Editorial from the Chicago Tribune

Watchdogs with teeth


Published October 24, 2003
The disgraced Dean Bauer, the former inspector general for the secretary of state's office, is proving to be far more useful now that he's out of a state job than he ever was when he had one.
His legacy haunts every conversation about how to craft tough new ethics legislation that would prevent the kind of massive corruption he managed to willfully overlook after he was brought in to clean a very messy house.
That's why, as the legislature heads into its November veto session, Gov. Rod Blagojevich is wrestling with House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan and others over just how to craft effective ethics legislation.
Blagojevich properly put the kibosh on the useless piece of dreck that came out of the legislature last spring. That measure proved that, despite coming off the worst corruption scandal in state history, most legislators still had no desire to hold themselves to higher ethical standards.
What led to the Dean Bauer cover-up fiasco was a lack of checks and balances. And that poses the thorniest problem now--creating a watchdog system, in which the watchdogs aren't beholden solely to their bosses, as Dean Bauer was to then-Secretary of State George Ryan. The other fear is that no one office-holder or political party has so much investigative authority that political witch-hunts get launched against foes.
Blagojevich, who has said he won't let the veto session end until a strong ethics bill gets approved, recently backed away from his demand that the reform package include a single inspector general imbued with authority to investigate all the offices of state government.
A new compromise allows for five inspectors general, each nominated by a statewide officer and confined to scrutiny only of that office. The compromise would create a part-time, unpaid ethics commission that would share authority over those inspectors general with the statewide officer, and that would hear complaints not resolved quickly by the inspectors.
Sunshine is the best antiseptic, the saying goes, and Lisa Madigan is absolutely right in pushing the notion of making the process as public as possible to ensure the greatest accountability. She wants regular, frequent reports made by each inspector general to the ethics commission about progress on the cases they're handling, all of which would be made public without identifying the employees involved.
It would make sense for all initial hotline calls to go through the ethics commission, which could then direct them to the appropriate inspectors general for investigation. That way, the central board would be able to log the types of calls that come in and keep track of time taken to resolve them.
There's more to this package. Many legislators apparently object to a ban on lobbyists paying for legislators' greens fees at golf outings. That doesn't mean they won't be able to golf with them at Medinah, it just means they will have to pay their own way. They will learn to make the sacrifice.
Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson (R-Greenville) has a few sensible ideas to address ethics issues that have arisen in recent months, such as requiring regular advisers to the governor who are not on the state payroll to file statements of economic interest.
As they head into the veto session, legislators should repeat this mantra --"Dean Bauer, Dean Bauer, Dean Bauer"--to prevent embarrassing themselves again by finagling their way to a toothless ethics reform bill.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune