The real issue lurking behind Quinn's email `scandal'

From the Chicago Tribune

The real issue lurking behind Quinn's email `scandal'
By Eric Zorn

Gov. Pat Quinn doesn't get it.

His decision earlier this week to accept the resignation of a top aide over a laughably minor and isolated ethical slip was not just absurd, but conspicuously absurd.

An investigation by Executive Inspector General James Wright determined that Quinn's chief of staff, Jerry Stermer, had, on three occasions late last year, used his state e-mail account to conduct political business.

A no-no, to be sure, but a piddling offense at worst that was mitigated still further by the fact that Stermer had actually blown the whistle on himself back in January.



After Stermer turned himself in for what he referred to as inadvertent errors, Wright's office reportedly pored over nearly 40,000 e-mails looking in vain for more lapses.