The power of a corruption case

From the Chicago Tribune
The power of a corruption case
Published September 19, 2005
Like the toxic muck that still coats much of the Gulf Coast, public corruption long has suffused Illinois government and politics. Now, though, action on each of four fronts displays the power of a corruption case:
- The power to show citizens who gets hurt. Since the late 1990s, the federal probe Operation Safe Road has exposed systemic corruption involving state employees. Federal prosecutions have yielded 73 convictions and, as yet, no acquittals. Most of these convictions, however, came from guilty pleas, not trials. Such sanitized legal niceties absolve us from confronting how tolerant we've been of corruption in Illinois.
The Safe Road trial of former Gov. George Ryan, which opens with jury selection Monday, will be different. As weeks of testimony turn to months, we'll all be taken on a nasty swim through the Illinois culture of political sleaze.
Cases already adjudicated have exposed how Ryan's employees committed crimes to further his political ambition and to bankroll it. His trial will dwell on previously disclosed contracts and leases to benefit insiders, the emasculation of state investigators and bribes paid for Illinois driver's licenses by truckers who were later implicated in the vehicular deaths of nine people.
A jury will decide whether Ryan was or, as he insists, wasn't complicit in any wrongdoing. But his trial can't help but show citizens that public corruption primarily hurts the public.
- The power to roil a state's politics. The scandals on Republican Ryan's watch gave Democrats overwhelming control of Illinois politics. Now, though, questions of impropriety hover over the administration of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. What had been complex accusations about the investment of state pension funds is suddenly a full-fledged scandal. It includes allegations that a high-ranking Illinois public official (not I, the governor says) benefited from a scheme to help law firms, investment banking firms and consultants in exchange for campaign contributions.
Plea agreements with two confessed participants in the alleged scam suggest the feds are getting an earful from cooperative witnesses. It's not yet clear where this probe is headed. But the seemingly unassailable good fortune of Illinois Democrats will look as tattered as a cornstalk after harvest if serious scandal flourished on their watch. That's a verity Illinois Republicans know well. No doubt they have ample tape of Blagojevich pledging, "No more business as usual."
- The power to penetrate Teflon. No government figure in this state has been more secure than Mayor Richard Daley. Winning 79 percent of the vote in the latest of many election triumphs will do that for a pol. But with the feds pursuing chronic scandals at City Hall, Chicagoans are asking if the mayor can be beaten.
For now that's just bar talk. Daley says he wants to clean house and has recruited several top aides with law enforcement backgrounds to do that. What's remarkable is not so much the possibility that a challenger could defeat Daley as the novelty that such a question merits the serious discussion it's getting in Chicago. Without the rising stench of corruption at City Hall, the mere notion of toppling Daley is preposterous.
- The power to terrorize a fiefdom. On Thursday a minority contractor and his company were indicted, accused of passing a $20,000 bribe to an unnamed Cook County employee. The contractor's lawyer says his client is innocent. But the Tribune story about that case included what has become the most frightening sentence in the argot of government in this state: "Federal authorities said their investigation is continuing."
The brevity of the criminal complaint and the federal prosecutors' careful protection of the employee's identity telegraphed one message to the many lawyers in county government: He or she must be singing like a canary. Two members of the County Board also have been subpoenaed. Among questions the feds might be mulling in that continuing investigation: Are we to believe that an alleged $20,000 payoff to one worker could, by itself, land a $49 million contract for medical equipment at Stroger Hospital? Or does that lone canary have a longer tune to warble?
Corruption cases should expose one other power: the power of citizens to say, "Enough."