From the Tribune (Editorial):

The view from New Louisiana

Published December 17, 2006

It is perilous, peering south from a corrupted northern state, to try to make sense of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.). In a runoff election last weekend, Jefferson was handed a ninth term by his New Orleans constituents. Evidently they accepted his claim, driven home in frequent campaign commercials, that, "I have never taken a bribe from anyone." As exhortations go, that falls short of "Give me liberty or give me death!" But it helped carry Jefferson to victory.

His denial addressed questions that arose after federal agents videotaped Jefferson allegedly accepting $100,000 in bribe money. Some $90,000 of that loot wound up in Jefferson's freezer.

Which makes Jefferson inconvenient for Democratic leaders bent on reversing the sorry ethical performance of several Republican congressmen (see Cunningham, Duke, and Ney, Robert). Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi will keep Jefferson off of high-profile committees for now. But he remains an inescapable embarrassment for flummoxed Louisiana officials who want to project an image of pristine integrity as they continue to lobby Washington for hurricane relief.

It didn't help that Jefferson's name figured prominently in news accounts of an appearance this month by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Public corruption is the top criminal priority for the FBI," and now ranks with fighting terrorism as a core duty of his agency, Mueller said. He added that more than 1,000 local, state and federal government employees have been convicted in public corruption cases over the past two years.

That count includes former Gov. George Ryan, who headlined this year's list of corruption convicts in Illinois. For several years now, Illinois gradually has been displacing Louisiana as the nation's most notorious hotbed of crime in government. (We're aware that some New Jerseyites may dispute these rankings.)

In April, the work of Mueller's agents helped convict Ryan on all 18 of the Justice Department's corruption charges against him. Ryan made a sorry mess of his life, of state government, of his Republican Party--and even dragged family members into his plots. The most pitiable victims: the nine people killed, and the dozens of others injured, in traffic crashes involving truckers who had bribed Ryan's employees to acquire Illinois driver's licenses.

Ryan's attorneys are appealing his conviction. They argued in papers filed Thursday that the judge in his case had committed "an avalanche of errors." Exaggeration usually earns poor marks in high school English; we'll see how it plays with the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

As we all await that ruling, think of Illinois as New Louisiana, a place where federal agents are uprooting public corruption in ways that voters have not. Consider: Chicago has the FBI's fourth-largest office as measured by agent headcount. But the Chicago office has more agents working public corruption cases than any other in the U.S. At a given moment here, three squads with a fluid total of 30 to 50 agents are working dishonest-governance cases.

If that reflects Mueller's priority, it also reflects a commitment by Robert Grant, who heads the FBI office here. As a Chicago-based agent in the 1990s, Grant for a time led the office's public corruption squad. After Ryan's conviction, Grant pledged to keep pursuing public officials who cheat the citizens who pay their salaries: "I hope that this case begins the end of political prostitution that seems to have been evident in the state of Illinois--and brings the resurrection of honest government services in the state that so many people have demanded."

We'd argue with Grant's last line. On Election Day after Election Day, not enough Illinoisans do demand honest government in Illinois.

Might the case of William Jefferson restore Louisiana's tarnished crown? The FBI is investigating Jefferson, who hasn't been charged with a crime. Hypothetically, though, a $100,000 bribe wouldn't change the course of history that has turned Illinois into New Louisiana. Federal prosecutors say Ryan gave his cronies so much illicit clout that they were able to pocket $4.77 million from deals involving state business.

Come to remember, $100,000 is barely a rounding error compared with the $4.7 million estate left by the late Paul Powell, who earned about $30,000 a year as Illinois secretary of state. Powell died in 1970 at age 68. His estate included $744,000 in mostly small bills found hidden in his Springfield hotel suite, plus more than $50,000 in his office. The hotel stash lay in one Marshall Field & Co. shoebox, two briefcases and three strongboxes camouflaged by old clothing and empty whiskey cases.

How did Powell accumulate his fortune? "He must have saved his money when he was young," then-State Auditor Michael Howlett gamely offered. That, and Powell had a lot of friends in the insurance, trucking and roadbuilding industries. State and Internal Revenue Service officials never fully understood Powell's money, some of which he willed to local Democratic organizations in all 102 Illinois counties. (Powell's proud epitaph: "Here lies a lifelong Democrat.")

So how's the view from New Louisiana, bipartisan land of George Ryan and Paul Powell?

Not so great. We'd like to return an ignominious title to Louisiana. But public corruption in this state has caused damage more lethal, more lasting, than freezer burn.

Ask the survivors of those nine people left dead by the Illinois culture of political sleaze.