My syndicated newspaper column this week takes a look at the Better Government Association’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the governor’s office and Lisa Madigan’s upcoming role.

Madigan will reportedly not be joining the Better Government Association’s lawsuit. Instead, Madigan likely will represent the governor’s office in the case.

Madigan is, per the state constitution, the state’s chief legal officer, and she therefore has the sole authority to represent any state official or office that is sued in an official capacity. The governor’s office can request that the AG appoint a special attorney general to handle this case, but Madigan reportedly will resist.

We got a taste of this sort of thing last fall when Madigan dumped the law firm she had appointed to defend some top Illinois Department of Transportation officials, including Transportation Secretary Tim Martin, in a case of alleged politically motivated firings. Madigan took over the case herself and began doing things that were pretty obviously not in the defendants’ best interests, but were in what she concluded to be the state’s best interests as a whole. For instance, Madigan began negotiations with the plaintiffs in the case to comply with their subpoenas, which Martin and the other defendants previously had fought tooth and nail, contending the subpoenas were “overly broad and burdensome.”

Martin and the other defendants sued, claiming Madigan had a conflict of interest, but a judge ruled in August that Madigan, as the state’s chief legal counsel, was “fully authorized to represent the state in this case.” A couple of months later, a different judge ordered Springfield attorney Mary Lee Leahy to give a deposition in the IDOT firing case, which Martin and his co-defendants had tried to block for months, contending they had an attorney-client privilege. Leahy had advised several state agencies, including IDOT, about hiring practices. After Madigan took over the IDOT case, she concluded there was no attorney-client privilege and didn’t argue against Leahy’s deposition.

The bottom line here is that we very likely will be treated to the spectacle of Lisa Madigan “defending” Rod Blagojevich’s office in a FOIA case where the plaintiffs are using Madigan’s own opinion to make their arguments that the subpoenas should be made public.

It’s gonna get real fun, real soon, campers.