Transit agencies biggest spenders on state lobbying

SPRINGFIELD | 110 local governments spent $5M of taxpayer funds

SPRINGFIELD -- It's not cheap getting your point across at the state Capitol.

Just ask the 110 local governments across the state that paid $5 million in taxpayer funds last year to do just that.

With a looming meltdown of the Chicago Transit Authority atop the 2007 legislative agenda, transit agencies spent the most in Springfield: nearly $700,000.

But that's not all. The bill for City Colleges was $213,200. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District spent $162,949. Chicago came in at $127,257, and the Cook County Board paid a comparatively modest $40,082.

Out of the $5 million total, $3.9 million came from cities, villages, schools, counties and community colleges in Chicago and the suburbs.

Those figures all come from a first-of-its-kind study into state lobbying released Monday by the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

The government watchdog wants similar information made available online at no cost so the public quickly can see how much companies and special-interest groups spend on hired guns. Under existing law, those private lobbying expenses by non-governmental bodies generally are secret.

"We have a law that needs to be fine-tuned. It needs to be improved," said Cindi Canary, the group's director.

Getting what the organization got from cities and counties wasn't easy. They had to file Freedom of Information requests with each government, a process that took six weeks in some cases to get answers.

The single largest government spender was the Regional Transportation Authority, which paid four lobbying firms $223,600 in the months leading up to a $530 million tax-increase package that averted fare increases and service cuts.

"The services we have obtained from these particular lobbying firms have been pivotal, and we honestly feel we could not have done this without them," RTA spokeswoman Diane Palmer said.

The firm with the biggest governmental lobbying business was Illinois Governmental Consulting Group, which had 10 clients that paid $366,730.

The company is led by former Edgar administration official Frank Cortese, former Senate Democratic staffer Elgie Sims and Theodore Brunsvold, son of former Blagojevich cabinet member and ex-Rep. Joel Brunsvold (D-Milan).

The watchdog group's full report can be viewed at www.ilcampaign.org.