Quinn’s Lobbyist Amnesia

Springfield, IL (ECWd) –

Gov’s Chief of Staff becomes top lobbyist- no disclosure on official statement.

Yesterday we presented Pat Quinn’s Economic Disclosures and found absolutely no private sector success reported.  We asked citizens a simple question; Is Governor Quinn completely inept or did he lie on the disclosures?  (Click here for that article)

24 hours later, there appears to be a lot of concerns raised as people point to Quinn’s side businesses that may have required disclosure. But the one thing that stuck out the most was from Quinn’s own campaign spokeswoman.

“There is no disassociation necessary,” Quinn campaign spokeswoman Izabela Miltko said. “

Who is the spokesperson talking about? The Gov’s former Chief of Staff- Jack Lavin.  Bruce Rauner rightly called for Quinn to disassociate himself from Jack Lavin, former Quinn Chief of staff who is now a lobbyist and under federal investigation related to the NRI scandal, among other things.  (Click here for Sun Times article)

Whoa… Jack Lavin is the former Chief of Staff to Gov. Quinn!

Considering Quinn’s Economic Disclosure claims “none” for question number 5 it does raise more concerns that Quinn is not providing truthful responses on mandated electoral documents.

Question 5 on the SEI form – List the identity of any compensated lobbyist with whom the person making the statement maintains a close economic association, including the name of the lobbyist and specifying the legislative matter or matters which are the object of the lobbying activity, and describing the general type of economic activity of the client or principal on whose behalf that person is lobbying.

Considering Jack Lavin is now a lobbyist and Quinn’s own campaign spokeswoman has acknowledged an association with the claim there is no disassociation needed, why was this association not disclosed?

“Why” is a serous question considering Quinn himself claimed he was going to push for legislation that would call for amending the state’s ethics law to impose a blanket one-year ban on top ex-aides lobbying their former colleagues.  (Click here for Quinn’s acknowledgement of the conflict)

“The governor favors amending the law to say that any chief of staff, deputy chief of staff or deputy governor – whether they’re participated in a decision or not – should not be permitted to lobby any official in state government for one year,” Mr. Quinn’s spokeswoman said. “We’re pursuing legislation.”

To our knowledge there has been no legislation pursued to address Quinn’s so called concerns and considering he had these claimed concerns wouldn’t it have been proper to disclose the very association with lobbyist Jack Lavin?

I am confident that most people will agree that when the Governor himself claims  a problem worthy of legislation to stop the well established conflicts and then fails to disclose those associations on his electoral documents the perception is he is hiding something.

Jack Lavin was Quinn’s Chief of staff from December 2010- September 2013 and began his Lobbying firm in February of 2014.

Quinn’s most recent Economic Disclosure statement was signed in April of 2014

You get to be the Judge in November!