For Some in Illinois, Talk of Reform Was Just That

For Some in Illinois, Talk of Reform Was Just That
By MONICA DAVEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/us/16reform.html?th&emc=th


SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — If anything good was going to come out of the arrest and removal of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, it was supposed to be in the stack of legislation now awaiting the signature of the new governor.

John J. Cullerton, president of the Illinois Senate, said changes by the legislature had achieved “some measure of success.”

A reform commission was appointed by the governor, Patrick J. Quinn, soon after Mr. Blagojevich’s impeachment from office in January. State lawmakers drew up their own Joint Committee on Government Reform. And citizen-led reform groups optimistically sprouted up across the state.

But now, with the legislative session over, some of the biggest backers of change say a historic opportunity has been lost, that too little is being cleaned up in a state that has become a national example of political corruption at its extreme.

“I don’t consider this reform legislation to accomplish in any way, shape or form what it was supposed to,” said Anton R. Valukas, a former United States attorney in Chicago and a member of one of the new groups, Change Illinois, who pointed in particular to efforts to set rules on campaign finance. “The thing is, I really had believed that this was the time to do something.”

Even the commission assigned by Mr. Quinn to recommend how best to fix Illinois’s broken political system says the state has fallen short on crucial matters.

State leaders, for example, delayed until later in the year a proposal to make the system of redrawing political districts less political; failed to decide on a proposal to let voters to recall political leaders; put off to further study the notion of financing campaigns with public money; and pushed aside a series of politically sensitive proposals to bolster legal tools for the authorities to investigate political corruption, set term limits for state lawmakers in leadership positions, and shorten the campaign season by moving primary election dates closer to general election.

David Hoffman, a member of Mr. Quinn’s reform commission who is also the inspector general for the City of Chicago, said, “We should have been able to get more on some of these important issues because its unlikely that’s there’s going to be a repeat performance.”

Even as so much reform was being mulled here in recent weeks, continued reports of questionable political behavior served as a reminder of the continuing need for change: a secret audiotape of Senator Roland W. Burris’s discussing how to help Mr. Blagojevich while he was hoping to be appointed senator by him; a Chicago alderman indicted; and even Mr. Quinn’s apologizing after reports that a campaign aide had been seeking fund-raising events from major interest groups that were offered “face time” with the governor.

Without question, the state has made changes — accomplishments described as significant, even historic, by Democratic legislative leaders and by Mr. Quinn, who built his political career as an outsider obsessed with transparency and reform.

Lawmakers have passed legislation to make public records easier to obtain; tightened oversight of contracts to prevent the politically connected from winning state work; made results of government inspectors’ investigations more open to the public, and purged the state’s pension boards, which had been scandal ridden.

And, in a state that is one of only about five left in the nation to set almost no restrictions on what donors may give in state races, a campaign-finance law awaiting Mr. Quinn’s signature sets the first limits: an individual would be allowed to give up to $5,000 to a candidate; a corporation or a similar entity, $10,000.

“This is landmark reform for the Land of Lincoln,” said Mr. Quinn, a Democrat and former lieutenant governor who is expected to run for the governor’s office in 2010. “If you would have said we’d be in this position a year ago, with this much reform, most people would have thought that was pure fantasy.”

But while acknowledging that some good had been done, others inside and outside of state government said the new legislation was unlikely to end the culture of corruption that had become associated with Illinois government.

In a Democratic-controlled capitol where Representative Michael J. Madigan, also the chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, has been the speaker of the House for more than 20 years, no one seemed to give much thought to a proposal that those in leadership positions be limited to set terms. And suggestions to give more authority to local prosecutors and the police to conduct corruption investigations never made it out of committees.

In other ways, the laws that survived, critics said, did not go far enough. In particular, these critics said, the state’s new campaign-finance rules were laden with flaws.

The state’s fund-raising limits will be about twice as high as federal ones (and cover shorter periods), and they will not come into place until 2011, after next year’s election for governor and other top statewide offices.

The law limits how much a certain type of political committee may give candidates (to prevent state party leaders from controlling the outcomes of state and legislative races), but the limit is $90,000, higher than Patrick Collins, the chairman of Mr. Quinn’s reform commission and a former federal prosecutor, had suggested.

In-kind contributions from such political party funds, too, are unlimited, meaning such groups could pay directly for all sorts of services and workers without those things counted toward the donation limits.

“Illinois deserves a campaign bill that is the model for the nation,” Mr. Collins told State Senate leaders last month, imploring them to add tougher provisions to their bill. “Is this a model for the nation?”

While the debate among lawmakers over some of the legislation broke along party lines — with Republicans arguing it did not go far enough, and Democrats praising it — outside Springfield the sense of disappointment included members of both parties.

Over the weeks of wrangling, a tense dynamic emerged between lawmakers and outsiders pushing for ethics changes. Some lawmakers, contending with grueling state budget woes and front-page editorials demanding reform, seemed to grow impatient with the pressure from Mr. Collins and his committee; several were quick to offer the reminder that it was governors — not legislators — who had gotten into so much trouble here.

John J. Cullerton, the senate president, said the changes that had passed would have prevented much of the behavior Mr. Blagojevich now stands accused of. “That’s a measure of success,” Mr. Cullerton said.

Many here defended the ethics repairs as a work in progress, “the best we can do at this time,” Mr. Quinn said. That seemed doubtful to others, who saw Mr. Blagojevich’s unraveling, on the heels of the imprisonment of former Gov. George Ryan, as a one-time opportunity of political will and public anger.

“That’s why our reaction to the argument that, ‘Well, half a loaf is better than no loaf,’ was not very positive,” Mr. Hoffman said.