Catastrophe - Dick Morris [109]
After all these kindnesses, Congressman Rogers was only too happy to do a favor for a friend.
But he’s not alone. Both parties participate in pay-to-play schemes.
The City of Indianapolis was trying to raise cash by selling off 1,100 properties—including police stations, maintenance buildings, and parks. The Indianapolis Business Journal reported that the Republican mayor of the city, Gregory A. Ballard, gave the contract to a guy who had given $25,000 to the campaigns of Indiana’s Republican governor, Mitch Daniels, and who had hired a lawyer who is the mayor’s “right-hand man.”374 That’s what friends are for!
Sometimes you need special qualifications to get your hands on the goodies you want. Qualifications, for instance, such as being married to then–Michigan state attorney general Jennifer Granholm, now the state’s governor. Her husband, Daniel Mulhern, got nearly $300,000 in no-bid “leadership training” contracts from Wayne County while Jennifer was the county’s chief attorney.375
Want to invest $25,000? You may be too late. Before he was removed from office, you should have given the money to Rod Blagojevich. He knew how to take care of campaign contributors. As the Chicago Tribune reports, three-quarters of the 235 people who donated that much or more to his campaigns received special favors, such as “lucrative state contracts, coveted state board appointments, or favorable policy and regulatory actions.”376
No-bid contracts are the latest gravy train for state and local governments throughout the country. There is no reliable estimate of the scope of the practice, but it’s making negative headlines from New Mexico to South Dakota to Pennsylvania to Indiana to Illinois to Michigan.
Most government contracts are awarded only after closely monitored competitive bidding. Typically, those who want the business submit sealed bids. The public officials shepherding the process aren’t supposed to confer with the bidders; they are supposed to open all the bids at the same time, and the lowest bidder gets the contract. Obviously, there have to be exceptions: federal law, for example, allows no-bid contracts where only one firm is able to do the work, in an emergency, or where one firm demonstrates that it has “a unique and innovative” concept for the work.377
But give a politician a fat piece of candy like a no-bid contract to dole out, and chances are good that he’ll give it to his favorite—and a politician’s favor usually rests on those who donate generously to his campaign.
But wait, you may be thinking, isn’t that illegal? It depends on the transaction. If the public official specifically links the donation to his campaign to the contract, he’ll wind up in prison. But if all that happens is that (first) A gives to B’s campaign and then (second) B awards A a no-bid contract, it can be hard for prosecutors to prove any linkage between the two events. If both sides use winks and nods instead of words—and nobody’s videotaped or recorded—the deal can be hard to prosecute.
Such pay-to-play shenanigans may not be illegal, but that doesn’t mean they’re not corrupt. And corruption is eating away at our faith in democracy, a catastrophe in the making.
We can’t sit back and wait for public prosecutors to police our system. It’s too hard to prove a corrupt arrangement in court. But we can use publicity to identify the culprits and bring them before the court of public opinion.
You’ll notice that this chapter goes after both Democrats and Republicans. That’s because neither party has a monopoly on corruption—and both could use a thorough housecleaning.
Let’s look in greater detail at the larceny going on right under our noses:
SENATOR ROLAND BURRIS (D-IL)
For example, there’s