The beauty of a revolving door is that it can take you back where you started with little effort. But, it can also put you in a different place, and not necessarily a better place in the long run.

The term “revolving door” is commonly used when referring to public employees who leave their jobs to go work in the private sector. The opposite also occurs, thus the “revolving” metaphor, as in coming and going.

A recent state audit shows how the revolving door can be problematic. Two former managers of the State Highway Administration were found to be in potential violation of state ethics laws and Department of Transportation rules.

One employee apparently solicited funds from companies doing business with SHA. A senior manager was involved in awarding a $16 million contract to a firm for which he went to work 12 days after retiring from the agency, according to the audit. Ask any public lawmaker and they’ll tell you that the revolving door practice is long-standing and continues, despite the best efforts of governmental bodies to curtail it.

SHA policy clearly bans former employees from working directly on projects they handled when with the state and prohibits companies from hiring said employees to deal with such projects within a year of leaving the government jobs.

In concurring with the audit findings, state Transportation Secretary Beverley K. Swaim-Staley said the department’s financial office will be reviewing contract procedures. Also, post-employment policies have been reissued to employees, and further training is in the works. Those are necessary steps. It also is essential that companies contracting with the state be punished for hiring former employees outside the designated time frame.

One expects government employees — and the companies that hire them after they leave government — to abide by the rules. In fact, the Office of the Attorney General is reviewing the audit.

At the federal level, it’s instructive that Justice Department officials say they see the federal revolving door law as being more useful as a preventative measure than as a tool for prosecution. They also believe that guidance from agency ethics officials deters most violations.

Let’s face it, as with any law or regulation, someone determinedly up to no good will find a way around it or seek to outright violate it. All the authorities can do — in this case, the Department of Transportation — is take steps to punish the parties within grasp and try to ensure against it happening again, or at least too frequently. Secretary Swaim-Staley seems to be taking that mission seriously.

In the meantime, the findings in an audit such as this leave a generally bad taste. In a news report, Gov. Martin O’Malley voiced his disappointment in the action of the two employees.

Perhaps Sen. Brian E. Frosh summed up the general disapproval most concisely when he told Gazette reporter C. Benjamin Ford that “it sure looks bad when somebody participates in a bidding process on one side of the table and then switches sides.”