Passage of ethics reform a hallelujah moment
By ROB BUCK
Editorial
Posted Sep 24, 2008 @ 10:10 AM
Finally.
We weren’t sure it would ever come to pass, but the Senate on Monday changed the way the political game is played in Illinois. After years of wrangling, legislators finally approved a major ethics bill that was nearly defeated by Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s veto pen in August.
The House began resurrection proceedings with an override vote shortly after the governor’s amendatory veto. The Senate completed the resuscitation with a 55-0 vote. A major component of the bill prohibits people with state contracts worth more than $50,000 from making political donations to state officeholders who administer the contracts.
And they didn’t stop there. The Senate on Tuesday repackaged the ideas the governor proffered in his amendatory veto into a new bill — SB780 — to further state ethics reform. That makes sense. Critics of the governor’s changes say he went too far. That may well be. If so, and a tougher fight lies ahead, failure to override the veto and enact the original plan would have simply put off ethics reform even longer.
With the bill that was passed Monday we have a start on cleaning up Illinois government and ending the “pay-to-play” system. On the surface, the governor’s proposals, now seen in SB 80, look like good ideas, too. The expanded legislation forbids lawmakers from holding second jobs in government, requires them to report when they lobby other public bodies, and clarifies the way in which legislators approve their pay raises.
Clearly such measures could have stymied progress, though the Senate’s 50-1 vote seems positive. The House, however, may see it differently.
Sen. Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, predicted SB780 would not succeed in the House. He suggested lawmakers negotiate an agreement rather than bandy different bills between the houses.
“We should be rational about this,” he said. “Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.”
Sounds like a good plan.
As for the bill passed Monday, Sen. Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, no doubt expressed the feelings of many Illinoisans.
“Hallelujah! I never though we would get here,” she said.
We say amen to that. — Rob Buck, local news editor