By Robert Heuer
“You look like you should be running this place,” remarked one cell mate, a convicted burglar. “What you in for?”
The two-and-a-half-week trial, in the spring of 1997, provided a first-ever glimpse at the inner workings of the powerful ISTHA. Prosecutors called 20 witnesses, including top officials from the Du Page County Republican Party. But their testimony was often confusing and sometimes contradictory. Most of the witnesses danced around the fact that awarding contracts to the politically connected is normal tollway business.
Outrage had been the public posture of tollway officials ever since Hickman tendered his resignation. The scandal signaled a new beginning, they said, a housecleaning of old practices. During the trial even Neal Thompson, the government’s lawyer, conceded that the toll authority was “absolutely rife with influence peddling.” Last fall the agency’s spokesman told me the Hickman era was “ancient history.”
Two days later, Hickman got a call from his attorney: there would be no new trial. He wouldn’t get another chance to tell his side of the story.
Hickman was friendly, sitting erect behind a big wooden desk that was impeccably polished and devoid of clutter. There was a telephone, a brass lamp, and a miniature statue of a horse with a golf bag holding a collection of calling cards. Perched next to Hickman’s nameplate was a Christmas photo of Jim Edgar and his family.
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Hickman bluntly explained why ISTHA is a preferred avenue for major road construction projects, rather than the Illinois Department of Transportation. “We don’t have all that bureaucratic nonsense.” Indeed, ISTHA was set up to function more like an efficient business than a plodding government agency. Toll roads are privately funded through revenue bonds paid off with tolls, or “user fees.” While tax-supported agencies help lay the groundwork for these roads, no federal or state tax dollars are spent by ISTHA in its day-to-day operations, so it avoids the budgetary and oversight constraints affecting other public agencies. In fact, it’s operated in such secrecy that even its acronym remains outside the public’s consciousness.
