Government Ethics: Chicago Style

It’s no secret that ethics means something a little different here in the Land of Lincoln. We’re home to where the last 3 of 6 governors have gone to jail. Our last governor was just convicted of a “Martha Stewart” offense and is awaiting retrial on his own corruption charges. Our current Governor, Pat Quinn, has been a self-styled outsider for decades and became an accidental governor after Blagojevich was impeached. The term “accidental governor” not only describes how he became Governor but in a large part it describes his governing style.

The one amazing transformation has been Quinn, the reformer, becoming Quinn, the business-as-usual politician. While claiming the need for “shared sacrifice” and insisting on a tax increase, his top political staff received massive payraises (up to 20%). He formed a blue-ribbon ethics commission to reform state government, then largely ignored everything they told him. However, the latest incident is the most disturbing.

His chief-of-staff Jerry Stermer had sent several e-mails from his state e-mail account to coordinate campaign messaging for Pat Quinn during the primary. He had directed the budget director of the state to produce information to be distilled into talking points by the Governor’s campaign PR firm. To his credit, he then turned himself in to the Inspector General of the state for an ethics investigation. The ethics transgression here isn’t peanuts, but it’s certainly not a case of storied Chicago politics corruption. But then things got interesting.

The incidents of political e-mails dates back to January. However, August 11th (many months later), the Inspector General issued his final report. August 12th, the report was received by the Governor’s office. During the morning on August 13th, Governor Quinn fired the Inspector General and replaced him with Ricardo Meza, an attorney for MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund).

Apparently, he was “formally” briefed on the ethics complaint on the evening of the 13th. In short, it appears the Governor fired the Inspector General for issuing a negative ethics finding against his Chief of Staff the day after that report was received by his office. The report requested that the Attorney General file formal ethics charges. You can read the timeline here.

The timing of the entire debacle is explosive. So explosive, in fact, that the Chief of Staff resigned this week to avoid controversy being directed at the Governor. Now, the fired Inspector General, James Wright, was a Blagojevich appointee and from all appearances was pretty much absent during Blagojevich’s corruption. The most public act he took in that role was to shake down professors at state universities for taking their ethics exams too quickly. No joke, he really did that.

However, from every appearance this is a retailation firing. More importantly to realize is that Quinn has always prided himself on a good relationship with the African American community. So much so, he has been terrified to let go corrupt public officials who are African American even when there is sufficient cause.

The entire University of Illinois Board of Trustees were demanded to resign by the Governor in the wake of an admissions scandal. Two of the trustees, African Americans, stood their ground and Quinn folded. Even more damning, his current Illinois Department of Corrections head, Michael Randle, is widely reviled as incompetent. He apparently ignored the Governor’s direct orders, released violent criminals early from prison (one of whom went on to kill a woman in Peoria last month) and was imported from Ohio under a cloud. Members of his own party want him fired. While he certainly has cause, Quinn refuses to fire him.

Yet he had no problem firing James Wright, an African American. The timing of events combined with Quinn’s notorious reluctance of holding African American bureaucrats to account paints a very dark picture of what is going on in the Governor’s office.

In Illinois, politicians often talk about bringing ethics to Illinois. Most of them mean simply that their unethical conduct should never be detected. And when an Inspector General has the temerity to issue an ethics finding, the powers that be show him his walking papers. In Illinois, we achieve ethics by shutting down the ethics watchdogs. Fair warning, that system has been exported to Washington D.C. Just ask Gerald Walpin.