Back in January, state Senator Michael Frerichs formally kicked off his campaign for Illinois state treasurer and posted a video online touting the fact the he'd ended "free, lifetime health care for state legislators."
Actually, Frerichs had voted against that bill in the General Assembly. Frerichs' campaign had to pull the video and replace it with a new one, even though he'd been planning his formal launch for at least a year.
In April, Frerichs appeared to flip-flop on his longstanding position that the comptroller's and treasurer's offices should be merged.
Frerichs told a WBBM Radio interviewer: "People have said to me, 'Wouldn't it just be a lot more efficient if we just had one financial officer?' And I've said yes, we could become very efficient, efficient like the city of Dixon, Illinois, who just had one chief financial officer and she was able, from this small little town, over several years to take something like $52 million away from them." He was referring to Rita Crundwell, who in 2012 pleaded guilty to embezzling the money. Frerichs was quickly forced to restate his support for the office merger.
