Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after being sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison and fined $2.5 million during a hearing on June 13, 2025, in Chicago. | Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune
Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan was sentenced Friday to 71/2 years in federal prison and fined $2.5 million after being convicted on 10 counts of bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud. While Illinoisans finally see some justice, they also see Madigan’s corrupt political legacy still hurting them.
Madigan was the longest-serving statehouse speaker in U.S. history. Under his reign, Illinois achieved the nation’s lowest credit rating and ranked as the second-most indebted and corrupt state. On average, more than one Illinois public servant per week — for 40 years between 1983 and 2023 — was convicted of corruption just in federal court, not including local prosecutions. High taxes, the pension crisis, massive debt and corruption have driven residents to better-governed states. Much of it can be traced to Madigan and how he pulled the levers.
The structure Madigan built concentrated power in ways exclusive to Illinois. He crafted rules that continue to give Illinois House speakers unparalleled power to control which bills become law, he is responsible for the state’s extreme gerrymandering and he nurtured the culture of corruption that continues to plague Illinois.
Lawmakers must unravel Madigan’s influence and the control he built through little-known rules of procedure. Madigan rewrote these to gather power and co-opt the legislature, effectively silencing voters’ voices when in conflict with leadership’s agenda.
Through these House rules, the speaker wields nearly absolute control over the legislative process. The most troubling of which allows the speaker to effectively control which bills, amendments and motions even make out of the Rules Committee. Madigan designed the process so everything must first pass through this committee, so that the speaker hand-picks the majority and bills opposed by leadership can simply die there through inaction.
Getting a bill out of the Rules Committee requires either unanimous consent — virtually impossible — or three-fifths support from both parties’ caucuses, with each supporter required to sponsor the bill. That’s an extraordinarily high barrier found in no other state. The Rules Committee has rarely voted contrary to the speaker’s wishes.
Madigan’s successor, Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, has adopted a similar rule by which only bills with 60 Democratic sponsors get called for a vote on the House floor. That makes it very difficult for bills without a large, progressive-leaning caucus to emerge.
Additionally, Madigan championed the state’s extreme gerrymandering by drawing the maps during the 1980s, 2000s and 2010s, plus influenced the 2020s effort. It was how he first started gathering power, saving Chicago Democrats’ seats in the state legislature by nipping off just enough of the growing suburbs to dilute their voting power. By doing so, he exacerbated Illinois’ uncompetitive elections in the following decades, leaving voters without choices and little reason to go to the polls.
When more than 560,000 registered voters in 2016 tried to stop him and ensure legislative maps were independently drawn, he used one of his ComEd cronies to sue and kill the effort. That decision still thwarts any reforms unless state lawmakers initiate them.
Illinois lawmakers should make that break with Madigan’s corruption by adopting an independent political mapmaking process for the people’s representatives in Springfield and in Washington, D.C. There’s little they could do of greater significance than giving voters back their power.
In addition to the elimination of Madigan’s rules and creating independently drawn political maps, the state needs comprehensive ethics reforms. Those reforms must go beyond the toothless package the legislature passed after his indictment. They include:
- Implementing a one- or two-year idle period before former lawmakers can perform any lobbying, closing loopholes that currently let them game the system.
- Providing the legislative inspector general with full investigative powers, including subpoena authority and the ability to publish findings without permission from the lawmakers on the Legislative Ethics Commission.
- Requiring lawmakers to provide complete financial disclosures for their immediate families, not just joint accounts.
- Giving the Legislative Ethics Commission independent oversight by requiring some number of members who are not current or former lawmakers. The current system of lawmakers policing themselves represents an obvious conflict of interest that undermines accountability.
- Preventing sitting public leaders from controlling party campaign funds. As chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois and speaker of the Illinois House, Madigan was able to control millions in party campaign funds and thus the fealty of lawmakers. Fifty-seven current members of the Illinois General Assembly benefited from and would not have been elected without funding controlled by Madigan, an Illinois Policy Institute analysis found.
Until Illinois reforms gerrymandering, ethics laws and House rules to better reflect democratic principles seen in other state legislatures, Madigan will continue controlling us. The power to make law will remain concentrated in the hands of a few.
Madigan’s punishment should include sitting in his cell knowing his machine is being dismantled. That would be full justice for Illinoisans.
Matt Paprocki is president and CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute
Published June 17, 2025 in the Chicago Tribune
