By HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com

CHICAGO – Commonwealth Edison’s top attorney was busy preparing for the General Assembly to take up major legislation the utility had spent months negotiating when ComEd’s top in-house lobbyist stopped by his office in late October 2011.

A little over 13 years later, the attorney, Tom O’Neill, recounted the episode on the witness stand in a federal courtroom on Monday as the seventh witness in the corruption trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. 

O’Neill, who spent nearly two decades at ComEd and its parent company Exelon, described the days and weeks leading up to the critical vote as a “very intense” time. But as the lobbyist, John Hooker, closed the door to O’Neill’s office and sat down, he wasn’t checking in on ComEd’s legislative efforts on the bill that the utility’s executives believed could turn the tide for the financially beleaguered company.

“After some pleasantries, he said, ‘Tom, we need to move on this Victor Reyes thing,’” O’Neill testified under questioning from a federal prosecutor. “He said it was important, we need to get it done and we need to get it done now.”

Earlier that summer, O’Neill had met with Chicago-based lawyer Victor Reyes about ComEd contracting with his firm, Reyes Kurson. But O’Neill put the issue on the back burner because he hadn’t yet identified any specific work the firm could do for the utility, even as ComEd’s top external lobbyist, Mike McClain, pestered him periodically about a contract for Reyes in the intervening months.

Plus, O’Neill said, he was swamped with ComEd’s efforts to override then-Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto on the bill known as the Energy Infrastructure Modernization Act, also referred to as “Smart Grid.”

After Hooker’s visit, however, O’Neill prioritized finalizing the contract, which guaranteed a minimum of 850 billable hours for Reyes Kurson annually – a fixed amount of work that was atypical for most contracts ComEd’s legal department entered into with outside firms.

The day after the contract was executed, lawmakers overrode Quinn’s veto on ComEd’s bill. It would be another four years until O’Neill learned that hiring Reyes’ law firm was politically significant, he testified on Monday.

Federal prosecutors allege ComEd’s contract with Reyes Kurson was part of the utility’s yearslong bribery scheme meant to influence Madigan. Instead of envelopes of cash, the feds claim, ComEd gave jobs and contracts to the speaker’s allies in exchange for greenlighting several key pieces of legislation that benefited the utility.

Reyes was one of Madigan’s political allies, and on Monday, O’Neill testified that he later realized that Reyes was “a prolific fundraiser for the Democratic Party of Illinois” – the state party apparatus chaired by the speaker.

O’Neill’s testimony, which will continue Tuesday, was at times almost word-for-word the same as his appearance on the witness stand in March 2023 in a related trial. That trial ended with the convictions of the so-called “ComEd Four” for their roles in bribing Madigan. The four included McClain, Hooker, a third lobbyist and O’Neill’s former boss, ex-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore.

Now, Madigan stands trial alongside his longtime friend and advisor McClain, both facing bribery and racketeering charges that stretch beyond the ComEd allegations into a similar, albeit smaller, alleged bribery scheme with AT&T Illinois. A jury last month deadlocked and a mistrial was declared in the trial of AT&T Illinois’ former president. The feds also allege Madigan illegally used his political power to get work for his property tax law firm.

McClain played an even bigger – and “rather persistent,” as O’Neill put it – role in renegotiating Reyes Kurson’s contract in 2016. With the exception of 2013, Reyes Kurson never actually exceeded the 850 annual billable hours it was promised in its original contract.

“If we are pushed for another agreement, one thing is clear – 850 hours (is) way, way too many,” ComEd attorney Stacy O’Brien wrote to O’Neill in September 2015. “We just do not have that much work for them.”

But after O’Brien later told Reyes Kurson that ComEd intended to cut the firm’s hours in the next contract, O’Neill said the reaction was swift.

“What happened after that?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker asked O’Neill.

“We heard from Mike McClain,” he said.

In January 2016, in the middle of extensive negotiations on legislation that would eventually become known as the “Future Energy Jobs Act,” McClain wrote a lengthy email to O’Neill detailing Reyes Kurson’s history of billable hours worked for ComEd.  

“Do you intend to offer something less than 850 per year or could you give me some idea?” McClain wrote. “I know I will hear about it no matter what.”

When Streicker asked O’Neill what he believed McClain meant when he wrote in his email that he knew he’d “hear about it no matter what,” O’Neill said he took it to mean McClain would hear about the billable hours issue from either Reyes or Madigan.

In addition to O’Neill, McClain had copied both Hooker and Fidel Marquez, who had taken over as ComEd’s most senior in-house lobbyist after Hooker officially retired and transitioned into a contract lobbying arrangement with the utility. In response, Marquez replied with advice for his colleagues to “keep in mind” that ComEd also had a contract with the Roosevelt Group, a political consulting firm also owned by Reyes.

“The same but different ????” Marquez wrote.

“Different arrangement,” McClain wrote back minutes later.

After two days without a response from O’Neill, McClain then wrote an admonishing email to Pramaggiore, urging her to get involved with the Reyes Kurson contract renewal or else “provoke a reaction from our Friend” – a nickname McClain used often when referring to Madigan.

“I know the drill and so do you. If you do not get involve and resolve this issue of 850 hours for his law firm per year then he will go to our Friend,” McClain wrote of Reyes. “Our Friend will call me and then I will call you. Is this a drill we must go through?”

Pramaggiore responded to McClain’s email apologizing that she hadn’t been informed and saying she was “on this.”

Later that day, Pramaggiore forwarded McClain’s email to O’Neill without adding anything to the body of the email.

Instead of responding to that email forward, however, O’Neill replied one minute later by forwarding to Pramaggiore his earlier email exchange regarding the Roosevelt Group’s contract with ComEd.

When Streicker asked O’Neill why he’d done that, he said he wanted Pramaggiore to see he was now aware that Reyes had two contracts with ComEd, though he used less strident language than in his testimony last year when O’Neill said he felt Reyes was “double dipping.”

“Because I was in the situation of being pressured to renew his law firm contract,” O’Neill explained Monday. “And Victor already had a contract through a different channel with ComEd and that was significant to me.”

But the Reyes Kurson contract renewal saga stretched on through the winter, spring and into the summer of 2016, as evidenced by the dozens more emails shown to the jury in which McClain kept pushing for updates and for the firm to get a guaranteed number of billable hours per month. 

McClain also indicated in several emails that he was keeping Madigan apprised of the Reyes Kurson contract negotiations, and O’Neill testified that he found it “unusual” that the “Speaker of the Illinois House would be interested in” guaranteeing an additional “10 hours a month for the Reyes Kurson law firm.”

Asked whose interests McClain seemed to be representing, O’Neill said ComEd’s longtime contract lobbyist “seemed like he was on both sides of this.”

O’Neill also recounted the months he spent at the negotiating table hammering out deals on the 2011 “Smart Grid” bill, follow-up legislation in 2013 and FEJA, which ultimately passed the General Assembly and was signed into law in late 2016.

His continued testimony Tuesday is expected to cover other requests McClain made for jobs and contracts for other Madigan allies, including the nearly two-year push to get Juan Ochoa seated on ComEd’s board of directors in 2017 and 2018.

O’Neill will then sit through cross-examination by defense attorneys for Madigan and McClain. In similar questioning from McClain’s and Pramaggiore’s lawyers last spring, O’Neill confirmed that he never intended to bribe Madigan by contracting Reyes Kurson.

 

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.