From the Sun-Times

Fund-raising legal because they say it is
Levine got it right by saying deals 'can be' corruption-free
April 15, 2008
BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist
By the end of the day, the following exchange was little more than an inconsequential aside in the Tony Rezko trial, but it caught my attention.
Joseph Duffy, Rezko's lawyer, was hammering away again at Stuart Levine, the star prosecution witness with the credibility gap, when Duffy popped this question:
"You would agree with me that political fund-raising is different than engaging in a corrupt transaction?" he asked.
Answered Levine: "It can be."
Truer words were never spoken, at least not by Levine.
While this was not the answer Duffy was expecting, it was the right answer.
Political fund-raising can be different than engaging in a corrupt transaction.
But, as Levine's answer implies, it often is not. Or maybe he meant to imply it usually is not, which would get no quarrel from me either, depending on my level of cynicism that particular day.
Political fund-raising is almost inherently corrupt as practiced in these parts.
Maybe there are well-intentioned folks giving money to presidential candidates based on their philosophies and hopes and dreams for our country.
Around here, though, people mostly give money to politicians because they want something.
They want a contract. They want a job. They want a zoning change.
Their company wants favorable treatment on a tax issue or an environmental problem. Or they just want the Legislature or City Council to leave them alone.
The pat explanation these days is that the only expectation from those making political contributions is that they want access, meaning they want a chance to be heard in the halls of government.
There's nothing wrong with that except for allowing their voices to be heard above the rest of us who don't make political donations.
Regular people often ask me how a politician can take hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from people who want something from a government official, get that something and yet no laws are broken.
There are days when I have a hard time explaining it beyond: Because they said so.
The fact is that as long as there is no direct quid pro quo -- meaning nothing the parties were so stupid to put in writing or get caught discussing on a secret wiretap -- they can be fairly certain that any campaign donation will be treated as totally legal.
In Illinois, our basic philosophy is that everything's legit as long as it's disclosed, a quaint view that works out better for the politicians than for the voting public.
Just for the heck of it, I went on the Illinois State Board of Elections' campaign disclosure Web site and pulled up a little feature called "Latest Reports Filed," which allows you take a random look at recent activity.
As luck would have it, one of the disclosure reports filed Monday was from the Good Government Council.
What an earnest name: the Good Government Council.
It conjures images of right-thinking men and women gathered around an important table in a wood-paneled office making decisions on how to fill our government with other right-thinking men and women.
When I was a rookie reporter, I would read right over this benign name when scrutinizing a political candidate's contributions, imagining somehow that nothing questionable could be wrought by a Good Government Council.
In actuality, the Good Government Council is the political fund-raising arm of the Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association, the lobbying group for the road-building industry.
In particular, it's the part of the road-building industry that wants our highways built with asphalt, as opposed to concrete, an issue long part of the push-pull of Illinois government.
The Asphalt Pavement Association also happens to be the longstanding political base of William Cellini, the politically powerful Springfield businessman who is an unindicted "co-schemer" in the Rezko trial and whose scheming with Levine was caught on several wiretapped phone calls.
I don't mean to imply that contributions to and from the Good Government Council are corrupt. That might be considered libelous.
But to the extent those donations have yielded good government, I consider it quite accidental.
We shouldn't forget the one thing Levine and Rezko have in common. They both got to be big shots in political circles because they were fund-raisers.