It’s time for another round of quick takes on the people, places and events that were being talked about in the news this week: RIP, one of the good guys Illinoisans — indeed, Americans — who like to know how tax money is spent lost their best friend with the recent, sudden death of 55-year-old Adam Andrzejewski (pronounced Angie-F-ski). The leader of openthebooks.com was well known as a dogged investigator of government spending whose reports frequently made local and national news and attracted congressional attention.
He was the scourge of free spending federal, state and local bureaucrats across the country. Andrzejewski, an athlete who ran marathons, was preparing for another big race when he died Aug. 17.
He leaves a wife and three daughters. Dynamic and well spoken — he was a college debater — Andrzejewski represented the best of citizen involvement in government. He made his fortune early in life as an entrepreneur who founded a hugely successful publishing firm that became the nation’s largest publisher of hometown telephone directories.
His fortune made, he left that business after seven years to pursue public life, briefly as a political candidate and later as a nonpartisan watchdog of government spending. His watchdog theme was “Every Dime, Online, In Real Time,” and he and his workers were dogged in pursuit of state spending records. They frequently filed lawsuits to gain access to government checkbooks and published their reports online.
As a consequence, openthebooks.com attracted vast, favorable attention. The Wall Street Journal wrote that OpentheBooks had “fomented a revolution in fiscal transparency.
” Andrzejewski’s enthusiasm, energy and straight-arrow character are just what government at all levels needs most. Moving on It wasn’t a mass prison break, but inmates at the Stateville Correctional Center were on the move last week. A federal judge recently found the dilapidated facility unsafe and ordered its roughly 400 prisoners transferred to other prisons throughout the state.
The judge’s finding, while surprising to some, came in the aftermath of Democratic Gov. J.B.
Pritzker’s announcement that the state will tear down the aging maximum-security Stateville facility as well as the women’s prison in Logan County, and build new prisons in their place. The new Stateville will be built on its existing grounds in Joliet. It’s unclear where the prison replacing the one in Logan County will be built.
There’s a big political fight brewing over the latter. Stateville, which was opened in 1925, has a long and colorful history in state penology. It’s held some of the state’s most notorious criminals, including Richard Speck, Loeb & Leopold, bosses of organized crime and street gangs.
It also was the site for a variety of executions, including that of mass murderer John Wayne Gacy. Honored guest An Illinois Republican received one of the most enthusiastic receptions last week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and it was hardly a surprise. Former U.
S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, whose district included Bloomington, took the stage to rip former president and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump is a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big. He is a faithless man pretending to be righteous,” Kinzinger said.
On and on he went, and the Democrats loved it. Many Republicans who view Trump skeptically have kept their thoughts to themselves. Kinzinger is among a handful of prominent GOP politicians who have broken with Trump.
Former U.S. Rep.
Liz Cheney of Wyoming is another. While denouncing Trump “in terms stronger than any of the Democrats who have taken the stage,” as one newspaper put it, Kinzinger praised the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. He saluted her “allegiance to the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy, and she is dedicated to upholding all three in service to our country.
” Kinzinger was among a handful of Republicans appointed by then-Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve on the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S.
Capitol in Washington, D.C. A fighter pilot, Kinzinger served for 12 years in the House.
He left after 2022, when Democrat congressional map-drawers gerrymandered the state’s U.S. House districts and forced him out.
Spending spree More details about the financial chicanery that devastated Peoria PBS television station WTVP are coming out. The Peoria Journal-Star recently reported that Lesley Matuszak, the former station CEO, embezzled “hundreds of thousands of dollars from the station’s coffers over a two-year period from 2022-23.” It appears, however, that the criminal investigation has been concluded because of Matuszak’s death.
She committed suicide Sept. 28, 2023, just a day after she submitted a shotgun resignation to the station’s board of directors. The CEO’s free spending ways severely damaged the station’s ability to operate.
The J-S reported that it “needed lines of credit in order to survive before her death.” An audit revealed the financial problems, which resulted in widespread station layoffs and the resignation of 11 station board members. Authorities revealed Matuszak treated station finances as her personal piggy bank.
She spent in a variety of ways, including clothing and jewelry, trips, country club dues, political donations and personal medical expenses. Authorities found four ways she abused her position — through credit-card spending, reimbursements, the purchase of “luxury auction items” like jewelry, and transfers out of the station’s investment account. Station finance manager Lin McLaughli, who approved many of the bogus expenditures, left WTVP at the same time as Matuszak.
But authorities did not find evidence of criminal conduct on her part. Pritzker rides media wave Last week was a great time for Democrats, who nominated Vice President Kamala Harris as their 2024 presidential candidate at the Chicago convention. But few politicians have ever had a better week than Pritzker, who hosted the convention, spoke to the nation during prime time and was celebrated as the media’s man of the hour.
It’s impossible to say what that means for his political future — Pritzker hungers to be president someday — but all that glowing media attention can’t hurt. Even The Economist magazine jumped on the Pritzker bandwagon celebrating him with a story headlined, “The ubiquitous J.B.
Pritzker, the man behind the Democrats’ party.” The article went on and on about all of Pritzker’s accomplishments in Illinois and suggested he’s a force to be reckoned with someday in presidential politics. But while lauding Pritzker to a level of which most politicians can only dream, The Economist had a bit of fun at Pritzker’s expense regarding his most obvious personal quality: his weight.
Most media outlets avoid pointing out that Pritzker suffers from no dearth of girth. It’s considered in poor taste. But The Economist’s references, while tongue in cheek, stood out.
“The governor of Illinois is thinking big,” was the story’s subhead. In the story’s text, the reporter said the convention gave Pritzker “the chance to demonstrate his total dominance of Illinois politics, and to test his weight on the national stage.” The article noted that Pritzker made it a point to get around the big four-day party, meeting with state delegations and visiting with political reporters.
It stated that he “flits” from event to event. “Each morning he has eaten three breakfasts with different state delegations” and enjoyed “lunching with political journalists.” He even quoted Pritzker joking about his weight — “He would like Americans to think as big as he is (that joke is his).
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