House Republican Leader Lee Daniels delivered $1.1 million in taxpayer funded pork-barrel grants to Lincoln Park Zoo, and zoo officials wasted little time naming a polar bear “Lee” in honor of their legislative benefactor.
Rep. Robert Bugielski gave $10,000 from taxes to the Adler Planetarium for an exhibit on Polish astronomers, and the institution posted a thank-you on its Web site.
And after Rep. John Jones dropped $125,000 on the Downstate town of West Salem, local folks presented him with the key to the city.
Call it the pork-barrel halo effect.
It is the warm and fuzzy afterglow that lawmakers bathe in courtesy of Illinois taxpayers. Long after government press releases and lawmakers’ newsletters have trumpeted the news of a grant, some pork-barrel projects are gifts that keep on giving–back to the lawmaker–with a public relations bounce that can last for years.
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It’s a golden age for these types of politically useful tokens of affection.
Over the last three years, Gov. George Ryan and the Illinois General Assembly have set aside $1.5 billion for legislators to shower the state with pet projects, also known as member initiatives.
The grants have continued to dribble out even as the state confronts a mounting fiscal emergency that has already forced Ryan to slash spending for social service and health-care programs and led him to ask for even more cuts for the next fiscal year. Still, lawmakers continue to spend down a big pot of money set aside for legislative pork that could be used to help plug the state’s budget hole.
Most of the money has gone for traditional pork infrastructure projects such as water, road and sewer improvements or building repairs. But a Tribune investigation found that many grants, which were parceled out in secret, also went to programs tied to cronies, relatives, favored religious groups and private agencies that legislators helped run.
Among the grants is one for $750,000 that Sen. Margaret Smith (D-Chicago) secured for St. Paul Community Development Ministries, an offshoot of St. Paul Church of God in Christ, to remodel a building for a church community center. Smith received her own quick burst of the halo effect when the church’s pastor cited her efforts at a banquet that was videotaped and broadcast repeatedly on public access television.
Rep. Terry Parke (R-Hoffman Estates) has become the beneficiary of a literally moving tribute from a senior citizen’s group after he sponsored a $60,000 grant to buy a mini-bus. A sign on the new vehicle reads: “Schaumburg Township Senior & Disabled Services thanks state Representative Terry Parke for the funds to purchase this bus.”
`Expensive bear’
Perhaps no lawmaker has gotten a bigger personal pop out of a pork grant than Daniels.
The Elmhurst Republican is so proud of Lee the polar bear that he placed pictures of it underneath the glass top of a long wooden table in his statehouse office. He posted the same snapshots on a Web site maintained by his campaign committee. He even knows that Lee weighs 500 pounds and will hit 1,200.
Daniels has a tie to the zoo, through his law firm: Bell, Boyd and Lloyd. Two of his partners have been members of the zoo board, and one of them, Raymond Drymalski, is a life member of the board and its former chairman.
In a recent interview, Daniels said he sends money to Lincoln Park Zoo because it is one of the state’s largest tourist draws. The lawmakers’ largesse, which helped pay for remodeling the entrance to the ape and monkey building and renovating the farm animal exhibit, is among the biggest dollops of tax money the zoo has received, spokeswoman Kelly McGrath said.
Zoo officials said thank you to Lee the lawmaker in April by mounting a plaque on Lee the bear’s enclosure as a “token of our appreciation of what Daniels did in the legislature,” McGrath said. “He really went to bat for us.”
The bronze memorial announces that “Lincoln Park’s male polar bear `Lee’ was named … for Illinois House Republican Leader Lee A. Daniels in recognition of his extraordinary commitment to keeping the Lincoln Park Zoo free and open to everyone, every day.”
McGrath conceded that singling out Daniels and his partisan political title and omitting any mention that the money came from state taxes was “maybe a little heavy-handed,” but that the zoo didn’t view the plaque as a political boost.
“We certainly mean no disrespect to the taxpayers of Illinois,” she said.
When recently asked about his fuzzy namesake, though, Daniels joked: “Expensive bear.”
Credit has staying power
Bugielski, a Democratic lawmaker from Chicago, earned a hearty thank you from the Adler officials for lining up a grant that helped underwrite an exhibit on Polish astronomers.
Credits for the exhibit, which ran from October 2000 to January 2001, noted: “Major funding was provided by: State Representative Robert Bugielski.”
The exhibit is long gone, but the planetarium continues to thank Bugielski on its Web site, credit he says he wasn’t looking for. “I could care less about that,” he said.
Bugielski said it was nice of Adler to mention him but it shouldn’t have. He promised to call Adler officials and tell them to revise the tribute to credit the state instead.
Adler and a Polish-American group lobbied him for the money, Bugielski said, because he is of Polish ancestry.
$125,000 and a wooden key
In southern Illinois, Republican Rep. John Jones of Mt. Vernon found $125,000 in state money to nearly double the size of the tiny Village Hall so more than a handful of people could sit in on board meetings.
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“If two or three visitors came [before], they were standing there with the door open,” Jones said. “There wasn’t room to get into the building.”
But when he showed up for a local parade and fish fry, Jones was in for a surprise. Some residents had gotten together and sawed a big key out of wood.
“I was flabbergasted because I didn’t know they were going to do it,” Jones said. “I had no idea.”
The key is now hanging in his office.