Bringing Ethics to Illinois’ Animal House
After over three decades of gathering power, former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan was a deserving target in 2017 when 300 women complained about Springfield’s frat house culture and the fact the former speaker had allowed the office charged with handling harassment claims to remain vacant for more than two years. Madigan’s inaction allowed 27 complaints to pile up.
Instead of assuming responsibility, Madigan’s fix was to hire a former federal prosecutor, Julie Porter, who was serving as the interim legislative inspector general.
Porter stepped into that interim role full of motivation and hope.
“I can make a difference here,” she said in a 2017 interview.
Two years later, that hope was gone.
“The office of the legislative inspector general in Illinois is broken,” Porter wrote in 2019.
Porter resigned in frustration, and in 2019 former appellate justice Carol Pope was named as the first permanent legislative inspector general in four years. She wasn’t very permanent, filing her resignation in July because her job was “essentially a paper tiger.”
She told lawmakers their weak attempt at ethics reform in May was why she was quitting.
“I thought I could be useful in improving the public’s view of the legislature and help bring about true ethics reform. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do so. This last legislative session demonstrated true ethics reform is not a priority,” she wrote.
In hindsight, Madigan must have known the role was worthless, so what was the point in filling it? He made it that way with the tacit blessing of the fraternity.
And he never bothered with any ethics reforms, because he knew many state lawmakers liked living in Animal House.
But proclamations were made about the mandate for reform after the ComEd bribery scandal, and losses in the November 2020 elections toppled Madigan. State lawmakers passed an ethics package in May and Gov. J.B. Pritzker certified the bill Oct. 8.
State Rep. Mike Murphy, R-Springfield, was unimpressed.
"We moved an inch when we need to move a mile. We need to be able to have the inspector general do the work they need to do."
Pritzker was also lukewarm.
“We must restore the public’s trust in our government and this legislation is a necessary first step to achieve that goal. I remain committed to making further advancements so the well-connected and well-protected cannot work the system to the detriment of working families across Illinois,” Pritzker’s office said in a press release Aug. 27.
“First step.” Lots of folks in Illinois keep repeating that phrase, kind of like a prayer of hope. And hopefully not like Porter’s early hope.
Here’s what we will get from “Illinois ethics reform” when it takes effect Jan. 1, 2022.
The legislative inspector general will no longer need permission from the lawmakers she is charged with keeping honest to probe their dark dealings and misdeeds, as long as it is within a year of the violation.
But what the paper tiger really needs is the ability to issue subpoenas for documents and witnesses; to publish findings of wrongdoing without first seeking permission from lawmakers; and to enact Pope’s suggestion to add an independent person to the eight lawmakers who oversee the inspector general.
Lawmakers will not be able to lobby their former peers for six months after they resign. But that only applies to the same General Assembly they just quit. If they quit the day before the new General Assembly begins, they are free to lobby the next day.
What Illinois needs is to keep lawmakers out of the Statehouse for at least a year after they quit. Better yet, keep them out for two years like many other states do.
Lawmakers will be required to provide more financial information about assets and debts over $10,000 and income over $7,500 to potentially reveal conflicts of interest. But it’s still possible to hide conflicts if financial assets are listed under a spouse or child’s name – that needs fixing.
Lawmakers, executive constitutional officers and elected leaders of units of local governments will be barred from being employed as lobbyists while in office under certain circumstances. But loopholes exist, with lawmakers able to open their own shops to avoid the prohibition against joining a big firm, and then they could lobby other units of government.
They call it a first step. They pledge there are more reforms to come.
But we of little faith recognize those passages from the Book of Madigan. He may be gone, but it will take persistent, ardent reformers to ensure Illinois doesn’t settle for a Madigan version of “change.”
Brad Weisenstein is the managing editor at the Illinois Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization.
