Are We Having a Sea Change in Illinois Ethics?
As Niranjan Shah resigned the chairmanship of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, he issued a statement that may be significant. Quoting from the Chicago Tribune article on Tuesday, this caught my eye:
“When I became a Trustee…many of the stakeholders in the University of Illinois system–Trustees, university administrators and staff, legislators and others–operated under a set of rules and norms that seemed appropriate at the time.“Today, I recognize that those rules are changing with the times, and I think that change is a very good thing.
Back in 1969 there may have been another change in ethical norms in Illinois.
Lou Goosens was mayor of Crystal Lake. He worked for the biggest developer, Ladd Enterprises. I remember taking him with me to the DuPage County Republican Central Committee’s summer golf outing.
Since there are so many new readers, let me re-run the April 18, 2006, story:
Shifting Ethical SandsAll sorts of folks are hoping that the conviction of former Governor George Ryan might signal a change in ethics for the Illinois political class and the bi-partisan political combine that the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass so aptly tagged.
Having been in and around the political arena since 1966, I remember only one shift in ethical standards in the last forty years.
The shift so shocked me that I even remember when I learned about it. I was driving by former McHenry County Sheriff and Recorder of Deeds Harry Herendeen’s home across from the Dole Mansion when Crystal Lake Mayor Lou Goosens told me.
I had invited him to accompany me to the DuPage County Republican Party golf outing when, at the last minute, a newly minted attorney and high school friend decided not to come.
That was 1969, the year of the first Earth Day.
I don’t know whether or not there was any connection with the emerging environmental activism, but I started noticing things changing ethically.
Mayor Goosens worked for Crystal Lake’s biggest developer, Ladd Enterprises. In 1969, the attitude was pretty much,
“Everyone has to work somewhere.”About 1970, the Crystal Lake Jaycees did a fire safety project in the back end of Ladd’s Coventry subdivision. The committee found that a fire engine could not get down the street if cars were parked on both sides.
All of a sudden, it made a difference where the mayor worked.
At the state level, when re-apportionment came along in 1971, lots of house and senate members decided it was time to retire. For years afterward, indictments of the new 1972 crop were non-existent.
(That did end, maybe with the surprising indictment and conviction of State Rep. Larry Bullock, who is now a minister in Schaumburg’s Living Faith African Methodist Episcopal Church. I think he was found to have owned an interest in the building where he rented his legislative office.)
In 1974, the Illinois Campaign Disclosure Law was passed, taking effect, of course, after the fall elections.
And, now, Rich Miller reports that House Speaker Mike Madigan is making phone calls on a cell phone in the hall outside of his office.
Something is clearly happening.
Could it be another shift in ethical standards?
Has the sand liquefied into quicksand? Will the political establishment struggle enough to sink Illinois’ corrupt political system?
In Crystal Lake about 1970, Ladd came in for another big subdivision, Four Colonies. By that time in Crystal Lake’s growth cycle, residents could tell that growth in no way paid its own way.
The second floor city council meetings were packed. As one meeting ended, the city treasurer’s wife, a nurse in the new Coventry grade school, was heard to say, “Damn transients,” after one particularly raucous meeting.
Judy Bathric Lawrence, a woman with whom I had ridden the bus to high school and by then a resident of Coventry, pretty much went berserk at the hypocrisy. Judy knew that our chemistry teacher’s wife had moved to Crystal Lake after her family had and wouldn’t have the job as nurse, if the “Damn transients” hadn’t moved to Coventry. Judy’s husband Don had to separate her from the treasurer’s wife as Judy repeatedly shouted,
“Transients! Damn transients! If it weren’t for the ‘damn transients,’ she wouldn’t have her job.”
In 1971, three-term Mayor Louis J. Goosens (1959-71) was handily defeated by Tony Wujcik, the president of the Involved Citizens Association. The victor was a heat treatment department worker who, when he announced for office, said that he knew that Crystal Lake was not a blue collar town and that, if someone else ran against the mayor, he would drop out.
No one else announced and Wujcik won the election handily.
