Progress Illinois

From the Tribune:

The Illinois Senate sent Gov. Rod Blagojevich a strong message Monday by approving the state’s toughest-ever restrictions on campaign spending, an attempt to restrict his practice of giving campaign contributors lucrative state contracts.

The Senate’s 55-0 vote came only days after Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama prodded his mentor, state Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), into taking up the matter quickly.

The heart of the legislation is a ban on supporters who have or seek state contracts worth at least $50,000 from donating to statewide officials who dole out the business.

Senators overrode a series of side issues that Blagojevich had tried to insert into the legislation, and their vote means the bill will become law in January. 

For more on Blagojevich's proposed amendments, check out our backgrounder from earlier this month.

Looks like a phone call from Barack Obama was enough to get the job done.

From Crain's Greg Hinz:

Bowing to a request from “my friend Barack Obama,” Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr. midday Thursday announced he will call the state Senate back into session next week to take final action on a pending major ethics bill.

“I stand by my interpretation” that the measure could have waited until after the November election, Mr. Jones said in a statement. However, he continued, “I plan to call the Senate back into session to deal with the issue of ethics, only at the request of my friend.”

The statement does not say when the session will occur, but Mr. Jones’ spokeswoman said it will be “sometime next week.”

During Lisa Madigan's campaign to become Illinois' attorney general, people took note when she pledged to throw back the shades and shed light on the inner-workings of state, local, and county government. Her plan was simple: to hire a public access counselor who would help average citizens and those elected officials with an independent streak understand state laws and, when needed, ride public bodies until they disclosed credit card statements, closed session minutes, cell phone records, and the like.

Dropping the hammer on Illinois public officials who have earned a reputation for doing their bidding behind closed doors -- from single-school districts all the way up to the governor's office -- may have come at a cost, Madigan's deputy chief of staff Cara Smith said. The governor decided to trim AG's budget by more than any other state agency this year. "Do I think this is a coincidence that our budget was cut by 25 percent? Absolutely not," Smith added.

And the public access office has become a casualty of the cuts.

Last spring, Public Access Counselor Terry Mutchler called it quits, after landing a job to head up Pennsylvania's new open records office. With the attorney general's budget gutted, a hiring freeze has been imposed, which has left her position vacant for nearly four months.

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In response to a loudening chorus suggesting he do so, Barack Obama called Senate President Emil Jones today to urge action on the pending ethics bill.  CapitolFax had the scoop.  The Tribune has some more detail:

"Senator Obama called Senator Jones today to offer his strong support for the ethics reforms pending before the Senate and urged him to pass them at the earliest possible opportunity," Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement.

Some lawmakers and self-styled good government groups have called on Obama to weigh in with Jones, given Obama's history of pushing ethics reforms during his tenure as a state senator. Until Thursday, however, Obama had declined to get involved.

By making the call to Jones, Obama moved to quell questions about his dedication to ethics reform before it became an issue in his presidential campaign. 

This afternoon, the Illinois House voted to override Gov. Rod Blagojevich's amendatory veto of the ethics legislation they passed earlier in the year.  From the Daily Herald:

The 118-member Illinois House just voted 110-0 to reject the governor's changes to ethics legislation and reinstate the provisions as they were initially and overwhelmingly approved by the House and Senate. [...]

House sponsor John Fritchey, a Chicago Democrat, took the governor's proposals and filed them as new proposals. He then advanced the initial plan that was overwhelmingly approved.

“This bill has seen more hurdles than the Beijing Olympics,” Fritchey said of the ethics plan.

For more on the governor's proposed changes, check out our backgrounder from yesterday.

A coalition of Illinois political reform advocates hope to put the kibosh on pay-to-play politics and expose how ballot measures are financed once and for all by calling on state legislators to override Gov. Rod Blagojevich's amendatory vetoes of two key reform bills.

The coalition, comprised of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, the League of Women Voters of Illinois, the Better Government Association, and a handful of other groups, today released an open letter to lawmakers that they hope will ratchet up the pressure as officials return to Springfield this week:

After a long and drawn out process, the pay-to-play and disclosure legislation that was overwhelmingly passed by both houses mirrors the public’s strong support for ethics reforms ... [R]esidents of Illinois are highly concerned about corruption in state government, extremely concerned about the influence of money in state politics, and are far less likely to “trust the government in Illinois to do what is right” as compared to residents who live in the surrounding midwestern states. It’s time to start restoring public confidence in the legislature and in the legislative process.

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The Senate unanimously passed ethics reform legislation this morning. The bill prohibits individuals and companies with a state contract exceeding $50,000 from contributing to the campaigns of the lawmakers responsible for the award. The measure was recently amended by a Senate committee to also prohibit nonprofit groups from making contributions to politicians who awarded them state contracts (it had previously prohibited only for-profit businesses). Yesterday, Illinois Issues quoted Sen. Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) saying that the bill was likely to pass the House "if it makes it out of the Senate first."

(H/T: Capitol Fax)