McHenry County Blog

The tradition of highway contractors contributing to political campaigns undoubtedly goes back decades, probably to the building of the first roads like the construction of Route 47 north of Huntley that Henry Marlow told me was built with horses.

Is it evil for a company doing work for county government contribute to campaigns of those in power?

Are there untoward implications?

Campaigns obviously cost money and not many significant ones are run on small contributions.

Even ones with significant volunteer effort, such as 8th Congressional District Congressman Joe Walsh’s, required well over $100,000.

You can make the value judgments, if you wish.

And, if you do, please think of how campaigns costing tens of thousands of dollars and growing each year the Post Office raises the cost of direct mail, should be financed.

You know that adequate space is not available in local newspapers to allow candidates to send out press releases and expect them to get published. Those days of when newspapers were willing to publish such campaign material ended shortly after my campaign for McHenry County Treasurer in 1966.

With big money being spent in McHenry County on Rakow Road’s widening and the Western Bypass’ construction, I thought it might be interesting to look up campaign contributions from those doing the work on the projects.

Today we look at contributions from Rakow Road contractors.

My original intention was to look at recent contributions, but so many older ones popped up in my search of the Illinois State Board of Elections

I started with Rakow Road. After all, it had a rainy, everyone-under-the-tent commencement ceremony recently.

The McHenry County Transportation Department send me documents for three contractors on Radow Road:

• Patrick Engineering of Lisle
• Mathewson Right of Way Company from Frankfort
• Jorgensen & Associates of Lake Villa

Surveying company Jorgensen made no contributions I could find.

Mathewson Right of Way Company, whose job seems to be to work through the land acquisition process for road projects, made the following political donations.

Here’s the $5,500 given to Ken Koehler’s campaign fund:

• 1-19-7 $550
• 2-11-8 $500
• 4-8-9 $500
• 11-27-9 $500
• 4-10-10 $1,000
• 9-20-10 $1,000
• 3-14-11 $1,000

In addition, State Rep. Mike Tryon received $250 on 8-4-10.

Algonquin Township Road Commissioner Bob Miller’s campaign fund also received a 10-17-10 check for $500. His campaign committee filing with the Illinois State Board of Elections filing notes that his wife, County Board member Anna May Miller, is financed by the PAC. Miller is head of the County Board’s Transportation Committee.

Patrick Engineering’s donations are grouped below by recipient.

The McHenry County Republican Central Committee received regular contributions during the middle of the last decade:

• 7-1-4 $1,000
• 7-10-5 $1,000
• 7-1-6 4 $1,000
• 7-23-7 $1,000

My search found McHenry County Board member Ken Koehler got $3,300:

• 1-19-7 $550
• 2-11-8 $500
• 4-27-9 $500
• 11-27-9 $500
• 8-24-10 $250
• 9-20-10 $1,000

Former McHenry County Board Chairman, now-State Rep. Mike Tryon was another recipient:

• 12-11-3 $250
• 6-22-4 $500

So was State Senator Dan Duffy. He got $250 May 28, 2008.

McHenry County Recorder of Deeds Phyllis Walters was the wife of the man Rakow Road is named. Jim Rakow used to be McHenry County Highway Superintendent, although he was not when these contributions were made:

• 10-4-99 $160
• 10-5-2000 $240
• 9-26-1 $250

Mayor Richard Daley caved this week on meting out a mere 3-year ban on doing business with the City of Chicago for vendor felon James Duff.

“Just a day earlier, city officials had said that a permanent ban for James Duff, the former head of Windy City Maintenance, and two associates was not allowed under city rules,” the Chicago Tribune reported.

Want some background?

As a result of Jim Thompson’s going after politicians as United States Attorney, a Chicago Republican state representative named Ron Stearney introduced a really interesting bill in 1977.

He introduced it during Thompson’s first year in office because some of his friends had been convicted of taking bribes. Two others, State Reps. Louis Capuzi and John Wall, were also on trial but both eventually beat their charges in the cement weight case. For the details, read this article by Mike Lawrence.

Stearney wanted to get even. He introduced a bill that would forbid anyone or his company who had been convicted of giving an Illinois state official of employee a bribe from ever doing business with the state again.

He was aiming at Lester Crown and his Material Service Company, the giant gravel and concrete company, a company with major holdings in McHenry County, incidentally. One of its employees, Carney Gilkerson, beat me for precinct committeeman in Algonquin Township precinct 13 in 1968 when my 1966 McHenry County Treasurer election recount lawyer Stan Narusis decided to move back to Southern Illinois and I tried to replace him.

Stearney’s bill was introduced back in the time when I had time to read all the bills descriptions in the Legislative Digest.

When I found it, I asked him what he wanted to do. He told me he wanted to stop Lester Crown’s Material Service from doing business with the state ever again.

“Well, this won’t do that,” I told him.

Pretty audacious of me, I guess, because he was a lawyer. (I still find a Ronald A. Stearney listed on the Attorney’s Registration and Disciplinary Commission’s web site. It looks like his son has joined the family business.)

I pointed out that Lester Crown of Material Service fame was an unindicted co-conspirator. He had been given immunity from prosecution, much as many of the witnesses in Tony Rezko’s trial. Material Service had been given corporate immunity. I believe that is the first time in the nation’s history such sweeping immunity had been granted.

Since Stearney’s original language would have required that one or the other be found guilty of bribing an Illinois official, the bill would simply not accomplish what he wished.

I suggested an amendment to which he agreed.

We added that the lifetime prohibition would apply to those who admitted under oath that they had bribed a public official, as well as those who were convicted of the crime.

This bill had the good government types behind it, as well as the friends of those less savory legislators who had been convicted in the legislative bribery case.

When the bill came to the floor it slid through like a greased pig slipping out of a medieval peasant’s arms.

Illinois State Senators were defendants in the cement weight truck trial, too. Needless to say, it passed the senate.

I had forgotten about the bill until I got a call from Basil Talbott, the political editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. It was fall, right before the deadline for then-Governor Jim Thompson to sign the bill.

Talbott decided to give Thompson an incentive to sign the bill and wrote a story whose headline covered the top of one of the inside pages.

Thompson signed the bill.

The first to be caught in the trap was Secretary of State Alan Dixon’s license plate maker, a firm in Arkansas, I think. The first sued when it couldn’t get the contract.

The appellate court agreed with the firm and I tried to craft language to meet the decision’s objection. It didn’t pass.

The bill finally was decided upon by the Illinois Supreme Court and, guess what?

The court ruled that banning vendors for life was OK.

The opinion was written by a justice from Bloomington.

So, state government can ban a crook from doing business with the State of Illinois forever.

I guess Chicago can, too.

I have never had a bill I played a role in held unconstitutional. Two have specifically been held constitutional. This was one of them.

But, Material Service is still doing business with the State of Illinois.

Find out ”What gives?” in a later story.

Perhaps also of interest would be the Mike Royko column about a resolution I introduced to name a Route 62 weight station after Lester Crown. It’s in the linked article.

Mayor Richard Daley caved this week on meting out a mere 3-year ban on doing business with the City of Chicago for vendor felon James Duff.

“Just a day earlier, city officials had said that a permanent ban for James Duff, the former head of Windy City Maintenance, and two associates was not allowed under city rules,” the Chicago Tribune reported.

Want some background?

As a result of Jim Thompson’s going after politicians as United States Attorney, a Chicago Republican state representative named Ron Stearney introduced a really interesting bill in 1977.

He introduced it during Thompson’s first year in office because some of his friends had been convicted of taking bribes. Two others, State Reps. Louis Capuzi and John Wall, were also on trial but both eventually beat their charges in the cement weight case. For the details, read this article by Mike Lawrence.

Stearney wanted to get even. He introduced a bill that would forbid anyone or his company who had been convicted of giving an Illinois state official of employee a bribe from ever doing business with the state again.

He was aiming at Lester Crown and his Material Service Company, the giant gravel and concrete company, a company with major holdings in McHenry County, incidentally. One of its employees, Carney Gilkerson, beat me for precinct committeeman in Algonquin Township precinct 13 in 1968 when my 1966 McHenry County Treasurer election recount lawyer Stan Narusis decided to move back to Southern Illinois and I tried to replace him.

Stearney’s bill was introduced back in the time when I had time to read all the bills descriptions in the Legislative Digest.

When I found it, I asked him what he wanted to do. He told me he wanted to stop Lester Crown’s Material Service from doing business with the state ever again.

“Well, this won’t do that,” I told him.

Pretty audacious of me, I guess, because he was a lawyer. (I still find a Ronald A. Stearney listed on the Attorney’s Registration and Disciplinary Commission’s web site. It looks like his son has joined the family business.)

I pointed out that Lester Crown of Material Service fame was an unindicted co-conspirator. He had been given immunity from prosecution, much as many of the witnesses in Tony Rezko’s trial. Material Service had been given corporate immunity. I believe that is the first time in the nation’s history such sweeping immunity had been granted.

Since Stearney’s original language would have required that one or the other be found guilty of bribing an Illinois official, the bill would simply not accomplish what he wished.

I suggested an amendment to which he agreed.

We added that the lifetime prohibition would apply to those who admitted under oath that they had bribed a public official, as well as those who were convicted of the crime.

This bill had the good government types behind it, as well as the friends of those less savory legislators who had been convicted in the legislative bribery case.

When the bill came to the floor it slid through like a greased pig slipping out of a medieval peasant’s arms.

Illinois State Senators were defendants in the cement weight truck trial, too. Needless to say, it passed the senate.

I had forgotten about the bill until I got a call from Basil Talbott, the political editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. It was fall, right before the deadline for then-Governor Jim Thompson to sign the bill.

Talbott decided to give Thompson an incentive to sign the bill and wrote a story whose headline covered the top of one of the inside pages.

Thompson signed the bill.

The first to be caught in the trap was Secretary of State Alan Dixon’s license plate maker, a firm in Arkansas, I think. The first sued when it couldn’t get the contract.

The appellate court agreed with the firm and I tried to craft language to meet the decision’s objection. It didn’t pass.

The bill finally was decided upon by the Illinois Supreme Court and, guess what?

The court ruled that banning vendors for life was OK.

The opinion was written by a justice from Bloomington.

So, state government can ban a crook from doing business with the State of Illinois forever.

I guess Chicago can, too.

I have never had a bill I played a role in held unconstitutional. Two have specifically been held constitutional. This was one of them.

But, Material Service is still doing business with the State of Illinois.

Find out ”What gives?” in a later story.

Perhaps also of interest would be the Mike Royko column about a resolution I introduced to name a Route 62 weight station after Lester Crown. It’s in the linked article.