10/2/07 The New Ethics Ordinance The actual ethics part of the proposed ordinance is a solid interpretation of ethics language supported by the Illinois Attorney General and the Illinois Municipal League. There does not appear to be any trap doors or hidden problems here, albeit it is still missing the Ethics Committee or Commission.  

With millions of dollars in infrastructure contracts each year coming in over the next few decades, DG will be targeted by companies seeking work, so it’s important temptation is removed as much as possible.

Sandack kept a campaign promise; he said he’d bring to council ordinance language limiting perpetual campaign war chests for local elections.

Sandack was amenable to every change anyone wanted to make.  Tully and Waldack wanted part two split out.  That has to do with when it's OK to open and close campaign accounts.  They voted against that section, which still passed 5-2.  Waldack kept his account open and has some debt still on the books.  Tully closed his account in June of this year, about a month before everyone who ran this time, and took a hit on his own campaign loans. 

This whole process was a good example of transparancy in local government.  Proposals were put forward as promised, and the village ends up ahead with a stronger, more comprehensive listing of do's and don'ts. 

There’s no good guys/bad guys here, but it makes for interesting meetings.

We still need an Ethics Commission.  The Village Attorney is the Ethics Officer, but the new ordinance allows for an outside person to be appointed and paid for that position.  While the majority of the Ethics Ordinance is very similar to language proposed by the Illinois Attorney General's Office and the Illinois Municipal League, the appointed outside Ethics Officer is not.

7/16/07 Everyone who promised to close down their campaign account and, if they had anything left over, donate the balance to charity, did exactly that.  Good job, guys!     

6/26/07 During the election, every candidate except Brian Krajewski said they would close down their campaign fund after the election.  The deadline is June 30th to file a final or semi-annual report.  Here's a list of candidates, and when I see they have closed their funds on the Campaign Disclosure website, I'll report it.  Or you can check for yourself: 

Bruce Beckman is in.  D-2 Final Report accepted 7/5/2007 at 2:27 PM.  Done deal as promised.  To the penny, Bruce had no money left over to donate to charity.

Sean Durkin, is in.  D-2 Final Report accepted 7/9/07 at 10:35am.  He donated his remaining $66 to charity as promised, I'm pretty sure to Helping Girls Navigate Adolescence.  Good job Sean.          

Brian Krajewski (okay, he never said he'd close his), filed his D-2. 

If I were him, I'd have a litle talk with the boys at Urquhart.  BK spent $38,450.59 on these guys for campaign design, printing, and postage.  Lay another  $11,780 in for more mailers, and BK spent more than $50 large for the media part of his campaign.  I hope they did more than run his website and advise him how to lose an election by a landslide.  I'd be a little honked at Hodas & Associates too, they of the $9,520.88 worth of annoying-as-hell phone polling that honked people off and probably contributed to the landslide.  Grand total: $76,446.83 spent.

Chris Lavoie is in.  Final D-2 filed 7/16/2007 10:56 AM.

Geoff Neustadt, is in.  Final report filed 7/16/2007 at 10:29 AM.  The balance was split up and donated to District 58, Disctrict 99, and the Downers Grove Historical Society.  Well done, Nuey.   

Ron Sandack, is in. Final report filed 7/16/2007 4:48 PM. $1,382.01 was contributed to United Way as promised, and Ron said the same went to the Boy Scouts, so he divied up what he had left and gave it away to charity.  Grand total: $50,967.24 spent (approx $2,600 to charity).  The local BSA troops hits my soft spot.  All our local troops work hard and excel at helping boys navigate growing up into decent young men. 

"As promised, my campaign committee closed our campaign account today and filed our final report with the State of IL. Through the incredible efforts of many, many good people our campaign committee was able to send The United Way of DuPage a check for approximately $1,300 and that same amount (in the aggregate) to several local Boy Scout Troops. 

Because the campaigning is over, campaign dollars will no longer be sought by me for a war-chest or otherwise. Constant campaigning and constant fundraising have been loudly rejected by our community. And besides, isn’t The United Way of DuPage and the local Boy Scouts better uses of such money? Many agree, so the next step is changing the rules going forward. In that spirit, I will be soon introducing, for discussion purposes initially, a Downers Grove code of conduct, a campaign reform ordinance and other proposed local legislation which will – hopefully --  help return our Village to small town elections rather than big town politics. Nothing would make me happier than having the 2007 mayoral election be known as the last “big time” financial brawl in Downers Grove giving way in favor of far more measured and appropriate local elections based upon merit rather than dollars."

Anyone else want to applaud that statement by Ron Sandack, go right ahead, you won't be alone. 

Mark Thoman is in.  Final report filed 5/17/2007 at 9:15AM.  I ended up about $757 in the hole, owing myself, so that's okay.   

Stan Urban ( I don't recall him chipping in on this one). Is in.  Like me, he ended up chipping his his own funds to cover expenses.

Total spent on mayoral campaign: $127,414.07  

Total spent on the election all candidates:  $173,135.39*

*This number revised up about $10,000 after further campaign expenditure analysis.

The next step is to take a look at how we can reduce the expense for future candidates.  When you talk to any of the batch of us who ran last election cycle, the conversations about how much it costs to run always start with a rolling of the eyes, as in, "tell me about it, this is ridiculous."  I talked with Sean Durkin about it, and he brought up wards.  With wards, you don't have to run village-wide; just in your ward.  There's pluses and minuses to wards, and I don't even know if it's possible to do something like that, but consider this: for almost every person who ran for office last election cycle, how to come up with the money was a driving concern.  Doesn't that seem to invite trouble by lending an ear to a contributor?

5/17/07 As promised, final accounting:

All contributions: 3,311.00
All expenses:       4,068.41

 

So charity starts at home this year. I filed the closeout D-2 when the last check cleared, and I closed my books.  Somebody needs to figure out how to pound some expense out of running for office.  Cheever said it was getting too expensive, and she was right.  Over $100,000 went into the mayoral campaign, at least $50,000 from each side.  I'll post up all the totals when the rest close out their accounts as promised.

5/1/07 An Ethics Ordinance, or, Three Steps to Resident Confidence

Step One

The Illinois Attorney General has a 2003 model ethics ordinance and how it might be implemented at the local level on her website.  This needs to be adopted virtually AS IS with no major changes.  We currently have half of the ordinance in place.  The real deal requires the complete ordinance.

 

Step Two

Illinois House Bill 0001 (HB0001) sponsored in part by our own IL Rep.  Patricia R. Bellock should be adopted into our muni ethics code.  This bill makes it illegal for companies that do over $25,000 of buisness with the state to make campaign contributions to elected officials or to present gifts to staff.  Let's make it $10,000 just to be safe.

 

Step Three

Senate Bill 2997 (SB2997) and The 2006 Senate Republican Caucus paper on ethics reform in public contracting, spearheaded by our own IL Sen. Kirk Dillard.  This covers the extensive abuse of no-bid contracts and lays out some very common sense rules to avoid it.

 

The Illinois Procurement Code – a reform law passed in 1998 to tighten State bidding requirements – allows state agencies to avoid initial bidding when a contractor is the “sole economically feasible source” for goods or services.

Don't ask me how that got distorted, but the law that was supposed to tighten the No-Bid exemptions actually loosened them.  We adopted the essence of that loophole provision into our municipal ordinance.  Right now, our Village Manager, at her option, can allow any number of no-bid contracts to come before the Council for approval. 

To incorporate the spirit and intent of this Step Three into our Ethics code, we also need to eliminate 5 words from one municipal ordinance.

And we're pretty much done.  It sounds too good to be true, right? 

From Sandack's website:

"Such an ordinance should be comprised of items such as mandating the closing of all campaign accounts after elections; prohibiting elected officials from serving in leadership positions with any political party (our elections are non-partisan after all); the prohibition against taking of any campaign money from Village vendors; as well as any other issue of interest to residents. While some may point out that we've adopted the State's ethics ordinance, I think a quick review of statewide politics of our current and past governor would lead one to believe the State's ordinance is inadequate. This issue is a prime example of how we can use our Home Rule abilities to do more for our residents than the State.  We can do more and should do better."

RS is right, we should do better.  

3/28/07 In retrospect, I'm kind of disappointed.  It was Beckman and Schnell who brought this whole ethics thing up to start.  I think everyone who wanted to look, knew BK raised a lot of money on an on-going basis.  No one called him on it until Schnell did at a council meeting that featured no-bid contracts and BK contributors at an unprecedented level.

 

But no one seems to have even read the ethics ordinance we have, or knows why it doesn't work.  

 

At the LOWV/DGACOCAI forum the ethics question was just a football so four candidates could score some points on BK.  If we're going to solve problems, actually solve them instead of just talking about them, we have to be objective, and actually try and solve them.  Sandack said he's ready to go, ready to get it done, and he's started off with limiting the Mayors ability to remove volunteers from committees and commissions. 

I went to the weather shortened VC workshop meeting, and got up and addressed Council about ethics materials that could be used for reference as a jumping off point on ethics discussion.  I spoke as a resident and and left them with CD's with four files on it (actually 5, but we'll get to that last one later).  I didn't get a chance to get it to all candidates, so I emailed them the files, with what I said about the files at the meeting.

 

2/22/07 More Ethics Stuff

The Sun Thursday finally reported on the 2/6 Village Council meeting  here's the minutes from the meeting.  So the fur's starting to fly on ethics, starting on page 8 of the document right after

A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING EXECUTION OF A PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AGREEMENT FOR CONSULTING SERVICES BETWEEN THE VILLAGE OF DOWNERS GROVE AND CLARK DIETZ, INC.

RESOLUTION 2007-10

The meeting minutes have more drama to them than the news article.  You can also read Elaine Johnson's opinion column at the Sun site.

 

Keep in mind, our own Sen. Kirk Dillard has helped craft the 2006 Senate Republican Caucus paper on ethics reform in public contracting, saying (translated to Village in light blue):  

  • Stop the Administration’s abuse of “sole source” and “emergency” exemptions to bidding requirements;
  • Encourage more competition on local contracts by strengthening bidding practices;
  • Require greater public disclosure on contractors and their related businesses, key executives and lobbyists. This will make it easier for the media and public to identify potential links between campaign contributions and contract awards;
  • Force timely public notices of contracts and conflict of interest waivers;
  • Give the Village Attorney, and Finance Director the power to void illegal contracts.

This is a brief breakdown of SB 2997 Responsible Public Contracting Act (Sponsors-Radogno-Rauschenberger-Roskam-Dillard-Axley-Watson).  Our Sen. Dillard is working with an additional five party leaders to make no-bids illegal.

"No-Bid Amendments Increasing. The Illinois Procurement Code – a reform law passed in 1998 to tighten State bidding requirements – allows state agencies to avoid initial bidding when a contractor is the “sole economically feasible source” for goods or services. Amendments to initially bid contracts also must be re-bid, but long-time agency rules also allow this sole source exemption to be used for amendments to existing contracts that were initially bid, within the scope of the originally bid work.

Since Governor Blagojevich has taken office, his agencies have “pushed the envelope” and greatly expanded the use of no-bid sole source exemptions, to add millions of dollars to contracts, extend terms of contracts for several years and enlarge the scope of work. These additions are made without  giving any public notice or opportunity to bid to other interested businesses or any right to rebid to the initially unsuccessful bidders."

So the top state republicans are accusing the top state democrat, Gov. Blagojovich, of what, basically, Senior Village Council Commissioner Schnell accused Mayor Krajewski of (but on a smaller $$ scale).  The irony is, Krajewski is Chairman of the Downers Grove Township Republican Party, so he should be supporting the efforts of his political bosses.  And as Elaine Johnson pointed out, everyone can take a look and judge for themselves.