From the Associated Press

Fawell pleads not guilty to McPier bid rigging
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Associated Press
March 19, 2004, 3:04 PM CST
Former Gov. George Ryan's longtime top aide, looking thinner after months in federal prison, pleaded innocent Friday to charges of bid-rigging in the $800 million expansion of the McCormick Place convention center.
Scott Fawell, 46, already serving 61/2 years for using state workers and taxpayer dollars to wage Ryan's election campaigns, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys.
Fawell grinned and waved to several reporters and courtroom sketch artists who work for television stations and covered the trial that sent him to federal prison for racketeering.
At other moments, though, he looked around the courtroom with a tired, careworn expression. And he had plainly dropped weight since going behind bars.
Fawell's case is an offshoot of the federal government's six-year Operation Safe Road investigation. It began as an inquiry into bribes paid in return for drivers licenses and has since expanded into political corruption when Ryan was secretary of state and governor.
Fawell is charged with playing a key role in an alleged fraud that sent the contract for supervising the McCormick Place expansion to the firm of Jacobs Facilities Inc. of St. Louis.
At the time, Ryan had appointed Fawell to the $199,000-a-year job of chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which operates McCormick Place and Navy Pier and is often referred to as McPier.
According to the indictment, Fawell directed his assistant, Alexandra Coutretsis, to provide sealed bidding information to Julie Starsiak, a member of the Ronan Potts LLC lobbying firm.
Starsiak has pleaded guilty in the case and admitted passing the information to employees of Jacobs, enabling them to land the contract by lowering their bid from $18.8 million to $11.5 million when McPier held a second round of bidding to receive "best and final" offers.
Also indicted in the case is Ronan Potts, headed by former state Rep. Al Ronan, D-Chicago, a close Fawell friend and major fund-raiser for Ryan and other politicians of both parties.
Ronan himself has not been charged in the case. But a Ronan Potts lawyer, James Cutrone, told reporters he thinks an unindicted co-conspirator named only as Fawell Associate 1 is Ronan.
Ryan, the highest state official charged in Operation Safe Road, is awaiting trial next year on racketeering charges involving steering of contracts to a favored lobbyist. He has pleaded innocent.
Keys directed officials to keep Fawell in Chicago's Metropolitan Correctional Center until officials straighten out a dispute over who will end up representing Ronan Potts.
Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune