Andy Shaw's OpEd from the Sun-Times
BGA hires Andy Shaw as new Executive Director
"Coordinator of coordinators." That ridiculously redun- dant job title still
makes me blanch 33 years after I discovered it during a line-by-line perusal of
a Chicago Board of Education budget.
It was 1976, and I was the newly hired education reporter at WMAQ-Channel 5,
which lured me away from the same beat at the Sun-Times with a promise of bright
lights and big bucks.
One of my first TV news assignments was to look for waste in the schools' budget
-- no binoculars needed on this one -- and my favorite find, in small print on a
page with enough "coordinator" positions in the curriculum department to rival
"Smith" in the phone book, was the supervisory title, "Coordinator of
coordinators."
A monument to bureaucratic absurdity that produced the best sound bite in our
waste series was when a man who actually had one of those positions said on
camera, with a straight face, that his job was "to coordinate the coordinators."
That old story came to mind last week as I watched an excellent Fox News Chicago
investigation of bureaucratic waste in the Cook County Highway Department, which
has more pencil-pushers anchoring desks downtown than repairing roads out in the
county.
One is Alex Moreno, brother of powerful Cook County Commissioner Joseph Mario
Moreno. Alex unwittingly provided the Fox story's "money shot" by sleeping at
his desk while the camera rolled, and then had the audacity to defend the nap by
saying -- cut to another straight face -- that he was tired after looking at his
computer for several hours.
All of this might be laughable on "America's Funniest Home Videos," but in the
real world it's disgusting. Because it's another piece of the "corruption tax"
we've been paying for decades to underwrite patronage and political corruption
in our pathetic polity.
It's an abomination I've resented as a city resident for the past 40 years,
including more than 25 as the main political reporter at ABC 7, where I asked
politicians from presidents to park supervisors tough questions about how they
managed their governments and spent your tax dollars. I held their feet to the
fire.
I watched allies of the first Mayor Daley marched off to jail for graft. I
reported on aldermen in Harold Washington's coalition who succumbed to bribes
from a government mole, who allegedly paid off a female council member -- may
she rest in peace -- by sprinkling hundred dollar bills on her pendulous breasts
as she lay naked in a bathtub.
I listened to my friend, lawyer Joe Power, tell me about the "selling" of
commercial drivers licenses by employees of George Ryan's Secretary of State's
office who needed extra cash to buy fund-raising tickets.
Power's startling revelations, which sparked an exclusive for WLS-Channel 7, and
the massive "licenses for bribes" scandal, came during a lawsuit he was handling
for the Willis family, which lost six children in a fiery accident caused by a
trucker who bought his license with a bribe. The corruption tax is paid in more
than dollars.
I've watched both Mayor Daleys react to corruption stories with a shrug, both
President Strogers with a laugh or a smile, and George Ryan with a grunt. Former
Gov. Blagojevich actually had the audacity to claim, on numerous occasions, that
"we do things the right way." Maybe he meant combing his hair.
My friend Bruce, a caustic political junkie who runs a dive bar in Old Town and
paints, among other things, portraits of famous Chicagoans -- including his
patron saint, legendary columnist Mike Royko -- sees the problem in comic, if
not cosmic, terms. He quotes Pogo, the main character in an old comic strip, who
said, "We have seen the enemy, and it is us."
So residents of Illinois: Look in the mirror and you'll see a reflection of the
enablers who keep returning the same overlords of a corrupt system to their
positions of power.
I left ABC 7 in January because I needed a break. I beat the winter, recharged
my batteries and now I'm back on the case.
But I'm changing acronyms -- BGA, for the Better Government Association-- is
replacing ABC. And I'm changing bosses --from the shareholders of ABC's parent
company, Walt Disney, to the voters and taxpayers of Illinois.
So let's get it on.
The BGA is a corruption-busting watchdog group -- independent, nonpartisan and
funded by its members -- that has been around since 1923, when civic leaders
decided it was time to fight the venal administration of Mayor William "Big
Bill" Thompson, who danced to the tune of mob boss Al Capone. And believe me, it
wasn't "My Kind of Town."
The BGA speaks truth to power and partners with news organizations to expose
waste, fraud and corruption. In fact, one of its investigators worked with Fox
on the Cook County highway story.
So I'm extraordinarily excited to re-enter the fray, with the freedom to
advocate and not just report, on behalf of the millions of Illinois residents
who, like Howard Beale in the movie classic "Network," are too fed up to take it
any more.
When I stopped in the bar to tell Bruce about the new job, he smiled. And nodded
up at the Royko portrait, which is down the row from a likeness of me that was
earned by purchasing pints, not penning prose for posterity.
"Move the ball a couple yards down the puerile playing field of Illinois
politics," he said, "and I'll move your mug down by Mike's."
"My helmet's on, my pads are straight and I'm protected in all the right
places," I quickly replied. "So I'm going in."
All I need is a few million Illinois teammates.
### Andy Shaw is a former political reporter
at WLS-Channel 7 in Chicago. He takes over as executive director of the BGA on
June 1
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