Yesterday, the so-called ComEd Four were convicted. The four included a former state legislator and long-time lobbyist who was a big friend of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a couple of ComEd1 executives, including a former CEO, and a lobbyist who worked for ComEd for 30 years. The charges were basically bribery by ComEd. Here is a description from the Chicago Tribune:
“The indictment alleged the four conspired to funnel $1.3 million in payments to ghost ‘subcontractors,’ largely through Doherty’s company, who were actually Madigan’s cronies.
The utility also hired a clouted law firm run by political operative Victor Reyes, distributed numerous college internships within Madigan’s 13th Ward fiefdom, and blatantly backed former McPier chief Juan Ochoa, the friend of a Madigan ally, for an $80,000-a-year seat on the utility’s board of directors, the indictment alleged.
In return, prosecutors say, Madigan used his influence over the General Assembly to help ComEd score a series of huge legislative victories that not only rescued the company from financial instability but led to record-breaking, billion-dollar profits.”
Personally, I always find it amazing, after every conviction of an Illinois politician, lobbyist, etc., how those who remain say not only that we must do better but that we already are. Senate President Don Harmon and House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch both did that on Tuesday after the convictions of the ComEd 4, talking about the new ethics laws they have passed.
But does anybody really believe things are going to be any different? Senate President Harmon said, “I believe we have people committed to behaving better.” I haven’t seen any difference since January of 2020 when Senator Harmon took over as Senate president. Certainly, the indictments have kept on coming. Speaker Welch said that since he was elected Speaker, “restoring trust in government was paramount.” But what was he doing during his eight years in the House before he was elected Speaker and Michael Madigan was in charge?
Governor J.B. Pritzker weighed in, too. But while new ethics and other laws are nice, just because something isn’t illegal doesn’t make it right. For example, when Illinois adopted a $500,000 limit on the amount a person could contribute to an Illinois Supreme Court race, the governor promptly contributed $500,000 from one of his pockets to each of the Illinois Supreme Court faces last year and another $500,000 to each race from another of his pockets. It wasn’t illegal, but was it right?
A hundred years ago, William Allen White said of Illinois: “Under primary, under convention, under a despotism or under a pure democracy, Illinois would be corrupt and crooked. … It is in the blood of the people.” I don’t think that is true of everybody in Illinois, but it has been, and still seems to be. true of our political class. And I have no reason to think it is going to change any time soon.
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1 ComEd is our local, electric utility
2 Edmund F. Kallina, Jr., Court-House Over White House: Chicago and the Presidential Election of 1960 (1988), p. 5.
UPDATE (5/5/23 10:20 am): A very lightly edited version of this post, excluding the first four paragraphs, which I included here as background, appeared in the "Voice of the People" in today's Chicago Tribune. See it here.
FURTHER UPDATE (5/8/2023 9:40 am): I added a link to a Wikipedia article on William Allen White.
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