The Republicans and Democrats vying to be the state’s top lawyer on Wednesday vowed to slap a legal lid on pork-barrel legislative spending as they promised greater oversight for a process that has authorized $1.5 billion for lawmakers’ pet projects over three years.
At a news conference, Democratic candidate for attorney general John Schmidt called “indefensible and unconstitutional” the process by which legislative leaders parcel out money from the state budget to lawmakers.
Schmidt’s opponent, state Sen. Lisa Madigan of Chicago, also said she opposed the process and would not seek projects this year after getting more than $2 million in the last two budgets.
Schmidt stood next to a cardboard poster with a quotation from Madigan’s father, Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan. It said: “That’s my money,” a remark witnesses said he made recently in rejecting suggestions that legislative project funding be frozen.
Many legislators have used such member initiatives to hand out taxpayer-financed grants to programs and projects linked to friends, relatives and campaign contributors. Schmidt said such spending could violate various state laws, including bribery and extortion.
Records show that during the last two budget years Lisa Madigan doled out many of her “member initiatives” to schools and arts organizations throughout her North Side district, including $150,000 to help build a theater in Edgewater and $200,000 to renovate the Cambodian Community Center on the Northwest Side.
A spokesman for Madigan said she disagrees with the member-initiative process and would not seek an allotment this budget year.
“This is just another example of the many things on which she and her father disagree,” said spokesman David Schaper, adding that she would dedicate the attorney general’s office to rooting out public corruption.
The Republicans in the race for attorney general–DuPage County State’s Atty. Joseph Birkett and Chicago attorney Robert Coleman–told the Tribune editorial board that they agreed on the need for more investigations of public corruption and more supervision over state contracts.
“I do not support backroom deals involving the appropriation or spending of public funds,” Coleman said, although he said that the disbursement of project funds “well may not be” a violation of the state constitution.
He said that, if elected, he would create a public-corruption unit. If abuses were found in legislative pork grants, Coleman said he would “seek restitution and criminal prosecution of the recipients of the funds.”
Birkett said he would create a contract-oversight bureau modeled on the financial-crimes unit he runs in the DuPage prosecutor’s office. It would have “powers both criminal and civil to review state contracts and hold those accountable who breach the public trust,” he said.
The subject of pork-barrel projects also took center stage at a debate in the Republican contest for the U.S. Senate nomination when Chicago attorney John Cox handed a canned ham to one of his opponents, state Rep. James Durkin of Westchester.
“Given that you’ve been down in Springfield for so long and served the state so well, voting for all those great programs down there, we thought we’d give you a little pork,” Cox told Durkin at the debate, which was sponsored by the City Club of Chicago.
Although Durkin has dispensed more than $4 million in grants during the last two years, he said he would forego more because “we’re in a deficit and I don’t think it’s appropriate.”
But he defended state outlays on public works, particularly for highway improvements.
“It’s the first time in decades where there’s been any major infrastructure program,” Durkin said. “It was necessary. Roads, when they’re crumbling, need to be fixed; goods need to be delivered; people need to go to work.”
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In other campaign developments, the frontrunner in the Democratic race for governor, Roland Burris, said he would create a state Department of Education with a Cabinet-level administrator who would report to him. Burris said that, if necessary, he would push for voter ratification in 2003 of a state constitutional amendment with the changes.
Under the law, the next time voters would be able to consider a change in the constitution would be in 2004.