It says something about the state of ethics in Illinois government that the very person who succeeded the felon Michael Madigan as House speaker is now under a dark ethics cloud himself.
There are no charges of public corruption surrounding Emanuel “Chris” Welch. In fact, as speaker, Welch has rebooted a lot of what was wrong with Madigan’s handling of the office. He has sought a more inclusive style of leadership, been accessible to the public and the press, and even committed to serve no more than five terms as speaker.
But Welch, like Madigan before him, mishandled a sexual harassment charge against a lawmaker that was brought to him privately by a General Assembly staffer. Welch sat on the complaint for three years before it spilled into public view, thanks to investigative reporting by the Tribune. The truth will out, after all.
Why does the state of Illinois have such problems?
A culture of corruption and tolerance of ethical improprieties persists in Illinois because the elected leaders, when handed the opportunity to clean up government, have mostly just taken a pass.
I know this from experience, given how hard my organization, the Better Government Association, and others have worked toward ethics reform — with far too little to show for the effort. The most bitter setback came when the state largely just stood down, in 2020 and since, after the Madigan transgressions created a mandate for transformative change.
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That mandate was mostly ignored.
Gov. JB Pritzker and the legislature came up with only incremental improvements in required financial disclosures by elected officials and lobbyists. Pritzker, keenly aware the response fell far short of the moment, promised more would come from a new Joint Commission on Ethics and Lobbying Reform he charged with ending “the unconscionable self-enrichment and corruption that has been uncovered.”
The commission held a few hearings, then shut down without issuing a report or recommendations.
There was no lack of good ideas. The BGA issued a comprehensive list of reforms, based on best practices from around the nation.
Many of the proposals focused on independent oversight of the General Assembly by the legislative inspector general: Give the LIG independent subpoena power, for example. Allow the LIG to independently issue investigative reports. Expand the Legislative Ethics Commission — which oversees the IG and is composed entirely of General Assembly members — to include public representatives.
None of that happened.
The BGA proposed a two-year cooling-off period before a former member could lobby the legislature. The reforms would have forbidden state lawmakers from lobbying other units of government in Illinois, stripped indicted lawmakers from leadership roles and banned the use of campaign funds for defense against public corruption charges.
None of that happened, either.
The ethics reform bill that ultimately did pass, under Welch’s leadership in his first term as speaker, was so weak that the then-LIG Carol Pope quit while it was in progress. Her resignation letter complained the new law, still under consideration, would render the office a “paper tiger.”
Pritzker signed the bill into law anyway, without amendment. He promised to strengthen ethics in subsequent laws, but never materially delivered; he never made a demonstrative public push to do so, either.
So here the state is again.
Welch is facing a reckoning — for failing to act on a sexual harassment complaint brought to him against now-disgraced former Rep. Harry Benton and for social media interactions that have raised questions about Welch’s own dealings with women working in Illinois government. The Tribune Editorial Board has called on candidates for the legislature to declare if Welch is still fit to serve as speaker — and what they would do, if elected, to advance ethics reform.
Perhaps the only way out for Welch is to go far beyond the tepid promises to date. So far, he has put out a call to address personnel policies and form a committee — another one! — to consider broader ethics reform.
Welch has described his mishandling of this matter as a systemic failure. But he has laid out no plan to fix the system.
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Well, there may be no one better to lead the repair job than the speaker, knowing the public scrutiny he will face as he works to clean up this mess — much of it self-made, in fact.
Welch need not wait for that blue-ribbon commission he has talked about. Plenty of strong ideas were presented — then rejected — the last time a speaker faced a scandal. If Welch leads an effort to bring those ideas to a vote, he could perhaps save his job by becoming the unlikely paladin of ethics reform in Illinois.
As for Pritzker, he has his own incentive to respond strongly now — in ways he failed to do as ethics and corruption allegations against Madigan came to light. Pritzker has been open about his aspirations to run for president, and he must know that a strong response to the current ethics crisis is his only hope to minimize the political damage from being CEO of a state with a culture of corruption that he has failed to materially mitigate in nearly a decade as governor.
Inaction now by Welch and Pritzker would merely set up our state for the next ethics or corruption failure — one that Welch, Pritzker and the people of this state can ill afford.
David Greising is president of the Better Government Association.
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