Ryan pal did little work, witness testifies
December 15, 2005
BY MIKE ROBINSON ASSOCIATED PRESS

A politically connected partner in one of Chicago's largest law firms testified Thursday that a close friend of George Ryan's was paid $5,000 a month for two years as a contract lobbyist at the urging of Ryan's right-hand man but wasn't really needed and did minimal work.

Former Judge Roger Kiley, a partner at the blue chip LaSalle Street firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe and Maw, testified at the former governor's trial that Ryan friend Ron Swanson spent their first strategy session telling repetitive and irrelevant stories and dropping Ryan's name.

"I didn't think that he would be any help," Kiley said. He said the lobbyists met to talk business and "he was having a hard time doing that related to the topic we were meeting on."

Swanson, a former Republican state senator from suburban Homer Glen, is one of several Ryan friends prosecutors say got special deals when Ryan was secretary of state and later governor.

Ryan, 71, and lobbyist friend Larry Warner, 67, are charged with racketeering, mail fraud and other offenses. Prosecutors allege Ryan steered big-money state leases and contracts to Warner and an elite circle of politically connected friends and got free vacations and gifts in return.

Ryan and Warner say nothing they did was illegal.
Swanson, 78, has pleaded guilty to lying to a federal grand jury and is awaiting sentence.

Kiley testified that he signed Swanson and his Springfield-based firm to be contract lobbyists for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which runs Navy Pier and the McCormick Place exposition center on Chicago's downtown lakefront.

He said Mayer, Brown ordinarily handled the authority's lobbying chores. But Kiley said he got orders from the authority's chief executive officer, Scott Fawell, to sign up Swanson as a subcontractor to help with lobbying state government.

Fawell was Ryan's longtime campaign manager and chief of staff and had been appointed to the $195,000-a-year job of running the authority, known as "McPier," as a reward after Ryan was elected governor in 1998.

Fawell, who was the government's leadoff witness at the trial, testified that it was Ryan who told him to call Mayer, Brown and have them give a lobbying contract to his old friend.

Fawell is serving a 6 1/2-year sentence for a 2003 racketeering conviction involving corruption in the secretary of state's office under Ryan and is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to rigging bids on the contract to supervise an $800 million McPier expansion.

Kiley said that when it came time to push the expansion program through the legislature, Swanson wasn't invited to that strategy meeting, even though he was already being paid $5,000 a month.

Kiley said he told Fawell he lacked confidence in Swanson to be effective as a lobbyist.

"He laughed and he agreed," Kiley said.

On cross-examination, Ryan defense attorney Dan K. Webb tried to paint Kiley as a slick elitist from a big international law firm who wanted to have "the whole lobbying pie" and freeze Swanson out.

He suggested that Swanson was eager to help McPier and got Kiley to admit that he gave the former senator's firm no lobbying assignments for nine months.

"This fell through the cracks at your end at your law firm-- correct?" Webb asked.

"Correct," Kiley said. He also said that Swanson was "a nice man, a gentleman, but it's difficult meeting with him. We're trying to stay focused on business and he's not."

"Would it be fair to say that he was different from the kind of lawyers who work at your big Chicago firm?" Webb asked.