executive inspector general, reimbursed the state, agreed to pay a $4,000 fine and promised to never work for the state again. She resigned Aug. 15.
.....”We had not seen the decision,” Emanuel spokesman Ben LaBolt told the Tribune late Friday. “Judy Erwin is a friend of Rahm’s with a wealth of experience and he’ll continue to consult her public policy knowledge.”
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. She said neither Emanuel nor his campaign was aware of the issue before Friday.
“The bottom line is the mayor-elect has very important work to do and I certainly don’t want to have any distractions,” said Erwin, a former state representative who also co-chaired Emanuel’s congressional campaigns. “I will be stepping aside from the transition. I don’t want any distractions at all.”
The inspector general investigation found that Erwin repeatedly violated the state prohibition on political activity between July 2008 and February 2009 and “co-opted” her staff by involving them in her activities.
“The atmosphere for IBHE employees must have been heavily colored by Ms. Erwin’s political activity on the job,” the ethics board said. It found “particularly troubling” her explanation that she made a campaign contribution to a state representative who was the chairman of the higher education appropriations committee: “This suggests that she was responding to a real or imagined pay to play incentive within state government.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/ct-met-rahm-emanuel-transition-20110226,0,5545430.story