the Chicago Sun-Times in its morning email reports the following;
State lawmakers adjourned for the summer without advancing a bill to merge the Illinois Gaming Board with the state Racing Board into a streamlined Department of Gaming Regulation and Enforcement — one that’s not subject to open meetings that are accessible to the public and press. Gov. JB Pritzker had presented the plan earlier this year, citing efficiency.
.One might ask sarcastically, “What could go wrong?”
Let me take you back to 1969 when Governor Richard B. Ogilvie was sworn into office, taking over from Otto Kerner.
Alexander MacArthur was Ogilvie’s Chief Deputy
Ogilvie asked MacArthur to head up the Racing Board.
MacArthur told me the office was devoid of records.
.Except for a piece of paper lodged behind one of the steam radiators.
On it were initials with numbers by each.
One of them was “OK.”
He figured that might stand for Otto Kerner.
MacArthur called the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“Two young men came over,” he said.
They were Jim Thompson and Sam Skinner.
There is a good biography of Kerner written by former State Rep. Gene Schlickman and Bill Barthart.
Missing from Kerner’s biography, however, is how the corruption probe that led to a former Governor and Federal Circuit Court Judge started.
Should Pritzker succeed in passing his bill to merge all Illinois gambling in one agency, there could be perfectly foreseeable problems in the future.
