THE ILLINOIZE: Thursday Free for All...The latest corruption trial...Stateville...Supreme Court takes up SAFE-T Act
September 12, 2024
Good morning, Illinois.
Here’s my roundup of post-debate content. WMAY interviews with Illinois GOP Chair Kathy Salvi, Democratic State Central Committeeman Bill Houliahan, and Washington Monthly Politics Editor Bill Scher.
I taped a reaction video with our friend Tom LoBianco on his 24Sight News Substack.
And I joined my old pal Brian Barnhart on WDWS in Champaign yesterday. You can find it here. I jump on around 47:30.
We’re taping our The Illinoize podcast today. No debate talk…transit and corruption. Go subscribe to the YouTube channel here. Paid subscribers will get first dibs tomorrow.
There’s nothing on Governor Pritzker’s public schedule today.
Let’s get to it.
YOUR THURSDAY FREE FOR ALL
(note: we’re not responsible for paywalls and restrictions from other news outlets, because good journalism isn’t free)
All agree 'King Madigan' ruled, but jurors must decide whether speaker was bribed in latest corruption trial (Chicago Sun-Times)
There’s no disputing the power that Michael J. Madigan once wielded in Springfield — it apparently offended even the man who is now on trial for having bribed him in 2017.
“King Madigan lives — elected to Speaker again,” AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza griped in a January 2017 email chain with his colleagues, reacting to a Chicago Sun-Times article about the Southwest Side Democrat’s ongoing grip on the gavel.
Years earlier, La Schiazza also wrote that Madigan “can not lose, the system is rigged as everyone in the system is beholden to the Speaker.”
Now La Schiazza is accused of bribing Madigan by hiring a Madigan ally in order to get crucial legislation passed. Though La Schiazza’s attorneys don’t dispute Madigan’s influence, prosecutors still hammered the point home to jurors as the trial began in earnest Wednesday.
“Madigan exercised enormous control over Illinois politics and policy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Mower said in his opening statement. “And that power was no secret, including to the defendant.”
La Schiazza’s defense attorney, Jack Dodds, didn’t disagree. But he countered that his client was in the business of lobbying, and it was La Schiazza’s job to build relationships and maintain goodwill — and to take job recommendations from public officials seriously.
That’s what he did when a request arrived for a “small contract” for ex-state Rep. Edward “Eddie” Acevedo, Dodds said.
La Schiazza and AT&T Illinois agreed to pay Acevedo $22,500 through a third party in 2017, amid an effort to pass legislation purportedly worth millions to the utility. It did so at the request of Michael McClain, who was widely known as Madigan’s right-hand man.
AT&T Illinois was charged separately in 2022 and agreed to pay a $23 million fine. Acevedo has already gone to prison for tax evasion.
While little of what happened is in dispute, Dodds told jurors Wednesday they would see no proof of an explicit exchange — Acevedo’s money for passage of the legislation. Nor would the jury see proof that La Schiazza knew “he was doing something wrong,” Dodds said.
Mower said La Schiazza urged his team to hire Acevedo even though Acevedo was “disagreeable, drank too much, talked too much, and was generally despised by Republicans in Springfield.”
Related: Jury selection begins in trial of former AT&T Illinois boss accused of bribing Madigan (Capitol News Illinois)
Opinion: Madigan's plea: Let word 'corruption' pass no man's lips (Champaign News-Gazette)
Protections sought for prison workers in closing of aging Illinois prison (Associated Press)
The union representing state prison workers is seeking a federal court order that the Illinois Department of Corrections ensure the rights and safety of employees as it shutters a century-old maximum-security lockup outside Chicago.
U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood, who last month ordered that most inmates be moved elsewhere from the decrepit Stateville Correctional Center, is scheduled on Wednesday to consider the complaint from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.
The Corrections Department acquiesced to the Aug. 9 ruling, saying it is in line with its plan to close Stateville this month in preparation for replacing it with a new facility on the same site.
The closure is part of a five-year, $900 million plan that includes replacing a women’s lockup in the central Illinois city of Lincoln. That prison, Logan Correctional Center, might be rebuilt on the Stateville site.
Wood ruled on Aug. 9 that most of the 430 inmates at Stateville in suburban Crest Hill, would have to be moved because of safety concerns raised by falling chunks of concrete, bird excrement, foul-smelling tap water and more.
On Tuesday, 187 inmates remained at Stateville, AFSCME spokesperson Anders Lindall said.
When plaintiffs in the case sought an injunction in July to shutter Stateville, AFSCME expected Corrections to oppose it, according to the complaint. It says that days before Wood’s ruling, AFSCME and the Department of Central Management Services, the state’s personnel agency, agreed that bargaining over the employee impact of Stateville’s shutdown was premature because Corrections’ plans were not finalized.
AFSCME is concerned about the ability of Stateville employees to find new jobs. In a hearing before a legislative review panel in June, Corrections administrators said prison jobs were plentiful within a 65-mile radius of Stateville. But many employees already travel long distances from Chicago and elsewhere to reach work at Stateville.
Supreme Court hears cases pertaining to detention under the SAFE-T Act (Capitol News Illinois)
The Illinois Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a pair of cases that test the authority of local courts to hold criminal suspects behind bars while they await trial.
The cases come almost one year to the day after the court allowed a new law abolishing the use of cash bail in Illinois to take effect.
That law, known as the Pretrial Fairness Act, was part of the broader SAFE-T Act criminal justice reform package that state lawmakers passed in 2021 amid racial unrest that erupted nationwide following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police the previous summer.
Under the PFA, most criminal defendants are allowed to remain free pending trial, subject to conditions that courts may impose. But the decision to hold other defendants in jail pending trial is based on factors such as the danger the individual poses to the community and the risk that they will flee justice, rather than their ability to pay a cash bond.
The law was originally supposed to take effect Jan. 1, 2023, but the Supreme Court delayed its implementation while it considered a constitutional challenge filed by state’s attorneys and sheriffs in more than 60 counties.
On July 18, 2023, the court rejected those challenges in a 5-2 decision and cleared the way for the law to take effect 60 days later, on Sept. 18.
The first appeal the court heard Tuesday centered on the new law’s early implementation. It involved a Chicago man who was charged with attempted murder and jailed just before the new law took effect, but who later petitioned for release once cash bail officially ended.
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After delaying Illinois plan, Stellantis investing $406 million in 3 Michigan plants (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Three City Council leaders demand ouster of top mayoral aide who called police 'f---ing pigs' (Chicago Sun-Times)
Johnson exempts police and fire from hiring freeze, but City Council wants to hear more (Crain’s Chicago Business)
AG Kwame Raoul calls on Congress to attach warning label to certain social media sites (Chicago Sun-Times)
Calumet City Council may consider plan to increase salaries for elected officials (Chicago Tribune)
When it comes to funding state-level campaigns, Pritzker in a league of his own (Daily Herald)
At Bloomington watch party, Illinois Republicans cast presidential debate as mixed bag (Bloomington Pantagraph)
Suburban politicians analyze the presidential candidates’ debate performances (Daily Herald)
Opinion: Chicago hit a home run with the DNC. Let's keep running up the score. (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Dart: Our law enforcement leaders must condemn political violence (Chicago Tribune)
Opinion: Improving preventive physical and mental care may be a matter of economic incentives (Shaw Media)
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