Ex-advisor to panel: Order Blago to get psych evaluation
Arya's memo says Blagojevich is good dad, great guy but ineffective, emotionally unstable chief executive
SPRINGFIELD — When former Chicago television broadcaster Bob Arya joined Gov. Blagojevich's staff as a senior advisor in November 2006, the governor described him as “a real asset to my administration.”
But when Arya's run with Blagojevich came to an end, he had a story to tell — one of intense jealousies by the governor toward President-elect Barack Obama, House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) and others, a terrorized staff, and emotional instabilities that Arya said demonstrate the need for a psychological evaluation by the legislative panel weighing the governor's impeachment.
(Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times)
Not long after Arya assumed his $114,000-a-year position, Blagojevich confided in him his desire to one day reach the White House. When corruption allegations prevented that from happening, the governor's disdain for Obama seemed to grow.
“Rod dislikes Barack Obama because Barack is living the life Rod envisioned for himself,” Arya wrote in a nine-page memo he has shared with the House impeachment panel.
The document from the former reporter at CLTV outlines how Blagojevich’s profanity-laced outbursts caused his senior staff to blanch as they tried to deal with peculiar aspects of his personality.
“The governor's chosen method of communicating with most senior staff on virtually all matters was via speakerphone from his home,” Arya wrote.
“The governor's tone and tenor with respect to those interactions was violently unpredictable depending on time of day, his mood and the issue you were calling about,” Arya continued. “Many staffers cringed at the notion of calling him and we were under strict orders to never let the phone ring more than three times.”
In fact, Arya said, the running joke among staffers used to Blagojevich's disdain for the office was that he should go “on a trade mission so he could be gone for a few months and things might actually get done.”
In one instance, Arya said he raised concerns about Blagojevich's frequent use of the state aircraft to go back and forth from Springfield — an issue the Chicago Sun-Times and other media dinged the governor on with regularity.
When Arya reminded Blagojevich that maybe he ought to opt for cheaper travel methods, the governor profanely defended his airborne perk: “F--- it, f--- them (the press). It comes with the job,” Arya quoted him as saying.
One of the “most disturbing” on-the-job actions by the governor Arya said he saw involved a letter sent to the governor from a Kentucky nurse with Downstate roots who was seeking an expungement so she could obtain an Illinois nursing license. The woman had improperly dispensed medication to a patient in Kentucky but was allowed to retain her license there and couldn't get a license in Illinois, where she wanted to move to care for her dying father.
In her package to the governor was a letter from Sen. John Jones (R-Mt. Vernon), who had months earlier condemned the Blagojevich administration's failure to meet with a developer who was considering building a motorcycle plant in his district but later opted instead to build it in Atlanta.
Arya described how Blagojevich came into his office, saw his former chief of staff John Harris reading Jones' letter on behalf of the woman and took it from him to read. “After realizing it was written by a lawmaker that did not see eye to eye with the governor on some administration priorities, Rod took the letter and said, 'F--- him.' Then (he) cast the letter aside toward the garbage can.
“That was it. Her life would remain on hold and would not even receive fair consideration simply because Rod had an issue with the senator,” Arya said.
The person with whom Blagojevich may have had the biggest issue was House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago). Arya said Blagojevich had told him prior to the start of his second term that he intended to set himself up for a White House run and take control of the state Democratic Party from Madigan, who is chairman.
“Rod let me and others know that the goal was to 'damage the Madigan brand.' This meant doing all we could to make the speaker look bad,” Arya wrote.
This included demands from Blagojevich to staff to write anti-Madigan letters to newspapers and to members of the General Assembly. Arya said he was requested by Harris to do research on Madigan's background for a biting proclamation Blagojevich wanted to sign recognizing the speaker's work.
“The goal of that proclamation was going to be to try and tie him directly to the massive growth in the pension deficit by virtue of pointing out when our obligation began, how it grew, the sweeteners Speaker Madigan supported,” Arya said.
Arya said he did the research but didn't draft a proclamation. However, in November 2007 he sent a memo to Harris and eventually the governor himself titled “Reality Check,” which proclaimed the anti-Madigan initiatives a complete failure that left the governor's 2007 legislative agenda in tatters.
In the memo, Arya compared Blagojevich — a former boxer — to a drunk in a bar. “When you come off a barstool, drunk and swinging widly, you are going to get your ass kicked. That is, in part, what happened this year,” Arya wrote.
He said the memo to the governor “went over like a lead balloon,” leading Blagojevich to curse him out. But Arya said Harris “agreed with me on every point” before noting that Blagojevich was the CEO and “what he says goes, got that?”
Arya also talked about the dismal relationship Blagojevich had with Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, whom “Rod never liked…and said as much a number of times.”
When Blagojevich proposed a multibillion-dollar gross receipts tax on businesses, which died a stunning legislative death in 2007, senior staffers wanted to consult with Quinn on the idea. Told of that, Blagojevich informed Arya: “Forget him, you want to talk to him, fine. I have nothing to say to him.”
When Quinn began publicly condemning the plan, Blagojevich “went ballistic. 'F--- him' was the response,'” Arya said.
“Once you cross Rod, in his mind, forget it. You are dead to him,” Arya said.
A similar icy relationship existed between Blagojevich and his former Deputy Gov. Bradley Tusk, who left in late 2006 to join a Wall Street investment firm after serving under the governor for the entirety of his first term. “Once Mr. Tusk decided to move on for family reasons, Rod forgot the previous four years and did not speak to him,” Arya said.
Arya declined comment beyond what he wrote in his memo to the impeachment panel, citing the possibility he might be called as a witness against Blagojevich during a possible trial in the Senate.
Looking back on his 23 months on the state payroll, which ended last October, Arya described Blagojevich as “a good father and a great guy to go to a ballgame with” but an ineffective, emotionally unstable chief executive.
“I would respectfully suggest this committee seek an independent psychological evaluation of the governor as part of this process,” Arya wrote to the impeachment panel. “I believe Rod, the committee and the people of this great state would benefit from such a move. It is clear to anyone who has been around him that there is ample cause for such an extraordinary request.”