* The Tribune points out the glaring loophole in Illinois “revolving door” prohibition. The prohbition doesn’t work because waivers are too easy to get…

Last week, tollway chief Brian McPartlin announced that he was leaving to become a vice president of McDonough Associates, an engineering and architectural firm that has received more than $30 million in tollway contracts while McPartlin was in charge. He’s asking the state ethics commission for a waiver of the one-year rule, and he’ll almost certainly get it.

Per tollway rules, McPartlin played no role in the McDonough contracts, an agency spokeswoman says. And that’s likely good enough to satisfy the toothless law. Since 2005, 14 applications for waivers have been filed; only one was denied.

In seven of those cases, the ethics commission determined the applicant wasn’t substantially involved in a contract or regulatory decision that directly affected a prospective employer. That’s a pretty squishy requirement, especially when applied to agency chiefs, who are running the show regardless of who makes the day-to-day decisions. Does your boss need to be in the room to influence your decision-making? Probably not. Does that mean he’s not a player? Ha. […]

Granting waivers to employees who can demonstrate they have no conflict of interest sounds fair, in principle. But the law’s wording is so loose that it applies to only the most egregious conflicts, which is not to say that McPartlin’s situation is among them. But if Illinois is serious about stopping the revolving door, it needs to be more realistic about what constitutes a conflict of interest, and less generous about granting waivers. A prohibition doesn’t mean much if you can get a waiver simply by asking for one. [emphasis added]

Exactly.

* Speaking of ethics, the AP takes a nuanced approach to Barack Obama’s claims that he shepherded an earlier ethics bill through the GA…

“When I was in Illinois, I passed the toughest ethics reform in 25 years there, despite the opposition of Democrats and Republicans,” the Democratic presidential candidate told a New Hampshire audience last month.

In fact, Obama was part of an ensemble that negotiated the legislation and built support for it. And the ethics bill passed by lopsided margins of 52-4 in the Senate and 102-3 in the House, although its riskier moments came earlier during those behind-the-scene negotiations that Obama was heavily involved in.

As always with ethics bills, the behind-the-scenes negotiations are the most important part.

* The sticking point on this particular bill was the state’s practice of allowing politicians to convert all of their campaign funds to personal use. The old bulls, who controlled the process, made it clear that they wouldn’t move any bill that contained that language. So, they were essentially bought off with a “grandfather clause” that allowed the old-timers to keep their cash…

The grandfather clause allowed Illinois politicians to continue making personal use of a combined $15 million, an Associated Press analysis showed. Obama was eligible to convert just $14,000 to personal use and chose not to do so.

Obama’s campaign says the loophole was vital to the bill’s success. “Making the law apply retroactively was a poison pill that … would have killed the bill,” said spokesman Justin DeJong.

That’s true. Many old-timers didn’t see a need for an ethics bill at all, let alone one stripped “their money” from their pocketbooks.

Still, critics are right that the bill wasn’t exactly the be-all-end-all that Obama proclaims.