Corrupt Ex-Governor Postscript

But first, a joke:

A mayor and a city budget director walk into a bar.

The mayor says, "Buy me a drink."

The budget  director shows the mayor a spreadsheet and says, "But the city is broke."

The mayor says, "Buy me a drink or you're fired."

The budget director disappears into the bathroom for a few seconds and returns with a new spreadsheet. 

The budget director says, "I was mistaken. We have three million dollars!"

The mayor says, "Hear that everybody! The drinks are on me!"

You know, I thought this post from last year about the sentencing of Milorad "Rod" R. Blagojevich would probably be my last:

Corrupt Ex-Governor Update: Final Edition

He once thought God made him a Rod to rule over Kings.

Today, not so much.

Today, little Roddy

completes his long, strange journey to the Illinois Governors' Maximum Security Retirement FacilityHouse of Many Doors.

...

But of course I was wrong, because today the judge passed sentence on Blago's Chief-of-Staff-turned-informant, John Harris, and in the arc of Mr. Harris' career there is still some tale to tell.

First, the facts.  From the Chicago Tribune:

Blagojevich's chief of staff gets 10 days in prison 

Defendant gets sympathy from judge, who sentenced ex-governor to 14 years

March 29, 2012|By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune reporter

A former chief of staff for Rod Blagojevich who provided crucial assistance to investigators was sentenced Wednesday to a mere 10 days in prison by a federal judge who reserved his harshest comments instead for the former governor, suggesting he was an impossible boss and pointing out some had even questioned his mental stability.

The sentence for John Harris was in stunning contrast to the crushing 14-year term Blagojevich began serving earlier this month in a federal prison in Colorado. In fact, Blagojevich has already spent more time in prison than Harris will.

During the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge James Zagel took the unusual step of querying Harris about what it was like to work for Blagojevich, quoting from letters sent to the court about how unreasonable Blagojevich could be. The judge also made a reference to suggestions at trial of "some level of mental instability" on Blagojevich's part.

Zagel, who also sentenced Blagojevich, went on to express sympathy for Harris and the "dilemma" he faced with a boss who wouldn't be dissuaded from the plots and schemes to corruptly trade on his office and influence for his own financial benefit.

But in the end, Zagel concluded that Harris shouldn't avoid prison time entirely.

"You were much too close to power, and you had an ability either to stop some of the things (or) report what was going on," the judge said.

After a dramatic pause, Zagel then announced his decision — 10 days in prison, perhaps the shortest prison term ever imposed in a public corruption case in Chicago.
...

Ten days?

There are people doing longer, harder time for smoking a joint.  For holding a joint.  There are people doing longer, harder time for speeding tickets.  Ten days is one third of the time judges here hand out for misdemeanor prostitution which, when you think of it, was basically what John Harris did for Blago:

Woman Jailed In Prostitution Case 

June 4, 2011 1:08 PM

WHEATON, Ill. (STMW) - A Chicago woman has been sentenced to 30 days in DuPage County Jail following her arrest late last year by Naperville police for prostitution.

Christina E. Trotter, 20, remained Friday night in the jail, after having been found guilty of misdemeanor charges of prostitution and driving with a suspended license.

Records on file in DuPage County Circuit Court indicated Trotter was convicted Thursday by Judge Ronald D. Sutter. He sentenced her to jail on the suspended license charge, entered an “unsatisfied judgment” finding on the prostitution count and assessed a total of $500 in court costs, records showed.
...

Ten days?

Hell, has anyone even bothered to cook up prison slang for doing ten days? "Dine and dash"? "Overnight sensation"? "Honeymooner"? "Balloon boy?" "Salahi"?  Shit, by the time your body cavity search is finished there's already a car waiting to whisk you back to hearth and home and (after a little time out of the public eye on some upscale version of the Mel Reynolds Rehab Express) back into the world of clout and cleverness.  And who knows? Maybe with good behavior he can even get that ten shaved down to four.

So why start out a post about the wrist-slapping of Blago's Chief-of-Staff with a joke about city budget gnomes?

Because since the days of Old Man Daley, at City Hall, no skill has been more greatly prized and feared
than mastery of the dark art of municipal budgeting.  Because, to misquote Roy Batty, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched budget wizards and contract mages pull impossibly large wads of dough out of thin air using Microsoft Excel, quantum singularities and accounting arcanum they don't teach anywhere this side of Hogwarts."

Because you do not rise to the level of City Budget Director and then successfully keep that job in all kinds of weather without knowing exactly how sketchy and corrupt the system is to five significant digits.

Because unless you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably never guess what John Harris did before he signed up to be Governor Fucking Golden's enforcer?

From me, in 2008:

Corrupt Governor Update, VI

...
So who is John Harris?

Well, once upon a time in a city far, far away...

Daley names O'Hare man as budget director 

It wasn't long ago that John Harris was in Mayor Daley's doghouse. But a major scandal and the power vacuum created by a wave of early retirements have a way of wiping the slate clean.

Harris, the brains and voice behind Daley's plan for new runways at O'Hare Airport, was chosen Monday to be Chicago's new $135,516-a-year director of budget and management. He succeeds Bill Abolt, who walked the plank for failing to clean up the hired truck mess.

A former intelligence officer and prosecutor who spent eight years in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the U.S. Army, Harris can match Abolt's intellect. But he also has the toughness and political savvy that Abolt may have lacked.

"He don't take no mess. He's a no-nonsense person who will demand that things be done and they will be done," said Ald. William Beavers (7th), chairman of the City Council's Budget Committee.

Harris is a "better candidate for budget director than Bill Abolt was" because he's served time in two of the biggest-spending departments, said a longtime City Hall observer.

"He knows where all the bodies are buried and where the gun is hidden," the source said.
...

Can't really say if he did a good job or a bad job.

Can say, in Illinois politics, there's a club.

And you ain't in it.

Because the judge's entire, deeply-sympathetic rationale for cutting Mr. Harris the lightest sentence in Illinois political corruption history was that Mr. Harris was some sort of babe-in-the-woods, browbeaten by a Meany McMeanington boss into doing naughty things, for which Mr. Harris is very, very sorry (from the Tribune again) --

...
Zagel, who also sentenced Blagojevich, went on to express sympathy for Harris and the "dilemma" he faced with a boss who wouldn't be dissuaded from the plots and schemes to corruptly trade on his office and influence for his own financial benefit.

But in the end, Zagel concluded that Harris shouldn't avoid prison time entirely.

"You were much too close to power, and you had an ability either to stop some of the things (or) report what was going on," the judge said.

After a dramatic pause, Zagel then announced his decision — 10 days in prison, perhaps the shortest prison term ever imposed in a public corruption case in Chicago.
...
Harris, who was Blagojevich's chief of staff for three years, testified that at first he objected to some of Blagojevich's crazier ideas, earning him a reputation in the governor's inner circle as a naysayer and acquiring a nickname from Blagojevich — the "Prince of Darkness."

As time went on, Harris testified, he decided to become Blagojevich's sounding board because the governor was increasingly isolated. "There were only so many arrows I could absorb," he told the first jury.
...

-- which is obviously ridiculous.

And finally (and most importantly) because my friends, just in case you need reminding...

There is still a Club (from the Sun-Times)

... The judge also cited what he described as an “unusual set of character reference letters” for Harris, many from prominent figures in city and state political circles. Zagel said he knew at least 10 of the letter writers personally.

And federal prosecutors only had words of praise for Harris. “He was clearly doing everything he could from Day 1” to help authorities build their case, Assistant U.S. Atty. Carrie Hamilton told Zagel.

Still, Harris admitted that he broke the law in a scheme to help Blagojevich try to parlay his power over the Senate appointment into a lucrative private-sector job.

Although he will forever be associated with Blagojevich, whose administration he joined in 2005, Harris had far deeper roots with former Mayor Richard M. Daley. He was a campaign coordinator in a North Side ward for Daley’s 1995 re-election bid and was city budget director and a high-ranking Aviation and Police Department official. He was best known at City Hall for supervising the dead-of-night dismantling of Meigs Field in 2003.

At least two former Daley administration officials — longtime mayoral aide Patrick Harney and chief financial officer Dana Levenson — attended Wednesday’s sentencing to show support for Harris.
...

And you still ain't in it.