You have to marvel at how the guy keeps it all straight. One minute he’s shifting employees from his staff in the Illinois House he leads to the Illinois Democratic Party he chairs, the better to serve his daughter’s campaign for attorney general. The next minute he’s making sure the state budget proposal of his 61 House Democratic colleagues, for whom he has to do all the head-scratching, is fat enough to please his pals at the state employees’ unions.
As if juggling all that isn’t burden enough, now comes word that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan still finds time to help an old college classmate. Madigan’s clout has sent almost $1.3 million in what used to be called taxpayers’ money to prop up a livestock show run by his buddy John S. Narmont, a Springfield lawyer.
The most delicious moment among many in Andrew Zajac’s expose in Sunday’s Tribune comes when Madigan’s spokesman Steve Brown says of Madigan and Narmont, dormmates in the Notre Dame class of ’64: “I don’t know that there’s any special close friendship there.”
Followed by Narmont’s boast: “I want to be clear, I do enjoy friendship with the speaker.”
What started out as Narmont’s annual horse show, the Solid Gold Futurity, fed at the public trough for several years before Gov. Jim Edgar’s administration cut off the hay in the 1996 state budget. With Madigan’s help, funds again began to flow in 1998.
Except that the show is now called the International Livestock Exposition. Maybe someone figured out that the old name didn’t work so well because horses aren’t made of pork.
And that’s just what this money is: taxpayer-funded pork for Madigan’s pal Narmont, who recycles the effluent by using three businesses his relatives own to provide services for the event. (Of course the state doesn’t audit the show’s books or ask unpleasant questions about sweetheart deals with family-owned businesses, but you guessed that.) Narmont returns the kindness, donating political money to Madigan and to the campaign of his daughter, Lisa.
So lots of backs get scratched while the larger flock gets fleeced–and that’s just the humans. No word yet on whether the livestock have been ordered to walk precincts and herd citizens to the polls to vote for Lisa on Election Day.
There’s a growing sense that in this and other pork shenanigans, Madigan is overplaying his hand. There evidently is nothing illegal about Madigan steering state money to a friend’s hobby. But these kinds of shabby, self-serving stunts betray a cockiness that says, I’m going to do it because I can get away with it.
So, with the state’s budget in ruin because of spending he helped engineer, Madigan’s spokesman gives every indication that the speaker will try to score money for Narmont’s show next year as well.
And why not? As Madigan himself instructed us a few months back, it’s his money.
