North Cook News

Veteran state Rep. Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) wants voters to read between the lines when it comes to assessing the ethics reform package now being advanced by Democratic lawmakers in Springfield.

“Voters should be cautious about legislation that grabs a headline or seemingly checks a box without actually doing anything substantial,” Morrison told the North Cook News.

With longtime House Speaker Mike Madigan now at the center of a widening federal corruption probe involving utility giant ComEd and a pay-for-play scheme, a group of Democratic lawmakers is now pushing a package of nine reform measures they insist will quickly lead to the kind of culture change in Springfield most agree is critically needed. Topping the list of proposals are measures that would ban legislators from becoming lobbyists, require greater financial disclosures, establish a censure process, make the legislative inspector general more independent, and institute term limits.

“Every year, every legislator must complete and pass an ethics test, and yet, in just the past two years, three Democratic state senators have been criminally implicated, a Democratic state representative has resigned under charges of bribery and the nation’s longest serving House Speaker is under federal investigation,” Morrison added. “The voters have said they’ve had enough of the public corruption, but they cannot continue to vote in the very local lawmakers that maintain the Democratic one-party rule in Springfield.”

In the meantime, Morrison laments Madigan continues to call all the shots.  

“With the current House rules, the House speaker alone determines which bills will move forward to get a vote,” he said. “That means he and his team will determine which new ethics rules they can live with. It’s just like campaign finance laws. They wrote into state law loopholes large enough for a truck to drive through.”

Morrison thinks he’s come to realize why Gov. J.B. Pritzker is among those blindly showing their allegiance to Madigan.  

The governor needed the speaker and his robust campaign operation to get elected,” he said. “He needed the Speaker to help muscle through his legislative agenda in his first two years. His reluctance to call for the speaker’s immediate resignation might be because it would harm Democratic state and local campaigns in the upcoming election.”