Challenging the culture of corruption

When Chicago superlawyer Patrick Collins popped his Achilles in a pickup basketball game a few months ago, I can assure you the first word to come out of his mouth wasn't "corruption."

Whatever was said by the esteemed ex-federal crime-fighter, he missed a wonderful teaching opportunity for those within screaming distance.

As a former U.S. prosecutor who sent dozens of dishonest state employees including Gov. George Ryan to prison, Collins knows better than anyone that corruption is indeed the Achilles' heel of Illinois.

Because we let it happen.

Greek mythology has it that Achilles, the great Trojan War hero, died from a heel wound - ­­possibly a poison arrow. So a person's "Achilles' heel" has become the accepted shorthand for a point of deadly weakness.

Corruption.

As painful as it was, with treatment and rehab, Mr. Collins' Achilles recovered well.

As painful as it will be, with treatment and rehab, Collins believes Illinois' Achilles can recover as well.

He makes the diagnosis in a book that is out, appropriately, just as Illinois voters will go to the polls tomorrow to select candidates for governor and U.S. senator, among others.

The book, "Challenging the Culture of Corruption," is a blunt accounting of where Illinois is, how we got here and what needs to be done to repair this Achilles' heel of ours: elected and appointed public officials living the high-life; sweetheart deals for favored business owners; "pay-to-play" politics and justice for sale.

After investing 10 years prosecuting state employees in the Operation Safe Road case, better known as bribes-for licenses, Mr. Collins had an awakening that summarizes the state of the State: "The allegations never stopped walking in the door, and worst of all, as exhibited by the [Gov. Rod] Blagojevich allegations, the deterrent message sent by high-profile prosecutions like Operation Safe Road fell on deaf ears."

Whether the analogy is deaf ears or snapped tendons, corruption costs all of us according to Collins, now in private practice in Chicago.

We pay higher taxes to investigate, prosecute and incarcerate dirty politicians and their friends. Some pay with their lives - as we saw in the bribes-for-licenses case, when six children of a Chicago minister and his wife were killed in a flaming traffic accident caused by a trucker who had paid bribes for a license.

And every day that we don't stand up to corruption our reputation is pitted just a little more. Our sense of values is weakened and the line between right and wrong is blurred.

After leaving the federal prosecutors office, Collins was tapped to be the chairman of a newly-formed, 13-member, independent Illinois Reform Commission, or IRC.

In the wake of the pitiful fall of former Gov. Blagojevich, the Collins commission had a few months to appraise Illinois' corruption landscape and recommend solutions.

The book recounts a quick lesson Collins was given.

"One of our commission members received an unexpected call from a top aide to Speaker Michael Madigan" writes Collins. "The aide essentially proposed that the IRC cut a deal with the legislature" to avoid meaningful reform.

Even though Collins ignored the alleged shakedown attempt, in the end - to use the terminology of infamous Chicago Alderman Paddy Bauler - Illinois "ain't ready for reform."

"With none of the major Democratic power brokers willing to champion our cause or seriously consider our proposed legislation" writes Collins, "the most significant proposals were rejected or simply ignored."

But just as he rehabilitated his own tendon, Pat Collins is passionate that Illinois' Achilles' heel can also be rehabbed; By allowing state prosecutors to obtain court-ordered wiretaps for corruption cases, as federal prosecutors use; And by moving the primaries from February to June, eliminating the "incumbent protection" provided by cold-weather, low-turnout

elections.

He has a lot of other good ideas and promises that book royalties will go to charity. So pick one up tomorrow.

On the way home from voting.

Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email at chuckgoudie@gmail.com followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie and on Facebook.