Guilty plea in Safe Road investigation

From the Chicago Sun-Times

Guilty plea in Safe Road investigation
February 26, 2004
BY MIKE ROBINSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chicago Sun-Times
A woman who worked at the heart of one of the state's most influential
lobbying firms pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to federal agents about
bid-rigging and promised to cooperate in the ongoing investigation of
corruption under former Gov. George Ryan.
"I was questioned by the federal government as to the numbers involved in a
procurement process, and I lied as to how I obtained the numbers," Julie
Starsiak told U.S. District Judge Blanche M. Manning at the hearing.
Starsiak, 56, was vice president of a firm headed by powerful lobbyist Al
Ronan, a major fund-raiser for candidates of both political parties in
Illinois.
Ronan is not charged with any wrongdoing, but his firm of Ronan Potts, LLC,
is named in the bid-rigging indictment along with Starsiak, former Ryan
chief of staff and campaign manager Scott Fawell, and Fawell's longtime
assistant Alexandra Coutretsis.
According to the indictment released earlier this month, Fawell told
Coutretsis to give details of sealed bids on a multimillion-dollar
consulting contract at the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority to
Starsiak. Starsiak then passed them to executives at a Ronan Potts client,
Jacobs Facilities Inc. of St. Louis, which lowered its bid from $18.8
million to $11.5 million and won the contract.
The bid-rigging probe is part of the federal government's six-year Operation
Safe Road investigation of corruption that took place when Ryan was
secretary of state in the 1990s and later governor.
Seventy-one state employees and others have been charged in the
investigation. With Starsiak's plea Thursday, 60 have been convicted or
pleaded guilty.
Starsiak admitted in her plea that when she was questioned by FBI agents and
postal inspectors she denied knowing anything about bid-rigging, even though
the government had given her immunity from prosecution hoping she could
provide crucial evidence.
Fawell, 46, is currently serving a 6 1/2-year sentence for racketeering. He
was convicted last year of using state employees and taxpayer dollars to
help fuel Ryan's election campaigns for more than a decade.
Ryan himself is awaiting trial on racketeering charges involving steering of
contracts to a favored lobbyist. He has pleaded innocent.
The charge Starsiak pleaded guilty to carries a maximum penalty of five
years in federal prison plus a $250,000 fine. But preliminary calculations
suggest she is more likely to get a sentence of between 15 months and 21
months under federal sentencing guidelines.
The sentence could be even lower if she provides sufficient cooperation in
the Operation Safe Road investigation, prosecutors said.
Defense attorney Chris Gair told reporters as he left the courthouse that
Starsiak "very much regrets the mistake she made."
"She's going to do what she can to make up for it, and we'll let the chips
fall where they may," Gair said. He brushed aside a remark that Ronan Potts
attorney James Cutrone made after the indictment was returned that Starsiak
should be held responsible and not the lobbying firm.
"He ought to check his facts," Gair said.