Carl Officer is back in politics and running for US Senate. Apparently he is running to demonstrate that, in fact, there can be a greater embarrassment to the State of Illinois other than Rod Blagojevich and Roland Burris.
No, I am serious. Officer is currently on the East Saint Louis School Board which primarily qualifies one to be a petty thief. In fact, just a few days ago, Durbin pointed out that the elected School Board needs an audit and probably is headed back to an oversight board:
Durbin wrote in his letter: “Recent media reports have detailed expenditures that appear extravagant and wasteful. In particular, I am concerned about reports that hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal funding are being used to pay high consultant salaries and that significant amounts of funding have been used for staff travel expenses.”
He also stated concern for, ” … reports of federal funding spent on entirely non-educational purposes.”
School board member Carl Officer, who was elected last year, said his requests for information concerning student performance, “have always been rebutted by saying that we needed to hire and pay these consultants which have been recommended time and time again in a variety of areas.” Officer, who has voted for consultants and has billed airfare and lodging to the district when traveling to conferences, said he welcomes any investigation, ” … to see whether or not these funds were spent judiciously, as we were told.”
On March 28, the newspaper reported that during the past six years the school district spent $2 million on consultants, according to incomplete financial records provided under the Freedom of Information Act. When the district refused to provide access to paperwork for at least half of the consultants listed, reporters turned up additional financial documents that upped the consulting total to at least $3.1 million.
The district also spent that at least $200,000 on airline tickets and hotels, as well as $10,000 for original artwork, including $4,000 for a “historical quilt.”
District finance records showed that at least $138,000 was spent during just one 12-month period on lodging for school board members, administrators, teachers and consultants at Hiltons, Sheratons, a Ritz-Carlton and other top hotels in cities from Los Angeles to New Orleans to New York City. One district employee stayed six nights at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix at a cost of $1,204.
Officer lost his race for reelection for Mayor of East Saint Louis and lost to Eddie Jackson for the race for an Illinois House seat. Jackson is probably just as bad, but not as entertaining.
My favorite bit on Officer was written by Pat Gauen about his experiences with Officer during Officer’s first stint as Mayor of East Saint Louis:
My personal favorite was the day he gathered the press to announce that he was filing a federal suit to stop Gov. James Thompson from using the National Guard to seize the city. When I broke the news to Thompson’s press secretary, I thought the poor man would laugh himself into a stroke. No troops ever showed up.
Or maybe the best was the time Carl began a speech by greeting me from the podium, by name, but then complained the next day to my editor that the resulting story was unfair because he wouldn’t have spoken so candidly had he known a reporter was present.
No, I think it was the opening of an obstetrical unit to help deal with the community’s soaring population of unwed mothers. Carl, a bachelor, publicly announced that he was personally going to start work on populating the place that very night.
Oops, I almost forgot the major MetroLink ceremony where Carl wiped the smile off every face by vowing to block the project because he wasn’t consulted. (Civic leaders unanimously insisted that Carl was invited to every meeting but never once showed up.)
You’ve surely heard about how Zaire un-invited Carl to help fine-tune its government after he announced that he would take his own blood supply, so if he got sick he wouldn’t depend on its “monkey blood.”
Perhaps the best was when he got stopped by police doing 108 mph in a Jaguar borrowed from a convicted drug dealer. Carl bitterly denied the cop’s version, insisting he really had been doing 140.
Is there no end to it?
I haven’t gotten to the bodyguard with the Uzi. Or the $2,200 Carl claimed for trips never taken. Or the consulting contract the city council approved for $545,000 but Carl signed for $1.3 million. Or Carl’s hearty endorsement of a $450 million riverfront development plan long after everyone else, including a federal grand jury, figured out that it was just a big scam.
Officer is running as a pro-life candidate. As we can see from Gauen’s piece, he apparently practices what he preaches.
Roll ’em up.
ArchPundit