* Crain’s has an interesting piece on House Speaker Michael Madigan this week. The money graf…

If Mr. Madigan is like many other pols in wanting to keep his power and help his family, what’s rare is how little he uses his power elsewhere. Mr. Lawrence recalls once asking Mr. Madigan if he was passionate about any issue or cause. “His answer was that he was more about being a political strategist.”

As I’ve said many times before, Madigan’s only real legacy so far is that he’s been Speaker longer than anybody else. And that’s a big reason why he opposed Gov. Quinn’s tax hike.

This is also a decent graf…

Former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar and other Springfield vets like former Senate President Philip Rock, a Democrat, say Mr. Madigan does have a bit of an ideology, not untypical of what you might expect from an Irish Catholic from the Southwest Side: mildly conservative, both on fiscal and social issues. “At times, he was my only ally (among the four legislative leaders) in trying to hold the line on the budget,” Mr. Edgar says.

But that can change, as the article rightly points out. Madigan has also pushed to underfund the pension systems and borrow way too much money.

* Patrick Collins is right, but he sometimes acts as if he’s the first person to ever notice this stuff…

“It’s all about protecting (Mr. Madigan’s) majority, his power,” says former federal prosecutor Pat Collins, who headed a reform commission that expected much more. “On things that affected his power base, the reform was slight at best.”

A good point…

Some Madigan allies say privately that the state is better off with a speaker who reins in members who might otherwise go astray. In Illinois, it has been governors and Chicago aldermen who have tended to get in legal trouble — not Mr. Madigan’s minions.

Go read the whole thing.

* Collins, by the way, is dipping his toe into politics….

A Winnetka attorney eyeing a run for Congress as a Republican may be the first to land a coveted endorsement from the prosecutor who put GOP Gov. George Ryan in prison.

Bill Cadigan, who was raised in Arlington Heights and once worked for U.S. Rep. John Porter, is a longtime friend of Patrick Collins, the federal prosecutor who led the Ryan trial and went on to become a statewide ethics advocate. […]

“If he throws his hat in the ring, he is someone who I think will be a great candidate,” Collins said. “I think he would be good on the issues that are important to me, such as ethics.”

* Meanwhile, since we’ve brought up the governor’s ethics commission, Pat Quinn dropped more hints the other day that he may use his amendatory veto powers on the campaign finance reform bill…

“Well when I testified for it I said it’s a good bill, but it’s not a perfect bill and I suppose you want to get as close to perfection as we can,” Quinn said late last week. “So, I certainly want to strive toward that goal and by working as a team I think we can go pretty far.”

Quinn has repeatedly pointed out to reporters that he has the power to strengthen the bill by rewriting it — a so-called amendatory veto. Pushed about whether that’s his plan, he said “that could be.”

A veto would send the bill back to lawmakers, where it would face an uncertain future amid competing political agendas. The bill would die if lawmakers don’t vote to agree to the changes or else override the changes with a supermajority vote that would require help from Republicans — who refused to support the bill the first time.

But remember how the reform commission and others demanded that local state’s attorneys be given broader powers to investigate political corruption? Well, the state’s attorneys have turned another reform argument upside down, and are working against the FOIA bill. Why? One reason…

Prosecutors are also leery of granting the attorney general new powers to enforce the Freedom of Information Act.

* Speaking of ethics and the like, I actually wholeheartedly agree with this Tribune recommendation for cleaning up the U of I admissions mess…

The university needs an objective liaison to field claims that an application was erroneously rejected. Lawmakers, trustees and others who are asked to intervene would then have a legitimate channel for those requests — and no excuse for meddling themselves.

Good idea.

* And, on a somewhat related note, the Daily Southtown slams a local mayor for not opposing video gaming in his town…

THE ISSUE: Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabrocki said in last Sunday’s SouthtownStar that he does not oppose video poker machines in the village, an expansion of gambling recently approved by Gov. Patrick Quinn and the Legislature.

WE SAY: Zabrocki is not taking the negative effects of video poker or the community as a whole into account. Let him know you don’t want it.

Um, what if they want it?

* Related…

* Black Caucus Springfield office tagged with racial graffiti

* Illinois must act on racial profiling : The response has been silence. On the legislative front, efforts to ban consent searches stalled in legislative committees, despite consistent evidence of the racial disparity in these searches. Rather than take action in the face of “indisputable” evidence, some legislators suggest studying the problem for a longer time before taking any action.

* The angry vote works

* Indignation no match for curiosity

* Blagojevich’s name still towers over a bit of Chicago

* Sources: Hull wanted Obama’s Senate seat : But this time, he worked behind the scenes, quietly angling to get appointed by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

* Lawmakers to probe tollway scandals: “We feel strongly that taxpayers need to have a far clearer understanding of certain patterns of behavior that emerge from the tollway,” said state Sen. Jeff Schoenberg, an Evanston Democrat and longtime tollway critic who is organizing the hearings with state Sen. Susan Garrett.

* Edgar keeps on giving

* Commission Drafts U of I Admissions Recommendations

* Redeeming the U. of I.

* Entire U of I board should resign

* System has helped to fuel problems at the U of I

* Here’s why U of I scandal matters to you

* Quinn presents more budget cuts, seeks tax hike

* Governor: Budget plan won’t fund the full fiscal year

* Area lawmakers: Plan will worsen deficit

* State continues to ride borrowed money merry-go-round

* State’s unpaid bills in the billions

* Agencies say Illinois’ unpaid bills are crippling

* Unions, Service Providers React to Gov’s Budget Cuts

* Government’s role as protector of disabled at issue

* Legislative uncertainty for Illinois Fiscal Year 2010, but where are the student voices?