Prairie State Wire

Republican Congressional candidate James Marter recently voiced his opinion on the recent indictment of former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan.

Marter is glad to see what he views as Madigan's one-man crime wave finally coming to an end.

"It's about time," Marter told Prairie State Wire. "His crimes have finally caught up to him, along with the fact that he’s been using the legislature for his own personal gain and to control Democrats in Springfield to the detriment of the people of Illinois. I'm glad the law has finally caught up to him. I hope there is a dragnet wide enough to pull other criminals that have been involved."

On March 2, Madigan was indicted of federal charges of racketeering, conspiracy, as well as individual counts of using interstate facilities to carry out bribery, wire fraud, and attempted extortion.

"The 22-count indictment accuses Madigan of leading for nearly a decade a criminal enterprise whose purpose was to enhance Madigan’s political power and financial well-being while also generating income for his political allies and associates," a release from the Department of Justice said.

The release notes that in addition to his role as Speaker of the House, Madigan has also held the positions of representative of Illinois’s 22nd District, committeeman for Chicago’s 13th Ward, chairman of both the Illinois Democratic Party and the 13th Ward Democratic Organization, and partner at the Chicago law firm of Madigan & Getzendanner.

Last year, Illinois legislators passed an ethics reform bill which Gov. Pritzker signed in October. The Legislative Inspector General at the time, Carol Pope, announced her resignation in response to the bill.

ABC7 reported that in her letter of resignation, Pope called the office of LIG a "paper tiger" and stated that the bill did not go far enough, and actually tied her hands more than they had been before. 

Pope told ABC7, "I'm thinking that the legislature knows the limitations of the power of the LIG and that they want it that way. That's why I said I am a paper tiger. There are no real teeth to this legislation the way it is now."

Marter agreed with Pope that the ethics reform bill did not go far enough.

"That was an ethics reform  bill in name only," Marter told Prairie State Wire. "They excluded Republicans from the bill and Republicans had no input. They don’t won’t to pass real ethics reform. Hopefully, we can change that when we take over.

The Congressional candidate for the 14th district (McHenry, Oswego, Sycamore) also believes that the office of Legislative Inspector General should have more power to fight corruption. 

"It's about having people in position to fight corruption and crime without apology," Marter told Prairie State Wire. "We need a person with really high integrity in that post given all the crime we’ve had decade after after decade in Springfield."