New Report on "Culture of Corruption" Released by UIC & BGA

By Karl Klockars in News on Feb 18, 2010 10:30PM

If you're looking for a little light late afternoon reading or something to skim over on the ride home today, why not an uplifting tale of how badly we're getting shafted by our elected (and sometimes installed) public officials? The Better Government Association and University of Illinois at Chicago has released "Corruption in Cook County," [.pdf] the third in a series of reports which are equal parts "Encyclopedia of shitty stuff county officials have done" and "What we should do about it but probably won't."

The Daily Herald quotes UIC professor and former Alderman Dick Simpson as saying that "Cook County has become Crook County," which makes us think that in the Dick Simpson Thesaurus, "has become" lists synonyms of "has for all time, eternally, ever and always been referred to as." Whether or not the County of Crook can ever get back to just being Cook County remains to be seen, but our money is on everyone just giving up and changing the name to "Everything Here Is Completely On The Level, Trust Us This Time County."

So what the hell are we supposed to do about it? Laws strengthening the Inspector General have helped, but more rules and regulations about campaign finance legislation, lobbying, nepotism, transparency and gifts are required. Given the lack of any real substantial change in the way Illinois is run at the state level in the wake of the collapse of the Blagojevich regime (save some campaign finance reform), we're not holding our breath for any other major changes on a county level. What we can look forward to are further BGA reports taking on the city's police force and the Board of Education, the latter being especially relevant in the wake of the suicide of Michael Scott.