It’s time to move beyond the sad laughter over the corrupt and damaging practices of Chicago and Illinois

The Tribune yesterday published the first in a series of articles to appear over the next few weeks examining the corrosive culture that has pervaded the government of the Land of Lincoln for more than 100 years.

Our conclusion? Illinois and Chicago have reputations as hotbeds of government corruption, and rightly so.

Residents of Chicago and Illinois consume these stories, indictment after indictment, conviction after conviction, conviction after conviction. It can all start to feel like background noise — as if reporters are covering another sad baseball season on the North Side, the South Side, or (as this year) both sides at once.

So we think there’s great value in taking a step back and examining the history and extent of the habitual manipulation of powerful (and not so powerful) government agencies for private gain. The Tribune did just that yesterday, tracing the state’s sorry history and presenting a rogue’s gallery of those who have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and punished, as well as some we now know to be rogues but who have never been prosecuted or convicted.

When the scammers and the system that enables them are brought together in one place, the effect is sobering.

For decades, many Chicagoans and Illinoisans would take a certain amount of perverse pride in the political class’s villainous practices. “Early and often” is the joke that is still repeated about illegal voting.

And then there’s “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.” We saw that particular trope come to life on the witness stand and in secretly recorded phone calls during last year’s so-called ComEd Four trial, centering on a sleazy corporation’s scheme to win the support of then-House Speaker Michael Madigan for an outrageously lucrative series of state laws in the 2010s. To win those goodies, Commonwealth Edison essentially played the role the government played in the heyday of the Chicago Machine, generously compensating political operatives and Madigan loyalists for little or no work.

When government agencies served that purpose—before pesky court rulings made it harder—we called the beneficiaries payrollers. In the final stretch of Madigan’s astonishing 36 years as leader of the state’s lower house, payrollers reinvented themselves as lobbyists and consultants. Madigan is set to go to trial in October on conspiracy charges and has pleaded not guilty. The four people convicted in the ComEd trial, including former utility CEO Anne Pramaggiore, have filed motions for new trials in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling a few months ago that undermined much of federal prosecutors’ case against them.

The corruption conviction of former Ald. Ed Burke, the city council’s dean for decades and a local politician who pulled his weight like few others before or since, was another dramatic milestone.

Many of the ways in which our state’s Burkes and Madigans have managed to feather their nests—and those of their loyal troops—center on gaping loopholes in ethics laws designed to reassure the public that their representatives aren’t being ripped off. Both Burke and Madigan had law practices focused on property tax appeals, an obvious and easy way to pinch moneyed interests that need things from the city or state. Such officials shouldn’t be allowed to work in that line of work while they’re in office, but there’s no law against that. Until now.

During the ComEd Four trial, the practice of legislators resigning and then almost immediately becoming contract lobbyists was exposed as a convenient way for Madigan to funnel private sector money to those who had kept him in power for so long. Corporations that needed Madigan’s support for their favorite legislation, or to kill bills they deemed harmful, knew they had to play along and hire Madigan’s favorites as lobbyists.

That horrific practice still exists; a recent state law aimed at “reform” forces former lawmakers to wait just six months before they can lobby their former colleagues.

During the ComEd Four trial, former state Rep. Scott Drury testified about a bill he sponsored shortly after entering the Assembly that would have imposed a much longer waiting period. He recalled a meeting with Madigan in which he tried to get the speaker’s support. Madigan, of course, had no interest, but calmly explained to Drury that not every state legislator was a lawyer like Drury and could make good money after leaving public life.

The unspoken but clear message? Those without such advantages should be able to benefit from their relationships with their colleagues, and Madigan most of all.

After the Madigan and Burke scandals, we believe most Chicagoans are now well past the stage of snickering and rolling their eyes at such blatant corruption. They used to call Chicago “the city that works,” an honorific with a double meaning. On the surface, of course, it was a celebration of Chicago’s working-class roots. But it also referred to the way state and municipal government provided services while enriching many people on the public payroll far beyond the respectable salaries they earned.

Paddy Bauler (“This town ain’t ready for reform”), the Richard J. Daley Machine, and Madigan and Burke chatting on a wiretap about “bringing in the tuna” will always remain an integral, even colorful, part of the history of this rough and ready city. But our wish — and we believe the same goes for most other Chicagoans — is for the book to be closed.

We are not naive enough to think that there will be no more chapters. But with Barack Obama in mind after last week’s Democratic National Convention, we are bold enough to hope that tomorrow’s (occasional) villains will be one-off villains, not routine products of a system that is rotten to the core.

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