Governor's Office responds
regarding Pork Bill

Jay Stewart is the former Executive Director and a former staff attorney of the Better Government Association, a Chicago institution and the premier good-government organization in the entire world.

When a citizen calls the Office of the Governor regarding a very questionable government practice, like the proposed expenditures in the Pork Bill that I've been reporting on ( Illinois General Assembly Donates Your Tax Dollars to Their Favorite Churches and Rep. Franks Explains How Pork Bill Got Approved ), and your phone call is returned by the Governor's Special Assistant Jay Stewart, you've just gotta believe that the Governor is serious about doing the right thing.

At least, you know that the Governor is taking into consideration concerns about good government, or Jay Stewart wouldn't be there.

Gov. Quinn has got to be under intense pressure from countless competing interests on what to do regarding a wide variety of issues.  It's good to know that doing the right thing is one of them.

So, here's what Jay told me:

Jay said that he understood, very well, the merits of my concerns.  He directed me to put the nature of my concerns in writing and send it to the Governor, with a copy to him.

The important part was that he said that I did not need to list each and every one of the hundreds of line items that are obviously unconstitutional.  The governor's office would easily be able to figure that out, as long as I explained why I felt that these types of items were improper.

Jay also said that I should list two or three line items as examples of the expenditures that I was challenging.

I'll make sure that you can see a copy of my letter to Quinn and Stewart in another post, later this month, probably later this week.

Meanwhile, I spoke, today, with State Representative Lou Lang (D-16, Skokie) about the Pork Bill.  A report on that conversation will be forthcoming here, later this week.