Keeping foxes away from hens

From the Chicago Tribune:

Editorial

Keeping foxes away from hens

Published June 12, 2003

Asking state legislators to impose strict new ethics rules on themselves is like asking foxes to please be respectful of the hens. Coming off a dismal era of corruption, conflicts of interest and insider lawmaking--capped by 57 convictions so far in the federal Operation Safe Roads investigation--one might have thought that lawmakers would want to impress voters with their willingness to make amends. As if to say, those of us who are still around recognize that the Springfield sleaziness has to end.

Not a chance. The legislature passed an "ethics" bill this spring, but only after it had been gutted of meaningful provisions that might actually police the political culture.

Lawmakers ensured that they could continue accepting golf and tennis outings from lobbyists, that the sky was the limit for lobbyists who want to wine and dine public officials.

Lawmakers allowed state officials to continue using televised public service announcements--some done at state expense--that often amount to thinly disguised campaign commercials. They scuttled an independent ethics commission that would review alleged violations, along with an executive inspector general.

The final "reform" package had all the punch of a KO'd prize fighter. It was so bad that even the bill's sponsor, Sen. Susan Garrett (D-Lake Forest) urged Gov. Rod Blagojevich to amendatorily veto it.

Blagojevich and Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan have made it clear that they aren't going to participate in the charade. Madigan is calling for significant changes that would toughen up the ethics package by creating a legitimate enforcement mechanism.

Blagojevich is likely to announce that he will do just that by issuing a sweeping amendatory veto of the bill.

Blagojevich is expected to write into the bill a strong and politically independent ethics commission--like most other states have--that would investigate ethics violations and enforce the state's rules.

The legislation is likely to create a state hotline for reporting violations, restrict state employees from awarding private firms and agencies with rich state contracts and then going to work for those firms, slice out exceptions to the Gift Ban Act, and set limits on what lawmakers can take from lobbyists.

We'll reserve judgment until the final language of the revisions are announced. But by all signs the changes encouraged by Madigan and accepted by Blagojevich are going to make this far, far more effective legislation.

So the Illinois legislature, in the veto session this fall, will get another opportunity to have its say on ethics. It can accept a tougher law or it can reject the governor's changes.

A new law is not going to scrub Springfield clean--those stains have been building for a long time. But it will set some needed rules and create a mechanism for enforcing those rules. If nothing else, perhaps it will allow the U.S. attorney's offices in Chicago and Springfield to reduce the overtime pay in the official corruption units.