Sun Times - Lobbying Cook County Officials a Million Dollar Business

Chicago Sun Times

By Lisa Donovan

Published July 27, 2010

Lobbying Cook County's elected leaders and other officials was a million dollar business in the first half of the year, according to a new county website unveiled Tuesday.

The Chicago-based lobbying firm ALL-CIRCO, Inc., whose clients range from the city of Des Plaines to an Atlanta company in the hospital debt-collection business, were the best paid of the group while Cook County Chief Financial Officer Jaye Morgan Williams was the most popular.

ALL-CIRCO, Inc., earned $335,750 from its clients between January and March , while Williams was lobbied nearly three dozen times -- almost exclusively on contracts and bonds.

"We know that a lot of lobbyists contacted 60 elected officials between January and June -- some of them [elected leaders] more than 30 times," said Cook County Clerk David Orr.

Orr worked with Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer to pass a stricter ethics ordinance that requires lobbyists to provide more detailed information about who they're meeting with, the subject matter and how much they're paid for the work.

The searchable database reveals that 188 lobbyists --representing 84 firms and five sole proprietors -- registered in Cook County earned $1.1 million, down from $1.3 million reported between July and December 2009.

The database Orr unveiled provides some transparency to some behind-the-scenes negotiations.

"We see this as a tool to give the public, the press, so they can see when there's a multi-million contract before the county -- are the commissioners making the right decisions?" Orr said.

Gainer said: "There's nothing wrong with a private company wanting to sell what they have to the county. It's just that in government you have the moral hazard that a vendor could contribute to a campaign, and we have to keep an eye on that -- and we have to be able to have a way to easily find that out."

David Morrison, deputy director for the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform said the public can decide for themselves, even raise a red flag if they see something unethical.

"This new website is going to make it much easier for the public to see what lobbyists are doing and to make the lobbying process much more transparent," Morrison said, adding: "I think this can boost public confidence in government, on the one hand, and the other hand ferret out corruption as it happens.