Politics: Hear the news? Illinois has a wonderfully honest state government

It must have been more than a decade ago. I was watching the”Tonight Show,” and Johnny Carson’s guest was a nice old lady whose avocation was to collect hardened bird droppings and polish them into jewelry. The finished products did, I must admit, look pretty in a sort of cheap trinket sort of way. But I thought to myself at the time: ‘It doesn’t matter how hard she polishes this stuff, it’s still bird shit.’

In today’s Journal Star, reporter Karen McDonald turns in this less-than-stellar article about a survey that gave Illinois high marks for campaign finance disclosure and other laws that supposedly keep the public informed about their candidates.

A survey that evaluates campaign disclosure laws, electronic filing programs, public access to campaign finance information and Web site usability ranked Illinois among the top 10 states in the nation in disclosure with an overall score of “B.” Thirty-six states earned passing grades for disclosure programs (the state of Washington ranked first), while 14 failed.

“People are either proud - as Illinois should be - in most categories,or say ‘we need to do better.’ It gives everybody a benchmark and lets them know how they compare to other states,” said Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Governmental Studies, which collaborated on the project with the California Voter Foundation and UCLA School of Law.

McDonald might not have been given much time to report and write this article. If so forgive me, but topic screams out for additional reporting. There are too many questions left unanswered.

Right off the bat, I’ve gotta know if this survey even bothered to address the issue of whether or not existence of campaign disclosure laws, electronic filing programs and the available of information on the Web has has done any good at all.

Illinois gets a high “B” in the survey, but I don’t think anyone who lives and pays attention would give this state a passing grade for honest and open government. We have a ton of laws on the books here, but we somehow keep electing politicians who use the public dime to enrich themselves, their pals, their campaign contributors and their relatives. Our previous governor is headed to the federal pen for doing exactly that, and our current governor is under investigation as well.

The trouble with Illinois is not that we don’t know how corrupt our government is. We know. These sorts of laws let us now exactly who puts money into our politicians hands. The problem is that We. Do. Not. Care. All we want to know is “Where’s mine?” All we care about is whether the politicians are going to continue the gravy train and keep sending pork to our communities, keep those tax breaks for our businesses, keep sending “free money” to local governments, keep hiking pensions for teachers (at least in Chicago) and police and firefighters, and on and on.

Even when we complain about the leadership of the state House and Senate, we keep re-electing the state senators and representatives who put those leaders in place, because we know that’s how it’s done in Illinois if you want the gravy train to stop in your community.

So spare me the praise from out-of-state brainiacs who think our laws are wonder examples of good government.

Feh.