When a Manhattan lawyer wanted proof Donald Trump would be covering a hush money payment sent to a former Playboy model, the lawyer secretly hit “record” on his phone, creating evidence that later helped convict the once and future president on 34 felony counts in a New York courtroom.
But if Michael Cohen had done the same in Illinois, he’d be the one looking at a potential felony charge, for recording Trump without his permission. And it’s doubtful the incriminating conversation Cohen recorded in 2016 would have been presented to an Illinois jury as evidence in a case against Trump.
That’s because Illinois is one of only about a dozen states that generally requires all parties to consent before a private conversation can be recorded. Legislators and civil libertarians have long maintained the law protects people’s privacy, but many prosecutors have argued the prohibition insulates corrupt public officials from state and local investigations.
In fact, state lawmakers — long leery of being secretly recorded — also have prohibited state and local law enforcement from wiretapping the phones of politicians suspected of corruption, as federal investigators are allowed to do.
Former federal prosecutor Patrick Collins, who led the corruption case that sent Republican Gov. George Ryan to prison, said Illinois law is so limiting that it acts as a “disincentive” for local authorities to pursue corruption cases.
This year, the Tribune’s “Culture of Corruption” series has documented how weak laws on campaign finance, ballot access, lobbying, ethics and oversight, and the byzantine structure of local government, among other issues, have helped dishonest politicians thrive in Illinois. Four of the last 11 governors, nearly 40 Chicago aldermen in the last half century and countless other public officials have served prison time.
The state’s sordid history may leave many residents feeling hopeless. But as the Tribune’s reporting shows, Gov. JB Pritzker and other elected officials across Illinois — from state legislators to township trustees — have the power to make a difference by shoring up weaknesses and closing escape hatches in the state’s laws.
The last major push for reform came nearly 16 years ago after the legislature impeached and removed Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and his successor, fellow Democrat Pat Quinn, created the Illinois Reform Commission with Collins as chair. Among other suggestions, the commission called for Illinois to follow other states and give Illinois authorities more leeway to record conversations without permission, supplementing the anti-corruption efforts of the limited number of federal prosecutors based in the state.
The importance of clandestine recordings to law enforcement has been on full display this year in the federal corruption probes of two of Illinois’ most powerful Democratic politicians over the last half century: former Chicago Ald. Edward Burke, sent to prison this year for a series of old-style shakedowns, and ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who is standing trial in federal court on racketeering and bribery charges.
Other potential fixes the Tribune identified include restricting the free flow of cash in political campaigns, increasing transparency around the money spent on lobbying and reducing the sheer number of government bodies in Illinois. Lawmakers could reform a balloting system under which veteran officeholders routinely file challenges that shut out other candidates. They could give inspectors general true power to go after and publicize corruption. And, in Chicago, they could rip up the unwritten power-sharing arrangement that has enabled so many aldermen to run their wards on cash gifts and favors.
Without sweeping change in statutes and attitudes, Illinois politicians will continue to take advantage of opportunities for corruption, said Jill Long Thompson, author of “The Character of American Democracy” and a former Democratic congresswoman from northeast Indiana.
“Democracy works only when it is run in an ethical kind of way,” said Long Thompson, who sponsored ethics legislation in Washington and taught government ethics at Indiana University. “There not only need to be the provisions and the tools to do that. There has to be the independence and enforcement to make it happen.”
Limits on political money
For years, enormous amounts of cash have been pouring into Illinois political campaigns with loose rules and little enforcement. Candidates often disrespect the few safeguards designed to control and track political cash. Spending is turning major statewide races into auctions bid on by billionaires.
Longtime campaign finance expert Kent Redfield, a retired political science professor from the University of Illinois at Springfield, urged more vigorous and frequent reporting requirements, bigger fines for blatant violations and stronger laws to ensure violators can’t easily game the system to avoid paying those fines.
As the Tribune reported, one super PAC delayed reporting millions of dollars in spending until the two Democrats who benefited from the cash infusion won their races for seats on the Illinois Supreme Court. When fined for failing to report on time, the super PAC transferred its assets, shut down and — if it remains closed for two years — could avoid paying the six-figure penalty.
Super PACs, otherwise known as independent expenditure committees, focus on helping or attacking certain political candidates or issues, often by funding TV ad buys. Legally, the organizations aren’t supposed to coordinate their actions with favored candidates, but Illinois law fails to define “coordination,” a loophole election officials say is up to lawmakers to close. The state elections board highlighted the matter this summer when it noted the lack of a definition factored into its decision to reject a Democratic complaint that the 2022 Republican candidate for governor, Darren Bailey, had coordinated with a super PAC.
“If we don’t take care of this soon we will erase the line between independent expenditure committees and candidates,” said Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, who has offered a proposal on defining the term. “This line is fragile enough already.”
The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization is also pushing to shed light on the rapidly expanding use of “dark money” — political contributions that are hard to track because they are often funneled through groups not bound by public disclosure requirements. Its proposal borrows ideas from Arizona, California, Rhode Island and Minnesota laws to identify the sources of donations that otherwise would be untraceable under Illinois law.
Another issue Kaplan wants to defuse is a maneuver insiders call “the money bomb,” in which Illinois politicians circumvent contribution restrictions by self-donating enough money to lift the limits laid out in state law. Currently, giving $100,000 in personal funds in a local and state legislative race or $250,000 in a statewide campaign will remove the contribution caps for all candidates in a single contest.
When they put these rules in place 15 years ago, lawmakers argued that doing so would level the playing field for candidates facing wealthy opponents.
But many Illinois politicians, from mayors to legislators, have turned cap breaking into a weapon. They intentionally lift the limits — sometimes by loaning money to their campaigns and then taking it back later — so they can raise as much money as possible, regardless of who their opponent is and sometimes when there is no opponent at all.
Reform advocates offer a variety of solutions, including a ban on lifting contribution caps when only one candidate is in a race, a ban on loaning money to a campaign simply to break the caps, and raising the $100,000 and $250,000 trigger points that lift all limits.
Or, rather than completely eliminate contribution limits when a wealthy candidate spends big, those limits could be increased, such as by doubling the maximum amount someone can donate to a campaign. That’s how Philadelphia does it.
Madigan’s federal trial has highlighted how the ex-speaker and fellow Democrats got around contribution limits and obscured the identities of donors by using politicians as middlemen who would collect contributions and send them, as directed, to other candidates. The General Assembly could add more transparency to address that issue, such as by adopting the federal system’s method of tracking directed donations.
Omar Aquino, a Chicago Democrat who sits on an election law subcommittee in the state Senate, signaled in an interview he shares most voters’ criticism that there is too much money in politics.
“If we’re going to have caps, there should be true caps — not something that is allowed to just bust, and then you’re going to have an unlimited amount of money flowing into campaigns,” he said.
While the General Assembly can set rules for how much campaign cash politicians can accept from each donor — and in what ways — federal court decisions prevent state lawmakers from limiting how much candidates can spend from their own pockets to get elected.
As Pritzker has pointed out, the U.S. Supreme Court “essentially has said that it’s free speech to spend as much money as you want.”
And he has. Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotel chain, pumped more than $300 million of his own money into his successful 2018 and 2022 campaigns, rendering moot the rules on contribution caps.
As he sets the stage for a potential presidential run, the Democratic governor’s overall spending on his races, as well as candidates and causes around the country, is close to half a billion dollars. His opponents in political campaigns rely on billionaires for help, but Pritzker even spent millions in the Republican primary to set up a weak challenger that he easily crushed in the 2022 general election.
Public funding of political campaigns, an idea that reform advocates often tout as a way to fight corruption, has had trouble gaining widespread acceptance in Illinois, though Evanston is trying a modest version that matches funds from small donors in that city’s mayoral contest. Using tax dollars to subsidize candidates can be a tough sell for a public that has witnessed Illinois’ sordid history of corrupt politicians.
Breaking the ballot blockades
Becoming a bona fide political candidate in Illinois can mean overcoming many challenges — literally.
If newbies want to run for office, Illinois election law makes it unusually hard for them to get on the ballot and relatively easy for opponents to kick them off.
The Tribune found the law sets up a complicated set of hurdles for candidates to jump over — starting with the relatively large number of signatures they need to gather from qualified voters. Rivals can nitpick details in the paperwork and file challenges that sometimes force elections officials to review hundreds of signatures per candidate. If enough signatures are rejected as invalid, the person’s campaign can end right then and there.
Neophyte candidates who survive this process and make it to the ballot are often so drained of time, energy and money that they are trounced at the polls.
Reformers have called for Illinois to ease the burden of running for office, such as by lowering the signature threshold to reflect norms in other states and by letting candidates use electronic tablets to gather signatures so they can check people’s information and screen out those not qualified to sign.
Or, Illinois could allow voters to submit signatures online. In Arizona, any voter can go online to sign a candidate’s petitions. The system vets users to ensure they’re registered to vote and qualified to sign for that candidate, based on where they live.
Illinois briefly allowed some candidates to gather signatures electronically during the COVID-19 pandemic before reverting to the pen-and-paper system and hours of tedious door-knocking.
California and some other states allow people seeking office the option of paying a filing fee instead of submitting petition signatures. For example, to get on the ballot for California state representative, a candidate can pay $1,300 instead of submitting 1,000 signatures. Illinois doesn’t give candidates that option.
Illinois could also give local elections officials the responsibility for deciding whether candidates’ petitions met legal thresholds, instead of a process based on challenges filed by political rivals. And candidates could be offered the chance to correct mistakes — as Los Angeles does.
If Illinois continues to allow challenges, advocates for reform have suggested the state could make it harder to reject someone’s petition signature — either by adopting a more forgiving interpretation of when a signature “matches” one on file or by forcing challengers to provide evidence a signature is invalid.
“We’ve got to change the law in Illinois,” said Quinn, the former Democratic governor who has long pushed for better ballot access. “This is not acceptable. It really is denying people a fundamental right.”
A new Chicago way
Democracy is designed to work best with a healthy check-and-balance system.
Normally, legislative bodies pass bills and local ordinances, including directives on how to spend tax money. An elected executive influences the process while focusing on managing the bureaucracy built around the laws. It may not always be pretty, but the system offers a level of accountability and encourages the two branches of government to keep an eye on the other.
But in Chicago, that isn’t how it works. As the Tribune reported, an unwritten power-sharing agreement has existed between the city’s mayors and its 50-member City Council since the era of Mayor Richard J. Daley.
Historically, the mayor has driven the budget process, with the City Council typically providing a rubber stamp of the mayor’s priorities for citywide initiatives. In exchange, each council member gets to be a mini-mayor of sorts in their ward, with particular control over zoning issues. As each exercises their “aldermanic prerogative,” their colleagues look the other way.
Abuse of that power has fueled aldermanic corruption, and good-government advocates have long pushed for Chicago to embrace a traditional system of checks and balances.
Advocates also have pushed for Chicago to adopt something many other cities already have: a charter laying out the basic rules for how city government operates. With a charter, they argue, the City Council could give itself more coequal powers and better assert its independence from dominant mayors.
Separately, the City Council could restrict the power of individual aldermen to block projects in their wards unilaterally. That would be a way not only to limit incentives to take bribes but also to tackle citywide issues more systematically. Advocates say affordable housing proposals, for example, are often vetoed by aldermen in more wealthy neighborhoods despite the citywide need — in contrast to New York City, whose council just approved a mayoral-driven zoning overhaul to tackle the affordable housing crisis.
While Chicago aldermen could lose control over zoning decisions, they also could gain independence from the mayor’s office — perhaps even picking their presiding officer instead of watching the mayor run the council meetings.
That potential independent streak already may be in an embryonic stage. Now nearly halfway through Mayor Brandon Johnson’s term, aldermen have shown unusual resolve in rejecting Johnson’s initial budget recommendations for 2025, including a 50-0 vote against a proposed $300 million property tax hike. But an earlier attempt by aldermen to take more control of all-important committees was quickly put down.
Beyond structural measures, advocates say, cultural changes are needed to shake off the hangover of Daley-era machine politics so the people elected to the City Council prize integrity and independence instead of a no-snitch culture based on unquestioned loyalty and self-dealing.
Simplify local governments
When people think about local government, they may think of cities, villages and school districts. But for more than a century, Illinois has allowed far more types of local government to proliferate — including some centered on functions as narrow as mosquito abatement or cemetery maintenance.
Illinois leads the nation in the number of local governments within its borders, with thousands more than any other state. The multitude of often-overlapping government bodies has long been blamed for bureaucratic inefficiencies and higher taxes — particularly because Illinois’ loose rules have allowed many local officials to borrow big at the expense of future taxpayers. It’s also a recipe for corruption.
Some cases make national news, such as when a Harvey school district employee was caught stealing more than 11,000 cases of chicken wings or when Dixon Comptroller Rita Crundwell embezzled $54 million – a saga that made headlines again this month when her 19.5-year prison sentence was commuted. But the vast majority of officials caught stealing, being bribed or taking kickbacks become footnotes in local history, with the cost of the graft passed on to taxpayers.
Although state law requires each agency to submit annual financial reports to the state comptroller, many do not, with few repercussions from state officials who could force audits. There’s also no scrutiny of the reports that are submitted. They just have to be filed.
A decade ago, a Tribune investigation found that south suburban Harvey hadn’t filed required reports for four years — finally prompting state auditors, at the prodding of the Cook County sheriff, to demand to see the books. Those audits showed that town leaders’ questionable spending had more than quadrupled the town’s debt in five years.
Beyond enforcing current reporting standards, the state could enact legislation that would create more inspectors general to oversee more levels of government. The state also could look for incentives to push smaller local governments to consolidate or enter into cooperative agreements to share duties and operate more efficiently.
With some narrow exceptions, elected leaders generally have been leery of merging governments, with particular reluctance to phase out township governments, even though critics say their duties often could be carried out by municipalities or at the county level.
In interviews, some lawmakers said they’d prefer to evaluate the effectiveness of townships and wean out inefficient ones by setting basic performance standards.
“I think we should have some kind of a threshold to say, ‘Hey, if you exceed this bar and you meet this threshold, then (it) probably makes sense to keep you in place,’” said Democratic state Rep. Fred Crespo of Hoffman Estates, who said he has worked with effective townships in his area.
“I think if we have established a threshold,” he said, “very few townships would probably make that.”
Lobbyists who represent local governments in Springfield — often at the expense of local taxpayers — could also be forced to be more transparent about the issues they lobby for and the pay they receive.
So far, legislature leaders have not enthusiastically embraced eliminating layers of local government, but they haven’t ruled it out, either — particularly as property taxes increase.
“Part of the problem with the property tax bills that people receive all over the state — look at the number of entities on a particular tax bill,” said House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside. “I think it would be smart for us all to look at where we can streamline and have more efficiencies with all the levels of government.”
Lassoing the lobbyists
The ongoing Madigan corruption trial is a daily reminder that the relationship between Illinois lawmakers and lobbyists is so close that a federal jury will need to sort out whether Madigan used co-defendant Michael McClain, a longtime lobbyist and confidant, as a conduit for many of Madigan’s government decisions. Prosecutors allege the two conspired together to such a degree they are both accused of racketeering in the far-reaching bribery-related case. Both have pleaded not guilty.
The coziness is evident in Illinois law, which allows legislators who finish a federal prison sentence for public corruption to start lobbying their former colleagues in Springfield days later. It happened just last year.
In comparison, Massachusetts has a 10-year ban on lobbying by people with convictions in state cases involving lobbying, campaign finance or ethics violations. The Massachusetts Legislature approved that 2009 law while its third straight House speaker was on his way to getting convicted of federal corruption charges. Massachusetts’ courts ruled the lobbying ban did not apply to federal convictions, and efforts to expand the ban have been blocked so far in the legislature.
Illinois could seek a similar ban, or it could take a smaller step: requiring lobbyists to disclose certain state or federal convictions. The U.S. Congress requires such disclosure for lobbyists convicted of bribery, extortion, embezzlement, kickbacks, tax evasion, fraud, perjury or money laundering.
Criminal convictions aside, many states require lawmakers to wait at least one year to become a lobbyist after leaving office.
About a quarter of states have adopted what advocates consider a “best practice” length of two years, including Iowa, Kentucky and New York. Florida voters even approved a six-year prohibition. But Illinois has one of the nation’s weakest “revolving door” restrictions. An Illinois lawmaker who quits partway through a term in office must wait only six months to lobby — unless he or she quits at the end of a legislative term. Then they can start lobbying the next day.
Illinois lawmakers have repeatedly rejected proposals to implement a longer waiting period, including in 2021 when Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul argued for a one-year lobbying ban to a legislative task force on ethics. The panel disbanded without issuing a final report.
Illinois also has weak disclosure laws for lobbyists. One of the best ways to estimate how much money special interests are spending to influence officials is to require lobbyists to disclose their compensation. But Illinois requires lobbyists to report only how much they spend on wining and dining lawmakers, a pittance compared with their pay. The state’s regulations fall short of the rules in the city of Chicago, the federal government and most other states — including every state bordering Illinois except Missouri.
With lobbyists pressuring their pals in the legislature, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias ran into major resistance this year when he tried to mandate disclosure of lobbyist compensation and give his office the power to investigate lobbyists, enforce rules and revoke licenses, including for corrupt former politicians.
The fallout from the Madigan trial may add momentum, but for now Welch prefers to tout the most recent changes, including the weak revolving door law and a ban on lawmakers from holding fundraisers on dates adjacent to legislative session days.
“I’ve heard nothing but positives as a result of the changes we’ve made in this area since I became speaker,” Welch said. “If there’s other things that we need to do, I’d love to hear suggestions from people.”
Unmuzzle the watchdogs
Once a political scandal hits, elected leaders frequently pledge to strengthen the role of internal watchdogs. Then those leaders quietly make sure the watchdogs can’t bite too hard.
The result is ethics laws with consistent weaknesses, including significant restrictions on what inspectors general can investigate, what they are allowed to report to the public and what punishments they can dole out. Multiple IGs have left their posts disillusioned and frustrated by the roadblocks they encountered.
Carol Pope, who quit her post as Illinois’ legislative inspector general in frustration, is among the former IGs who have pushed for more independence for the office. She said lawmakers should restore the office’s power to open investigations when it suspects wrongdoing, rather than wait for a formal complaint, as well as restoring the power to investigate actions of lawmakers unrelated to their public duties. Pope also has called for the power to issue subpoenas and to release reports on wrongdoing by lawmakers without requiring approval from the Legislative Ethics Commission, a body that regularly deadlocks on partisan lines.
The legislature also could reduce the odds of deadlock on the eight-member commission by adding a politically independent ninth member or by requiring that some or all seats go to non-lawmakers, as is the case in some other states.
In addition to the IG for the legislature, Illinois has five inspectors general who each oversee a different statewide office. The Quinn reform commission recommended making it harder to fire them to help avoid political retribution. The commission also called for requiring the release of names of at least higher-ranking employees and officials who engaged in wrongdoing. Neither of those proposed reforms was adopted.
In Chicago, after the City Council disbanded its own inspector general’s office, aldermen eventually transferred some of its powers to a citywide inspector general. But that broader office, now run by Deborah Witzburg, can’t force city officials to act on its findings or ensure rule-breakers are punished. City Hall can simply bury a report if the mayor’s administration so chooses. Witzburg said her office should be empowered to decide if a report merits public release, taking both privacy and transparency into consideration.
Witzburg can issue subpoenas and investigate without formal complaints. But she would like the city to ensure that agencies quickly turn over records and investigators can speak in private with subjects and witnesses, both common protocols elsewhere, yet not in Chicago. The office “cannot conduct effective oversight when City Hall gets to decide which information” the IG gets to review, Witzburg said.
Local corruption investigations
Illinois officeholders who commit bribery and other forms of public corruption unquestionably draw more attention from federal authorities than from state and local law enforcement. One major reason: The Illinois General Assembly has made it tougher for local authorities to target public corruption.
“Investigating and prosecuting public corruption in the state of Illinois is a far more arduous, difficult endeavor than doing so in the United States District Court,” said Daniel Kirk, a former first assistant in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
State lawmakers for decades have rejected calls to give the Illinois attorney general the power to empanel statewide grand juries to investigate public corruption.
In addition, more than 35 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government allow the recording of phone calls and in-person conversations with the consent of only one of the participants. That’s why, in New York, Cohen could secretly record his discussion with Trump. But in Illinois, a person generally needs consent from all parties involved in a conversation to record it.
In public corruption cases, Illinois law also bans state and local police from using wiretaps, an aggressive law enforcement technique that allows investigators to listen to conversations without any participant’s consent. State law allows local authorities to seek court-approved wiretaps in other types of cases, including those involving guns, drugs and gangs, but not for public corruption.
Empowered by federal law, FBI agents can ask informants to record their conversations, then use those recordings to persuade federal judges to OK wiretaps. That’s one major way they’ve gone after Illinois politicians for decades, including Madigan and Burke.
“Some of the most significant cases at the U.S. attorney’s office … in Chicago have certainly been made based on recordings,” said Matt Madden, former chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago.
Illinois laws offer a far more limited path. A local prosecutor pursuing a public corruption case could ask a circuit judge to allow an informant to make secret recordings. But state law forbids the judge from authorizing the next and often crucial step: a wiretap.
The Illinois standards can be traced to the Watergate era, when lawmakers worried that innocent citizens, not to mention public officials, could get caught up in secret tapings.
Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago still bristles about the authorities surreptitiously recording the Illinois Black Panthers when he served as the party’s defense minister, recalling in an interview that their “constitutional rights were essentially and completely stepped on, ignored and pushed aside.”
In the 1960s, a hidden recorder planted in a hotel room caught lobbyists chatting about bribing lawmakers, fueling paranoia in Springfield. Secret recordings also played a significant role in the federal conviction in the 1970s of former Illinois House Speaker Jack E. Walker, a Republican from suburban Lansing. A report that several bugging devices had been detected around the Capitol led lawmakers to form a special committee to investigate.
A long-ago point man for Daley in the General Assembly, Democratic Rep. Gerald Shea of Riverside declared at the time that “any elected official” should have “the sanctity of being able to talk in his office, or over the phone, without somebody hearing that conversation.”
In the 1980s, Cook County State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley, who later followed his father as mayor, sent top aide Jeffrey Kent to Springfield to push for more freedom to make covert recordings. But Kent recalled getting rebuffed in a committee by Democratic Sen. John A. D’Arco Jr. of Chicago.
“I got through my spiel, and D’Arco starts to talk about, ‘What about privacy? What about civil rights?’” said Kent, who also served as a federal prosecutor in Chicago and Eugene, Oregon. “There was no way he was going to let that bill out of committee.”
The senator later went to prison for taking bribes to influence insurance legislation, thanks in part to a federal recording obtained by an undercover mole.
Decades later, the Illinois Reform Commission in 2009 urged lawmakers to adopt one-party consent and to expand the wiretapping powers of state and local law enforcement to include bribery, extortion, fraud, official misconduct, government contracting crimes and racketeering. The commission noted Illinois was one of just four states with such restrictive recording laws.
The panel specifically cited the support of then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan and then-DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett, who had been bitter political rivals, along with Jack Blakey, then a top assistant Cook County prosecutor.
Birkett, now a Republican state appellate court justice, recalled that the effort, like others over the years, died after meeting resistance from Michael Madigan, the father of the Democratic attorney general. “I think he viewed it as being underhanded,” Birkett said. “He just didn’t like it.”
Madigan, who served a nationwide record 36 years as speaker, is now the latest Illinois politician to hear his recorded voice being used against him in a federal corruption trial. His daughter Lisa often takes a front-row seat in the courtroom.
And the Cook County prosecutor who advocated for more leeway in Illinois recording laws 15 years ago is better known now as U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey.
He is currently presiding over ex-Speaker Madigan’s trial.
Chicago Tribune’s Rick Pearson, Dan Petrella, Gregory Royal Pratt and Jeremy Gorner contributed.
