Regardless of the outcome of Gov. George Ryan’s trial on corruption charges, the scandal that surrounded his years in public office has inspired a raft of ethics reforms throughout state government.
A landmark ethics package given final approval in the fall veto session has many provisions that can be linked to Springfield’s anything-goes atmosphere in which Ryan, a Republican, thrived. And the secretary of state’s office has made changes prompted by the Operation Safe Road investigation, including reforms to testing procedures for truck driving licenses.
Now inspectors general throughout state government have broader authority and their activities will be monitored in hopes of heading off another case like that of Dean Bauer, the Ryan inspector general who quashed investigations rather than pursue them.
Private citizens who do work for statewide officials must disclose it. State employees are required to fill out time sheets. Lines between political and government work have been sharpened. And state workers, who, like imprisoned Ryan campaign manager Scott Fawell, often contended they didn’t know their political indiscretions were wrong, will be required to undergo ethics training.
State officials will no longer be able to flood the airwaves with public-service announcements in which they star–a process that Ryan raised to an art form while pitching the organ-donor program. Loopholes were closed so supervisors will be banned from pressuring subordinates to make campaign contributions on work time–another allegation repeatedly raised by people who worked under Ryan.
New protections also strengthened the law so whistleblowers, sometimes persecuted under the Ryan administration, would be protected.
“The biggest legacy is one that you won’t find in any of the statutes, and that is a huge change in the culture and mentality in state government,” said Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago), who has pursued reform for years. “It took a series of scandals of this enormity to actually wake public officials up and remind them that government is supposed to work for the public and not for those on the inside.”
When Rod Blagojevich took office as the first Democratic governor in 30 years, he issued an executive order creating an inspector general and an ethics hot line for employees. He then began pushing for many of the reforms that represented a reaction to the Ryan regime.
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Yet the allegations swirling around Ryan and his friends were not the sole impetus for sweeping changes.
Three of the four legislative caucuses, including that of House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), the state Democratic Party chairman, and the office of state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, the state Republican Party chairwoman, have come under federal scrutiny over allegations that their staff did political work on state time.
Despite the new ethics law, some lawmakers say Illinois still has weak enforcement of campaign-finance laws, secrecy surrounding legal-defense funds, loose disclosure requirements for consultants, insufficient oversight of leases and no mandate that businesses report how much they pay lobbyists. And while the new law eliminates the unlimited amount of wining and dining that lobbyists can do, the new restrictions allow $75 a day per lobbyist, per official.
Even so, the Ryan scandal prompted Jesse White, a Democrat, to make major changes in the secretary of state’s office.
It is tougher now to get a commercial driver’s license–one of the areas where wide-scale bribery flourished.
Truck drivers are tested on computers and the questions are scrambled so people can’t simply memorize the answers.
Trucker applicants also must take their driving tests in English. The move is a direct outgrowth of the allegation that truck driver Ricardo Guzman, whom authorities say paid a bribe for his license, could not understand when people speaking English tried to warn him of a loose piece that broke free from his truck and hit the mini-van of Duane and Janet Willis, causing it to erupt in flames. Six of their children died in the crash.
About 70 percent of 2,700 people with Illinois drivers licenses–1,500 truckers and 1,200 drivers–failed to get new licenses when White retested them, a move prompted by federal prosecutors.
Less than a year after White took office, six lower-level secretary of state employees working at a West Side facility were indicted in the Safe Road probe–something Ryan used to point out. But links to Ryan’s tenure remained at center stage.
Following Ryan into office, White implemented a policy in which employees would not be solicited for contributions, although those wanting to contribute could still give up to $500 a year.
The limits on employee giving as well as those on vendors have made a substantial difference since Ryan supervisors put the arm on subordinates to buy $100 fundraising tickets even though they made only $25,000 or $30,000 a year, said Jim Burns, a former U.S. attorney who now is White’s inspector general.
“That was ugly … That was a fundraising operation,” Burns said. “You had a lot of heat on employees. What you will get now is isolated employees that are corrupt or corruptible. You are not going to see the type of widespread conduct that you saw in Safe Road.”
In fact, White and Burns are making a point of sending letters of congratulations to workers who do such things as report a customer who tries to pay a $20 bribe.
“It’s my impression, whether it’s government or corporations, the tone is always set at the top,” Burns said. “If you have a bad culture, I’m never surprised to learn that the tone coming from the top is not good.”
Before Ryan left office, he even had to deal with legislation from the General Assembly that was an outgrowth of his scandal.
He approved a ban on state and local government employees soliciting campaign contributions from people or businesses they regulate, a measure that proponents pushed to discouraged the types of crimes committed in the licenses-for-bribes scandal.
During Ryan’s tenure as secretary of state, there were repeated accusations that workers who inspected car outlets were shaking down the dealers, who feared they must contribute to avoid being closed down or penalized.
The solicitation ban was first pushed by Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn when, as state treasurer, he ran unsuccessfully against Ryan for secretary of state.
After letting the bill linger for months, Ryan’s approval of the measure was his last action on the 348 bills sent to him during the 2002 spring legislative session, his last as governor.