The weekend likely can't come fast enough for County Board President Todd Stroger.

A stream of negative news stories is creating a rocky week for the administration. Reports surfaced that his deputy chief of staff, Carla Oglesby, had approved a $24,975 contract for her public relations firm just days after she took the county job. That launched an ethics investigation into Oglesby, who is now on unpaid administrative leave, and some inside the Stroger administration wonder why she is still on the payroll.

(The administration announced yesterday that Stroger ordered all his department heads to produce every contract issued in the last two years, as it seeks to cooperate with the investigation.)

Friday night, a report aired on ABC7 outlining personal expenses Stroger put on his county-issued credit card. Sunday night, Fox Chicago News reported another so-called “24-9” contract was issued to a former Stroger campaign staffer based in Philadelphia.

And questions were raised early last week about why his office was purchasing new furniture with just eight months left in his term.

Stroger addressed those questions yesterday in a press conference in his office, where he sat behind a desk he said is warped and falling apart.

He lamented his place as a political whipping boy.

“I’m riddled. I have more holes in me than Swiss cheese. But I only do it because I think it’s important,” he said.

He talked furniture: “I don’t even think the order had been in when it was announced. But there is new furniture coming. I won’t be taking it home with me when I leave, but there is new furniture coming to the office.”

On Carla Oglesby: “She got paid for her work on the campaign from the campaign itself. And from her work product, I knew that she would be a good person to bring to the county. And actually in the short time she’s been here, she’s made a lot of changes, which may be one of the reasons why some people were so out to get her…”

Oglesby’s salary was initially listed as $116,000, but she actually gets paid $120,000. Stroger says she has not received a raise; spokesman James Ramos says the human resources department bumped up her salary when she was hired. Her predecessor, Pam Muzzini, made $116,000

On his personal use of a county-issued credit card: “I’m the only president. There’s no one else like me. You try to diminish the office of the president, but I’m the head of a $3 billion corporation with 23,000 employees. I’m not your regular employee.

“I paid for everything, and there’s probably, like, what, what three things you’re complaining about? I pay for everything.”