* Uh-oh…

A campaign committee formed last week to support the Libertarian Party candidate for governor is headed by a convicted felon.

The Liberty for Illinois committee has sent out direct mail pieces in support of gubernatorial candidate Chad Grimm’s third party bid against Republican Bruce Rauner and Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn.

The committee, which has received all of its $200,000 in funding from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, is headed by Michael Bonivel, of Chicago, who spent at least two years in prison on two separate drug-related convictions.

Bonivel’s involvement in the race for governor is the latest twist in a push by the Operating Engineers to dilute support for Rauner among conservative voters. The Joliet-based labor organization already gave Grimm $30,000 to help tilt a hotly contested race in Quinn’s favor.

* Yikes…

Court documents reveal that Bruce Rauner personally authorized a transaction which appears to have involved the flushing away of state pension money as part of a plan designed to allow Rauner and his fellow GTCR principals to escape liability in nursing home lawsuits.

* Hmm…

I recently briefly examined GTCR’s SEC filings. Below are my observations about the industry generally and Rauner’s firm specifically. […]

The litany of permissible conflict of interest scenarios (many of which are commonplace throughout private equity) detailed in Bruce Rauner’s firm SEC filings, should be disturbing to any so-called sophisticated investor. Unfortunately, public pensions routinely consent to such potentially harmful conflicts either because they don’t read, don’t fully comprehend the oblique disclosures, or simply don’t care that politically-connected insiders may be profiting at the expense of stakeholders.

…Adding… One more…

But this story of how someone appeared to get a job with political pull and then ended up on the payroll of the state’s Executive Ethics Commission does have a certain only-in-Illinois quality to it.

The story involves a woman named Gretchen Tucka. She was referenced several times as “Employee 218″ in a report by Illinois Executive Inspector General Ricardo Meza that absolutely excoriated IDOT, charging that hundreds of people had been improperly hired by the department under Govs. Rod Blagojevich and Pat Quinn.

…Adding… I know I said “one more,” but here’s another one…

Before entrusting anti-crime program funds in North Lawndale, the Quinn administration acted on the advice of then-Ald. Sharon Denise Dixon (24th), picking the non-profit Better Boys Foundation as the “lead agency” for NRI in North Lawndale.

In February, the Illinois auditor general’s office reviewed about $388,000 that the Better Boys Foundation oversaw and concluded that 46 percent of the money went for what “appeared to be unallowable” expenses or there was no documentation to back up what was done with those dollars.

On Tuesday — more than eight months since the auditor general’s report was completed — a state spokeswoman said the foundation provided it with documentation and “we are in the process of reviewing it to determine if any funds will need to be recovered.”

In any case, two top foundation executives are no longer in their jobs. That’s because both former executive director John Holton and LaTonya Lumpkin — whose resume notes that she directed NRI in North Lawndale for the Better Boys Foundation — have landed jobs in Quinn’s administration. They were put in positions exempt from merit-hiring, anti-patronage rules, state records show.