House Democratic legislators received a stern lecture during the second week of veto session about leaks from their private party caucus meetings.
During the first week of veto session in October, I posted a photo on my blog of a caucus PowerPoint presentation showing the range of revenue ideas under consideration in the House to fund mass transit…while the caucus was still meeting. That apparently caused quite a stir.
Then, at the beginning of the veto session’s second week, I posted a narrative from the caucus meeting about the House Democratic revenue plan for mass transit…again, while the caucus was still meeting. That turned out to be the final straw.
Leadership quickly clamped down. Staff members were disbursed throughout Statehouse Hearing Room 114 (where the majority party caucus meetings have traditionally been held) during a subsequent caucus meeting to keep an eye on members’ cellphone usage. Members were told that leakers would be “invited to not caucus with us anymore,” according to a participant.
And if the leaks continued and the culprits weren’t caught, duly elected House members were warned they’d be required to check their cellphones at the door.
I’ve dealt with this sort of thing for as long as I’ve been writing about the legislature, but it hasn’t made me stop.
I realized long ago that much of the “real” business of the state legislature was conducted, or at least openly discussed behind closed doors during party caucus meetings. If you wanted to know what was happening or what was about to happen, it seemed obvious to me that a good way of doing that was to find out what was happening at those meetings.
Almost nobody liked that idea, except for my readers. Caucus meetings are supposedly a place where legislators can express thoughts that they can’t or won’t say in public.
I get that. But it’s not my problem.
Plus, I admit, the cloak and dagger tactics I sometimes have to use to obtain this information can often be fun.
House Speaker Michael Madigan’s people were furious whenever I wrote about what went on behind closed doors in the 1990s.
I was having dinner with my parents at a Springfield restaurant when a person close to then-Senate President Phil Rock angrily berated me for writing about the “sacred” caucus meetings (we’ve long since made up).
Senate President Pate Philip threatened to eject members from the GOP caucus for leaking to me (which I, of course, wrote about the next day). Pate was convinced that then-Sen. Judy Baar Topinka was my source, but little did he know that one of his favorites was my main backup (that person is still alive, so I won’t mention his name).
Senate President Emil Jones not only threatened to kick members out of his caucus for leaking to me, but he also threatened members of his own leadership team with ejection for talking to me about their high-level, high-stakes meetings about Madigan’s feud with Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Eventually, things mostly chilled out. Madigan stopped holding regular caucus meetings for a time, but he eventually grew to at least grudgingly accept the leaks. Both Senate Presidents John Cullerton and Don Harmon decided not to make a big deal about it.
I kinda chuckled when I heard about the recent attempt at intimidating elected Illinois Representatives because those two veto session House Democratic caucus leaks didn’t come to me directly from members. House members were texting lobbyists, who, as loyal subscribers, forwarded those texts to me. I confirmed their authenticity and published them.
It’s been my experience that human beings love sharing information, even (and often especially) when they’re told not to.
And it’s not like these are nuclear weapons secrets or something. It’s state government, not the CIA.
Also, the contents of that photo of House revenue options ended up in legislative constituent surveys not long after the caucus meeting. The Illinois Policy Institute published screen shots of one of those surveys the same day I posted the photo. And the revenue list I posted during the second week was made public just hours later when the House unveiled its doomed mass transit bill.
As Elvis Costello once sang: “I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.”
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.