The to-do list for cleaning up Illinois

Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn chose the anniversary of the arrest of his former running mate, ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, to sign a campaign finance reform bill into law Wednesday.

It was one of several efforts in the past year to fix flawed systems in Illinois that allow for secrecy, manipulation and corruption.

Lawmakers did make some improvements by limiting campaign contributions to candidates, by opening up contracting to more scrutiny and by putting a bit more onus on governments to be transparent.

Still, none of these efforts were as good as they need to be. We've all weathered far too many stories about political pay to play, no-bid contracts and stonewalling public officials to believe Illinois has been cured of its case of corruption flu.

As it is, the campaign limits bill Quinn signed doesn't even take effect until 2011 and it increased the already considerable power and influence of the four legislative leaders in Springfield by not putting any limit on the amount of money they can funnel to their favored candidates in the critical general elections.

Voters are going to have to continue to pressure their rank-and-file legislators to pressure Democratic House Speaker Michael J. Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton to close that loophole.

And voters really need to start needling state Sen. Don Harmon, an Oak Park Democrat whose district stretches north to include parts of Rosemont and Bensenville. Harmon, who sponsored the campaign finance bill this year, told WBEZ Radio he wasn't sure there'd be time to address the leaders' loophole and other better government efforts next year because job creation will be the priority.

We want, demand and expect our elected officials to quit stalling and to deal with the state's budget problems, job creation and cleaning up government in 2010. We pay you to be able to handle more than one problem just as we all do at our jobs, senator.

Illinois still needs limits on the four legislative leaders and parties in both primaries and general elections. It needs a new system for creating legislative maps that are drawn by computer and approved by an independent commission that is as free of political influence as possible. Illinois needs term limits on legislative leaders and rules that require full hearings and floor votes on proposed laws that gain a reasonable amount of support from rank-and-file lawmakers.

Illinois still is approving budgets few people have studied right before adjournment. And Madigan and Cullerton still refuse to budge on limiting the money they can give to their candidates. That's all the evidence we need that we're not done cleaning up corruption. We've only begun.