Ethical Lapse Or Just Plain Old Theft ?

The smiling nutjob pictured above is State Representative Joe Driver (R-Garland).   He had a pretty good scam going -- at least for a while.   He had his travel expenses paid for out of his campaign fund.   There's nothing wrong with that, except then he turned around and billed the state of Texas for those same travel expenses as though they hadn't already been paid.

Unfortunately for Driver, that's something called "double dipping" and it's against Texas state law.   The money he received from the state (for expenses paid by his campaign fund) was going straight into his personal bank account -- something that could not be done with funds from his campaign account.   The state funds or the campaign funds could be used to pay for the representative's travel, but tapping both sources for the same expenses and using the extra payments to enrich himself is nothing short of theft.

Now Driver is in trouble.   He might be OK if it was just the Texas Ethics Committee doing the investigation, since they are notoriously lenient on state elected officials.   They would probably just slap his wrist and tell him not to get caught again.   No, Driver is in trouble because the Travis County District Attorney has started an investigation into his little scam.   The Travis County DA has jurisdiction because the state capitol is in that county.

You may remember the Travis County DA's office.   That's the office that just convicted corrupt Republican politician Tom Delay (and a couple of weeks before that convicted corrupt Democratic politician Kino Flores).   That office just hates government corruption (in either party) and they're not afraid to prosecute it.

Driver has reimbursed his own campaign fund to the tune of over $49,000.   He seems to think that will solve all his problems.   That's pretty sneaky and not nearly good enough.   He steals nearly $50,000 from the people of Texas by billing them for expenses he did not owe, and he thinks he can get out of it by donating the money back to his own campaign fund (so he can use it in the next election).   Making repayment was the right things even though it doesn't absolve him of any guilt, but the repayment should have been to the state of Texas (the taxpaying citizens of the state).   That's who he stole from.

Just like Delay and Flores, Driver needs to be given a fair trial in a Travis County criminal court.   In hard times like these when people are struggling to pay their taxes, we simply cannot and should not put up with legislative crooks who steal from the people (regardless of their political party).