SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (IRN) — A committee set to meet Thursday morning in Springfield starts the process of investigating allegations a utility allegedly hired people for do-nothing jobs to curry favorable legislation from the state’s most powerful elected official: House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Madigan was implicated in a deferred prosecution agreement federal prosecutors released back in July where utility ComEd agreed it took part in a nearly decade long scheme of giving people associated with “Public Official A” jobs with little to no work.
Republicans in the House invoked House Rule 91 to launch a Special Investigating Committee at the end of August. The committee’s first meeting to go over the organization of the public investigation is Thursday in Springfield.
Madigan has not been charged with a crime and has said he has done nothing wrong.
Professor David Parker, director of the Center for the Study of Fraud and Corruption at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, said Illinoians should watch how the hearings unfold.
“I think this is historic,” Parker said. “It sends a strong signal about are we committed to change and anti-corruption, or is it going to be status quo?”
State Rep. Tom Demmer, R-Dixon, is the committee’s minority spokesman. He said they’ll be calling people named and unnamed in the ComEd deferred prosecution agreement “to provide us with information that will help us answer these important questions about the conduct of Public Official A who’s been identified as Speaker of the House Mike Madigan.”
Thursday’s hearing is expected to lay out the ground rules. A Madigan spokesman said to not expect him there for the first hearing but he will be available for future hearings as needed.
It’s unclear who else will be called to testify. Republicans have said they do not want to interfere with the ongoing federal probe which produced bribery charges against a former ComEd executive last Friday.
Parker said the election year could be a factor.
“You’re going to have the Republican Party coming on fairly strong,” Parker said. “The Democrats are going to give a lot of pushback. Everybody gets to say ‘we’re doing something, we’re looking at it,’ so everybody is going to kind of step up and say ‘it is an issue and it is being addressed.’”
The bipartisan House Special Investigating Committee is a rarity. The last one for former state lawmaker Luis Arroyo was disbanded before it met because the state representative resigned. That committee was looking into bribery charges prosecutors filed against Arroyo that alleged Arroyo accepted money from an unnamed state Senator who was wearing a wire for federal investigators.
Special Investigating Committee Chairman state Rep. Chris Welch, D-Hillside, has said the committee will give Madigan and others the appropriate due process.
By GREG BISHOP for the Illinois Radio Network/the Center Square