State Senate OKs much-disputed ethics measure

SPRINGFIELD _ Illinois has long been known as the "Wild West" of campaign finance, where patronage has been a right for politicians' friends and cronies and there is a history of trading jobs and contracts for contributions.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has even used Barack Obama's Illinois ties as a negative in a new campaign ad, portraying the Democratic opponent as a product of corrupt Chicago machine "pay-to-play" politics.

Any donation was legal in Illinois, as long as it was reported. But in a vote taken at Obama's urging, the Illinois Senate on Monday finally created restrictions on political fundraising in one of the state's more fundamental post-Watergate campaign finance reforms.

The 55-0 vote dismissed a veto by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and prohibits people with state contracts of $50,000 or more from contributing to the politicians who administer them, or to those officeholders' opponents in an election year.

"Touchdown!" declared Comptroller Dan Hynes, who championed the measure and is a potential 2010 rival to Democrat Blagojevich, who has been accused of trying to block the reform with his veto.

The vote might not have occurred had Obama, a former state senator, not urged his mentor, Senate President Emil Jones, to call his chamber to action.

"The Illinois Senate took an important step forward today by breaking the gridlock and unanimously passing a tougher ethics law that will reduce the influence of money over our state's political process and further the bipartisan reforms I worked with my colleagues in the General Assembly to pass ten years ago," Obama said in a statement after the vote.

The action was a defeat for the governor, who used his veto power to rewrite and "improve" the bill with other ethics measures. A Senate committee OK'd Blagojevich's other ideas in separate legislation Monday evening.

In a state with virtually no limits on who can give or how much, supporters say the law, which takes effect Jan. 1, is a small but crucial step toward tamping down Illinois' reputation for "pay to play" politics: The idea that if you want government contracts, it will cost you.

"We'll have a better reputation and a cleaner government as a result," Hynes said.

Blagojevich took office in 2003 as a reformer, replacing Republican Gov. George Ryan, who is serving a 6ˆ½-year federal prison sentence for racketeering. But now Blagojevich finds himself in the middle of federal investigations into allegations of trading jobs and contracts for contributions. A top fundraiser, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, is awaiting sentencing on federal corruption charges involving similar schemes.

Nonetheless, Blagojevich vetoed the bill that passed both houses of the General Assembly without a single "no" vote. He made the contribution ban an executive order and applied it to all state officeholders, which could be challenged in court.

And he changed the bill's language to add prohibitions on legislators holding second government jobs, require fuller disclosure of outside lobbying work, and make lawmakers' pay-raise process clearer.

Spokesman Lucio Guerrero said Blagojevich's veto was far more significant than the Legislature's measure.

"We are the ones that are pushing real ethics reform and reform for all state government," Guerrero said.

On the contrary, said Hynes, the vote "shows that (Blagojevich) has zero credibility on the issue of ethics."

Taxpayer pressure won the day, said Cynthia Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

"It was less repudiation of the governor and more an acknowledgment that they had to do something to meet a public demand here," Canary said.

Jones was unimpressed. Contractors instead will give money to state parties, which will then funnel it to the appropriate officeholders, he said.

"If you want to stop contractors from contributing to a candidate, then you would have banned all contributions from anyone receiving a state contract," Jones said after the vote.

That's what Blagojevich meant to do with his amendatory veto. His ideas for applying the ban to all officeholders, as well as prohibiting lawmakers' "double-dipping" with other government jobs, lobbying and pay-raise-vote reforms, were packed into a separate measure the Senate Executive Committee approved later.

Canary testified against the legislation, saying reform groups continue to meet with the governor's office to refine the ideas, but that they're not ready to become law. Reformers prefer an across-the-board limit on contributions each election, as is the case for federal races and in most states.

That bill's sponsor, Sen. James DeLeo, D-Chicago, said if the Legislature wants ethics reform, it should go all out.

"If you do business in government, if you make money off the taxpayers, don't contribute," DeLeo said.

The Senate also voted to override an amendatory veto on another measure requiring stricter disclosure for campaign committees. Blagojevich had changed that bill to ban campaign contributions from any government employee, state or local. That measure, without the governor's change, goes to the House.