What
is it about Illinois? The Land of Lincoln has a long- running,
nationwide reputation for political corruption, and we aren’t
in a position to complain. There is hard evidence — even
Illinoisans can see it — to rank this state among the ethic-ally
challenged. These days especially, when it wouldn’t come
as any surprise if the slogan on Illinois’ license plates
read, “What’s in it for me?”
Federal
prosecutors now have the attention of even the most jaded. The
racketeering convictions of a former statewide official’s
top aide and — this is a first — his campaign committee
inspired political scholars and practitioners to convene a summit
on ethics. It spurred the governor to push to train state workers.
And it motivated lawmakers to agree on some reforms.
Ethics,
it seems, is on the agenda.
Yet,
we should remember, Illinois’ roster of political scoundrels
dates from statehood, and they are larger-than-life figures. Some
are remarkable for the scale of their greed. Some because their
ambitions reached the humorous. Some because their schemes touched
on the banal, objects of the everyday that became a shorthand
for character. Shoeboxes, say, or barbecue grills and industrial-size
shredders.
Even
when measured on a national scale, these characters are standouts.
Why is that? Former federal judge Abner Mikva jokes that “it
can’t be the water.” Illinois, after all, shares the
shores of Lake Michigan with Wisconsin. But the political culture
of the Badger State, though it has faced scandals of its own over
the past couple of years, shares nothing in common with that of
the Prairie State.
The
reasons, says Mikva, who has represented Chicago in the Illinois
legislature and in Congress, are cultural and political. “Illinoisans
have a weird pride in their history of political corruption.”
It’s true. We love tales about the late Secretary of State
Paul Powell, who reportedly left shoeboxes full of cash, and long-gone
Chicago boodlers “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathhouse
John” Coughlin. The statesmen we leave to historians.
As
for political scientists, they place Illinois among those states
with individualistic political cultures. Unlike the citizens of
Wisconsin, who tend to see civic engagement as a moral enterprise,
Illinoisans are generally disposed to leave government to professionals,
who, broadly speaking, see public service as a form of personal
entrepreneurship. An approach that doesn’t bother Illinoisans
much unless the grab for spoils gets out of hand.
In
their book Illinois Politics and Government: The Expanding
Metropolitan Frontier, Sam Gove and Jim Nowlan write that
“in Chicago parlance, the culture is best described as ‘Where’s
mine?’ but in more genteel circles, the Illinois system might
be termed a government-as-marketplace, where a give-and-take process
allocates ‘fair shares’ of the pie to those who have
earned a place at the table.”
This
traces to the state’s earliest settlement. Immigrants brought
their cultures with them and passed them on. In this way, too,
the political culture of City Hall is modeled to the next gener-ation.
Same goes at the Statehouse, where Paul Powell is reputed to have
said, “My friends eat at the first table.”
So
is it nature or nurture? Mikva and a panel of political experts
wrestled with this and other questions in April, just as Illinois
lawmakers entered the final month of their spring session. The
summit, “Politics and Ethics in Illinois: Past, Present and
Future,” was sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential
Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Illinois
at Springfield, and among the panelists were former state officials,
reformers and political scientists.
On
this they agreed: The majority of Illinois officials are honest
and well-intentioned. But panelists weighed whether opportunity,
if not propensity, for corruption is endemic to our governmental
system, or whether this is the legacy of a few bad apples.
Mikva
emphasized structure. He recommended reducing the number of governments,
which, in Illinois, includes the state, counties, munici- palities,
townships, school districts and special units such as park districts.
“A plethora abounds,” he says. “It confounds, it
astounds and it’s hard as hell to dislodge.” His argument:
Multiplicity confuses voters, enables governments to work anonymously
and reduces public accountability. All reasons elected officials
are unlikely to decide soon that less is more.
Individual
responsibility got more emphasis. Mike Lawrence argued that problems
stem from the culture an official establishes. Lawrence, who was
press secretary to former Gov. Jim Edgar, is now associate director
of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University
in Carbondale. And political scientist Kent Redfield at UIS, who
tracks the relationship between money and politics, noted the
“win at all costs” values taught by some government
aides to workers “lower down the food chain.”
But,
no surprise, the widest range of opinion centered on the value
and limitations in prohibitions. Former state agency director
Howard Peters III, for one, saw no reason to allow public officials
to accept gifts of any kind for any reason. Former state Sen.
Howard Carroll countered that “you can’t legislate ethics;
you can’t cover every possible situation.” But Alan
Rosenthal, a political scientist at Rutgers University and an
expert on states’ legislative ethics, argued some laws can
change a capital’s culture, though maybe not a state’s
culture.
But
in Illinois, the “burglars,” as Mikva calls them, tend
to overreach. The federal probe into licenses for bribes has netted
dozens of convictions, and Illinoisans have been treated to tales
of state workers campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime, stealing
government property and attempting to destroy evidence by grilling
it in a barbecue or shredding it to bits.
Lawmakers
couldn’t ignore this. In the final hours of their session,
they agreed to spell out political activities state workers are
prohibited from performing on state time — and ban, specifically,
theft of state property to politick. They prohibited taxpayer-funded
bonuses to state workers for campaigning. They signed on to ethics
training for state workers, and established protections for whistle
blowers. They took a pass, though, on author-izing the means to
enforce these strictures through inspectors general or new ethics
commissions. And they chose not to put tighter restrictions on
lobbyists’ gifts to public officials. Cynthia Canary, who
heads the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform and served on
the summit panel, faxed an immediate response: “There was
little evidence today that Illinois leaders are serious about
changing business as usual.”
Can
Illinois change? Summit panelist David Kenney argued that “you
don’t change it by making a few rules, no matter how carefully
we write them.” Kenney, who has headed two state agencies
and taught political science at SIU-C, believes this state’s
political culture is deep-seated, and any major change will take
time.
Other
Illinoisans got a chance to weigh in, though. The Survey Research
Office at UIS interviewed more than 400 randomly selected households
for approximately half an hour on attitudes about corruption.
The poll was taken in April. Among the results: Nearly 80 percent
of those surveyed believe corruption in state government does
affect the lives of citizens; almost 90 percent believe government
employees found guilty of corruption should be “punished
severely”; but almost 70 percent agree that “law enforcement
in Illinois has tended to look the other way when it comes to
political corruption.” In short, Illinoisans appear, for
now, to be taking political corruption in their state seriously
enough to want to see the perpetrators caught and punished.
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