When politicians sue each other over jurisdictional disputes, it’s most often the lawyers who win and the taxpayers who lose. Every so often, though, a trip to the courthouse can clear the political fog and advance the cause of good government.
This appears to be the happy outcome of a lawsuit filed last year by a handful of state representatives challenging Gov. Jim Edgar’s authority to finance a new welfare headquarters in Chicago without legislative approval. Specifically, lawmakers led by Rep. Jeffrey Schoenberg (D-Evanston) sued to stop the Edgar administration from financing the new building with so-called “certificates of participation” or COPs, rather than with general obligation bonds.
The latter method would have required a two-thirds approval by the General Assembly. But with many lawmakers convinced the state didn’t need a new $19.2 million office building at Clinton and Van Buren Streets, Edgar proceeded using the COP rent-to-own mechanism. This way the legislature need only budget, by a simple majority, a $2.4 million rent payment each year for 20 years.
The cumulative $48 million seems a lot to pay for this building, especially given today’s renters’ market in downtown real estate. Then again, the governor promises savings once scattered welfare functions are consolidated.
But with the building nearly complete and state bureaucrats poised to move in, it made no sense for Schoenberg & Co. to push their suit to trial–not when a Circuit Court ruling against Edgar might have damaged the state’s credit rating.
So instead an agreement has been struck under which the plaintiffs drop their lawsuit and the governor signs a bill passed last spring that would give the General Assembly more control over the issuance of COPs. But more important, Gov. Edgar and the Democratic plaintiffs pledge a “good faith” effort this fall to enact several reforms of state purchasing practices.
Patterned on a bipartisan bill that passed the House last spring only to die amid the Senate ruckus over school funding, these reforms would restore true competitive bidding on major state purchases, defined as goods worth more than $10,000 and construction worth more than $25,000.
Today’s scandalously loose “competitive selection procedure” would end, as would state purchases from state employees, “revolving door” purchases from former state officials and hidden ownership of vendors doing business with the state.
Illinois may not need that new building, but it badly needs these new purchasing reforms.
