Corruption hardly ‘tangential,’ especially in Illinois

Opinion/Editorial - State Journal-Register
by Jay Stewart

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Firmly perched on his high horse, Gov. Rod Blagojevich recently chastised the media for focusing on the corruption scandals that threaten to swallow his administration. “You want to cover tangential, collateral things that have no impact or relevance to people,” he said.

It’s amazing how time changes one’s views. A 2002 candidate named Rod Blagojevich issued a never-ending stream of press releases, statements and attacks on then-Attorney General Jim Ryan for failing to stop the culture of corruption that flourished under George Ryan when he was secretary of state.

Indeed, Blagojevich’s 2002 campaign largely hinged on the “tangential” topic of public corruption and not once did he criticize the media for their extensive coverage of George Ryan’s corruption implosion. Furthermore, Blagojevich spent much of 2006 trying to convince voters through millions of dollars of commercials that George Ryan’s corruption scandals were not mere “collateral things that have no impact or relevance to people” but rather a central reason to stay away from Judy Baar Topinka and vote for him.

However, campaign commercials cannot hide the reality that the parallels between George Ryan and Blagojevich are becoming more pronounced every day. Both suffered from aggressive federal investigations of their administrations. Both had close colleagues indicted. Both increasingly hunkered down to avoid the media. Both have appeared as “Public Official A” in federal prosecutors’ court filings.

Whether the parallels continue to include an indictment and conviction on Blagojevich’s part remains to be seen, but only the foolhardy would dismiss it as an impossibility.

Blagojevich should drop his cheap media criticism, stop his pointless and mindless attacks on the General Assembly and instead come clean with the public about the roles his indicted friends, Chris Kelley and Tony Rezko, had in his administration and his campaigns.

As a candidate in 2002 Blagojevich thundered, “Rather than investigate corruption, (Jim Ryan) was asleep at the switch, looked the other way and did nothing, including being oblivious, evidentially, or impervious to the fact that one of the principle players in this corruption scandal was someone he actually hired and used in his campaign.” How would he answer this charge if directed at him?

Citizens are waiting for Blagojevich’s response because public corruption affects real people, real public dollars and real policies. Stuart Levine and Joe Cari have pleaded guilty to attempting to shakedown companies that wanted to invest Illinois pension funds. Tony Rezko has been indicted for participating in the same scheme, which involved plans for illegal kickbacks for the co-schemers and campaign contributions for “Public Official A.”

Pension funds are supposed to be invested for the benefit of public employees, not used as bait for luring investment firms to pad the pockets of connected insiders and swell campaign coffers of elected officials.

In the spring of 2006, Blagojevich made one of his patented attempts to appear to care about corruption by vowing to “rock the system” and enact some serious campaign finance reform. Despite an endless serious of media exposes about state contracts being awarded to major Blagojevich campaign contributors and criminal investigations into some of the more egregious instances, Blagojevich has yet to push for passage of House Bill 1, which bans pay-to-play for state contracts. If that is “rocking the system,” I’d hate to see what sticking your head in the sand looks like.

In the summer of that same year it was revealed that the federal government is investigating Blagojevich’s administration for possible illegal political hiring, reminiscent of the same practices that have sent several of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s high-ranking aides to prison.

The media has been full of stories about elderly interns, the locations of job positions being switched to different geographic regions in an apparent attempt to make an end run around the veterans hiring preference and other questionable hiring practices. How many qualified applicants never had a chance for a civil service job because Blagojevich’s version of “reform and renewal” looks suspiciously like old school Chicago backroom deals?

Public corruption is not a tangential or collateral issue. It is, unfortunately, still a significant part of Illinois’ deeply flawed and compromised political system. Tiresome diatribes against the media won’t change that fact.

Jay Stewart is executive director of the Chicago-based Better Government Association.