Illinois Takes On Its Culture of Scandal

Ensconced in the privacy of his office, long after his staff had left for the day, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich settled in front of his computer to test his personal ethics.

Scenarios rolled across his screen, offering up situations that any state worker might face: If a state contractor promises to put a new roof on his house in exchange for new business, can he take it? If a lobbyist wants to pay for a free weekend of golf, should he accept it? If a company seeking a government contract slips him season Cubs tickets, can he keep them?

Again and again, Blagojevich clicked on the “no” button.

The online training program is part of sweeping ethics laws enacted late last year in Illinois, in response to embezzlement and illegal licensing scandals that rocked the state capital.

As of last year, 44 states required their employees to undergo ethics training, according to a survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures. But only 16 states make such training mandatory.

All of Illinois’ state employees must sit down once a year and take this course. Jailers. Carpenters. Welders. Teachers. Secretaries. The governor.

In a state with politicians like former Gov. George Ryan -- a proponent of ethics laws who was later indicted on charges of taking kickbacks from state contractors and lying to FBI agents about it -- the citizenry is wondering how a computer can teach honesty.

“It’s a good first start,” said David Keahl, project manager for the program. “But it’s only a start. We have some serious cultural and behavioral problems that need to change. And one training session a year is not going to change how state government in Illinois is run.”

Such training comes as scandals are affecting not just government, but businesses and the media nationwide.

In Illinois, though, the trail of trouble often has led back to political figures. Considering that five of the last nine governors here have been convicted of, tainted by or tried on charges of criminal activity, many see corruption in public office as inevitable.

Ethics experts praise Illinois’ efforts, and say that its computerized testing is part of a cutting-edge trend. Such online training is often cheaper than setting up thousands of classrooms for workers, say state officials. It also is more convenient for employees because they have more flexibility in choosing when they take the training.

“It’s the first time since I started working for the state that anyone’s making an effort like this,” said Marina Ravelo, an accounting specialist with the state inspector general’s office, a few hours after her training.

Critics argue that even the best training and the strictest rules will be forgotten when employees face real temptation.

“It is impossible to legislate ethics,” said G. Calvin Mackenzie, author of “Scandal Proof: Do Ethics Laws Make Government More Ethical” and a professor of government at Colby College in Maine. “You can teach people what do to in a specific situation. The problem is that life, and particularly life in public service, is rarely that black-and-white.”

Voter confidence was at its peak in the 1960s, when there were no major ethics laws on the books, researchers say.

Since then, the number of ethics laws has multiplied, particularly in the aftermath of Watergate, ethicists say. But citizen confidence in government has dropped from 60% in the early 1960s to less than 30% in 2000, according to a poll by National Election Studies, an academic organization that examines political participation.

That hasn’t deterred a flood of recent local and state measures designed to legislate honesty.

“It’s the great American tradition,” Mackenzie said. “When someone does something wrong, we say there should be a law. Whether it’s effective or not doesn’t seem to matter. All that matters is whether politicians are doing something about the corruption voters are reading about in newspapers.”

While all 50 states regulate the conduct of their public officials, there is no uniformity to such laws. As a result, rules and regulations not only differ between states -- but between cities, counties and sometimes even between the legislative houses of the same state.

The first strong push to legislate ethics in Illinois started in the 1990s.

“Everything was in a mess,” said state Sen. Kirk W. Dillard, who was the sponsor for that first round of ethics reform. “We had a former Senate president who used his campaign funds to send his daughter to college. We had a legislator use his funds to put an addition on his house.”

Laws passed in 1998 blocked campaign funds from personal use, banned state employees from accepting gifts from government contractors and tightened restrictions on how campaign finances were reported.

But the reforms also left in loopholes, including golf trips. It was legal for a politician to take a free golf trip anywhere if it included an educational element.

“The ethics bill would not have passed unless we put an exemption in for golf,” Dillard said.

The new ethics laws in Illinois, passed in December, eliminated the free golf. They tightened economic disclosure laws and set new restrictions for state workers involved in political campaigns.

It also required that state employees participate in the ethics-training program.

The state rolled out the program in January. As of last week, 56,000 of the 62,000 who work at state agencies that report to the governor had completed the training. The remaining employees are expected to finish the training by the end of May, officials said.

Officials at the state legislative and judicial branches say they are developing their own ethics training program, which is likely to be similar.

“To truly change the culture in state government, we need to ensure that everyone involved -- from the governor to the mailroom clerk -- understands what the rules are and how they apply to our work as employees of the public,” Blagojevich said.

That sentiment did not inspire confidence in Eileen Brennan, a public service administrator for the state’s Educational Labor Relations Board. For weeks, people in her office gossiped about the training.

“Most folks were rolling their eyes and complaining about this being a waste of time,” Brennan said.

Brennan hoped for the best when she logged on.

Designed for a sixth-grade reading level, the hourlong tutorial takes employees through various scenarios.

One part brings up a fake newspaper headline: “State Workers Accepting Bribes Leads to Six Deaths.” Another details a case in which employees took bribes in exchange for giving commercial driver’s licenses to unqualified truckers. Both refer to the real-world scandal that led to former Gov. Ryan’s indictment.

The lesson here, the computer told Brennan, is that taking bribes is bad.

But then the questions became a bit tougher. Can she make phone calls at her desk to support a political candidate? Of course not. But, asked the tutorial, how could she deal with peer pressure? Who could she turn to for help?

Brennan stopped and thought about it. The tutorial gave her hints -- as well as phone numbers and names of agencies to help in such a situation. If she answered a question incorrectly, the program prompted her until she got it right.

At the end, the program recorded the time she finished and that she passed the test.

“People are talking about honesty, about doing the right thing,” Brennan said. “That is huge, when you consider what’s happened in the past.”