Illinois Coal Campaign Cash Scandal Reveals Culture of Corruption

The Chris Cline coal campaign contribution scandal has grown bigger than I ever expected. CoalGate is getting wide press coverage and resulted in a second acting director of Mines & Minerals being removed for the same actions as Tony Mayville. Here's a rundown of the press coverage and expanding consequences since I first wrote about a former mine regulator taking campaign contributions from a coal industry billionaire.

Patrick Yeagle at Illinois Times was the first reporter to give the story the full journalism treatment. IT reported that Tony Mayville was placed on unpaid leave and an investigation is underway.

Jim Tenuto, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections, says a state law on official misconduct may make the contributions a criminal act, though that’s up to a state’s attorney or the attorney general to decide. Under the state law, if Mayville solicited the contributions, it would be a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.
Chris McCloud, spokesman for DNR, said the contributions to the committee controlled by Mayville came to light when Mayville sought permission from DNR director Marc Miller to run for elected office. 

The trouble is that Mayville was already taking contributions from the coal industry to his Washington County Democratic political fund when he was made acting director of the Office of Mines & Minerals in 2012. It was public information easily accessible by a simple web search. It was no secret that Mayville was chair of a county political party. Did no one bother checking at the time or did no one care? Or both.

WSIL TV news interviewed Mayville for their story. He tried to keep the focus on a contribution to his State Representative campaign fund instead of the additional contributions he was taking to his political party fund since 2008.


His defense says it all. He argues that the contributions are no big deal because the company representative is a good friend he used to work with anyway. Think about that for a minute. The guy who was in charge of mine safety for Illinois, and the entire Mines & Minerals Office for a time, is saying that campaign contributions from the industry he regulates can't influence him because he's already such good buddies with industry officials. He actually argued that!

That shows exactly the problem I set out to highlight. There's a cozy good ol' boy network among DNR regulatory staff and their friends and former co-workers in the industries they regulate. A top Illinois regulator just said so!

In case it wasn't obvious enough that this is part of a broader problem within the agency, the current acting director of Mines & Minerals was jut caught doing the exact same thing. I first read at Capitol Fax, and then the News-Gazette that Douglas County Democratic Party Chairman Michael Woods Sr. was removed from his position for accepting political contributions from Foresight Energy, a company owned by the Cline Group.

Within a few days of Foresight's $10,000 donation to the Douglas County Democrats, officials disbursed much of it to Democratic candidates and other party organizations outside of Douglas County.
The largest sum — $5,000 — went to Gov. Pat Quinn's re-election campaign. Another $1,200 went to the Illinois Democratic County Chairmen's Association. And $250 went to the campaign fund of state Sen. Mike Frerichs, D-Champaign.
The Douglas County Democrats also gave $1,000 to the campaign fund of Tony Mayville, a Democratic candidate for the Illinois House in the 115th District in southern Illinois. 

Douglas county Democrats had a sleepy little campaign fund until Wood got his promotion at IDNR. Then, what do you know, Foresight Energy gave them a $10,000 political contribution. It's a pattern.

Chris Cline is not an insignificant donor. He massively expanded his Illinois coal holdings in recent years to make him one of the top energy players in the state. His companies have had many issues pending before DNR and will have many more. He's making ginormous contributions through multiple subsidiaries to Illinois politicians. Billionaire Chris Cline is attempting to purchase control of the state's political and regulatory systems.

An excellent video about a recent hearing on a Cline mine near Hillsboro reveals the dysfunction of the current system.



Pat Quinn and Mike Frerichs donated the campaign funds they received from the Douglas County Democrats to charity. But, they're keeping hundreds of thousands they've taken directly from Chris Cline and his coal empire. It's a nice attempt to avoid controversy, but keeping their other Cline donations sends the message that they're still available for purchase.

It would be a disservice if Governor Quinn is allowed to deflect attention from this scandal after two personnel changes at IDNR. This is a systemic problem about the culture of a crucial regulatory agency full of political hires leftover from the Blagojevich administration. People deserve to know whether Chris Cline companies were regulated to the full extent of the law in both the permitting process and with mine safety. Fatal mine accidents and cancer-causing pollutants make this literally a life and death issue.

Right wing blog caught plagiarizing me. Accuses me of lying but google cache tells all.

I'm going to warn you up front that this is a petty, trivial post but you may get a laugh out of it like I did.

Friday evening I wrote on my blog about a proposal to rename a major Chicago roadway after Nelson Mandela. It's a good idea from a good Illinois State Representative, La Shawn Ford.

Sunday morning I saw a twitter link for the conservative blog, Illinois Review, writing the same thing. Or, copy-and-pasting the same because it was taken entirely from my blog and the press release. They just added a few lines at the end trashing Representative Ford, of course.

The big giveaway was their use of the distinctive line from my blog that, "the change would put Mandela's name on the tip of many Chicagoan's tongues daily." They also used the same photo I took from HuffingtonPost, who took it from AP. But, they didn't link back to my blog! Not a big deal, but bad netiquette.

Illinois Review does some original content, but it's part of the network of conservative blogs that spam the internet by copy-and-pasting stories from each other while often obscuring the original source (presumably Grover Norquist's underground bunker). It's an effective tactic for spreading the latest talking points and manipulating google searches.

I decided to leave a comment with a link back to my blog so their readers could see where they found the story. It wasn't approved. I tried again. It still didn't show up but they did approve a couple comments trashing Mandela because what else do you expect?

Since they wouldn't even approve a link to my blog as a comment (and I was procrastinating doing real work) I decided to needle them a little by calling them out on twitter.

Pretty blatant plagiarizing of my blog without attribution by @IllinoisReview http://t.co/JpCdrMhY4I @ILBlogNetwork
— Will Reynolds (@willinois) December 7, 2013

At this point, Illinois Review could have done several things and I never would have given it another thought. They could have:
1) Added a link with or without an apology.
2) Not responded.
3) Changed the post without comment.

What do they do instead? Deny it! They claim it all came from the press release. Then they covered their tracks by editing to remove the phrases and picture taken from my blog. So I respond...

I see you just edited to remove sentences obviously taken from my blog but still no link. You stay classy @IllinoisReview
— Will Reynolds (@willinois) December 7, 2013

And then this happens.



They accuse me of lying! That's when I got pissed. Not giving a link back is merely rude. Editing a post and then accusing me of making the whole thing up crosses a line!

I responded: "lol @IllinoisReview It's not a big deal unless you make it worse by lying. Google cache and screen caps exist." That warning may be why they deleted their end of our twitter exchange, once again covering their tracks. But google cache. I took a screen cap of the original plagiarized post they took down.

You can click to enlarge the screen cap from google cache and compare it to the edited version online now. The new version looks like it came directly from the press release, as they claim. The original makes it very obvious that they copied my blog.

Everyone borrows and modifies phrases now and then. It's no big deal. What's the point of lying about where you found a story, trying to cover it up, and then accusing me of lying when I call them on it? WTF?

It's the contagious Fox News mentality. Fox misleads viewers daily and never makes a correction. This is the perfect example of why no amount of scientific studies will ever convince the hard core right-wing talk radio crowd that climate change is real. They would rather make up new lies to cover their tracks before ever admitting they're wrong.

Now I'm forced to defend my reputation since they tried to make me look like some kind of crazy person making up stories. Now the whole exchange and screencaped proof is here so everyone can laugh at Illinois Review. If you're going to create an entire blog by copy-and-pasting stories, at least link back to your source, even when it's a liberal tree-hugger blog.

Also, I strongly recommend you sign Representative Ford's online petition to rename Cicero Avenue in honor of Nelson Mandela. Mostly because it's a good idea, but also because it will annoy the lying plagiarizers at Illinois Review whenever they drive by a sign for Mandela Road.