We’re going to talk some history today.
According to testimony at the federal ComEd Four
trial, then-House Speaker Mike Madigan’s former 13th Ward Alderperson Frank
Olivo was brought on as a subcontractor under then ComEd Chairman and CEO Frank
Clark.
Clark retired in September of 2011, almost a
dozen years ago. He has never been charged, nor has it ever been claimed that
he did anything at all illegal. And Olivo didn’t officially register as a
lobbyist until the beginning of 2012, according to a 2019 report by NBC
Chicago.
Olivo was put on ComEd lobbyist Jay Doherty’s
payroll as a subcontractor, according to a secretly recorded video of a conversation
Doherty had with ComEd’s top in-house lobbyist at the time Fidel Marquez.
Doherty explained that John Hooker, ComEd’s former top in-house lobbyist, was
the person who carried the news to him.
It didn’t stop there, of course. The alleged
ComEd scheme was drastically expanded and even perfected under Clark’s
successor, ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, who appeared to express surprise when
she was told by Marquez how, long ago, Olivo had been hired and by whom. “Oh my
God,” she said on a secret government recording when told the news.
Pramaggiore, Doherty, Hooker and former
Statehouse lobbyist Mike McClain are now all on trial for allegedly carrying
out a massive scheme to bribe Mike Madigan.
Give Madigan an inch and he would always try to
take a mile. But this sort of thing often happens with big bureaucracies,
private and public. Assign a bureaucracy a task, and it’ll tend to stay on that
path, sometimes to a ridiculously absurd conclusion – although rarely does that
conclusion wind up with a federal criminal trial, as it has here. Putting Olivo
on the payroll eventually led to a level of absurdity that surpassed anything
seen before or since, even if there are legitimate arguments that the behavior
was not criminal.
Needless to say, this is not how it was all
supposed to end when Frank Olivo was awarded a $4,000-a-month Jay Doherty
subcontract a dozen years ago.
But there’s an aspect to this lobbying topic
which isn’t really being addressed at the ComEd 4 trial.
Over the decades, Madigan built a giant “farm
system” that became the backbone of his political and Statehouse organization.
Young people either started out on campaigns before they were put on Madigan’s
Issues Staff or were subsequently sent out to work on campaigns after joining
the staff. The most favored were moved up to the top of the in-house food
chain, and the most favored of them were eventually sent forth into the
lobbying world, where they could make very good money and continue overseeing
campaigns, training the young people hired for the next cycle.
Every other legislative leader had a similar
operation, although none were nearly as extensive as Madigan’s far-flung
operation. Madigan, as was his habit, “perfected” it to the point where companies
and other special interests believed they had to hire his people as contract or
in-house lobbyists, or their bills wouldn’t advance. A buddy of mine recently
recalled a conversation with a former legislative leader who only half-jokingly
predicted a certain bill wasn’t going anywhere because the proponents hadn’t
yet hired enough Madigan people to work the legislation.
None of the current legislative leaders have
been around long enough yet to set up anything like that. Senate President Don
Harmon is the most senior leader, but he’s had the job a little over three
years. House Speaker Chris Welch has led his chamber for a bit more than two
years, and the two Republican leaders just started in January.
The ComEd Four trial should put a damper on such
things going forward. Madigan and the other leaders branded this practice as
building “good will,” and the accused have used that in their defense. Those
who wanted something done did favors for people close to the leaders to grease
the skids and what could possibly be so horrible about that, was the feeling.
But doing such things now could well be seen as
attempted bribery by the feds.
To be clear, many of the lobbyists themselves
are not the issue here. They participated in a tradition that started long
before they came to the legislature. And none of them were charged by the feds
in this case, after all.
But now the Statehouse
leaders need to figure out where to go from here.
This article appears in Freshman class.
