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By MIKE ROBINSON
AP Legal Affairs Writer | Thursday, December 15, 2005 | (No comments posted.)
CHICAGO | The director of the computer department in the secretary of state's office under George Ryan testified Wednesday that IBM lobbyists helped him get the job and he assured them that he thought the office should switch to a multimillion-dollar IBM computer.
Once hired, he played a major part in the conversion from an old, overloaded computer to a $25 million IBM model, Frank Cavallaro told jurors hearing the former governor's racketeering and fraud trial.
Federal prosecutors say Ryan's decision to buy the IBM computer shows how an elite circle of well-connected Ryan friends, including co-defendant Larry Warner, made money off state contracts and leases when Ryan was Illinois secretary of state.
Ryan, 71, and Warner, 67, are charged with racketeering, mail fraud and other offenses. The indictment says Ryan steered contracts and leases and got gifts and free vacations in return.
Ryan and Warner say nothing they did was illegal.
Testifying under immunity from prosecution, Cavallaro said lobbyist Robert Kjellander asked over lunch in 1991 if he wanted to be in charge of the newly elected Ryan's computer department.
Kjellander, now treasurer of the Republican National Committee, has been accused of no wrongdoing. In 1991, he was IBM's lobbyist at the Statehouse in Springfield and Cavallaro was an employee of the state's Department of Central Management Services.
Cavallaro said he was eager to move up to a job supervising 200 other employees.
Before Ryan offered him the job, though, he was interviewed by Warner and medical lobbyist Donald Udstuen, a Ryan political adviser, both of whom ended up getting IBM lobbying fees.
Cavallaro said the men told him they believed it was time to switch to IBM.
"I agreed with them," Cavallaro told Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary T. Fardon.
Reached at his office in Springfield on Wednesday afternoon, Kjellander said he had recommended Cavallaro and maybe others when asked for a candidate to serve as computer chief.
He said the request for such a recommendation probably came from Udstuen, although he wasn't certain after 14 years. He said he couldn't remember if he took Cavallaro to lunch.
"You have to remember I was patronage chief under (Gov.) Jim Thompson -- people asked me for personnel referrals all the time," Kjellander said.
Cavallaro testified that the secretary of state's office was facing a computer crisis when he was hired in 1992. He said the Honeywell Bull computer Ryan inherited, which police and others relied on for driver information, was badly overloaded and in danger of breaking down.
And Honeywell Bull was telling the secretary of state's office that it would no longer service the computer or provide spare parts, Cavallaro testified.
He said he nursed the overloaded computer along using a "band-aid approach" until 1995, when Ryan's office began the conversion to the new IBM computer.
Cavallaro said that at a meeting with Udstuen and Ryan chief of staff Scott Fawell in 1995 they decided to hire an outside consultant "to validate the process" of switching to IBM.
Andersen Consulting was brought in and worked with a committee of technical experts in the secretary of state's office to produce a report recommending the conversion to IBM, he said.
Cavallaro also said he did not know that Warner and Udstuen were getting IBM lobbying fees.
But earlier, Udstuen testified that Kjellander came to him, said he might not be the best person to lobby Ryan and asked for the name of another lobbyist to help win the contract.
Udstuen testified that he recommended Warner, who had no lobbying experience but was a close friend of Ryan and promised to share whatever fees he earned with the medical lobbyist.
Udstuen testified that Warner sent him as much as $385,000 in fees from IBM and another company and that he laundered the money through a firm owned by a longtime consultant friend.
Udstuen has pleaded guilty to tax fraud conspiracy and is awaiting sentencing.
Questioned by Ryan attorney Julie Bauer, Cavallaro said that he genuinely believed the state was right to buy the IBM system. He said only a few states anywhere in the nation at the time were using anything other than IBM-compatible systems for driver records and the like.
Bauer also elicited the information that state law at the time did not require officials to seek competitive bids when purchasing computers.
The latest from George Ryan's trial
WEDNESDAY: The computer chief in the secretary of state's office under Ryan testified that IBM lobbyists screened him before he was hired and he assured them that he believed the office should get rid of its old computer and convert to a new IBM model. Testifying under immunity from prosecution, Frank Cavallaro told how he helped to engineer the conversion to a $25.8 million IBM system that meant lobbying fees for Ryan co-defendant Larry Warner and adviser Donald Udstuen.
TODAY: The trial wraps up week No. 12 with prosecutors saying they hope to rest the government's case by Jan. 15 with a week off between Christmas and New Year's. Before the weekend break, they hope to put former Cook County Republican Party Chairman Manny Hoffman on the stand.
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