McHenry Times

The Illinois legislature is no stranger to ethics issues. 

After longtime House Speaker Mike Madigan resigned amid a swirl of bribery allegations, many legislators are ready to see real progress in ethics reform. Republican lawmakers are frustrated that it does not seem to be a priority for their Democratic counterparts. 

"Ethics should not be a partisan issue, plain and simple," said state Sen. Dan McConchie (R-Lake Zurich) during a May 17 Senate Republican Caucus news conference. "We all have the common goal to make the system better to serve the people of Illinois, and there's no reason to not bring Republican ideas forward."

McConchie is annoyed that, despite his 2020 State of the State address where he vowed that corruption should be weeded out in both parties, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been unresponsive to ethics-related legislation this year. 

"The governor has sat idle on the sidelines," McConchie said. "[...] He has failed to address the flames of corruption that continue to engulf this state."

The senator said that the GOP has had enough of waiting for the governor to act, and that if meaningful ethics legislation is not passed, the Pritzker administration will have failed "beyond any of the others."

"We're tired of reading the headlines about yet other continued corruption that's going on in this state," McConchie said. 

Illinois' corruption prevents the state's attorney general from effectively doing his job, McConchie said. It is about more than politicians taking bribes or breaking rules, he explained, it's about a legislation that does not fundamentally allow self-policing. 

"I believe it's unAmerican, it's unfair and it's just fundamentally wrong," McConchie said. "We're supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard because by definition we are elected to represent the people, and right now the trust between this building and the public is broken."

McConchie urged Pritzker and Democratic lawmakers to support a group of anti-corruption initiatives recently introduced in the Senate, including Senate Bill 4, which would amend the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act.