DOE: Peachy and Keaney

It turns out that the vaunted political operative, one Maura Keaney, was chastised by a wrist slapping COIB for soliciting election money on government time: "Here's the deposition in which Maura Keaney, a former aide to Council Speaker Christine Quinn, admits she solicited political contributions from organized labor on behalf of her former boss. The COIB has levied a $2,500 fine on Keaney, who departed Quinn's staff to handle field for Mayor Bloomberg's re-election campaign and is now reportedly negotiating to take a senior post at the Department of Education. In the deposition, which appears in full after the jump, Keaney admits having made "six to twelve calls" to union representatives to ask that they serve on a host committee for a May 14, 2007 fundraiser for Quinn's re-election campaign. She insists she didn't make the calls on city time or on a city phone and stopped "immediately" after being informed by Quinn's chief of staff that the calls were "inappropriate."

But totally appropriate for the Bloomberg/Klein regime that is, as we know, above politics: "
On the same day the COIB announced its $2,500 fine of a former aide to Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the same aide - Maura Keaney - was officially tapped for a new job with the city Department of Education. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has appointed Keaney to the post of executive director of external affairs, where she will oversee legislative and government affairs, media relations, community relations, and family engagement and advocacy."

And if it weren't for the perspicacious Klein, we wouldn't have found out this about the canny Keaney: "Maura is an innovative thinker and advocate with a record of serving the interest of New Yorkers from positions both in and outside of government,” Klein said in a press release.
“Her experience in working with large and diverse communities across the City will be an enormous asset as we continue our work over the next four years to transform public schools."

Now we know that Maura is a capable woman, and of all the Quinnistas she is probaly the most accomplished and the most engaging, but this is certainly a bad precedent-as we have already commented. And we're awaiting the caustic comments from the NY Daily News, the arbiter of political ethics in the city and state. We just know that Mort will have a mordant observation.