Question: What’s the difference in Illinois between the way Democrats and Republicans use their offices to enrich themselves or their pals?
Answer: About four decimal places. And, of course, the way Republicans find a way to do it legally, or at least quasi-legally.
After all, no self-respecting GOP officeholder would be caught dead hiring his friend’s wife for a no-show government job or taking a four-figure bribe to look the other way while trucks dump construction rubble on a vacant lot in his district.
Not when it’s so much safer, not to mention more profitable, for the friend to “win” a riverboat casino license, or a state management contract–or better yet, a no-bid lease for office space that he just happens to own.
Sure, some of the slicker Democrats also have mastered what the press calls “pinstripe patronage.” A few of Mayor Daley’s pals have picked off concession contracts at O’Hare International Airport, and the law firm of House Minority Leader Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) does a suspiciously brisk business in tax appeals.
But while most of us have been watching Operation Silver Shovel scoop up small-time chiselers at City Hall, or clucking with disgust that ex-Congressman Dan Rostenkowski sent people gifts from the House stationery store, deals involving far larger sums of money have been flowing like water from our GOP-controlled state government.
Republican-style influence peddling doesn’t draw much attention, however, for several reasons. For one, state purchasing laws are written in such a way that political favoritism in the award of contracts is, with few exceptions, not a criminal offense. You don’t go to jail in Illinois for bad ethics. For another, a gray eminence such as William “Bill” Cellini, the secretive Downstate businessman and GOP contract king, does not fire the public imagination as does a character like the late Ald. William “Wild Bill” Henry, the larger-than-life Lawndale ward boss who was among those who allegedly winked at the aforementioned dumping of rubble.
This always has bothered me, and not just because I lean philosophically toward the Democrats. I would argue that we have a double-standard–embraced by government prosecutors and largely accepted by the investigative press–which says it’s okay to go after the low-hanging fruit while leaving the tree-top stuff undisturbed.
It is, after all, a lot easier to catch simple grafters than someone who stacks the deck by, say, wording a purchasing specification to favor a certain vendor. Too many investigative reporters hereabouts are both occupied and satisfied with peeking through the keyhole of grand jury rooms, or snapping up “exclusives” dropped from the prosecutor’s table.
Under this double standard, it seems not to matter that Gayle Franzen, chairman of the DuPage County Board and one of the most powerful Republicans in Illinois, has made himself rich brokering tax-exempt bonds and investing in a state-licensed riverboat casino.
Or that Robert Depke, GOP chairman of the Lake County Board, has been renting an office building he owns through a secret trust to the Illinois Department of Revenue.
Or that the above-mentioned Mr. Cellini, like Franzen a riverboat-owning millionaire, is about to develop and manage yet another new state-funded office building in Springfield, even though another one of his ventures is $20 million in arrears on the state loan that enabled him to build a nearby luxury hotel.
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Or that developer John Marks, a regular GOP contributor, is about to develop a new state unemployment office northwest of the Loop now that the Edgar administration has agreed to pay rent roughly double the going rate elsewhere in the space-glutted downtown office market.
Or that a 5-year-old company called Management Services of Illinois, Inc., which has been handed $40 million in consulting fees by the chronically underfunded Departments of Public Aid and Children & Family Services, has pumped more than $165,000 into Gov. Edgar’s campaign coffers, and, more ominously, has floated an $850,000 loan to a Florida company whose owners include the GOP assistant majority leader of the Senate.
Or that developer William Alter, another contributor/friend of our governor, will build a $19 million headquarters building west of the Loop for the Dept. of Public Aid, even though that debt-ridden agency faces a total reorganization and deep cuts in federal funding.
Or that Arnold Kanter, the former chief counsel to Gov. Edgar who lost his law license over an ethics violation, is now a top executive at an HMO which does millions in state Medicaid business, and is angling to get millions more once all the state’s welfare families are ordered into managed care.
These things seem not to matter, though eventually the public may catch on to the game being played. Eventually people will notice the nickle-and-dime nature of the prosecutions which lead the front pages and the TV news, and begin to ask who’s minding the store while the powers-that-be chase after the kids who stole the apples.
Then again, it’s a crime in Illinois to steal apples. Walking off with the store is just politics.