Live blogging ethics reform

Getting ready to join a conference call with several Senate Democrats discussing the status of ethics reform in Illinois. The senators include Don Harmon, Jeff Schoenberg, Susan Garrett, William Haine and Kwame Raoul. (note: I forgot to mention earlier that the conference call was for political bloggers, so I took off my MSM newspaper hat)

Here we go ...

Don Harmon:
Giving a general sense of where things are going and let other members talk about their specific areas of study. For instance, Schoenberg is procurement, Garrett is transparency, Haine is pointman on criminal enforcement.

At the beginning of the year we undertook our most momentous activity.

First key reform already happened -- dumping the pension board members -- for which Harmon said lawmakers "did not get the appropriate attention in the mainstream media."

Harmon said:
I expect we will address all six areas in the reform commission
campaign finance
state contracting
enforcement
government transparency
government structure
inspiring better government.

"We're going to act immediately on several recommendations."

But said others that don't face immediate deadlines will wait for further debate over the summer.

Harmon's specific area is campaign finance.

"We will have campaign caps."

He said the federal $2,400 limits are too low. Those low limits have some unintended consequences.

Now it's Schoenberg's turn to talk about procurement
He said there will be meaningful progress on handling of state contracts and investment decisions.

"We have already tackled a major series of reforms," Schoenberg said of the pension board overhaul that also set new criteria for who gets pension business. "We fast-tracked a bill and sent it to the governor's desk."

"People who do business with the retirement systems have to be true investment professionals and not making the solicitation for business on the basis of their political connections."

"For contracting reforms we need to make sure the people making decisions are truly independent and they need not be worried about their job security."

"Under the Blagojevich administration, auditing functions were consolidated under the guise of greater efficiency. What that really did was make sure there were not enough people patrolling."

Kwame Raoul
Raoul is joining the conversation from the governor's mansion.
He pointed out that several lawmakers have long been working on cleaning up state government well before the reform commission came around.
"The members of the legislature have been engaging in trying to advance reforms of state government."

Campaign finance and judicial elections:
Raoul said we do not want special interests influencing who ends up on the state's highest courts.

"I have for the past two General Assemblies, sponsored a bill to bring about public financing of Supreme Court campaigns."

Program should start with the Supreme Court and then expand to appeals court races and then to legislative races.

On the topic of giving local prosecutors more powers ...
"It's a very dangerous thing to give 102 state's attorneys -- who take a political path to their seat as a county prosecutor -- the power to do wiretapping without the consent of a judge."

"It's a dangerous thing to give such broad powers to political figures."

Haine and Garrett have not called it so it's back to Harmon ...
"We are going to conclude our session with some real progress on this front."

Questions from the crowd
Harmon is going over questions received via email.

He said there were questions about the breadth of the report, its timing and whether anyone played a "devil's advocate" role on the ethics commission to challenge the thinking in the report.

"Very few of these ideas are new or novel."

Said there are proposals that need refinement to deal with realities.
Used the example of "real time" campaign reporting.
Said many candidates don't maintain year-round campaign staffs.
Predicts there will be a $1,000 threshold and up to a 5 day reporting requirement to trigger reporting.

Others that don't require immediate action because acting now doesn't do anything ...
redistricting
leader term limits

Deadline for action is more than a year away.

Q: How do you enact limits that don't turn lawmakers into perpetual fundraisers?
Harmon said the limits will likely be higher than the federal amounts to try to prevent this.

Q: Any reason people dealing with pension investments don't get a flat fee or pay via hours rather than commissions?
Schoenberg: Prohibited contingency fees for people who don't really do any work other than make some political connections.

Q: So who's drafting the actual legislation: lawmakers or Patrick Collins or together?
Harmon: "I would describe it as a cooperative venture at this point."
He said one of the great things about the ethics commission is it was completely outside the political and legislative culture. But that also creates some problems.

"There have clearly been some hiccups as we have tried to work with them on ideas that are suitable for legislative action."

Harmon said trying to shepherd the commission's work through the Legislative Reference Bureau and get it translate to legal form has been "a bit of a procedural challenge."

Harmon said many of the ideas lawmakers and the commission have will be combined and advanced as a single proposal. Where there's disagreement he said both versions are expected to get a full debate.

Q: ArchPundit question about the stability of State Board of Elections data links and making state agencies make their information more useable online.
A: Harmon said he's glad to hear its not just him having technical difficulties. Said it could be a problem of not enough money to update technology and is something lawmakers need to make sure agencies have the resources to do properly.

Q: David Ormsby: Probability of the Cook County veto override change being passed out of the House? (The Senate OK'd making it easier to override the Cook County president's veto)
A: Schoenberg: "I think we're going to have to ratchet up the heat on that."
"I can't predict that."
"I know that going into the next election cycle I would want Democrats to be able to say they're holding the Stroger administration accountable."

Q: This group of lawmakers has been interested in reform for years, you come in with new Senate leadership, oust the evil governor and now this ethics commission is getting all the credit. Is that frustrating?
Schoenberg:
"My only frustration is that this hasn't happened sooner."
Took 15 years to make the tollway more accountable.
This is our moment.
If I've had any frustration it's that these two entities have gone down parallel tracks a bit longer than I would have liked.

Harmon: "I'm not frustrated. Success has many parents."
We work our tails off for months only to see a headline that says "governor signs law ..."
I am frustrated by two things.
1. with all the controversy regarding the governor, "no legislator has been implicated in this and yet we have to deal with the enormous task at hand."
2. "I'm also frustrated that this has taken up so much time and so much attention when we have huge issues."

Chicagoist question: What does the Senate think of Speaker Madigan's "3,000" bill?
Harmon: That's a proposal in the House. We're working on the legislation that in front of us right now.