Life Lessons
The Illinois Review Board has recommended the reinstatement of the former Deputy Chief of Staff of disgraced Governor George Ryan.
The petitioner was placed on interim suspension in 2002 and later consented to disbarment. He was convicted on a plea of guilty to mail fraud and testified as a cooperating witness at the Ryan trial.
The board was impressed with his efforts to turn his life around:
Besides his own rehabilitation, Petitioner has gone to great lengths to ensure that others, future lawyers in particular, do not end up in a similar position.
In 2007, Petitioner was contacted by Henry Shea, a law school professor and former AUSA. In the years since, the two men have done more than two dozen presentations together, mostly to law students at schools across the country, but also to others such as those attending a government ethics conference held by the City of Austin, Texas and students interested in government service attending Minnesota’s Boys State. Through questioning by Professor Shea and questions from his audience, Petitioner tells his story, the consequences that resulted, and the lessons he has learned from this experience. He sums up those lessons in three rules: When you are told concerning something questionable that “everyone is doing it,” or it is necessary to compete or that no one will know, this is a red flag and another perspective is needed. Be prepared to be scrutinized in everything you do and act in a way that you will be able to explain your actions and be proud of them. If you continue to encounter moral dilemmas in your professional life, walk away and get another job. As a corollary he advises his audience to tell the truth, as he recognizes that this is what has given him a second chance.
The Administrator points out that approximately half of these presentations were done to fulfill Petitioner’s probation requirements. We do not consider this to diminish the service that Petitioner has provided. His sentence required him to perform community service. It did not require him, to paraphrase AUSA Collins, to educate others as to how good people could go wrong in a personally embarrassing way. Petitioner has continued to make these presentations long after the early termination of his probation, and intends to continue to do them in the future. Other than two $1,000 honorariums, he and Professor Shea have received no payment except for their expenses.
Petitioner’s presentations with Professor Shea have not been his only efforts to prevent conduct similar to what he engaged in. At the time of his hearing, Petitioner had been employed by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) for ten years and had become its Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, Managing Director of the Contractors Division and a registered lobbyist on ARTBA?s government relations team. In those roles, Petitioner has been responsible for raising awareness of ethics issues within the transportation industry. ARTBA conducts a Young Executives Development Program which brings the organization’s younger “rising stars” to Washington, D.C. to learn about ARTBA and current issues concerning federal policy and transportation. As part of that program, Petitioner moderates a program he began with a former Department of Transportation Inspector General where the ethical and legal issues facing their industry and the importance of adopting ethics and compliance policies at their companies and how to implement them are discussed. Petitioner has also worked with a group from the Federal Highway Administration to put together a model ethics and compliance program for the businesses that are members of ARTBA. In 2010, at the request of the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General’s Office, he arranged a panel session of ARTBA members to present the industry’s perspective on ethics and compliance issues at a conference attended by approximately 400 people.
(Mike Frisch)