By:
Elizabeth Grossman, Executive Director, Common Cause Illinois
Alisa Kaplan, Executive Director, Reform for Illinois
Ryan Tolley, Executive Director, CHANGE Illinois
On Friday, June 13, former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison for bribery, conspiracy, and other corruption charges. It’s just the latest chapter in our state’s long, sordid history of elected officials betraying the public trust.
With scandals like this at home and growing cynicism about our political system nationwide, Illinois’ leaders should be delivering real reform that tackles corruption and boosts faith in our government. Instead, they’ve given us self-serving stunts and hollow rhetoric.
In the final hours of Springfield’s legislative session last month, state Senate President Don Harmon effectively killed an election bill by including a provision that would have rescued him from up to $9.8 million in potential fines for campaign finance violations. The bill failed after a rare rebellion by rank-and-file lawmakers who refused to vote for it.
When asked about Harmon’s last-minute maneuver, Governor Pritzker – who has been vocal about corruption in Washington D.C. – defended the senate president, praising his ethical standards and claiming that he had “been constantly working with me and with the legislature on better ethics legislation.”
That’s news to us. It’s been four years since the General Assembly passed any significant ethics legislation, and that 2021 bill was riddled with loopholes and did little to address the harmful coziness between legislators and lobbyists, enforce conflict of interest rules, or empower government watchdogs to do their jobs. The Legislative Inspector General at the time, Carol Pope, resigned in protest, saying the bill proved that “true ethics reform is not a priority” for the statehouse.
Both Governor Pritzker and legislators described the legislation as a “first step,” with the governor vowing to “push for [more] every single year that I’m in office.”
They haven’t kept that promise.
This year, several strong proposals had broad support from individual lawmakers, yet there was not a single hearing on any of them. That was largely because of opposition from the Senate, House Ethics and Elections Committee Chair Maurice West recently told the Chicago Tribune. The bills included:
• HB 2795, toughening conflict of interest rules for lawmakers
• HB 3696, making the Legislative Inspector General’s office, which investigates ethics complaints against legislators, more independent and transparent
• HB 1385, a “revolving door” ban requiring legislators to wait three years after leaving the General Assembly before becoming lobbyists
• HB 3698, regulating Super PACs to prevent abuse of our campaign finance laws
These aren’t outlandish ideas that merit years of stonewalling. They’re common sense reforms that would help bring Illinois’ embarrassingly flimsy ethics rules in line with other states’.
Part of the problem is the way Springfield handles ethics and elections legislation. Instead of having open hearings and votes for each bill – standard practice in other states – our lawmakers meet behind closed doors to decide what to include in an “omnibus” bill. These big, complicated bills typically surface in the last couple days of session, leaving little time for debate.
Eleventh hour omnibus packages are perfect for sneaking in shady provisions like Harmon’s. They can also hold good legislation hostage. When Rep. Kelly Cassidy and other lawmakers rightfully called out Harmon’s amendment, they torpedoed the entire bill, including some positive measures that would have expanded voter access.
We agree with Rep. Cassidy that it’s time to consider treating ethics and elections bills individually, with public discussion and votes, rather than dumping them into a multi-part Frankenbill that’s crafted in secret and introduced in the final hours of the session. This is even more important when it comes to ethics bills, which are supposed to be about transparency and accountability.
The General Assembly has adjourned for the summer, but there’s still time to make this right. In the coming months, we urge Governor Pritzker and other leaders to match their big talk with action. Give these long-overdue, corruption-fighting measures the consideration they deserve, and do it in a way that rebuilds trust instead of destroying it. Our state’s future depends on it, because as Sen. President Harmon recently put it: “We cannot be effective if people don’t trust us.”
With our democracy in crisis and yet another Illinois politician facing prison time, it’s not time for business as usual. It’s time for our state leaders to step up to their responsibility, put the people’s interests over their personal interests, and finally deliver real change. Illinoisans will be watching.