James E. Walker, who began his career in higher education as an assistant profes-sor at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, is set to become president of SIU October 1. Walker has been president of Middle Tennessee State University since 1991.

George T. Wilkins left his seat on the SIU Board of Trustees. Wilkins was appointed to the board as a Democrat, but this spring drew criticism from some student protesters who contend-ed that his recent primary voting record was Republican, violating the requirement that the board have balanced party representation. Wilkins, who has a home in Indiana, resigned shortly after a law took effect that requires trustees to live in the state. He had been on the board since 1979.

The former chancellor of SIU-Carbondale wants her old job back. Jo Ann Argersinger filed a federal suit last month against current and former SIU administrators. She is seeking rein-statement and damages, claiming that her free speech rights were violated because she was dismissed for pointing out improprieties in insurance billings and contract awards at the school. Argersinger was removed from the chancellor's position in 1999 and returned to her tenured teaching position in the history department. She also maintains that she was dismissed without due process and that her recent pay cut is discriminatory because other administrators have returned to the faculty at their administrative salaries.

APPOINTMENT
Gov. George Ryan appointed former state Rep. Pete Peters of Chicago to chair the Illinois Clean Energy Community Trust. The panel oversees a more than $200 million trust created in 1999 as a condition of Commonwealth Edison's sale of its coal-fired plants to a California company. The trust is designed to help fund clean coal and renewable energy initiatives. Some of the dollars will be designated for the Illinois Citizens Utility Board. Peters' appointment does not require Senate confirmation. He will receive an annual salary of $25,000 for the position.

U of I prof pioneers home-grown soy snacks
If Richard Bernard has his way, snack food addicts may soon have a new alternative to beer nuts. That's because the Japanese snack of cooked soybeans is catching on in this country and this University of Illinois professor emeritus has made it easier for backyard gardeners to grow the nutritional food.

Bernard, a plant breeder at the university's National Soybean Research Lab, has developed six varieties of garden soybeans for harvesting as a table vegetable. "We had over 1,200 requests for the seeds. We ran out and had to take names," he says.

Asians have been eating soybeans as vegetables for more than 2,000 years, says Bernard, but Americans think of them more as an industrial product. The Asian soybean, which tends to be bigger and tastier, does not produce well in the Illinois climate, nor does it have resistance to Illinois insects and diseases. Through crossbreed-ing with local beans, Bernard developed varieties that are at least 50 percent larger and, in some cases, twice as large as Illinois beans. Shiny green with a nutty taste, the soybeans are cooked in the pod, then shelled like peanuts and eaten cold or hot.

"They are easier to cook, easier to digest and have the highest amount of protein of any bean," says Bernard, who hopes some private seed company might take over marketing and distribution.

Scandal by the number
Dean Bauer, the former inspector general under Secretary of State George Ryan, pleaded not guilty last month to new federal charges that he failed to investigate allega-tions of corruption in that office. Bauer's case is expected to go to trial in early December. Federal authorities also charged five more driving school instructors with paying bribes to state employees. The two-year-old Operation Safe Road bribes-for-licenses investigation is ongoing.
Number of people charged in Operation Safe Road: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37*
Number of people who have pleaded guilty: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Number of people convicted in contested cases: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Number of people sentenced: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
*All figures as of mid-August

Another bribes-for-licenses investigation heated up this summer, this time at the Waterloo and Jerseyville licensing facilities in southern Illinois. Federal investigators there have charged Gay Lynn Wielgus of Belleville and Michael A. Fahey Sr. of Bunker Hill with taking bribes for improperly passing applicants for truck driver's licenses. Former secretary of state employee Wielgus transferred to the Illinois Department of Transportation in May. Fahey is on unpaid leave. The Wielgus indictment charges that she granted licenses to some applicants after they made political contributions.

"We tend to talk about him as an Illinois writer. He is one of the finest writers Illinois has ever produced, but his body of work is important on a national and international level," says Barbara Burkhardt, who turned her critical biography of Maxwell over to an agent just two weeks before the writer's death.

Illinois, primarily downstate Lincoln, often served as the backdrop for Maxwell's books, including the American Book Award-winning So Long, See You Tomorrow, a 1980 novel set in 1920 that explores a scandalous murder and its effects on the friendship of two boys.

"He has called Illinois 'his imagination's home,'" Burkhardt says. "Maxwell captured both the provincial nature of the small town in Illinois as well as the beauty of his life there."

Lincoln also played a role when Maxwell chronicled his mother's death during the 1918 influenza epidemic in his 1937 novel They Came Like Swallows. Maxwell's family moved to Chicago after his mother's death, which is mirrored in the action of his 1945 tale of youthful friendship, The Folded Leaf.

Though Illinois figured prominently in Maxwell's fiction, work drew him to the East Coast, where he served as a fiction editor for The New Yorker magazine for 40 years and worked with writers John Cheever, John Updike and Vladimir Nabokov.

"I think with his death, his fiction will come to be known as his greatest contribution to American letters," says Burkhardt, who hopes her biography will advance Maxwell's stature as a fiction writer. "His fiction has been unrecognized in his lifetime, I believe." Maxwell's death came eight days after the death of Emily, his wife of 55 years.

Arlington track on the block
A $100 million offer to buy the state’s premier horse racing venue has a legislator calling for a second look at the controversial 1999 gambling law.

Richard Duchossois agreed to sell Arlington International Racecourse this summer to Louisville, Ky.-based Churchill Downs Inc., owner of the home turf of the prestigious Kentucky Derby race. After the announcement, Rep. Jeff Schoenberg questioned whether Duchossois had planned the deal as he lobbied for passage of the gambling measure. The measure, since signed into law, will cut the owners of horse racing tracks in on tax revenue expected from a new riverboat gambling venue law-makers designated for Cook County. “This taxpayer subsidy significantly boosted the value of Arlington and gives [Duchossois] a considerable windfall,” says Schoenberg. “No legislators were aware that the bill would boost profits from a subsequent sale.” The Evanston Democrat is chair of the House Appropriations Committee. He says he may hold hearings to investigate the timing of the takeover. Duchossois had closed the track in 1997, saying competition from the burgeoning casino business made it unprof-itable. News of its sale came after Arlington reopened on Mothers Day, when about 32,000 well-wishers, including Gov. George Ryan, showed up to try their luck at the ponies. An Arlington spokesman says the sale is part of an ongoing consolidation in the racing industry. Still, if approved by the Illinois Racing Board, this could be a gam-ble that goes sour for Duchossois. Some of his take depends on the opening of a casi-no in Cook County, and that remains in limbo due to two continuing lawsuits.

Edgar-era scandal still has legs
Two judicial rulings revived the ghost of Management Services of Illinois Inc.
• The five unindicted co-conspirators in the MSI Inc. contract scandal were named after a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. They are Michael Belletire, former Gov. Jim Edgar’s deputy chief of staff; Janis Cellini, who was Edgar’s personnel director; Jim Owen, former assistant to Senate President James “Pate” Philip; and Terry Bedgood and Terry Logsdon, aides to former Gov. James Thompson. The Illinois Press Association, The Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune and Copley Press Inc. sued to make the names public because statements from some of them became evidence in the trial of James Berger, a Department of Public Aid admin-istrator charged with helping to defraud the state. Berger was acquitted. The U.S. attorney’s office had argued releasing the names could unfairly burden the five because they hadn’t been charged with a crime and had no chance to clear their names legally.
• U.S. District Judge Richard Mills reduced the restitution Michael Martin and Ronald Lowder owe the state from $12.3 million to $172,000. Mills held prosecutors didn’t prove Martin and Lowder’s actions cost the state any more than that. The two were convicted in the 1997 investigation of a contract between the public aid department and MSI Inc., a Springfield-based data management company.