From The Chicago Sun-Times:

Gov. Ryan still won't play the name game

December 9, 2002

BY MARK BROWN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

This should come as no surprise, I suppose, but it appears that George Ryan has fooled us once again.

Less than five months after promising to reveal the names of donors to his legal defense trust fund, the governor is stonewalling.

The Dec. 1 deadline set by the governor for disclosure has come and gone, and it's starting to look more and more as if Ryan has no intention of honoring his commitment.

"I don't know," said Dennis Culloton, the governor's press secretary, when asked when the donor list would be released.

If you know anything about reporters, we ask the same question a half dozen different ways to see if we can get a better answer. I started down that path.

"I don't have a better answer," said Culloton, who knows this process better than most.

I asked if there was somebody else I should be checking with.

"I'm probably the right person to check with," Culloton said.

And?

"If I had a list, I'd be disclosing it. I just don't have a list now," Culloton said.

If Culloton had said the governor needed another week to pull the information together, I wouldn't be writing this. But that clearly wasn't the message the governor was sending through his press secretary.

I interpreted the real message to be something like this: So what are you doing to do, indict me?

Soon enough, but not for this transgression.

Unfortunately, there is no legal requirement for Ryan to disclose donations to his defense fund, even though there ought to be. The promise to make the donor information public was entirely voluntary on his part, although it certainly served its purpose: defusing the issue as a political distraction during the governor's last half year in office.

I seem to be one of the few people harping on this, and if you're tired of hearing about it, I apologize. But this is one of the bigger government ethics loopholes confronting us in Illinois these days, and it would be nice if somebody got serious about closing it.

The legal defense fund, one of the stinky traditions of Illinois politics, has long been particularly popular here in Cook County.

For that reason, I always assume readers know all about them, but for the uninitiated, they sort of work on the same principle as a baby shower.

If you come under federal investigation, your friends are expected to get together and help defray your expenses, same as if you got pregnant. Instead of diapers, however, they are encouraged to give you cash. One of the benefits for the donors is that if it becomes necessary for you to cooperate with the government to lighten your sentence, you are less likely to mention any illicit dealings you had with them.

Even McPier CEO Scott Fawell has his own defense fund, the money we are paying him to do nothing while he awaits trial being insufficient to cover the cost of his lawyers.

Members of the Illinois General Assembly, some of whom are only a phone call from a disgruntled girlfriend away from being in the same predicament themselves, have never had the stomach to confront the issue.

It's one of those "there but for the grace of God go I" subjects. Many would prefer not to hamstring their own ability to raise money to pay lawyers should the need ever arise.

Lawyers can be very expensive in these criminal matters, the best ones running into hundreds of thousands of dollars if it becomes necessary to go to trial.

One of the ways the politicians justify the legal defense funds is their belief that they are bigger targets for prosecution than the average citizen, causing them to come under investigation for practices that are routine in private enterprise.

We probably can't prohibit them from creating defense funds, but we certainly can require them to make public all donations.

This is important for the same reason that the disclosure of campaign contributors is important.

We deserve to know how much money has been contributed to Ryan's legal defense by companies and individuals looking for last-minute deals to tide them over for the first few years of a Democratic administration, such as the big public relations contract being awarded by the Illinois Department of Transportation for the coming Dan Ryan Expy. reconstruction project.

We deserve to know whether any of the individuals seeking a pardon from Ryan before he leaves office have tried to get his attention by making donations to his defense fund. How about all the Hollywood types who seem eager to reward the governor for his stance on the death penalty and might want to encourage him to go further?

Ryan announced the creation of the George Ryan Trust Fund in a July 16 press release after federal prosecutors had moved to block him from spending all the money in his political campaign fund. Prosecutors assert taxpayers deserve some of the campaign fund money.

The governor isn't calling it a legal defense fund, covering himself with some silliness about how the money might be used to "promote the reform of the criminal justice system and other philanthropic pursuits." Not likely.

Running the fund for Ryan is Chicago insurance executive Richard Parrillo Sr., a colorful character whose father, William, was one of Al Capone's lawyers. One of Parrillo's main qualifications for this position is that he is one of the few friends of the governor not known to be under investigation himself.

Culloton said he doesn't know how much money Parrillo has raised for Ryan.

"I believe there's been a reception or two, and they've gotten a pretty good response," he said.

Cynthia Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, wrote the governor a letter in September suggesting some guidelines for Ryan's voluntary disclosure, including posting the information on a Web site.

She received a letter in return from Parrillo, thanking her for her recommendations and assuring her that "the administration of the fund will be conducted with the utmost integrity and in full compliance with all applicable state and federal statutes, rules and regulations."

As he knows, none of those statutes, rules and regulations require him to tell us anything, but if you'd get angry, we would change that.

E-mail: markbrown@suntimes.com