No shit, sherlock. The Obama supporter’s punishment for improperly searching a private citizen’s records to provide fodder for the media and her candidate? A month of unpaid vacation. Oh, and Ohio’s Governor is standing by her.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is standing by an agency director who OK’d improper computer checks for confidential information on “Joe the Plumber” and used state e-mails for political fundraising.

Strickland announced today that Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Department of Job and Family Services, will be placed on unpaid leave for one month in response to an inspector general’s investigation.

The investigation found Jones-Kelley had no legitimate reasons to check on Toledo-area resident Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who was popularized as “Joe the Plumber” by Republican presidential candidate John McCain. It also confirmed she improperly used her state e-mail account to raise campaign money for President-elect Barack Obama.

And she gets one month of unpaid vacation. One. Freaking. Month. And this is after being on paid leave since November 7th. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Strickland is protecting a fellow Obama supporter because he doesn’t really give a crap that the privacy of one of his citizens was violated for political purposes. But we all know that he’d never do that.

State Auditor Mary Taylor also called for stronger action. “I urge Gov. Strickland, who campaigned on the promise of running an ethical administration, to ask for the resignation or terminate Ms. Jones-Kelley immediately,” she said today after the report was released.

Strickland said that while he accepts the inspector general’s findings, he values Jones-Kelley’s contributions over her career and decided on what he called a “fairly severe” but fair penalty.

Fairly severe penalty? Strickland isn’t even a good liar. If you’re going to blatantly abandon your campaign promises in order to protect political allies, at least come up with a good excuse to entertain us.