FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date: April 16, 2003
Contact:
Barbara Ferrara, 206-7094
UIS' Lincoln
Presidential Center to host summit on politics and ethics in Illinois
SPRINGFIELD - Is there something ingrained
in Illinois' political culture that makes state government especially
susceptible to ethical missteps? This and other questions will be explored in
"Politics and Ethics in Illinois: Past, Present, and Future," the
2003 Public Policy Summit sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Center
for Governmental Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. The
event will be held from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, April 29, in the Public Affairs
Center on the UIS campus.
Although the summit is free and open to
the public, reservations are required and should be made by contacting Charlene
Lambert at (217) 206-6502 no later than Monday, April 21.
This year's summit will examine the
current ethical health of Illinois government and generate suggestions for
improving it. Judge Abner Mikva,
professor of law at the University of Chicago, will deliver the keynote address
focusing on the roots of Illinois' present-day political culture.
A former state legislator, Judge Mikva
also served five terms in Congress before being appointed to the United States
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1979. He was named
Chief Judge in 1991 and served in that position until he became White House
legal counsel for the Clinton administration in 1994. His publications include
Ethics in Government: Not an Oxymoron.
-more-
Following Judge Mikva's address, a
roundtable discussion will examine the present political culture in state
government and politics, as well as what should, or can, be changed.
Discussants will include Cynthia Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for
Political Reform; Howard Carroll, former state senator from Chicago and an
expert on state finance and public health care; David Kenney, professor emeritus
of political science at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and former head
of Illinois' Department of Conservation and Historic Preservation Agency; Mike
Lawrence, associate director of the Public Policy Institute at SIU-C and former
press secretary and senior policy adviser to Gov. Jim Edgar; Howard Peters III,
vice president of the Illinois Hospital Association, deputy chief of staff to
Governor Edgar, and first director of the Illinois Department of Human
Services; Alan Rosenthal, professor of political science at Rutgers University
and expert on legislative ethics, campaign finance, and redistricting; and Kent
Redfield, professor of political studies at UIS and author of several books
including Money Counts: How Dollars Dominate Illinois Politics. Charles Wheeler, director of the Public
Affairs Reporting program at UIS and past-president of the Illinois Legislative
Correspondents Association, will moderate.
Also during the summit, Richard Schuldt,
director of UIS' Survey Research Office, will release the results of a new
statewide survey on public perceptions of state government and politics and
tolerance for corruption.
The center's Public Policy Summits are
designed to bring former state government leaders together with activists and
scholars for in-depth exploration of major public policy issues, with the
intent of developing effective options
for addressing the issues.
For more information, contact Barbara
Ferrara, associate director of the Lincoln Center, at (217) 206-7094.
-30-
2003
Public Policy Summit Speaker Bios
Judge Abner
J. Mikva of Chicago,
keynote speaker, began his long public career in the Illinois legislature and
eventually went on to five terms in Congress, appointment as a federal judge,
and White House Counsel. Now Visiting Professor of Law at the University of
Chicago, he is the author of Ethics in Government: Not an Oxymoron.
Cynthia
Canary is director
of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform and a past executive director of
the League of Woman Voters of Illinois. She has served on the Chicago Bar
Association Special Committee on Judicial Campaign Finance Reform and the
American Bar Association Commission on Public Financing of Judicial Campaigns.
Howard W.
Carroll (D-Chicago)
served 26 years in the Illinois Senate, including six as Assistant Minority
Leader and 16 as chair of the Appropriations Committee. Senator Carroll is an
expert in state finance and public health care.
David Kenney moved from a teaching and publishing
career at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale to the hurly burly of state
politics. Elected first as a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1970,
he was appointed by Gov. Jim Thompson to head the Illinois Department of
Conservation and later the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
Mike
Lawrence, former
press secretary and senior policy adviser to Gov. Jim Edgar, was a journalist
and columnist for 25 years. He is currently the associate director of the
Public Policy Institute of Southern Illinois University.
Howard A. Peters
III moved from
being Gov. Edgar's deputy chief of staff to the first director of the Illinois
Department of Human Services, the mega-agency that centralized the state's
social service programs. His previous career in corrections spanned many of the
state's adult and juvenile facilities.
Kent
Redfield is a
professor of political studies and a research fellow with the UIS
Institute
for Legislative Studies. He wrote Cash Clout: Political Money in Illinois
Legislative Elections and Money Counts: How Dollars Dominate Illinois Politics.
Alan
Rosenthal won the New
Jersey Governor's Award for Public Service for his work on legislative ethics,
campaign finance, and redistricting. A professor of political science based at
the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, he is a frequent
consultant to other state legislatures seeking reform.
Richard
Schuldt is director
of the Survey Research Office of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Center for
Governmental Studies at UIS. He will
present the results of the recent "Illinois Political Ethics Survey"
at the summit.
Charles N.
Wheeler III is director
of the UIS Public Affairs Reporting Program and a past president of the
Illinois Legislative Correspondents Association. He is a regular contributor to
Illinois Issues magazine and the "State Week in Review" radio
program.