Governor Pat Quinn of
Illinois has only a few weeks left in office after his defeat by Bruce Rauner.
That left him enough time to get Lou Bertuca appointed as executive director of
the Illinois Sports Facilities
Authority, which was “created by the Illinois General Assembly in 1987 for
the purpose of constructing and renovating sports stadiums for professional
sports teams.” The ISFA owns US Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox,
and has a $40
million annual budget. The position pays $160,000 per year, not bad for a
30-year-old with no relevant experience, except that he was Quinn’s campaign
manager.
That is corruption, the
misuse of government for the benefit of private interests. Corruption exists at
the nexus of money and power: money buys governmental power, and power enables
people to make money. Quinn promoted himself as a crusader against corruption
when he sought office, but he no longer has any reason, except perhaps conscience,
to refrain from rewarding friends at the expense of the public good.
Quinn’s appointment of
Bertuca is called patronage, the doling out of government jobs to friends and
supporters rather than to qualified candidates. The Civil
Service Commission was established in 1883 to end decades of patronage
scandals. Applicants for federal jobs would have pass an examination to
demonstrate their qualifications. Despite countless efforts to get rid of
patronage in the US, the use of power to reward unqualified people continues,
even at the highest levels.
Illinois has the reputation
of having one of the most corrupt state governments in the country. Beyond the
tendency of our governors to commit crimes and go to prison, it involves the
systematic abuse of the public trust for personal enrichment. That reputation
has been confirmed by some political scientists at the University of Illinois
at Chicago. They
wrote that “the Chicago metropolitan region has been the most corrupt area
in the country since 1976,” and that Illinois is the third most corrupt state.
Besides the corrupt governors, 31 out of 100 of Chicago aldermen since 1973
have been convicted of corruption, an incredible continuity of criminality.
Most of these convictions involved bribes to influence government decisions.
When states are ranked by convictions of public officials per capita, we see that
corruption is non-partisan: the highest rates over the past 40 years were
reached by Democratic Illinois and Washington, DC, and Republican North and
South Dakota and Mississippi. On this score, the least corrupt states are in
the West: Oregon, Washington and Utah.
These incidents pale in
comparison to the deep corruption which plagues other nations. Two weeks ago
dozens of Italian mobsters were arrested for forcing their way into the city
government of Rome. An investigation
has revealed “widespread and unchecked corruption of public money” through
nationwide crime syndicates infiltrating local governments, using them to
siphon millions from public treasuries. While ordinary Italians suffer from
inept or nonexistent public services, politicians and gangsters rake in illegal
profits.
A new
book describes Russia under Vladimir Putin as a “kleptocracy”, in which
billions of rubles in public assets were seized by high-ranking Communist Party
members, especially KGB operatives like Putin. He now rules an increasingly
authoritarian state designed
to preserve these corrupt gains by undermining internal democratic forces,
weakening the independent media, and spreading disinformation in the West.
The organization Transparency
International publishes a “Corruption
Perceptions Index”, ranking nations “based on expert opinions of public
sector corruption”, by which is meant “prevalent bribery, lack of punishment
for corruption and public institutions that don’t respond to citizens’ needs.” The
oldest democracies in Europe and North America are the least corrupt, while
nations in the Middle East, Africa and Asia rank highest. The United States
does not come out very well, perceived as more corrupt
than most western European countries, closer to Chile, Uruguay and Hong Kong
than to England, Germany or Canada.
Corruption can be rooted out
only by a combination of political and popular will. But while many politicians
and citizens decry corruption, it is apparently all too easy to give that fight
a low priority. New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo set up a new “independent” ethics
commission in 2013 to attack corruption. When the panel issued a subpoena
to a firm that counted Cuomo as a client, his
office demanded they withdraw it. This March, Cuomo
disbanded the commission. New York voters displayed a similar apathy when
they re-elected Republican
Michael Grimm to Congress, despite his 20-count indictment for tax fraud. Three
other New York state
legislators who are under indictment also won, a Republican and two
Democrats.
Transparency International
cites “elections decided by money” as a sign of public corruption. The role of private money in public
elections is much greater in the US than anywhere else. Giant campaign
contributions allow the richest Americans and their corporations to write
Congressional legislation. Because the ability of the wealthy to buy
American elections through campaign contributions is legal, it does not count
in international comparisons of corruption. But if we cannot reduce the
influence of money in our political system, we may eventually lose our
democracy to legalized corruption.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published in the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, December 16, 2014
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