Somehow, I missed this column today by Mark Brown. It’s a fun read, but the really important stuff is kinda buried. The story is about a lawsuit between two lobbyists with very close connections to Gov. Blagojevich. One allegedly stole an associate and business from the other.

Deep in the column is this nugget:

Other messages contain computer files… including a curious legal opinion… asserting that it would not be a violation of the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Act’s ban on “ex-parte communications” to communicate directly with the governor about pending planning board matters.

As Brown later explains, the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board rules on whether hospitals can expand or add new services and is “at the center of a major scandal involving board member Stuart Levine, who allegedly used his position to shake down applicants.”

The hospitals, which need the board’s permission to build new facilities, aren’t supposed to have any contact with the agency’s board or staff except through tightly restricted channels. Nobody is.

Ever since Blagojevich was first elected, lobbyists with close ties to the governor have been signing up hospital clients by the boatload, “even though those firms are prohibited from directly lobbying the board,” as Brown rightly notes.

So what’s up with that legal opinion? Did Blagojevich-allied lobbyists get around the law by lobbying the governor’s office, which in turn may have put pressure on board members or staff for their buddies’ clients?

That board, by the way, was wired by Tony Rezko from the start. Remember the $25,000 contributions from two board members to the governor’s campaign around the time they were appointed?

It was so putrid over there that the governor was eventually forced to clear the place out and start all over, blaming it all on the Republican Levine and his GOP predecessors.

Brown concludes:

It won’t surprise you to learn that none of the litigants were willing to talk to me about that.

Advice of counsel, you understand.

Yep.

It never ceases to amaze me how often these bitter little lawsuits wind up wreaking all sorts of prosecutorial havoc.