West: Ethics Legislation Coming in May
Rep. Maurice West (D-Rockford)
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The Chair of the House Ethics and Elections committee says he expects a package of ethics legislation to move before the legislature is scheduled to adjourn May 31.
Rep. Maurice West (D-Rockford) is light on specifics of what the General Assembly could take up before the end of May, but says he is working on ideas, from Republicans and Democrats, for what could be included in a final deal.
But, West said, he’s not being driven by the corruption conviction of former House Speaker Michael Madigan or the bribery case of Sen. Emil Jones III (D-Chicago) that ended last week in a mistrial.
“The Ethics and Elections Committee does not chase headlines,” West said. “So a lot of people come to me to be reactionary to what has been in the news without understanding the fact that the current laws that we have in place is why they are in the news.”
But, at this point, Democrats have had few discussions among their caucus about ethics reform at all. In fact, multiple Democrats say ethics reform hasn’t been raised in House Democratic Caucus meetings at all this spring.
So, it isn’t clear if it’s a priority for leadership at all. West says conversations are just beginning.
“We're going to start the process of conversing and having meetings with the Governor's team and the Senate, because it's a dangerous precedent, in my opinion, to move standalone bills on either ethics or elections for it to not move in the other chamber,” West said. “Making sure that there's an agreement on these bills that that's focused around ethics is what is what we try to is what I've been trying to work on.”
He said conversations with the Senate yet. Some House Democrats said they’re skeptical of moving any legislation forward because they don’t believe the Senate will agree to any serious ethics reform.
Governor Pritzker, meanwhile, at an unrelated event earlier this week, continued to downplay the need for reform.
“We've had an enormous challenge in the State of Illinois over decades, really, of people who have thwarted the law. Fortunately, many of them have been caught. Many of them convicted when they were guilty,” Pritzker said. “What I have often said is that we always have to work on this problem. One way that to do it is to tell people who run for public office, don't run. If you think that you're going to get to Springfield or go to Washington, DC and make money through corrupt purposes, don't run. You're going to get caught. And so I call on anybody that's in public office today that is involved in anything corrupt whatsoever to get out of office. Get out of the way. We need to elect honest people to government.”
“That plan is really working out well, isn’t it?” texted one Republican lawmaker in response to Pritzker.
West says he knows the legislature has to work on restoring public confidence in government.
“Public trust is top of mind for a lot of us. We have a desire to make things happen and reform ethics when there's an opportunity to do so,” he said. “The reason why we are going through this process is to ensure there's no unintended consequences. Yes, we want stronger laws focused around ethics, but at the same time, we don't want to unintentionally trip people up for things that they did not mean to have it look like they were trying to do a backhand deal. Ensuring that we have all these conversations, vet each bill, look at what the impact it will make in the future. Honesty and integrity rules the day under this dome. The only thing you have is your word. And so what can we do to ensure that our laws reflect that? That's what we're that's the process we're going through now to see if we can what we can do for 2025.”
We reached out last night to the spokesmen for House Speaker Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon to ask if they support ethics reform this session. A spokesperson for Welch did not respond.
A spokesman for Harmon offered a brief response:
“President Harmon is always interested in effective ethics legislation,” Harmon spokesman John Patterson said.
