Coit was not available for an interview, but her spokesman Michael Healey said: "At the very least it looks really bad if we're doing business with a vendor and now we're asking this vendor to pay for a luncheon benefiting [our] employees."

As to why Coit and Floor are reimbursing a state vendor personally, Healey said: "We weren't going to compound one mistake with another mistake. It was our lapse in judgment that caused this, so why should the taxpayers have to fund that mistake?"

Healey added that paying out of his own pocket was Floor's idea. "Frank feels awful about this mistake. That he tried to correct it by immediately volunteering to pay the vendor back with his own money speaks to his character."