Breakfast Panel on Government Reform
The Committee for Economic Development, in partnership with Chicago Appleseed, Business and Professional People in the Public Interest, Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, CHANGE Illinois, Union League Club, and the Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy, offered an interesting panel discussion at a breakfast this Thursday morning: “A New Look at Government Reform and Why it Should Matter to the Next Generation of Business”.
All participants spoke generally about money in politics and the effects of campaign donations on the public trust. I’d like to call attention to just a few sentiments expressed this morning, which I found particularly valuable or resonant.
In her opening remarks, Elspeth Revere from the MacArthur Democracy Program, mentioned that a bad political system devalues the philanthropic currency in our society.
At the end of his portion of the panel discussion, David Hiller of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, spoke about the need for quality civic education and the need for more people to engage meaningfully in our democracy.
David Hoffman, from Sidley & Austin, said that getting elections right is the core of our identity as a democratic nations and that it is vital that our elected officials act in the public interest. Money can corrupt this process by driving down trust in the process, trust in the elected officials and, ultimately, participation in the process.
Landon Rowland of Lead Bank emphasized that we need business to be involved in reform.
Finally, Stephen Beard of Heidrick & Struggles spoke generally about ethics and ethics reform, asking the necessary question whether people recognize the value of preserving the public trust.
The theme emerged that money in politics is causing citizens to disengage from government and civic involvement more and more every year. The March primary last week in Illinois reached the historic low in voter turn-out: merely 16% of registered voters turned out.
The cycle of mistrust and disengagement is particularly vicious in judicial elections. Our courts only work when we trust them and accept their authority as valid. A justice system depends on the trust of the litigants within it. Nearly 15 years ago, the National Center for State Courts found that only 23% of respondents to their survey on public trust in the judiciary had a “great deal of trust” in their local courts. Although there has not been a similar nationwide survey since, various local reports show that the situation is not improving significantly (in a 2012 study in Utah, for instance, 29% of respondents were “very confident” of their courts; in 2005 in California only 20% of respondents were “very confident”).
This morning, the CED panel touched on all the concerns we at Chicago Appleseed have found in our work with judicial campaigns—whether the issue is campaign financing, judicial disqualification and recusal, voter education and engagement, or public confidence in an elected judiciary. It is necessary for reform groups to work with a broad range of constituent groups to create reforms that engender the public trust. It is necessary to cultivate trust in our elections in order to engage more people in the political process. The more people engaged in the political process, the stronger and more representative the process is. And to close the circle, the more representative the political process is, the greater the trust we have in it and in our elected officials.