I’m out for a stroll one perfect late afternoon in mid-November 2020 and end up at McKinley Park on Chicago’s Southwest Side. On the southwest diagonal of Archer Avenue that skates right past the park the original Lindy’s Chili is shuttered and the building for rent. The Covid-19 pandemic has at this point laid waste to Chicago’s thriving and economically vital restaurant industry. Thankfully, further down Archer another Lindy’s branch was still open. Don’t lay that aficionado stuff on them, asking about Cincinnati Five-Way. They never heard of the stuff. They sell Chicago chili.
On the long leafy stretch of South 37th Street bordering the park on the north, goose graffiti covers the walkways. They own the big landscaped ponds and know it. The ducks give them a wide berth. Pulling up on eastbound 37th by the statue of the assassinated President is a tall, brawny SUV thumping and pumping with metalloid beats. Music of the future apocalypse. The door flies open and a guy with dense neck tattoos emerges to stretch his legs. Very loosely from the bottle’s tip he’s holding a two-thirds-drained quart of Budweiser. I get a big whiff of another kind of bud. A bleary female rider leans out to summon someone from a group congregated near McKinley’s cast-bronze likeness.
Meet The Boss Squirrel
At the park’s edge someone has left a carved Halloween jack-o-lantern under a tree for the squirrels. Several are gorging on the slowly rotting gourd but none more so than the little bushy-tailed guy sitting atop it with a knowing mein. This is the squirrel capo. He takes what he wants; how he wants; when he wants. He decides who else gets to nibble and for how long.
Now walk with me. Because for more than thirty-six years that squirrel was Michael Madigan.
Madigan is a Southwest Side Chicago guy. His father was a ward superintendent. His first political job was on the back of a city garbage truck. He got a Loyola law degree and became a ward committeeman. With the blessing of his mentor Mayor Richard J. Daley, Madigan got elected to the state legislature in 1970. He rose high. Except for a two-year relegation to the minority party, he was Democratic Majority Leader of the Illinois State House of Representatives from 1983 until January of 2021. Speaker of the House.
During his extended legislative heyday Madigan was known not only as “Mr. Speaker” but also as “The Velvet Hammer” and “The Real Governor Of Illinois.” His own district was the state legislature’s 22nd. Its eastern border is just about a mile southwest from McKinley Park, where his squirrel analog was presiding over the spoils of the rotting pumpkin.
Speaker Madigan and other legislators joined with a Republican Governor in 1989 to support legislation that would drive city and state public employee pension debt astronomically higher. City of Chicago and even state efforts to later roll back the compounded three percent annual cost of living increases in pensioner benefits were stiff-armed by the Illinois Supreme Court.
During Madigan’s reign in Springfield, Illinois’ unfunded liabilities owed to its pensioners went from $41 billion in 2006 to $144 billion by mid-2020. Then by one estimate it more than doubled. With less rosy, market-based projected investment returns for state pension funds, unfunded state pension obligations rose to north of $300 billion, according to a first-quarter 2021 estimate from Moody’s. By 2020 the state’s five big public employee pension funds were only forty percent funded compared to required future pay-outs. The industry standard is no less than ninety percent.
Under Madigan’s leadership the state’s bond rating was described as “worst in the nation…near junk status.” During his tenure the state’s income tax rose by two-thirds. Among the fifty states, Illinois from 2003 to 2017 had the third highest ratio of accrued pension liability growth relative to economic growth. On average over that span, states had grown their pension liability at a rate one-and-a-half times state gross domestic product (GDP). But in Illinois it grew at three times the rate of state GDP.
It Was The Other Squirrels Who Brought Him Down
None of this harmed Madigan politically. Not with his own party. Nor with voters who kept his party in power. No. What got him in the end was those munching squirrels around his rotting pumpkin.
So many Madigan allies had been slotted into jobs at the electric bureau at Chicago’s Streets and Sanitation Department that it would be called “Madigan Electric.” But there weren’t enough city jobs for all of them. Another big landing strip was needed. And conveniently, the state’s biggest electric utility, Commonwealth Edison, needed Madigan’s cooperation to push through a big rate hike structure plus other measures pressed by their huge team of lobbyists.
Electric Utility Cops To Scheme, Pays $200 Million Fine
There was a price to pay. More than expected, it turned out. In July 2020, ComEd admitted to a bribery scheme to win Madigan’s influence over legislation and agreed to fork over $200 million in fines to avoid federal prosecution. Prosecutors had detailed a big back-scratching pact which included $1.32 million for do-nothing hires or consultants sent by Madigan. The make-work ComEd jobs and contracts for Madigan’s minions were allegedly blessed by the public utility’s CEO. Others were involved; one company official had already pleaded guilty in 2019 for his involvement.
A 2020 report from the Illinois Public Interest Research Group asserted ComEd had benefitted handsomely from 2011 and 2013 bills Madigan had eased into law. A rate hike structure was approved, and then, constricting state regulatory actions and authority were rescinded. The utility’s profits grew by nearly half and consumer costs for energy delivery services by more than a third.
At the time of ComEd’s $200 million settlement in July 2020 to avoid prosecution, Madigan himself was not charged. His spokesman said Madigan had only recommended certain hires and had never said they should do no work. But some recommendations carry a lot of weight.
This was how other major units of government and big companies got things done in the Illinois state legislature. You curried favor with The Speaker.
In November of 2020 the now-former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore was among four individuals indicted by federal prosecutors for the scheme. They were each charged with bribery conspiracy, bribery, and willfully falsifying ComEd books and records.
One of those indicted was John Hooker. He was a top ComEd lobbying exec, then an external lobbyist for the utility, and served as board chief of the Chicago Housing Authority under Mayor Emanuel.
Prosecutors referred to Madigan only as “Public Official A” but specified him unmistakably. The one around whom everything allegedly revolved. As in the July settlement between the feds and ComEd, Madigan wasn’t charged in the November 2020 indictments.
Another of those indicted in November was a prominent Chicago lobbyist named Jay Doherty. Prosecutors alleged he had laundered ComEd money through his own firm for payments to Madigan allies.
The quiet understandings implicit in the alleged buying of power were made more clear in federal documents released at the time of the July 2020 deferred prosecution agreement with ComEd.
‘That Which Is Understood Need Not Be Mentioned’
The arrangements were made “to keep (Public Official A) happy, I think it’s worth it, because you’d hear otherwise,” one principal said. “Your money comes from Springfield,” he warned a top ComEd official. The tit-for-tat nature of the operation, another said, was “unmentioned, but you know, that which is understood need not be mentioned.”
It brought to mind a remark attributed to one of Louisiana’s many scoundrel governors, Earl Long. “Don’t write anything you can phone. Don’t phone anything you can talk. Don’t talk anything you can whisper. Don’t whisper anything you can smile. Don’t smile anything you can nod. Don’t nod anything you can wink.”
Illinois was long on whispers, nods, and winks. But it had some talkers, too.
The July settlement between ComEd and the feds, and Madigan’s central role in the budding scandal, was bad optics for Illinois Democrats. They lost a bit of ground in the November 2020 state elections. Then a few weeks later came the four indictments. Under pressure from his party Madigan resigned first as Speaker, then state representative, then state party chair.
But his thirty-six-year run as the Boss of Illinois is a road map to what’s wrong with the state, one beset with fiscal wreckage that lands at the feet of Chicagoans already on the hook for the city’s deep money woes.
The High Art Of Compounding Political Power
Any archaeology of it begins with this: It’s one thing to ascend to power, another to compound it. For a very long time, Madigan had been masterful at that.
Public employee unions, trial lawyers and other special interests paid tribute to Madigan with contributions to his own campaign committee, plus the big Illinois Democratic House campaign kitty he controlled, and another he ran as state Democratic Party chairman.
With his piles of cash from connected donors Madigan financed the campaigns of Democratic state legislative incumbents and party-approved candidates in districts with contorted boundaries that he and allies had rigged to ensure loyal party soldiers got and kept their seats until they moved up, retired, or got convicted.
To keep Madigan’s campaign cash flowing their way, Democratic House members had to vote the way he told them. Intra-party debate became stillborn. Madigan’s position largely determined the fate of legislation.
The common weal got twisted in other ways. Sham candidates were dragooned into service to help dilute the votes for a challenger to Madigan in his own 22nd District House Democratic primary election contest of 2016. The real challenger was named Jason Gonzales. But then there appeared two more contenders, also with Latino surnames.
Gonzales lost handily to Madigan and alleged in a lawsuit against The Speaker the ballot-gaming had been illegal. Madigan’s political workers acknowledged they’d been involved in recruitment, signature gathering, and paperwork filing for the sham candidates. The candidates had done no fundraising or spending. They were on the ballot to confuse matters.
The judge ruled Gonzales could have had a case. But also that he’d blown it by going first to the media. He’d preempted the court of law in the court of public opinion, which had considered his protests and chosen Madigan anyway, the judge said.
There were other paths to influence. You might give business to the law firm where Madigan was a partner. It did appeals work for the well-off, on property tax assessments and zoning.
A close Madigan ally was Democrat Joe Berrios. He served as the elected Cook County Assessor and as an elected member of the obscure three-member county Board of Appeals which decided tax appeals cases argued by lawyers like Madigan, and Chicago alderman Ed Burke. Another Southwest Side Irish political chieftain.
Clients of Madigan’s firm from 2011 to 2016 won a collective twenty percent discount on tax appeals for properties valued at more than $8.6 billion.
Other property owners weren’t nearly so lucky without expensive lawyers. They suffered from a Cook County tax system which overvalued homes and helped drive up taxes in lower-income neighborhoods, while it undervalued more expensive homes and commercial properties. The assessment inaccuracies and imbalances were painstakingly documented through investigations by ProPublica, and the Chicago Tribune.
With the city and state legislature under lock and key of Democrats, Illinois and Chicago had become hardened political plutocracies. The connected class had recourse. The less connected did not. Thankfully, Berrios was beaten by a challenger in 2018 and the assessment process is undergoing long-overdue reform.
There was also political bullying, but as always in Madigan’s case, it was just inside the letter of the law. The Chicago Tribune described in December 2020 how Madigan had used strong-arm tactics that had repulsed even allies, to get his daughter Lisa Madigan elected Illinois Attorney General in 2002.
“Madigan directed state employees who worked for him to join her campaign apparatus, from secretaries to legislative aides to policy analysts. He pressured his friends in organized labor to endorse her. He set up an old-fashioned phone tree, asking his allies to supply him with guest lists from their weddings, Christmas card lists, church and volunteer groups, names, addresses, and phone numbers.”
‘He Can Do It In Such A Way That You Wouldn’t Even Know’
The Tribune had reported at the time, “‘The pressure many of us have gotten is unbelievable,’ said the longtime leader of one advocacy group. ‘It’s more than unbelievable. It’s disgusting…(He) is able to mess with your candidates. He can mess with your (legislative) bills. He can do it in such a way that you wouldn’t even know.’
“Some labor leaders said they received implicit threats that long-sought legislation would wither if they didn’t back Lisa Madigan. ‘He knew exactly where to draw the line,’ one union leader said of his conversation with Madigan…’I’m not stupid. I know exactly what he meant.’ After that endorsement was secured, legislation sought by the union was called for a House vote and passed,” the Tribune wrote.
There was more. If you were connected with Madigan as a campaign donor, labor chieftain, or as some other kind of political muscle, young college applicants you favored could be clouted by him into the University of Illinois. The University depended on Madigan and the legislative majority he controlled for annual budget allocations.
No level playing field here, at the state’s premier public university. What would be the point of that?
More than any other state legislator, Madigan suggested to the University that favored applicants be given a closer look. The vast majority then got in, though some had been previously rejected, or wait-listed.
A Tribune investigation revealed that together, the relatives of twenty-eight such applicants on whose behalf Madigan intervened with U of I had either given campaign contributions, or were connected by board membership on political action committees to contributions, of $201,145 to campaign funds controlled by Madigan or his daughter the Attorney General of the state. After exposure, the university changed its practices.
His political career done, Madigan as of early 2021 remained unindicted but under investigation by the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois John Lausch. President Joe Biden had announced Lausch’s firing but then walked it back under protest from Illinois’ two Democratic senators, at least until a successor was named.
Madigan’s personal campaign fund had $6.6 million at 2020’s end. He’d paid $1.7 million from it that year in legal fees. By the end of 2021’s first quarter, after his resignations, the fund had a balance of $10.6 million, and he’d paid another almost $2.7 million in legal fees. Under state law he would be able to take up to $1.5 million from his campaign fund for personal use, subject to taxes.
Madigan’s annual state pension was to start at $85,000 and then jump smartly to just under $149,000 in mid-2022.
No matter what, he would still be a very well-fed squirrel.