Tristano backgrounder

This is a newspaper column I wrote in June of 2002. It will give you some background on the Tristano indictment. The column is based on a much longer Capitol Fax, which you can find here.


Crain's Chicago Business has reported that during the summer of 2000, just about everyone at House Republican Leader Lee Daniels' Chicago office was allegedly paid with state money to work on political campaigns. The magazine also documented that several staffers were apparently reimbursed by taxpayers for campaign travel expenses.

This would be illegal, of course. So, I picked up the phone and started calling people who once worked for Daniels. I convinced six to talk.

Their stories were almost identical, and the picture they all painted was ugly. If they are to be believed, and I believe them, then somebody needs to go to jail.

Every one of my sources fears retaliation, even though they no longer work for Daniels. "They put the fear of God in you if you said anything," said one former House GOP staffer. Another likened the job to working for the Mafia.

And most said they were told staff would be blamed if things ever got rough. Sure enough, a few days ago Daniels said he didn't know anything about the allegations and would cooperate with an investigation of staff wrongdoing.

* The Chicago Office - A November, 2001, memo from one of Daniels' top political people pretty much sums up the problems at Daniels' Chicago office - a completely state funded operation.

The memo was sent to then-state Republican Party Chairman Rich Williamson and referred to efforts to fill a vacant GOP state central committee slot. Williamson is advised to call the staffer at Daniels' state office in Chicago.

"The point of the (Chicago) office was to run political campaigns," said one source. "They'd have political meetings there. They used the state computers to print out (precinct) walk sheets."

Another former staffer said election programs were installed on the office's computers.

"They said, 'Here's the campaign you're gonna be working on,' and they send you out and they pay you the way they want to." said one source.

Another source claimed he was "under orders to run a campaign on state time."

* Comp Time - A couple of months ago, I told you that the House Republican state payroll actually increased during the last two months of the 2000 election, while all the other legislative staff payrolls shrank. Part of their excuse was that the staffers were reimbursed for "comp time" - days off in lieu of overtime pay - while they worked campaigns.

Yet all but one of the former staffers (and he left years ago) said comp time at the Chicago office is a fraud.

"I was on staff just two weeks and they gave me ten days' comp time," claimed one former staffer, who said he worked no overtime in those two weeks.

Every source who worked in the Chicago office said, as far as they could tell, overtime was never even tracked. The chief of staff would send them a memo telling them how much comp time they had.

"Comp time would just appear and you'd use it," said another source.

"They'd say, 'We need you to do campaign work for seven days, so we'll give you the comp days to pay for it," explained one.

"There's no overtime at that (Chicago) office," said a different source.

* Vouchers - "I was in a situation where (the campaign) screwed me out of money, so they told me to file vouchers," claims one former staff member.

The staffer had run up several bills that the Daniels campaign fund refused to pay. But the low-paid worker needed the cash, so he was advised to "just say you were gone a little bit longer," on some travel and let the state pick up the tab through travel reimbursements.

"Because they paid you so (poorly), you needed that travel money," said another source, who said they were regularly paid with state money for campaign travel.

"I was asked repeatedly to voucher," for campaign expenses, claimed another source, who said he "put up a fight about it" on a "regular basis."

"Their counter was, 'Calm down, don't worry about it, this is the way things are done, but there's no way you're going to get paid (from the campaign account),'" the source said.

Another former staff member said he also didn't voucher and was under no pressure, but claimed his superiors "would sign anything."

Every former staffer I talked to understood that what they did was against the law. I asked one if that bothered him. "It was my job," he said. "I wanted to run campaigns. I just thought that's the way it was. It's the state of Illinois. It's Chicago."

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By the way, mucho props to attorney Rich Means for doing almost all the investigative work on which Crain's based its reporting. Means is getting married this month so the Tristano indictment is an early wedding present.