There's just no end to the number of ways that Frank LaGrotta has managed to pervert the power of public office.

In 2005, he was among the legislators who arrogantly granted themselves a middle-of-the-night pay raise. Voters ran the Ellwood City Democrat out of office for it the following year, but not before he managed to put his sister and his niece on the state payroll for jobs that consisted largely of collecting their paychecks.

Now we learn that he reneged on a promise to repay the raise, which he made in his ill-fated re-election campaign. That's right: When he asked Democrats to renominate him to run for re-election in the 10th District in the state House, he assured them he was giving back his raise. He even started making the payments.

When he lost in the May primary, though, he stopped paying and went the extra greedy mile to get back from the state what he'd already repaid.

Mr. LaGrotta, 49, gets more than his money back, too. He gets to keep his state pension, which he says will be $36,111 a year plus a one-time payment of $102,000 at age 59.5, even though he pleaded guilty in the job scandal. And the pension will be higher because of the pay raise.

He's not going to jail because he's cooperating in another investigation, presumably the one into whether the $1.9 million in bonuses that House Democrats gave out actually were illegal payments for campaign work.

The latest revelation about the ex-legislator should make prosecutors think twice about how much they should trust what Frank LaGrotta is telling them.

This is a man who, over and over again, has shown that his motivation is looking out for No. 1 -- the kind of public official who makes the public mistrust officials.