* Let’s start with a proponent…

On May 31, the Senate and House approved a package of reforms that address some of Illinois’ most glaring ethical problems. State Senator John Curran (R-Downers Grove), a former Cook County Prosecutor, was the lead Senate Republican negotiator of the bill.

“With every new indictment or arrest of an elected official, the people of Illinois lose more faith in their government,” said Sen. Curran. “Through give-and-take bipartisan negotiations, today we took a large step forward in delivering real ethics reform. Through SB 539, we will hold elected officials to a higher ethical standard and we will empower our Legislative Inspector General (LIG) to independently investigate allegations of political corruption without first having to obtain permission to investigate from a panel of sitting lawmakers. This new level of autonomy is a crucial element of the reforms we passed today.”

SB 539 includes the following provisions:

· Allows the Legislative Inspector General to initiate a political corruption investigation without approval from the Legislative Ethics Commission;

· Reforms and strengthens the statement of economic interest disclosures by adding new disclosure requirements for legislators and their spouses, including disclosure of debts; and

· Prohibits legislators from leaving office and lobbying the General Assembly during the term they were sworn into for six months;

· Requires consultants to register and for lobbyists to disclose any contractual relationship with a consultant for the purpose of influencing the legislature;

· Prohibits fundraisers across Illinois on session days or the day before or after a session day;

“Through negotiations, Republican ideas were brought to the table, resulting in a more robust ethics package,” added Sen. Curran. “While there are still several components we would have liked to have seen in the final bill, the reforms we are sending to the Governor have teeth, and is a positive first step in restoring the public’s trust in state government.”

Sen. Curran said additional improvements in a future bill should include providing the LIG with subpoena powers, a provision that allows the Illinois Attorney General the ability to use a statewide grand jury to investigate, indict, and prosecute public corruption crimes, and an even stronger legislator-to-lobbyist revolving door.

“We must continue to build upon these bipartisan negotiations, in which we respected each other’s priorities, and continue to work to create a more ethical government that is free of corruption and which truly works for the people of Illinois,” Sen. Curran said. “While there is no denying there is a lot more we can do on ethics, I am pleased to know our spring session did not end without sending meaningful ethics reforms to the Governor.”

The two things I wanted most out of an ethics bill were the Monday fundraising ban and the consultant registration.

* On to the opposition. Reform for Illinois…

Yesterday, the General Assembly passed SB539, a long-awaited ethics omnibus bill. After endless scandals and indictments, we had hoped for comprehensive reform that would help restore Illinoisans’ confidence in their government. While SB539 takes some steps in the right direction, we are disappointed in the bill’s failure to make the hard choices necessary to uproot the culture of corruption that has harmed Illinoisans for years and earned our state government the lowest trust rating in the country.

Reform for Illinois has stood with its fellow good-government organizations—the Better Government Association, CHANGE Illinois, and Common Cause Illinois—and identified the ethics updates our state most sorely needs. The new bill makes some positive changes, including banning some legislator-lobbyists and requiring disclosure of lobbying consultants, which RFI proposed last year.

But SB539 falls short in key areas. For example, the bill:

—Bans former lawmakers from lobbying for just six months, a “bottom of the barrel” waiting period. A revolving door ban of just half a year will put Illinois behind 36 states that have a cooling-off period of at least one year, and well below the recommended prohibition of two years implemented in a dozen states. And there would be no waiting period at all for ex-legislators lobbying a new General Assembly–they could leave on the last day of session and be back on the first day of the next one to lobby their former colleagues.

—Fails to give the Legislative Inspector General’s office the tools it needs to exercise truly independent ethics oversight over lawmakers. SB539 takes a step in the right direction by enabling the Legislative Inspector General to launch investigations without the approval of the Legislative Ethics Commission.

But the Inspector General will still need to ask permission from the Commission–a body made up entirely of current and former legislators–to issue subpoenas or publish reports finding wrongdoing. This gives lawmakers ample opportunity to hamper or suppress investigations into their colleagues.

This bill will do nothing to solve the problem former Inspector General Julie Porter identified when she claimed legislators quashed her report finding “serious wrongdoing by a sitting legislator.”

SB539 also adds new and unnecessary limits on the Inspector General’s jurisdiction, and misses an opportunity to improve independence and transparency by requiring the appointment of members of the public to the Ethics Commission.

In short, we still don’t have truly independent oversight of the legislature–the fox is still guarding the henhouse.

—Aims to prohibit lobbying by elected officials but creates a loophole. As we learned from the Luis Arroyo case, sitting lawmakers shouldn’t be allowed to be lobbyists. Under the new law, members of the General Assembly will be prohibited from lobbying state or local governments, but only on behalf of entities registered to lobby the General Assembly. That opens the possibility that legislators may still be able to take some lobbying jobs that could conflict with their obligations to the public.

—Fails to provide essential information about legislators’ possible conflicts of interest. While the bill makes some improvements on the old economic disclosure forms (called “none sheets” for their lack of information), other states require lawmakers to disclose much more information about the value and sources of income that may cause conflicts with their legislative work. For example, an official who received a $100,000 consulting fee from ComEd could have a much more serious conflict than one who received $7,600, but their answers on the new forms would be the same. We can do better.

Lawmakers say this bill is just the beginning for ethics reform, and we hope to take them at their word. But how much longer will Illinoisans have to wait? After so many years of corruption and scandal, they deserve real change now.

* Change Illinois…

After years of ethical lapses resulting in lawmaker and political insider indictment-after-indictment, elected officials yet again fell short on delivering meaningful reforms to Illinoisans that would begin to restore their trust in government.

New House Speaker Chris Welch repeatedly promised a new day in Springfield and a meaningful ethics package and Gov. J.B. Pritzker also had called for reforms, but what was approved this session is a far cry from what’s needed and only serves to diminish voters’ hopes for stronger laws to guide officials’ actions.

After nearly two years of talk and work on ethics reforms, we’ve seen a do-nothing commission that did not even bother to publish a final report and an attempt to rush through ethics proposals in the middle of the night in a previous session. CHANGE Illinois, the Better Government Association, Common Cause Illinois and Reform Illinois have been unified in saying we need this serious package of reforms as a starting point:

Banning state lawmakers from lobbying local governments
Implementing a two-year revolving-door ban preventing former lawmakers from immediately lobbying colleagues
Strengthening the conflict of interest disclosure and recusal requirements
Fully empowering the Legislative Inspector General to operate independently

The ethics bill that will be sent to Pritzker falls short on all four issues. Only lawmakers lobbying local governments was addressed in a substantial way. Overall, this package is yet another example of the weak approaches we’ve seen in previous years that have done nothing to curb the continued cycle of corruption scandals that Illinois is infamous for across the nation. It reminds us of the campaign finance reform approved years ago after former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s impeachment that was supposed to have been a “first step” toward more substantive improvements. Those subsequent steps never materialized and we cannot allow that to happen again with this effort.

The revolving-door ban on lawmakers becoming lobbyists included in the package falls severely short. The six-month ban is the lowest in the nation, putting Illinois at the bottom of the list.

The proposal does include needed improvements to annual financial disclosures officials must file. However, it lacks teeth without a recusal requirement. Any lawmaker still can have a conflict of interest and continue to vote in favor or against legislation that affects them personally without any repercussions.

The bare minimum also was done to give the Legislative Inspector General’s (LIG) office more independence to truly act as a watchdog. The proposal only allows for the LIG to start investigations without lawmaker approval for incidents that happened within the previous year. And it still requires the LIG to seek permission from the very elected officials it is supposed to investigate to collect necessary information for its probes. The LIG also still must seek lawmaker approval to publish reports when the office finds wrongdoing has occurred, yet another example of lawmakers trying to protect themselves.

Given the state we’re in, this is not nearly enough. This ethics bill must not be the last attempt to curb bad actors from further damaging the people’s trust in our government. As federal prosecutors continue to probe corruption in state government and new indictments come to light, Illinoisans must renew their call for stronger reforms. The people know we need stronger improvements that truly will signal lawmakers are serious about charting a new path forward, rather than relying on the same old playbook from the past that allows too many bad actors to tarnish the reputation of all of Illinois’ elected officeholders.

* BGA…

The Better Government Association stands with Reform for Illinois, Common Cause Illinois and CHANGE Illinois in voicing deep disappointment with the feeble ethics bill passed May 31 by the General Assembly.

The bill, which cleared both houses and soon will be on its way to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, contains some incremental improvements that are long overdue. But this legislation has been 18 months in the making. It’s fair to ask: Is that all?

The work of the Joint Commission on Ethics and Lobbying Reform highlighted many deficiencies in the state’s ethics laws. This legislation barely scratches the surface.

This follows an unfortunate historic pattern: Elected officials promised to clean up Illinois government in response to the licenses-for-bribes scandal that sent Gov. George Ryan to prison, and again after the impeachment and conviction of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Many of the reforms that didn’t happen then didn’t happen this time, either.

This moment calls for much more than our lawmakers have delivered.

The BGA and its allies have advocated for a package of reforms that collectively would ensure that public officials act in the public interest and not their own. The bill approved by the General Assembly comes up short in every category.

Thoughts?

* Related…

* State’s new ethics rules under fire from unlikely source