When former state Sen. Tom Cullerton walked out of federal prison on April 14, 2023, after serving time for public corruption, he was following in the footsteps of scores of convicted Illinois politicians before him.
Eleven days later, Cullerton headed down another well-worn path for ex-officeholders in the state — he became a lobbyist in Springfield. Lobbying not only earned Cullerton a paycheck but also enabled him to use the access and influence he had accumulated over nearly a decade in the statehouse to help shape public policy, only this time on behalf of paying clients.
Cullerton served seven months of a yearlong sentence after pleading guilty to pocketing a quarter-million dollars in pay and benefits from the Teamsters through a no-show job. A union boss told federal investigators the Democrat from west suburban Villa Park was given the organizer gig as a “favor” to another state senator, who has never been publicly identified.
Because of provisions in federal law, the conviction meant Cullerton was banned from working for a union or employee benefit plan for 13 years after his release.
But there was nothing stopping him from joining the ranks of the Illinois General Assembly’s so-called Third House — the group of nearly 2,300 registered lobbyists who are paid to bend the ears of state officials and sway the votes of lawmakers on behalf of interests ranging from megacorporations such as Amazon and Apple to unions and tiny nonprofits.
Cullerton’s quick turn from federal inmate to statehouse lobbyist underscores the insular nature of Springfield, where legislators and lobbyists hash out issues by day in hushed conversations around the Illinois Capitol rotunda’s circular brass rail and hang out in the same downtown restaurants and bars by night.
The cozy, at times co-dependent, relationship between lawmakers and lobbyists, coupled with some of the flimsiest regulations in the country, contributes to the greed and graft that permeate Illinois politics, which the Tribune is exploring in its ongoing series “Culture of Corruption.”
Unlike nearly every other state, Illinois until recently had no restriction on how soon former lawmakers could start lobbying their onetime colleagues, creating an environment that can tempt officials to legislate with an eye toward their future employment prospects rather than the public good.
The state finally enacted a revolving-door restriction last year, but good-government advocates say the cooling-off period between legislating and lobbying is too short, with a loophole that still allows lawmakers who finish out their terms to become lobbyists the next day, rendering the restriction mostly meaningless.
And while it’s clear there is good money to be made in the lobbying business, there’s no way for the public to know exactly how much is being spent to shape state law on behalf of powerful interests because, unlike the federal government, about half the states and even the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois doesn’t require lobbyists to disclose any information about their compensation.
Lobbyists do have to report the relatively small amounts they spend wining and dining lawmakers and other officials, leading the authors of a recent review of lobbying laws in all 50 states to declare that Illinois has one of “the most backwards disclosure schemes of any state.”
And in a pattern that repeats to this day, Illinois lawmakers only act to change the laws when a lobbying-related scandal forces their hands. Even then, efforts to tighten the rules or increase transparency get stalled or reduced to half measures. As recently as this spring, a top Democrat was rebuffed in his push for a new law that would require lobbyists to disclose their compensation.
“We are, I would say, close to the bottom of the barrel in terms of lobbying regulation compared to other states,” said Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, which has pushed for tighter rules in Springfield, with limited success.
The depth of Illinois’ lobbying culture is being detailed this fall at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago, where former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, long the state’s most powerful politician, is being tried on a raft of bribery and racketeering charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
The Madigan trial is the culmination of a sweeping federal investigation that ensnared numerous lobbyists, from a handful of ex-lawmakers to the former leaders of utility giant Commonwealth Edison and AT&T Illinois. His co-defendant in the case is Michael McClain, a lawmaker-turned-lobbyist and longtime Madigan confidant who already was convicted last year, along with the former ComEd CEO and two others — both lobbyists — in a related conspiracy to bribe the once-mighty speaker.
But lobbying that veers into influence peddling and other forms of corruption long predates Madigan’s record tenure as the longest-serving state House leader in U.S. history.
‘There are no controls’
At its core, lobbying is a fundamental freedom enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
Alongside the First Amendment’s higher-profile freedoms of religion, speech and assembly is the right to petition the government, which is, in essence, what lobbyists do.
At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the government’s ability to regulate professional lobbyists — those who try to bend public policy to the will of paying clients — with the high court giving its stamp of approval for registration and disclosure requirements.
The potential pitfalls of lobbying have been clear long enough that Georgia sought to ban the practice outright in a since-discarded provision of its state constitution in 1877. While other states instituted safeguards in the following years, Illinois did nothing until the mid-20th century, even as a culture of bribery and influence peddling took hold.
Today there are two main types of lobbyists in Springfield: those who work exclusively for a single corporation or interest group — the state’s manufacturers or retailers, for instance — and those who contract with a variety of clients, essentially hired guns for anyone willing to pay.
With roughly 13 registered lobbyists for each of the Illinois legislature’s 177 members, the group wields enormous influence over how decisions are made at the statehouse.
Lawmakers are confronted with an overwhelming breadth of issues each session, from emerging questions such as how to regulate artificial intelligence to perennial problems such as how to dole out limited tax dollars for bridges, roads and schools.
Whatever the issue, chances are there is at least one hired lobbyist on each side, trying to make sure their client’s point of view prevails, whether that means inserting provisions into a bill to benefit a particular industry or blocking unfavorable legislation from advancing.
To help sway legislators to their side, lobbyists distribute talking points, testify as experts during committee hearings and help lawmakers count votes to make sure a proposal has enough support to pass. Sometimes they even write legislation that lawmakers file on their behalf.
When top lawmakers and key advisers to governors negotiate some of the biggest issues in the state behind closed doors, be it a bailout for nuclear power plants or the expansion of legalized gambling, lobbyists are given a seat at the table.
While social media and targeted ads have become integral to lobbying, it remains a person-to-person profession where success largely depends on access and relationships with lawmakers and other elected officials.
In many instances, the most influential lobbyists are former lawmakers or people who used to work for prominent legislators, governors and Chicago mayors.
Indeed, as federal investigators dug into ComEd and parent company Exelon in 2019, the companies had on their lobbying team nine former Democratic lawmakers, including two recent members of Madigan’s leadership team and the daughter of a former Cook County Democratic chairman, as well as a bevy of former House Democratic staffers, the Tribune reported at the time.
Even after Madigan’s highly publicized downfall, many of his former staffers and members of his legislative leadership team remain among the most sought-after and successful lobbyists in Springfield.
Lobbyists undoubtedly play a vital role in representing a wide array of interests, but Illinois’ political history is littered with examples of the art of persuasion veering into bribery and other forms of corruption.
In 1905, fellow lawmakers tossed Rep. Frank D. Comerford out of the Illinois House after the freshman Democrat publicly declared the state legislature was a “great public auction, where special privileges are sold to the highest corporation bidders.”
Publicly naming legislators he said were taking bribes, Comerford accused one Cook County Democrat, a close ally of the gas industry, of accepting $14,000 in one session, some of which he spent in the resort town of Mount Clemens, Michigan, after the legislature adjourned, according to newspaper accounts at the time.
Half a century later, little had changed. In 1955, St. Louis-based Union Electric Co., looking to advance legislation that would save the company money on its Illinois tax bill, agreed to funnel $35,000 to Illinois Auditor Orville Hodge through a Chicago lawyer who acted as a lobbyist for the company.
The utility’s checks ended up in the same South Side bank “brown envelope account” Hodge used as he looted and squandered $2.5 million in public funds. Union Electric didn’t face federal charges because authorities determined the company hadn’t violated a law barring campaign contributions from regulated utilities. Hodge eventually went to prison for embezzlement.
In 1964, Paul Simon, then an Illinois state senator, threw down the gauntlet over the culture of self-dealing that pervaded the statehouse when he published an article for Harper’s Magazine titled “The Illinois Legislature: A Study in Corruption.” Highlighting Union Electric and other scandals, Simon and his co-author, journalist Alfred Balk, declared: “There are no controls on lobbyists in Springfield.”
Simon, a reform-minded southern Illinois Democrat who went on to become lieutenant governor and served for decades in Congress and the U.S. Senate, detailed how some lawmakers filed bills called “fetchers” as a way to extract payments from opposing interests who wanted the proposals killed.
A year after Simon’s piece earned him pariah status in Springfield, the Chicago’s American newspaper published transcripts of leaked audio recordings in which a lobbyist and two executives for a state association of currency exchanges discussed bribing lawmakers to fend off an unfavorable proposal.
“What you may as well get used to is that every time you have a legislative session, you come prepared with about $50,000,” the lobbyist told the executives.
Loopholes and half measures
The Union Electric and currency exchange scandals prompted the first attempts to regulate lobbying in Illinois. In what would become a pattern in Springfield, the resulting legislation had little impact.
After the payments from the electric company to Hodge became public, state Rep. Paul Powell in 1957 successfully pushed a new requirement forcing those lobbying the legislature to register with the state — but only if they were backing measures affecting specific interests as opposed to “the whole people of the State.”
In his Harper’s piece, Simon decried Powell’s effort as “a weak law” that still allowed lobbyists to “hand out any amount of money to influence legislators, without disclosing their expenditures.” The law also stopped far short of stronger proposals, including one that would have required lobbyists and organizations to disclose monthly how much they spent trying to influence policy.
Powell, a southern Illinois Democrat who was mentioned by name on the secretly recorded currency exchange tapes in connection with $10,000 in bribes, became secretary of state in 1965 and achieved Illinois infamy upon his death in 1970, when his Springfield hotel suite was found to be stuffed with $750,000 in unexplained cash.
Not until 1969 did the legislature improve on the original registration law and begin requiring lobbyists to report some of what they spent wooing lawmakers. But the law was largely ignored because it didn’t detail what spending needed to be reported and lacked any real enforcement provisions.
In 1975, for example, 95% of registered lobbyists in Illinois didn’t report any expenditures, according to the DePaul Law Review.
Scandals in the 1970s involving the paving and car rental industries and even the 1980 attempted bribery conviction of businesswoman Wanda Brandstetter for offering a lawmaker a $1,000 campaign contribution if he supported the Equal Rights Amendment didn’t prompt any significant action.
In 1993, the same year former Rep. Al Ronan made headlines for handing out campaign contributions steps from the Illinois House chamber to his onetime colleagues on behalf of the casino he represented as a lobbyist, then-Secretary of State George Ryan successfully championed a new law requiring lobbyists to register with Ryan’s office if they sought to influence the executive branches of state government, including the governor’s administration.
The law also closed loopholes that had allowed lobbyists to get around reporting much of what they spent on meals, tickets to concerts and sporting events, rounds of golf and trips to court public officials.
Ryan went on to become governor before being brought down in a federal corruption probe stretching back to his time as secretary of state. The investigation, called Operation Safe Road, also netted convictions of more than 50 others, most notably lobbyist and longtime Ryan friend Lawrence Warner, who used his connections and sway to illegally profit off of state contracts and leases handed out by Ryan’s secretary of state’s office.
Trying to capitalize on his Republican predecessor’s downfall, Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich in late 2003 signed into law an overhaul that prohibited lobbyists and their spouses from serving on state boards and commissions and capped lobbyist spending on food and drink for public officials at $75 per day, among other changes.
Five years later to the day, Blagojevich was arrested by federal authorities on broad corruption charges, several of which involved statehouse lobbyists William Cellini, an influential GOP fundraiser, and Alonzo “Lon” Monk, who had been Blagojevich’s chief of staff.
After Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office, his successor, Democrat Pat Quinn, created a special panel to review Illinois’ government ethics laws and come up with suggested fixes in 100 days.
Aside from recommending an outright ban on lobbyists making campaign contributions, an idea that continues to be ignored, the panel hardly touched lobbying, saying it wasn’t given enough time to study that issue in depth. Lawmakers were happy to let the matter lie.
Another decade passed before the latest federal probe into Illinois politics shed a new spotlight on the nexus between lobbying and public corruption and led to the convictions of more than a dozen lobbyists, lawmakers, lawmakers-turned-lobbyists and others.
Among them was McClain, who was convicted last year alongside ComEd’s former CEO and two other lobbyists for a scheme that involved funneling payments to Madigan allies who did little or no work.
The Tribune first reported how McClain rounded up a group of utility lobbyists to direct more than $30,000 in payments to Kevin Quinn, the brother of 13th Ward Chicago Ald. Marty Quinn, Madigan’s hand-picked alderman in his political home base on the Southwest Side. The payments to Kevin Quinn came after he was ousted from Madigan’s government and political operations in 2018 over sexual harassment allegations from a campaign worker.
In a prelude to Madigan’s day in court, the former head of AT&T Illinois was tried earlier this fall on charges similar to the ComEd Four case, but a federal judge declared a mistrial after the jury apparently deadlocked on reaching a verdict due to a lone holdout.
Afterward, another juror told the Tribune, “The rules and regulations surrounding lobbyists are not very clear at all, and that fine line between lobbying and bribing or any other kind of illegal act is very hard to determine.”
The revolving door
A common thread throughout the state’s sordid political history is the ease with which lawmakers and other officials move on to lucrative second acts as well-paid lobbyists.
Among those convicted in the latest federal probe was former Democratic legislator Annazette Collins, who registered as a lobbyist in 2013, less than a year after finishing her term representing a West Side district in the Illinois Senate.
Collins, whose name appeared on what federal prosecutors have called a “magic list” of Madigan-approved lobbyists found in a 2019 federal raid on McClain’s home, was sentenced in June to a year in prison in a tax fraud case that involved underreporting her income as a lobbyist and consultant, which included roughly $300,000 in payments from ComEd and AT&T from 2014 to 2018, according to court testimony.
“The revolving door is a key means for corruption and influence peddling,” said Craig Holman of the Washington-based consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which in a 2019 study found Illinois at the time was one of only seven states without a revolving-door restriction on lobbying.
“It provides any kind of business interest, any company that has business before the state, (the ability) to basically dangle promises of lucrative employment once you want to leave the legislature, if you’re nice to the company,” Holman said. “And, boy, that buys official favors right and left.”
Madigan’s trial provided a key insight into why Illinois lawmakers have been so reluctant to slow down the revolving door.
On the witness stand last month, former state Rep. Scott Drury, a Highwood Democrat and outspoken Madigan critic, described introducing a proposal that would have created a two-year waiting period before ex-lawmakers could begin lobbying. But he said Madigan never allowed it to get even a committee vote.
Drury, who in each of his three terms introduced similar bills with two-year waiting periods, testified that the speaker told him in a private meeting such a proposal would be opposed by some colleagues who, unlike Drury, didn’t have law careers to return to after leaving the legislature and wanted to keep lobbying open as an option.
Shortly after Madigan’s departure from the House in 2021, Illinois for the first time approved a revolving-door restriction for lawmakers — a six-month wait until ex-legislators can begin lobbying their former colleagues.
That’s among the shortest waiting times of any state that’s set a limit. What’s more, the restriction, which took effect when new lawmakers were sworn in last year, is lifted each time the legislature’s two-year term expires. So a lawmaker who leaves office with, say, one week remaining in the term can start lobbying as soon as the new session begins.
As a result of those weaknesses, a little over a year after resigning from the Senate in disgrace, Cullerton was able to walk out of federal prison and into a new career as a lobbyist, a move he defended in a statement to the Tribune.
“As an honorably discharged veteran of the United States Army and a longtime public servant, I believe in the importance of the civic process, and I am proud that I can lawfully represent those who need help in the legislative process to affect change,” Cullerton said, declining an interview request.
In many places he would have had to wait at least another year before starting his new job. Neighboring Iowa and Kentucky have two-year cooling-off periods, as does New York.
Many other states, including Indiana, Wisconsin, California and Pennsylvania, have one-year restrictions. The longest waiting period in the country is in Florida, where voters approved a six-year prohibition that went into effect Dec. 31, 2022.
By contrast, the Illinois law is “so weak it hardly counts,” said Kaplan, of Reform for Illinois.
Days after the Illinois measure passed the House, Rep. Tim Butler, a Springfield Republican, criticized it in a post on his legislative website, writing: “This is not real reform. This is the status-quo!”
The following year, however, Butler resigned his seat shortly after winning a fourth full term in the November 2022 election to become president of the Illinois Railroad Association and a registered statehouse lobbyist.
If Butler had waited to resign until he’d been sworn in for another term, he would have had to delay taking the lobbying job for six months. Instead, he was able to begin lobbying on Jan. 9, 2023, days after his resignation took effect on Dec. 31.
Butler said in an interview the railroad association job “came up out of the blue, out of nowhere” and that he followed the law when deciding to take it.
Whether lobbyists are “bad actors” doesn’t depend on how long they had to wait before taking the job, Butler said.
“When you look at legislators, you have good actors and bad actors. When you look at lobbyists, you have good actors and bad actors,” he said. “And we really need people to get into these positions and respect the rule of the law and the norms and operate the right way.”
Yet as Cullerton’s example shows, even lawmakers who leave the General Assembly under a cloud of controversy can be quickly welcomed back as lobbyists.
In 2019, veteran Rep. Lou Lang, a Skokie Democrat and longtime member of Madigan’s leadership team, resigned the seat he’d held for more than 30 years — just two days before he would have been sworn in for his latest term.
Lang, who testified for prosecutors at Madigan’s trial, left the House in the wake of a sexual harassment complaint made by a medical marijuana advocate, though he denied the allegations and an inspector general’s investigation concluded the available evidence didn’t support her claims.
At Madigan’s trial, prosecutors played a secretly recorded phone call in which McClain, working at the speaker’s behest, encouraged Lang to resign. “I don’t think you’re gonna have a hard time” finding work, McClain reassured him on the call.
Four days after he left the legislature, Lang filed the necessary paperwork to begin working as a lobbyist. Among the clients he and his partner have represented in Springfield over the past five years are companies in the heavily regulated industries that were among his specialties as a lawmaker, including gambling and medical marijuana, along with ComEd parent company Exelon’s power-generation business.
Lang did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Lack of transparency
While it’s easy enough for the press and the public to find out whom a lobbyist such as Lang represents and even how much his firm spends courting officials (a little less than $4,000 last year), the state offers virtually no transparency about how much corporations such as ComEd and other interests are paying their lobbyists.
Advocates say that’s a major downfall of the system and one that contributes to both the perception and the prevalence of corruption.
Without that transparency, the public has no real sense of how much money large corporations and other powerful groups are willing to shell out to shape state policy in their own self-interest. That leaves grassroots groups and everyday residents in the dark about what they’re up against when trying to advocate for proposals they feel will benefit the public good.
Testimony at Madigan’s ongoing trial, for instance, showed ComEd was fearing bankruptcy before the utility successfully pushed for lucrative smart grid legislation in 2011 and a bailout in 2016 for two of parent company Exelon’s nuclear power plants.
“To disclose that lobbying is happening without indicating how much is spent on it is hollow,” said Sarah Bryner, former research director at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
When the group rated the states based on their lobbying disclosure laws in 2022, Illinois ranked 32nd, tied with Minnesota and North Carolina, in large part because of the lack of compensation disclosure.
Given Illinois’ deep-seated problem with lobbying-related corruption, increasing transparency should be an obvious step, Bryner said.
“Even if we say that there is no problem, transparency is necessary to help there not be a problem, as well as to give the public a sense of security in knowing, baseline, what is being spent to influence policy,” Bryner said.
Just last month, research and advocacy group F Minus, which tracks lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, released a report on lobbying disclosure laws in all 50 states, with Illinois among the 27 states that received a failing grade.
“Illinois and Georgia have the most backwards disclosure schemes of any state, as they require bimonthly disclosure of small expenses like gifts and meals, but do not require disclosure of compensation, which comprises more than 90% of all client spending,” according to the group’s analysis.
As a result of the requirement to disclose certain expenditures, the Tribune was able to calculate that lobbyists spent nearly $2.3 million courting state lawmakers and other officials last year, the most since at least 2006, the earliest year for which the secretary of state’s office was able to provide data.
The bulk of that money — $2 million — was spent on receptions and other large gatherings, and lobbyists don’t have to disclose who attended.
Regardless, that figure certainly pales in comparison to the undisclosed dollars corporations and other special interests pay lobbyists, experts said.
“That’s the money that matters,” said Holman, of Public Citizen.
In Wisconsin, for example, corporations and other interests reported paying their lobbyists more than $39 million in 2023, in a state with three times fewer registered lobbyists than Illinois, according to records from the Wisconsin Ethics Commission.
The lack of such information under Illinois law is “a huge loophole,” Holman said.
Anusha Thotakura, director of progressive grassroots group Citizen Action/Illinois, has seen firsthand how campaigns by well-connected lobbyists can quickly change conversations with lawmakers in Springfield.
Thotakura’s group is backing legislation that would create a state board to oversee prescription drug prices.
While initial conversations with lawmakers went well — enough so that the proposal attracted two dozen House sponsors, including Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch of Hillside — the tone changed when lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry, “some of the people that (lawmakers are) friends with,” began working against the proposal, said Thotakura, who ran unsuccessfully for the Chicago school board this month with backing from the powerful Chicago Teachers Union.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade group known as PhRMA, uses some of the most influential lobbyists in Springfield, including firms that have a former Madigan chief counsel and at least two ex-lawmakers on their rosters, state records show.
Since PhRMA got involved, the bill backed by Thotakura hasn’t even received a committee vote and appears unlikely to move before the current legislature adjourns in January.
The public can see that PhRMA spent nearly $28 million last year lobbying in Washington, D.C., according to OpenSecrets. In addition, government records show PhRMA spent nearly $70,000 in the state of Wisconsin and $10,000 at Chicago City Hall. But there’s no way of telling how much its lobbyists in Springfield were paid.
Reluctance to act
The small reforms that have spun out of the investigation now culminating in Madigan’s trial follow a pattern Illinois residents have seen for more than a half century: A scandal leads to calls for significant change but ultimately brings about little more than tweaks to the existing system.
One of the first sets of reforms in this latest wave arose when Luis Arroyo, a state representative from Chicago who also was a City Hall lobbyist for a sweepstakes gambling company, was charged with offering a bribe to another legislator to win support for a measure that would have benefited the gambling firm. He later pleaded guilty.
Rather than banning elected officials from lobbying, however, legislators passed a law requiring state lobbyists merely to disclose if they were lobbying anywhere else in the state and if they held any elected or appointed offices. Two years later, in 2021, they passed another law prohibiting state elected officials from working as paid lobbyists at other levels of government — but only if their lobbying clients also are registered to lobby state government or the legislature.
The legislature also in that 2021 law began requiring lobbyists to report the names of hired consultants, a move that won praise from reformers as it addressed an alleged scheme revealed during the Madigan case in which companies funneled payments through lobbyists to allies of the speaker who were hired as consultants, positions that didn’t have to be publicly disclosed. They also tightened up a few restrictions on when political fundraisers can be held.
At the same time, though, the law forcibly ended Cook County’s system requiring lobbyists to register and to report how much they were paid to lobby county government — a move sold as standardizing lobbying regulations outside Chicago.
Last year, responding to rampant corruption in the red-light camera industry — another branch of the recent federal probe — lawmakers approved and Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker signed a measure banning campaign contributions from the industry and creating a two-year waiting period before former public officials, including legislators, can work for those companies.
In January, a bill introduced by Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias — whose office administers the registration of lobbyists — would have finally brought transparency on lobbyists’ pay to Illinois.
Giannoulias’ bill not only would require lobbyists to disclose how much their clients pay them but also would give the secretary of state’s office more enforcement powers, including the ability to investigate allegations of unregistered lobbying and to suspend or revoke registration for people who violate the rules or are convicted of felonies that result in the loss of state pensions.
Giannoulias said in an interview that he viewed the plan as a modest but “important first step, especially for a state with a history of corruption and influence peddling.”
“When I think about people’s distaste for elected officials, their distaste for politicians, their distaste for the political process, the lack of people voting as it relates to that, I think we need to do everything we can to rebuild that trust,” said Giannoulias, whose unsuccessful 2010 bid for U.S. Senate was dogged by controversies stemming from the failure of his family’s bank.
While Giannoulias has had success shepherding other initiatives through the legislature during his first two years as secretary of state, he hit a roadblock with his lobbying proposal.
Out of deference to a statewide official from their party, House Democrats agreed to give the issue a public airing, but they only held a “subject matter” hearing, with no vote taken. Even the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Rep. Maurice West of Rockford, told the Tribune earlier this year he was neutral on the proposal.
During the subject matter hearing in April, an attorney testifying for the secretary of state’s office was repeatedly put on the defensive about the compensation disclosure requirement.
“Why should a private business transaction be a searchable public record?” asked Josh Witkowski, a lobbyist for clients including the motorcycle advocacy group ABATE of Illinois and the Illinois Federation for Outdoor Resources, a conservation and gun rights organization.
Witkowski also said the state requiring financial disclosures could prevent his firm and others from offering lower prices to organizations representing causes about which the lobbyists feel passionate.
“All it’s really going to do is continue this stigma of believing that money runs politics,” Witkowski said. “And any lobbyist down here will tell you a higher-paid lobbyist can implode just as well as a low-paid lobbyist can.”
More criticism of the proposal came from Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat who sits on the Ethics & Elections Committee chaired by West. Alluding briefly to the “magic list” of Madigan-favored lobbyists, Cassidy nevertheless dismissed Giannoulias’ proposal for compensation disclosure as “well-meaning but a solution in search of a problem.”
Cassidy, who was among the group of House Democrats that helped end Madigan’s 36-year reign as speaker, said disclosing compensation could perpetuate lower pay for women and minorities because corporations and groups might seek them out based on lower reported fees.
Bryan Zarou, vice president of policy at the Chicago-based Better Government Association and a registered lobbyist who testified in support of Giannoulias’ plan, said he’s skeptical of Cassidy’s contention. (The Tribune has collaborated with the group’s nonprofit newsroom, Illinois Answers Project, on occasional stories unrelated to this series.)
“I’ve yet to see any sort of documentation … (showing) how this would impact people of color or even women in this business,” Zarou said in an interview.
The April hearing concluded after less than half an hour, and Giannoulias’ measure has received no further legislative action.
This fall, West would say only that he was committed to talking with leadership about how to proceed on the lobbying measure and other ethics proposals before the legislature adjourns in January.
Chicago Tribune’s Ray Long, Joe Mahr, Jason Meisner and Megan Crepeau contributed.
