New York state comptroller Alan Hevesi used state car services to chauffeur his wife around but "forgot" to reimburse the state for the costs. And only did so when it was clear that it would be exposed.

This so clearly shows a lack of good financial management of state funds. It reminds me of the pension scheme in the European Parliament. Bad financial management means you do not set up systems that hands out funds to public officials for personal use, without oversight of the use of those funds, and whether they are being reimbursed. Parliament money goes directly to the pension funds to pay into the parliament's private fund, but MEPs are supposed to reimburse the money. But so many never do, and there are no controls of this process.