It’s been a while since we featured a new episode of our occasional series Bureaucrats Behaving Badly, and to tell the truth, we debated waiting until Halloween to tell this particular tale, but because it’s just been in the news, we really can’t resist.

Today’s story comes to us by way of the Washington Post‘s Federal Eye, which tells the story of Kevin Maynard…

… an employee at the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Exeter, R.I. [who] is expected to plead guilty on Monday at his arraignment in federal court to stealing worn and broken gravestones from the cemetery over numerous years. Kevin Maynard, 59, of Charlestown, R.I. took the stones to his home, then used them as flooring in his garage and shed, prosecutors said.

When an investigator with the VA’s inspector general’s office and a Rhode Island State Police detective went to Maynard’s home near the cemetery, they discovered at least 150 veterans’ grave markers laid out as a floor in a shed and two makeshift garages on the property.

Investigators also found a box of American flags he allegedly stole from the cemetery.

It’s yet another classic case of a government bureaucrat putting personal preferences above the needs of the ordinary Americans that bureaucrats claim to serve.

Meanwhile, if you click through to the article, you’ll find that the gravestone-robbing VA employee is actually the second story of a double feature. The first tale is a simple story of graft and influence peddling, in which another VA employee took $1.2 million in kickbacks from contractors to whom he used his authority to award lucrative contracts, even if they never completed the projects for which they were hired.

That’s government work for you!