Things are changing on ethics in Illinois, but we have to keep up the pressure

A "baby step," is what the Daily Herald editorial board succinctly and correctly called the ethics legislation passed in Springfield in the waning days of the Illinois General Assembly's spring session.

As someone who's both a dad of young children and spent nearly two decades closely watching the Statehouse, I've found myself rolling that term around a lot in recent days.

Baby steps are a necessary foundation. Each baby step is a precursor to more autonomy and independence.

And that, I realized, is the vantage point from which Illinois' new ethics legislation's provisions must be viewed.

Lawmakers should be commended for efforts to put real measures into law. Many other states have basic, common-sense reforms and Illinois just joined them.

Now, we must press for more.

To put this in perspective, in 2009, when Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted of trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat, lawmakers passed lobbyist reform. I remember sitting in disbelief in my cubicle in the Capitol building.

Not ethics reforms for a governor or for a General Assembly linked to scores of public corruption convictions. Rather, they went after a group with low favorables and nothing to do with Blagojevich's crimes: lobbyists.

So, in the months following the ouster of former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, who was under federal investigation for public corruption, I again expected more reform that would do nothing meaningful to address the problem.

But something was different this time. The General Assembly moved on legislation that would start to address the system of corruption in Illinois.

Here is how the ethics changes will and won't move us forward:

• The six-month period before a lawmaker can leave the General Assembly early and become a lobbyist is certainly an improvement from before, where someone could make the change at any time without consequences. However, this change only applies during the term of the General Assembly when the lawmaker retired, and it is limited to six months only - a shorter period than most states impose. Illinois should join the long list of other states that have a one- or two-year buffer between when a lawmaker leaves office and becomes a lobbyist, which would allow a proper "cooling off" period.

• The new laws also finally loosen some restraints on the legislative inspector general. The inspector now is allowed to investigate complaints without approval from lawmakers on the legislative ethics commission within one year of the incident. While this provision eliminates some common partisan roadblocks, a state watchdog could be further empowered by being allowed to issue subpoenas to interview witnesses and by extending the one-year window to investigate. The inspector general should also be able to publish findings of wrongdoing without prior approval of the commission.

• Effective Jan. 1, 2022, the ethics bill creates a ban that prevents lawmakers from lobbying other units of government. Yet, several loopholes remain to get around the ban that many could figure out.

Legislators will now be required to make expanded disclosures of financial and personal conflicts of interests, but not those of their family members. This, too, can and should be expanded, so lawmakers must recuse themselves on voting for pieces of legislation that could unfairly benefit themselves or their families.

Voters deserve to see changes in the culture of corruption. It is unfair and harmful.

For too long, Illinois has abandoned the poor, the marginalized, the small business owners and the entrepreneurs who need help the most. Some of them have abandoned Illinois, too - leading to the state's first Census loss in 200 years. Instead of lifting them up, we've spent decades allowing corruption to lift the powerful and the connected.

Things are starting to change in Illinois. They will change faster with an ethics reform package with teeth.

Baby steps are great, but we expect grown adults to be disciplined in their quest to run.

• Matt Paprocki is president of the Illinois Policy Institute