Senate needs to get the lead out and confirm Fardon: Brown

Updated: September 10, 2013 2:21AM

You couldn’t have missed the big headlines back in May when President Barack Obama nominated Zach Fardon to be the new U.S. attorney in Chicago.

What you might not realize is that Fardon, best known for his role in prosecuting former Gov. George Ryan, still has yet to actually become the U.S. attorney.

Fardon has been left in limbo, as has the federal prosecutor’s office here to an extent, while waiting for the Senate confirmation process to play out.

It is expected Senate approval for Fardon will come “soon” now that Congress got back to business Monday following its summer recess, although nobody seems to want to commit to predicting when “soon” might be.

This all became more urgent to me Monday as I sat in on opening statements in the trial of Eugene Mullins, a former spokesman for — and childhood friend of — former Cook County Board President Todd Stroger. Mullins is accused of taking kickbacks from friends to whom he had steered small public “outreach” contracts.

Without diminishing the accusations against Mullins in any way, let me just say that it’s not the type of case that would normally lure me down to the Dirksen Federal Building — at least not without Stroger himself on the witness stand or the subject of testimony.

But I’m just so starved for action!

There’s no denying that the U.S. attorney’s office here is in one of those lulls that occur from time to time on the public corruption front — even in this city with its seemingly endless supply of corrupt politicians.

The lull may or may not have anything to do with the vacancy created when Patrick Fitzgerald pulled out of the top job in June 2012. I’ve always been one of those people who argue the U.S. attorney is not quite as all-powerful as we make him out to be in Chicago.

But 14 months and counting is a ridiculously long time for such an important job to have been left vacant.

This sort of lull has happened previously — even on Fitzgerald’s watch — and then just when you think it can’t get any slower, a major investigation pops.

Right now, though, we’re working through a series of second-tier players such as Mullins with nothing known to be on the horizon — and a gestation period of two to three years on major cases even after they surface.

The biggest local public corruption case in the past year — involving Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife, Ald. Sandi Jackson — was prosecuted out of Washington.

I’m not suggesting that business is backing up on the desk of acting U.S. attorney Gary Shapiro, a respected veteran career prosecutor who doesn’t strike me as a guy who would have any problem making his own decisions on big cases.

But if nothing else, things are bound to slow down even more for a bit after Fardon takes over as he comes up to speed on whatever major investigations the office is conducting. The sooner he can get started the better.

Fardon will definitely need to deal first with a problem created by delays in replacing other experienced prosecutors who have left the office in recent months.

This slow period in public corruption cases quite possibly has as much or more to do with the recent turnover in the Chicago office of the FBI, where Special-Agent-In-Charge Cory Nelson quit after just seven months in the job. They’re the folks who make the investigations.

In the meantime, though, it would be nice if the Senate Judiciary Committee could move Fardon’s confirmation up on its to-do list.

There’s been no suggestion of any controversy over Fardon’s selection, which passed muster with both U.S. senators from Illinois, Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Mark Kirk.

Mullins’ attorney supplied some comic relief Monday with his unusual opening statement in which he introduced the jury to an imaginary “Little Geno” — pretending to hold the hand of his client’s seven-year-old self.

Here’s hoping that by next year we get back to some good old-fashioned courthouse drama.

Twitter: @MarkBrownCST

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