From the Peoria Journal-Star:

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

March 3, 2003

Perhaps Joe Birkett's family has a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. How else do you explain the former Attorney General candidate apparently not knowing much about his cousin, who, incidentally, loaned Birkett $100,000 for his campaign last year.

The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform recently picked on Birkett, as well as other candidates, for not filing very complete campaign disclosure reports.

Says Kent Redfield, director of the Sunshine Project: "It is important to know who is funding the campaigns of candidates for public office in Illinois. The more information citizens have, the more informed their votes will be on Election Day. The high level of compliance with the law speaks very well for the vast majority of candidates for public office in Illinois. But it is still disheartening to see a few candidates either ignore the law or fail to take it seriously."

Birkett failed to report employer and occupation information on 31 percent of his donors.

"Particularly striking in Birkett's case," states the news release, "was that he failed to provide employer and occupation information on the donors of several extremely large contributions, including Raymond Fauber of Peoria, who gave $100,000 . . ."

Wow. $100,000. That caught our attention and made us wonder who is Raymond Fauber.

Turns out, he's Birkett's cousin and a retired hydraulics manufacturer. He loaned Birkett his RV motorcoach with its queen-size bed, full bath and 265-gallon gas tank. We found all that out by a quick search of past Journal Star articles.

When we checked the State Board of Elections Web site, Birkett's report said there was a "good faith effort made" to discover Fauber's employer and occupation. Hmmm.

By the way, Fauber failed to return our calls. We just wanted to know, after such a generous offer, if his feelings were hurt that Birkett apparently doesn't recognize his own kin.

All kidding aside, we speculate Birkett just got lazy.

As Cindi Canary of ICPR says: "I can't believe there's any campaign out there that doesn't know where that kind of money is coming from. Maybe when they lost, they also lost their desire to fill out paperwork."