I suggested to Mr. Madigan that, surely there should be some way that we could work together to resolve many of the disputed grants in the Capital Bill, rather than having a court embarrass the General Assembly by blocking numerous line items as being unconstitutional.
Madigan responded that, while some of the line items obviously were unconstitutional, there's nothing unconstitutional about having a religious organization provide certain services, with public funds, on a secular, non-discriminatory basis.
I replied that, indeed, I supported that sort of thing. An example that I mentioned to him was Salvation Army, known to its friends such as myself as "Sally." I said that Sally does a wonderful job of providing shelter to the homeless and food and clothes to the needy, with public funds, without requiring religious involvement by the recipients, and that was a good thing. However, there's a big difference between that and giving $140,000 to St. Martin de Porres Roman Catholic Church for "general infrastructure" (see page 342, Section 1805, of the Capital Bill), where State Rep. LaShawn Ford is on the parish council and Finance Committee, or giving $150,000 to a Jewish organization to build a cabin for their eight-week summer religious ministry camp for children in Wisconsin (see page 61, Section 375, of the Capital Bill).
Madigan agreed. He directed me to contact a specific high-ranking person in his office, somebody who I already know as having a very distinguished career in ferreting out government injustice. Madigan gave me his direct phone number at his office at the Capitol in Springfield and told me to call him and work with him on the issues.
Before the news conference even began, I called the person. He answered the phone, himself.
I introduced myself. He said that he knows who I am.
I explained the situation to him about the grants to religious organizations contained in the Capital Bill. I let him know that I was in the midst of going through the 996-page bill, line by line, and preparing a list of items that I was challenging.
He asked that I send him a copy of the list, when complete, and we'd see what we could do to resolve as many of the issues as possible without requiring a court to make the decision.
I agreed to that, and we parted on excellent terms.
I'll provide his name to you in a future report, after I've sent him the list of challenged Capital Bill line items. I want him to have the list before I reveal his name, but he's a good guy with a solid background and reputation.
Speaker Madigan was very pleasant, professional, courteous, helpful and cooperative.
There's also one more thing that I want you to know about my conversation with Mike Madigan: I asked Mike if he subscribed to the comments made to the Springfield Journal-Register by his spokesman, Steve Brown, where Mr. Brown condemned my efforts regarding the Capital Bill by saying, "Who made Rob Sherman king?"
Madigan said, "No."