ILL-inois Crook County pay-for-play: Employees get raises after donating to Dem boss

Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, a Chicago Democrat, has been mired in a couple of scandals involving the picking-of-the-pockets of her employees, one involving so-called "birthday presents," the other involving paying $3 for the privilege to wear jeans at work.

Now there is another one.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Several employees of Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown were recently given big promotions — a reward for their years of loyalty and hard work, according to Brown's office.

As it turns out, most of those employees haven't just shown loyalty in the workplace, campaign finance records show.

Four of five employees who were promoted last December — promotions that come with pay bumps between $12,000 and $18,000 a year — have donated a total of $3,853 to the Friends of Dorothy Brown campaign fund, records show.

The practice is not illegal. In fact, donating campaign cash to your boss is a form of constitutionally protected speech and used to be common in Illinois. Brown herself stopped accepting donations from employees at the end of 2012, several months after being elected to her fourth term.

Those campaign contributions were made before Brown's self-imposed moratorium.

I don't believe we've heard the last from Brown in regards to workplace graft. Whether it's jeans or birthday presents, this Democrat has proven herself to be creative in discovering ways to extract cash from her workers.