For several years, James Heiple, now the Illinois Supreme Court’s chief justice, leased his regional court office from a Pekin bank in which his wife was a director and stockholder, according to state records.
By renting the office, Heiple may have violated a criminal statute that prohibits elected officials from having an interest in a state contract or lease, according to lawyers and ethics experts.
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Whether Heiple benefited financially from the agreement remains an open question. The answer could determine whether prosecutors would want to pursue the matter.
But given the current political climate, in which the House is proceeding with impeachment hearings, it seems likely that questions about the lease will add to Heiple’s woes. Legislators have not limited their investigation’s scope, so every aspect of Heiple’s professional life could be examined.
Heiple declined to comment Wednesday and referred questions to his attorney, George Mahoney III.
Mahoney said he does not believe the lease presented a conflict of interest. Heiple himself owned no stock in the bank, Mahoney said. And it is “an affront to women,” Mahoney said, to suggest they cannot own assets independently of their spouses.
An Illinois law that dates to the last century bars public officials from having an interest, “either directly or indirectly,” in a state contract. Illinois courts interpreting the statute have reached different conclusions when faced with the question of whether a wife’s interest is necessarily her husband’s interest as well.
Shortly after being elected to the state’s high court in 1990, Heiple assigned his administrative assistant at the time, Warren G. Reynolds, to scout potential sites for Heiple’s local Supreme Court office. Reynolds said he gave Heiple a report on eight sites in Peoria and nearby Pekin, where Heiple and his wife lived at the time.
Heiple chose to rent from the Amcore Bank in Pekin, in which Heiple’s wife, Virginia, was a director and shareholder. The bank had lost a major tenant, a health care clinic that rented 6,000 square feet. Heiple agreed to rent slightly more than half of the vacant space.
Although Heiple made the choice, Reynolds said he also thought the Amcore site was the best of the bunch.
According to some attorneys, Heiple’s actions may have violated the Corrupt Practices Act, a law that has been on the books since 1872. A conviction constitutes a felony and mandates that the public official be removed from office.
“It is very possible the guy technically violated the statute, but it wouldn’t be attractive to pursue criminally if there was no self-enrichment,” said Thomas Scorza, a law professor and former federal prosecutor.
Illinois courts have ruled that the Corrupt Practices Act generally applies, regardless of whether a public official profits from a state contract. It also applies even without a showing of intentional wrongdoing by the public official.
Heiple, who was elevated to the position of chief justice in January, has had a tumultuous year. Disciplinary charges filed against him in January were compounded by a subsequent accusation that he tapped his friend to head the commission that would hear those charges.
Three fellow Supreme Court justices also rebuked Heiple for appointing another friend to be the court system’s chief administrator, while remaining an appellate judge. And just this week, the General Assembly approved, by a 113-0 vote, a resolution to begin investigating Heiple to see if grounds exist for impeachment.
There is some irony in the possibility that Heiple may have violated a statute designed to draw the line between personal and public matters.
During a closed-door interview in October, Heiple told state investigators that he has taken pains to separate his public and private affairs, according to a transcript of the interview that Heiple recently provided to reporters.
Heiple was being questioned by the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board, an investigative body that later filed disciplinary charges against Heiple, accusing him of repeatedly disobeying police and flashing his court identification to avoid traffic tickets. Those charges are still pending.
Heiple told the Inquiry Board that he had a private telephone line installed in his office so that his personal calls would not be made on a state telephone. He also keeps his own stamps in an office drawer for personal correspondence.
Heiple said he owns most of the furniture in his office, thereby saving taxpayers money. And once, he told investigators, he was so shocked at the price of silk flowers he had ordered for the front lobby that he covered the cost himself, instead of sending the bill to Springfield.
“I have tried to never put myself in a position where I was using my office for some personal gain or privilege,” Heiple told the board.
The Inquiry Board questioned Heiple about his use of Supreme Court stationery to issue a press release days after he was arrested during a traffic stop in Pekin. The board also questioned him about having his secretary, a state employee, type up the release.
No disciplinary charges were filed concerning those matters, and during the interview, no mention was made of Heiple’s office lease.
Heiple rented the office from 1991 until March 31, 1996, when he moved his office to Peoria. The state paid nearly $140,000 in rent for the Pekin office.
If other criteria are also met, the Corrupt Practices Act exempts state contracts with an annual value of $25,000 or less, but the rent for Heiple’s Pekin office was about $36,000 a year.
Former Amcore Bank President Charles Renner said he negotiated the details of the contract with Reynolds, who was then Heiple’s administrative assistant.
While the rent amount by square foot for Heiple’s office was higher than what other state agencies were paying in Pekin, that was balanced out by the bank’s up-front costs, experts said. Amcore spent about $25,000 to $30,000 to remodel the space for Heiple, Renner said.
Heiple’s wife, who died in April 1995, sat on the boards of Amcore and later Commerce Bank, which purchased Amcore in 1992.
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Renner said Virginia Heiple owned less than 1 percent of the bank’s stock. “It was very small–the qualifying number to be a director and a few hundred more,” he said.
Mahoney said Virginia Heiple had “very, very minimal shares” that were worth about $5,000.
In March 1996, almost a year after his wife’s death, James Heiple filed a disclosure form, required of judges, stating that within 30 days of the filing date he owned stock in Commerce Bank.
Still, Mahoney said he doesn’t believe James Heiple owned any stock himself.
The assets owned by Heiple’s wife should not be considered Heiple’s assets as well, Mahoney said.
“I know the law, and rightfully so, is well beyond the time where spouses are economically subservient to their spouses,” Mahoney said. “Women, like men, have the right to independently own property.”
In cases involving the issue of whether a spouse’s financial dealings presents a conflict of interest, Illinois courts have drawn different conclusions.
In 1972, one court ruling stated that it does. “To hold otherwise would be to close our eyes to the natural and probable sharing of assets and liabilities which constitutes a characteristic of the family unit as it is known in our society,” the court wrote.
But five years later, another court ruling stated that “the wife’s interest is not necessarily the husband’s interest, provided the contract is not a mere subterfuge for his own pecuniary interest.”
When asked about the lease agreement, James Swarts, legal counsel for Commerce Bank, said the bank assumed the lease when it acquired Amcore. He said such issues as whether it was a conflict for Heiple to lease from the bank would not have been looked at by Commerce.
“Those issues are normally raised at the outset of the lease,” Swarts said. “It is (Heiple’s) responsibility to determine if he had the authority to enter into the contract.”