No ethics reform in sight as ex-speaker’s scheduled prison term begins

By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – As his predecessor’s scheduled 7.5-year prison term for public corruption begins, the speaker of the Illinois House is not showing much interest in new ethics reform.

The Bureau of Prisons assigned former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, 83, a register number of 90368-509 ahead of his report date Monday.

Madigan, D-Chicago, served in the Illinois House from 1971 to 2021 and was speaker for all but two years from 1983 to 2021. He chaired the Democratic Party of Illinois from 1998 to 2021 and also led Chicago’s 13th Ward Democratic Organization.

Madigan’s report date arrived just over a year after jury selection began for his U.S. District Court trial in Chicago on 23 corruption-related counts.

Potential jurors began filling out questionnaires on Oct. 8, 2024 for what would turn out to be a four-month trial. On Feb. 12, 2025, a jury convicted Madigan on 10 counts of bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud and use of a facility to promote unlawful activity.

On June 13, 2025, U.S. District Court Judge John Robert Blakey sentenced Madigan to 7.5 years in prison plus 3.5 years of supervised release and ordered him to pay a $2.5 million fine.

The ex-speaker appealed his conviction, but a federal appeals court denied Madigan’s request to remain free during the appeals process.

At an unrelated press conference in Broadview Monday, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, said he had not spoken to the man he replaced.

With the General Assembly’s fall veto session scheduled to start Tuesday, Welch did not offer plans to improve lawmaker or utility ethics in the wake of Madigan’s imprisonment.

“We did ethics reform in my first year as speaker. It was very substantive. I’m proud of that. We did it in a bipartisan way initially and then the other side, when it came up again to tweak, didn’t vote for it,” Welch said.

Welch said he is proud of the work he has done on ethics.

“We’re constantly looking at ways to strengthen things,” the speaker said.

State Rep. Patrick Windhorst, R-Metropolis, said the ethics reform passed by the General Assembly in 2021 was insufficient.

“The impact of that legislation was the resignation of the sitting legislative inspector general at that time, in protest to what she believed was creating an office that is a paper tiger,” Windhorst told The Center Square.

Windhorst said lawmakers should want to build trust with their constituents.

“And one of the ways we can build that trust is by saying, ‘We’re going to pass strong ethics reforms to bring our state in line with other states,’” the House Republican floor leader said.

Windhorst said there has been no movement this fall on ethics legislation, not even a subject matter hearing.

Several Illinois Republicans have said that Welch was handpicked by Madigan to succeed him as speaker.

Brian Gaines, Honorable W. Russell Arrington professor in State Politics at the University of Illinois, agreed that Madigan’s political legacy continues.

“I think he had a big part in coloring the state a deeper, darker blue than it was. It’s a very safe Democratic seat. I don’t think he gets all the credit for that, but certainly certain parts of it, the gerrymandered districts and to some degree the control of the [Illinois] Supreme Court and redrawing judicial districts, those are all moves in which he was involved,” Gaines told The Center Square.

Gaines said much of the political machine built by Madigan remains intact, even though the people in power now might quickly deny any association with the ex-speaker and insist there’s no pay-for-play in sight.

“I think it’s hard to argue that somehow we’ve got a wholly new political culture,” Gaines concluded.

The Illinois Republican Party issued a statement Monday afternoon.

“Today, Illinois families finally get justice as Democrat kingmaker Mike Madigan begins his prison sentence — the long-overdue consequence of decades of corruption, greed, and self-dealing at the taxpayers’ expense. For nearly half a century, Madigan ruled Illinois like a political crime boss, turning the Democrat Party into his personal empire and the state into a pay-to-play machine,” Illinois GOP chair Kathy Salvi said.

Greg Bishop contributed to this report.