The Journal is reporting this morning that the Public Regulation Commission is promoting Larry Lujan--an employee caught using PRC resources to campaign for Commissioner Jerome Block Jr--to transportation division director, a job with an almost $80,000 salary.

Commissioner Jason Marks, who may be the only commish currently un-embroiled in scandal, told the Journal: "Mr. Lujan is an extremely knowledgeable individual with respect to the area of transportation. However, coming at a time when the public has a lot of questions about our agency, I think it sends the wrong message."

The Lujan thread was Journal's Raam Wong contribution to Blockgate throughout the 2008 campaign; Wong pointed out that Block had used public campaign dollars to pay Lujan, a full-time PRC employee, and then revealed that Lujan had used his work cell phone on work time to campaign for Block.

Considering that the Journal owned this piece of the puzzle, I can't help but wonder why the story included this line:

PRC officials investigated the calls after they were reported by the Journal and determined Lujan inappropriately used his phone, though the agency didn't disclose whether Lujan was disciplined.

That may be true, technically, but PRC did disclose to us back in April that Lujan had been ordered to reimburse the state:

PRC Administrative Services Director Juan Rios tells SFR Lujan repaid the PRC $38.34 for the “personal calls” and gave up 10.6 hours of vacation time.

At his new salary rate, that would've been a little more than $2,300 Lujan would've returned for campaigning on the job. Block paid him $2,000.