Is There Any Program Illinois Politicians Can’t Find a Way to Corrupt?

Sixteen years ago the City of Chicago began installing red-light cameras.  The idea of red-light cameras is simple and sounds good: make sure cars stop before turning right on a red light.  But Chicago being Chicago, and Illinois being Illinois., once red-lights cameras arrived so did corruption involving red-light cameras. 

In 2016, a Chicago city worker and the CEO of a red-light camera company were convicted of participating in a kickback scheme involving the awarding of Chicago’s red-light camera contract.¹  Now, the Chicago Tribune reports that, according to testimony in a court case, SafeSpeed, a company with a number of red-light camera contracts in the Chicago suburbs, paid the police chief of Justice, Illinois (I know, “Justice, Illinois” is a contradiction in terms) a fee of 1% of the revenues it collected from other cities that the police chief was able to convince to sign a contract with SafeSpeed. 

According to the Tribune, “a loophole in state law … allows red-light camera companies to put public officials on the payroll without disclosing those relationships.”  Which is amazing, except it’s Illinois.  In fact, this being Illinois, you wonder if allowing red-light camera companies to pay public officials like this is really a loophole or something that some legislator deliberately put in the law for this purpose.  It’s sort of like the computer software company that says it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Which brings me to the investigations of Illinois corruption being currently conducted by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.  My question is: Why is it always federal prosecutors who are going after corruption in Illinois?  Where is the state Attorney General?  Of course, we know the answer to that.  I recall that the prior state Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, said she didn’t get involved in corruption investigations because she didn’t want to interfere with what the federal prosecutors were doing.  Yeah, right.  I am sure that is the only reason.

Our current state Attorney General, Kwame Raoul, said, during the campaign in 2018, that he did not consider government corruption to be a major priority.  He’d investigate it if somebody called it to his attention, but he wouldn’t go looking for it. 

Maybe Attorney General Raoul is right.  Maybe government corruption isn’t a major priority in Illinois.  Maybe the people don’t care.  They know the State, and its politicians, are corrupt, and they figure there is nothing that can be done about it.  Maybe the voters are resigned to it.  They figure, just let the politicians take the money and hopefully they’ll be satisfied.  Sort of like the mob.  Pay enough in protection money and they’ll leave you alone.
------------
¹ It is amazing to me, given things like this that went on during Rahm Emanuel’s time as mayor (not to mention the coverup of the evidence in the Laquan McDonald murder case), that he has such a reputation around the world.  See, for example, his interview in the Financial Times (“‘There is more to us than our divisions,’” Financial Times, November 16, 2019).  Neither the corruption in Chicago nor the Laquan McDonald murder case is mentioned.  I don’t get it.