Better Government Association

Prepare for political corruption of Olympic proportions

By Chuck Goudie
Daily Herald Editorial Columnist
Posted Monday, April 16, 2007

That dripping sound you hear is saliva leaking from the well-marbled jowls of city contractors and politicians.

They are drooling like lockjaw victims over a smorgasbord at the vision of millions in Chicago Olympic contracts.

Since Chicago beat out Los Angeles to win the backing of the U.S. Olympic Committee for the 2016 Games, it is time to open up the trough and let the feast begin!

Of course, Chicago is still a long shot to overtake Rio de Janeiro, which seems destined to give Brazil and South America their first-ever Olympic Games. But during the two years until that final decision is made by the International Olympic Committee, the contractors and the politicians will all be jockeying for position in case of a Chicago upset. And there will be millions of dollars in lobbying work and preparations just to prepare for the final push to a 2016 decision.

Considering Chicago’s gold-medal status in governmental corruption, the prospects of back-room shenanigans in such a situation are of Olympic proportions.

You would think that the Chicago Board of Ethics, that agency in charge of ferreting out official malarkey and malfeasance, would be bracing for a lengthy monthly meeting on Wednesday to chart a course.

If you would think that, then you would be disappointed.

The Chicago Board of Ethics’ monthly meeting scheduled for Wednesday has been canceled.

So was the March meeting.

And the February meeting was also canceled.

It certainly can’t be for lack of work, now can it?

Not in the “City that Works” harder at graft, self-interest and politicking than the business of the people, or seems to, anyway.

In Chicago, where more city departments are under federal investigation than not — and where the mayor’s office is among the targets — what could possibly cause the Chicago Board of Ethics to cancel their regular meetings three months in a row?

“Public notice is hereby given that the April 18, 2007 meeting of the board of ethics has been canceled due to a lack of quorum.”

That means they can’t get enough members of the ethics board together to conduct a legal meeting and make decisions under the law. And Wednesday will make three months in a row that they haven’t been able to muster a quorum.

“We have five members of the board,” says city ethics board lawyer Richard Superfine. “We have to have four” members present to hold a legal meeting.

While the lawyers and investigators in the small city office are paid employees, board members who actually make the important determinations, are volunteers. “Certain decisions have to be made by the board,” says Superfine, who expresses frustration that the legally mandated decisions have to be put off every month that there is no quorum.

Superfine says that they have a “help wanted sign” out all the time, looking for more ethics board volunteers. Adding a sixth or seventh member would ease the quorum pressure, because they would still only need four members present to hold a legal meeting.

The Chicago Board of Ethics has been in place for more than 20 years and is responsible for registering and policing lobbyists, campaign financing, conflicting financial interests of government employees, nepotism, sweetheart deals and the litany of behavior that falls under “business as usual.”

For obvious reasons, the ethics office has never been well received by all city officials. It has always been short-staffed and under-funded. From the beginning, the ethics office started with few teeth in its municipal mouth but has grown a few more over the years — usually after a scandal causes some limited public outrage.

Just the fact that board members are appointed by the mayor and approved by the city council, all of whom are supposed to be policed by the ethics office, is a strain of common sense. That alone doesn’t exactly help to “ensure public confidence in the integrity of Chicago government,” as the board’s mission is.

Last fall, the only ethics board executive director to serve under Mayor Daley’s reign resigned. A permanent replacement for ex-director Dorothy Eng has not been named.

Some critics of the ethics board, as it is presently put together, believe that the director’s vacancy is a good time to retool the entire office. Jay Stewart, who runs the private watchdog group the Better Government Association, says he doesn’t recall the last time a major scandal was stopped or exposed by the board of ethics.

Stewart maintains that the city ethics office doesn’t have enough power and official backing to fight corruption and notes that it is usually the media that prompt criminal investigations.

Annual ethics training is now a requirement for all 36,000 city employees. With that, the number of complaints coming into the city ethics office is increasing to almost 2,000 per year.

Now, with the pinky-ring crowd salivating over Chicago’s multi-billion dollar Olympic prospects, wouldn’t it be a good time to pump a little more money and manpower into the business of enforcing the rules of good conduct?

Maybe the problem with the board of ethics is that too many people are just bored of ethics.

Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC7 News in Chicago. The views in his column are his own and not those of WLS-TV, or the Daily Herald. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com.