The Emanuel Administration hasn’t even taken office in City Hall yet and already they’re facing ethics violation charges:
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.
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.
Good to see a smooth transition from the Daley Administration.
Note that this is not merely the appearance of wrong-doing but actual wrong-doing. I guess I shouldn’t be too tough on Mayor-Elect Emanuel about this. I suspect it’s impossible to assemble a blue ribbon team in Chicago that includes people who’ve held jobs with the state, county, of city governments in the past without running into ethics violations.
Is it too early to speculate that he won’t govern as a reform mayor?
