By TAYLOR PENSONEAU
The Illinois political correspondent of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he has covered
Illinois government for 10 years and has
done a number of stories during those years
in cooperation with the Better Government
Association. A native of Belleville,
Pensoneau is a 1962 graduate of the
University of Missouri School of
Journalism.
Government reform: BGA's controversial crusade
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Not an official agency, it is financed by more than 3,000 individual and corporate members. It was
founded as a guide to better government but began exposes under George Mahin as director. Today
it has a small staff — 3 lawyers, 6 investigators
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Consider the following list of public figures who have criticized the BGA. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, whose Democratic machine often has been under fire from the association, has convinced many persons that the BGA is an arm of the Illinois Republican Party. Ray Page, a former state superintendent of public instruction and onetime power in the Illinois GOP, had good reason to regard the BGA as a tool of the Democrats. Page came under fire when serving as superintendent as a result of disclosures in a BGA investigation of spending practices in his office. It was alleged that Page's office circumvented Illinois law on various purchasing procedures. Much interest centered in particular on a revelation that Page charged the cost for publicity photographs of himself to an appropriation for financing special education for handicapped children.
Gov. Dan Walker and his lieutenants have come to view the association as a self-appointed prosecutor willing to use unsubstantiated charges and almost any other means to soil the image of officeholders. Walker's predecessor, Richard B. Ogilvie, questioned the fairness of several BGA undertakings when he was governor, even though Ogilvie had been an ally of the association in his days as sheriff of Cook County.
A major bone of contention between Ogilvie and the BGA revolved around an allegation by the BGA and a Chicago newspaper that Dan Malkovich, an acting director of conservation under Ogilvie, may have been involved in a conflict of interest because of certain advertising appearing in a magazine under Malkovich's control. The alleged incident took place during Malkovich's term as acting director. Malkovich, a Benton, Illinois magazine publisher, hotly denies any impropriety on his part, saying that "the incident was stimulated by someone with ulterior motives . .. the reporter and the BGA investigator were very unfair in the whole matter."
Major officeholders, of course, are not the most objective analysts of an organization which has persistently nettled the Chicago and state political establishments. A more accurate assessment of the association would fall between the extremes painted by its detractors and defenders.
The BGA is believed to be unique, and one is hard pressed to find similar agencies in other parts of the United States. Contrary to a belief in some places, it is not an official agency and it receives no government funds. Financing comes from the more than 3,000 individuals and corporations which now comprise its membership. Most of the tax-exempt contributions are relatively small. The largest one in 1975, totaling $5,000, came from Standard Oil Co.
March 1976 / Illinois Issues / 7
BGA has sought to force Walker to disclose donations to pay '72 debt, but court blocked this. Walker people say 'this little gang is clearly Dan's enemy,' bent on 'destruction'
The private status of the association denies it law enforcement powers, but
there are compensations. Since it is not
dependent on public appropriations, the
association unquestionably enjoys
greater flexibility than many official
investigative agencies in determining the
subjects, scope and procedures of
inquiries. The policing of the BGA's own staff is
a responsibility of several panels. A
board of trustees determines basic
policy, reviews the performance of the
investigators, adopts the budget and
participates in fund-raising. Between
meetings of the trustees, a board of
directors governs the organization.
Both panels are dominated by representatives of industry, business and
Chicago's upper crust. There are Democrats as well as Republicans. The association's expenditures in
1974 came to $349,071, a modest sum
for such a major shaper of public
opinion. That outlay was considerably
more, however, than the $153,000
donated to the association in 1967 by
individuals, businesses, foundations
and trusts. These budget figures are just
one indication of the BGA's growth.
The establishment of a formal legal
program to buttress the investigative
undertakings, the recruitment of student interns to broaden research capability and the sponsorship of public
symposia on various issues have taken
the association into avenues broader
than the gumshoe activity which put the
BGA on the map. Three full-time lawyers are on the
staff at present, and there are six
investigators, including the association's new man in Springfield, Patrick
Riordan. Greater diversity on the staff,
some observers have contended, is
intended to give the organization that
veneer of sophistication which a cadre
of Sam Spades can't always provide.
But, holds William L. Hood, BGA's
former downstate coordinator,
anybody maintaining that "we're trying
to branch out just to gain respectability
is full of baloney. The truth is that
detection of government waste today is
tougher because the officials have a
myriad of legalistic, computer and other
red tape mechanisms for obfuscating a
monitoring of their activities." Actually, the association has not
always been a muckraker. Established
in 1923 to increase voter participation in
Chicago elections, the BGA was originally intended to serve as a nonpartisan
guide to better government. The aggressiveness in exposing corruption
materialized during the 10-year executive directorship of George E. Mahin. The Mahin era, in which the BGA
began investigating the Daley machine
for the first time, as well as the underworld, would provide rich material for a
Jimmy Breslin book. Mahin and his
small crew, operating in those days out
of an old office complex on Chicago's
South Dearborn right over the noisy
elevated railway, tackled big cases of
finagling by politicians that federal or
state agents would not touch. They also went after many little cases,
and some not too difficult, like the
discovery of the Chicago street employees who unfortunately picked the
basement of the old BGA building in the
city for their sleeping quarters during
working hours. Probes that made
headlines during the Mahin era included
the association's thrusts against the
squandering of tax funds by the Chicago
Sanitary District, against political hacks
who made a dangerous mockery of the
state meat inspection program and
against massive cheating on truck
licensing, partly as a result of lax
enforcement by investigators for the
secretary of state. The success of these undertakings
prompted grossly inflated estimates of the association's resources. The few
reporters and other outsiders privy to
BGA operations during Mahin's tenure
regarded it as a shoestring setup that
provided unbridled opportunity for a
handful of professional crusaders. One
of them, James F. McCaffrey, recalled
recently the fertile ground that he
stumbled upon after the Chicago office
assigned him to Springfield in 1967 to
establish a full-time BGA presence in
the state capital. McCaffrey, now an
investigator for the Illinois Department
of Revenue, found it much more interesting in Springfield to read public
records instead of novels. "Once you
learned how to digest the stuff, the
patterns of boondoggling came out as
juicy tales better than any fiction,"
McCaffrey said. "The expense accounts
alone that were filed by some state
officials would have put James Bond to
shame, even in his high living. It would
have been funny if it didn't show such an
abuse of the public trust." Association staffers did more than
read the records. Targets often were
shadowed for days and more than one
BGA operative spent a night or two
crouched outside the home of an
official. Mahin has been viewed by BGA
enemies as the main figure behind the
1965 bugging of a Springfield hotel
room in which three lobbyists discussed
payments to legislators for votes. Mahin
never admitted such a role. Later, a
Chicago newspaper published excerpts
from the tape recordings which, indicated that some legislators were on the
take. The public reaction was little short
of sensational. The glamour surrounding the BGA
— some would call it notoriety — is
largely attributable to the organization's
cooperation with the press. Even when
the association has gone it alone, a press
conference is normally called to announce the findings. The closeness of the association to
journalists was brought out during
George Bliss's four-year stint (l968-
1971) as chief investigator for the BGA.
Bliss, who was a top investigator for the
Chicago Tribune before joining the
association, returned to an investigative
post with the Tribune in 1971. Pictures
of Bliss were viewed nationwide in 1970
when he posed as a heart-attack victim
in a Chicago apartment. As a photographer secretly recorded the event, two
private ambulance attendants refused to
transport Bliss to a hospital because he had only $2 instead of the $38 they demanded.
8 / March 1976 / Illinois Issues
The enhancement of BGA prestige by that inquiry, one of the organization's best, was tempered somewhat by a development that seemed to bolster the old assertion that the association is a branch of the GOP. Friedman, a lawyer who had been a Democrat, left the BGA to run for mayor of Chicago early in 1971 as a Republican. He was trounced by Daley. Earlier, Mahin had departed from the BGA to serve as revenue chief in the administration of Ogilvie, a Republican. In addition, the association's head investigator in the early 1960's, Joseph I. Woods, later was elected sheriff of Cook County as a Republican.
Although the BGA has feuded with Republicans like Ogilvie, these quarrels have been mild compared to the antipathy between the association and the Walker administration. The tension may have been prompted in part by the refusal of J. Terrence Brunner, the BGA's current executive director, to go to work for Walker. In December 1973 the governor asked Brunner, a one-time head of the U.S. Justice Department's Pittsburgh Organized Crime Strike Force, to head the Governor's Office of Special Investigations, an operation responsible only to Walker.
Not long afterward, early in 1974, Democrat Walker abruptly fired or forced the resignation of several top officials in the state's regulation of the savings and loan industry, including Albert Pick III, Illinois Commissioner of Savings and Loan Associations, only hours before the Chicago Daily News planned to publicize apparent conflicts of interest involving the officials. The allegedly improper activity was turned up by a joint inquiry of the newspaper and the BGA. However, the governor credited his special investigative office with the discovery of the information which led to his action. To this day, BGA officials feel that Walker was able to blunt the impact of their investigation because the administration may have been tipped off to the upcoming stories by an association employee.
Since then, the association has collaborated with other newspapers on uncomplimentary disclosures about the administration's personnel practices, fund-raising activity and questionable management of the State Fair. State campaign finance disclosure records are said by the BGA to show that Walker, like many of his predecessors, has received most of his large contributions from firms and individuals doing business with the state. The association also contends that Walker associates have violated the Illinois political fund disclosure law by not reporting the sources of contributions for the retirement of Walker's 1972 campaign debt since Oct. 1, 1974, the effective date of the law. The BGA filed a complaint on this matter with the Illinois Board of Elections. However, the board was prevented from holding a hearing on the complaint because the Sangamon County Circuit Court upheld a contention in Walker v. State Board of Elections (see "Judicial Rulings," December 1975, p. 380) by Walker that the method for the selection of board members violated the Illinois Constitution.
The court ruling in effect restricted the Election Board to little more than clerical duties, a broad repercussion of this particular clash between Walker and the BGA. The antagonism is expected to have other reverberations. As one Walker assistant sees it, "It could become all-out war because this little gang [the BGA] is clearly Dan's enemy . . . dedicated more to his political destruction than any objective analysis of our administration." Norton Kay, the governor's press secretary, has argued in private that the BGA's treatment of his boss has convinced him, Kay, that "they often shoot wildly from the hip with nothing solid to back up their charges." Kay, who viewed the association in a different light during his days as a reporter in Chicago, now holds that "the time has arrived, perhaps, for somebody to take a serious look at their performance, for a change."
Almost all attempts to place the BGA on the defensive — such as an unsuccessful bill in the General Assembly 10 years ago that was designed to cripple the association's tax-exempt status — have been rebuffed. Furthermore, argues BGA Executive Director Brunner, the events of Watergate should erase any remaining doubt about the necessity for independent outside scrutiny of public officials. "We don't expect plaudits from those we're trying to watch," says Brunner. "Our growing membership, throughout Illinois, is all the proof we need of the right direction of our program."
The Board of Trustees determines basic BGA policy, reviews
performance, employs the executive director, adopts the
budget, and participates in fund raising to support the
budget. It is bipartisan.
E. Stanley Enlund, chairman; First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Chicago
Bennett Archambault, Stewart-Warner Corporation
Norbert F. Armour, Carson Pirie Scott and Co.
*Philip D. Block, III, Inland Steel Company
Gardner Brown, White, Weld & Co.
Joseph A. Burnham, Marshall Field & Co.
Milton F. Dan, Jr., LaSalle National Bank
John E. Drick, First National Bank of Chicago
Richard J. Farrell, Standard Oil Co. (Indiana)
Donald M. Graham, Mayer, Brown & Platt
John D. Gray, Hart Schaffner & Marx
Howell H, Howard, Edward Hines Lumber Co.
Leonard S. Matthews, Leo Burnett Company, Inc.
Brooks McCormick, International Harvester Co.
*John J. McEnerney, Pioneer Electric & Research Corporation
John W. Moutoussamy, Dubin, Dubin, Black & Moutoussamy
William F. Murray, Harris Trust and Savings Bank
*David W. Rewick, Ernst & Ernst
*Max Robert Schrayer, Associated Agencies, Inc.
Daniel C. Searle, G. D. Searle and Company
Harold Byron Smith, Illinois Tool Works, Inc.
Leonard Spacek, Arthur Andersen & Co.
E. Norman Staub, The Northern Trust Company
* Also a director
BGA Board of Directors
The Board of Directors is the governing body of the BGA between meetings of the Board of Trustees, sees that basic policy is carried out, and is also bipartisan.
Mrs. Richard Bentley
Philip D. Block, III, Inland Steel Company
Mrs. George Bogert
William G. Brown, Bell, Boyd, Lloyd, Haddad & Burns
Walter H. Clark, First Federal Savings & Loan Association of Chicago
Alvin W. Cohn, CFS Continental
E. David Coolidge, III, William Blair & Company
Milton Davis, South Shore National Bank of Chicago
Mrs. Sylvia O. Decker, Sidley & Austin
Milton Fisher, Mayer, Brown, Platt
Lucius P. Gregg, Jr., First National Bank of Chicago
Albert W. Hachmeister, Marketing Decision Data, Inc.
James Hadley, Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago
John P. Heinz, Northwestern University School of Law
R. C. Hiller, Jr., Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Charles W. Houchins, Borg-Warner Corporation
Robert D. Jones, Jewel Companies, Inc.
Jonathan Kovler, Blum-Kovler Foundation
C. Russell Lockwood, Standard Oil Company (Indiana)
H. Barry McCormick
John J. McEnerney, Pioneer Electric & Research Corporation
John McKnight, Northwestern Center for Urban Affairs
Mrs. George Marienthal
Harold Meitus, Superior Match Company
Gordon H. Millar, Deere & Company
Lester T. Moate, Amsted Industries, Inc.
James T. Otis, Price, Cushman, Keck, Mahin & Cate
Clifford H. Raber, Ford Motor Company
Thomas F. Roeser, The Quaker Oats Company
Richard S. Rosenzweig, Playboy Enterprises, Inc.
Patrick G. Ryan, Great Equity Financial Corp.
Mrs. Paul Saltzman
Max Robert Schrayer, Associated Agencies, Inc.
Milton Shapiro, Maremont Corporation
George R. Stevens, Arthur Andersen & Co.
Douglas F. Stevenson, Hackbert, Rooks, Pitts, Fullagar & Poust
Richard P. Strubel, Northwest Industries, Inc.
John J. White, Midland Manufacturing Corporation
March 1976 / Illinois Issues / 9