I think this is a great way to get a story. Maybe we're worried about it being a slippery slope, which it is, but as it was done in the story? I'm totally fine with it.
FWIW I've had to deal with a lot of inspectors and similar officials, and I've only been treated unfairly once, but never had the feeling someone expected a bribe. But I'm in a much smaller city. And I guess the relative anonymity the internet provides is enough to change the dynamics; I think in 2023, nobody's afraid to report it. At least, not around here.
You've never lived in a place with endemic corruption. I grew up in India where corruption was a way of life.
Every interaction with a government official of any sort came with the expectation of some sort of bribe being paid. We're not just talking about paying inspectors off to ignore violations, we're talking routine matters. For example, a passport application requires a police verification where the local police visit you to verify your home address and other details. You can get that without paying a bribe but it might take months. Or you can pay a few hundred rupees to "expedite" it. Get pulled over by the cops or caught on the train without a ticket? You can pay the official fine or pay a fraction of that as a bribe. There's a whole coded language around this. They ask if you "want a receipt". Want to get admitted to a good college? You need to make a "donation".
The corruption goes up the chain. Civil servants want to be posted in positions with more bribes to be had. Of course the people making those decisions expect a substantial payoff for the most lucrative postings. Officials who've paid that don't want to disrupt the system they've paid into. You can't prosecute someone because you probably won't find an honest official. Every so often someone does manage to gain some notoriety trying to clean things up only to get torn down by people with a vested interest in things staying the way they are.
To me, that's the scariest part of the brazen corruption at the supreme court, and members of congress who won't do a thing about it because they happen to play for the right team. I don't think we're far from the tipping point where the system can no longer root out corrupt officials the way the city did after this report exposed it.
I'm curious when things get that pervasive how a system wound up in that state. Did it start out that way, did it slowly creep, did it cross over from other societal interactions that predated it.
yah that's an interesting angle, the default is corruption. This mirrors that line of thinking with poverty, which is the default in the state of nature is poverty. Just humans standing about trees and rivers and all the natural resources they start with and choose how to direct and shape from their own free will. The analogy there is the default is corruption in the state of society and people tame their selfish desires and other impulses to erect order and justice and other higher level objectives that unlock even higher level objectives. That's an interesting angle to take I'm going to have to think about that a bit.
For example Egypt is like GP's explanation, that's why when the Arab Spring happened, cops were beating up protestors; the cops were part of the corrupt system and were eager to defend it/themselves.
>but never had the feeling someone expected a bribe
I've only ever had one experience that toed the line of a situation where an inspection approval hinged on something totally unrelated to the results of an inspection. It was the final inspection to receive our CO for our office space. Every inspection up until then was done by inspectors that were courteous and professional, and was beyond my expectations of how the process could have gone. The final inspection was done by none other than the Fire Marshall himself. Not someone from the office of. At the end of the inspection, he said every thing looks good and sees no issues, except.... Our office space was in a large building with other commercial offices as well as residential space on the upper floors. Apparently, the city and the building owner had been going back and forth with updates to required exit signs and other items that are necessary for commercial but not for residential spaces. The city had decided the owner was not holding up his end of the deals, and the Fire Marshall decided to hold our CO hostage over these other deals that had nothing to do with us. We had to call in a few favors to get this resolved, and had we not had a particular contact available to us, there's no telling how long we'd have needed to wait vs the less than 48 hours it did take
I mean "I can't sign off on your office because the building you are in isn't compliant" seems like a fine reason to me even it's mostly outside of what you can directly do.
The tiff was over if a mixed use residential/commercial space needed exit signs. The building wanted the tenets to pay, the tenets wanted the building to pay. Remove the CO for those spaces that are not in compliance, but there's no need to hold hostage a space this is fully compliant. The building itself was compliant within the common spaces. If a new commercial occupant moved into a space previously used as residential unit without an exit sign above the only door, the unit needed to have a sign installed. The wiring and mount was already there. It just needed the sign. This was just being handled poorly and in a petty manner.
First let me say that it's a decent bar, a good place to spend s snowy afternoon. Second, not as much now but 20+ years ago way too many City of Chicago employees were on the take and had an expectation that they were going to get something free to make the inspection go smoothly. It didn't have to be much, it was usually "lunch for the boys" for their trouble. If thy didn't get their free lunch then the little nit picky stuff started popping up, stuff that really didn't matter but could jam you up. You alternative was to use your clout and all the little shit went away -it is the Chicago way.
In the 80's my dad went to school in Iowa with a fellow from the Chicagoland area. The guy got pulled over for speeding and, per standard procedure, gave the cop his license, registration, proof of insurance, and some cash.
He had a court date and had to explain that's simply how things are handled where he grew up.
As recently as the 90's you had to pay the desk SGT if you wanted to be the traffic cop on Lake Shore Drive because you'd make so much money from "tips" that everyone wanted a cut.
In many places, you either pass the inspection by actually meeting the requirements, or offer a bribe and get closeish to meeting the requirements.
Assuming you're a good citizen who only calls the inspectors over when you're pretty sure you have done everything necessary to pass, then you will never get the opportunity to pay a bribe.
I have found that localities in the U.S. are very different when it comes to this kind of behavior. It is part of the friction of doing business in that you don't know what is actually required to get anything done.
That said, I also do business outside of the U.S. and it is dramatically different trying to figure out how to get anything done in some countries and how much extralegal activity is necessary.
Incredible the negative impact of contemporary fears about journalistic integrity. Fact is they exposed corruption across the city using the only way possible.
Yeah, it seems like the journalist community shot themselves in the foot there. It's not just the limited effects of a single bar, but the fear that "this bar could be owned by a newspaper" would create amongst inspectors. Knowing that there's lots of people working hard to catch you out is bound to increase honesty amongst inspectors.
> In addition to being close to the Sun-Times offices, the bar came with an unexpected perk—a business broker who informed Pam and Bill he would help them cheat on their taxes and buy off officials.
...
> [...] he was going to steer us through the process of getting licensed and getting inspected and getting our inspections approved—he would be contacting the building inspector and the fire inspector and whatever inspector we would have to deal with and we should leave an envelope with a certain amount of cash, and he told us what the cash amount should be for each inspector.
...
> [...] And we looked at the entrapment laws because we knew people would say it was entrapment.
> Pam: The rule we followed the whole time was not to say anything, or pressure anybody to do anything they weren’t normally inclined to do.
I don't understand how they go from hiring a guy to bribe inspectors for them (or teach them to bribe inspectors), to saying they have a rule "not to say anything, or pressure anybody". If I understand correctly the reporters were the ones initiating the bribery, offering the envelopes of money (as opposed to the inspectors initiating by asking for the money). So I can see how the question of entrapment is complicated in this case.
> I don't understand how they go from hiring a guy to bribe inspectors for them (or teach them to bribe inspectors), to saying they have a rule "not to say anything, or pressure anybody".
They didn't say they wanted to bribe people. Rather, someone assumed they were going to play along and told them to do these things. They just did what they were told and played along. They just included an envelope. Things that shouldn't pass were passed. They didn't say "Hey, here is the envelope of cash, that should pay for the mess back there."
That's effectively how it's done.
Basically, if an inspector came along and refused to take the money and/or refuse to pass them, they would have accepted the refusal to be passed and most likely fixed the issue to get passed. Or end the story.
As for "hiring a guy," he came associated with the place, and effectively offered to do the work for them. They didn't seek him out. He approached them, and they just say "Ok" and played along.
Bribe-accepting officials don't tell you that you must pay them cash in an envelope. That's carelessly brazen. Or, if they do, it's only after extra weeks of nudging. They might take pity on someone completely naive... there's no need to be cruel to those who don't know the rules of the game. So after a month or two of being shut down, and the dumbass not taking hints, maybe they whisper something when there are no witnesses. Maybe after poking around and making sure that they're not some undercover cop or fed.
But after years of this, systems develop organically to minimize the need. Others who aren't inspectors (a savvy real estate agent) but do know the rules step in. They let the rubes know what's up. And if someone accuses them, they've committed no bribes, they're just pointing out the existence of the bribery and providing free advice on how to navigate it (it's fair to assume some get kickbacks, but good luck figuring out those details).
They ran into one of those guys early. They didn't set out to hire anyone to do it. He offered for free.
I got a journalism degree from Medill (Northwestern University). We had to write an ethics paper, and I twisted the assignment a bit so I could write about The Mirage after I learned about it.
As I researched it (pre-Internet, 1990), I was shocked to discover that my professor worked with the the reporters on the case as one of the key investigators. She’s a lawyer and still at NU: Mindy Trossman. That made my job a lot harder; no bullshitting her! Still eked out an A-.
I grew up watching Pam Zekman on Chicago news, and doing that paper gave me much more respect for her.
Students may dread paper assignments, but I can think of several that taught me quite a lot and made me more open-minded.
