Ethics legislation stalls in Springfield as Senate president tries ‘brazen' move that would have helped his election case

Chicago Tribune

4 hours ago

In the closing hours of the Illinois General Assembly's spring session, Senate President Don Harmon tried to pass legislation that would have wiped clean a potential multimillion-dollar fine against his political campaign committee for violating election finance laws he championed years ago.
Harmon's move came against the backdrop of the former Illinois House speaker's upcoming sentencing for corruption and abuse of power and almost instantly created a bipartisan legislative controversy that resulted in the bill never getting called for a vote.
The Oak Park Democrat's maneuver, characterized by critics as 'brazen' and self-serving, also raises anew questions about how seriously political leaders are trying to improve ethical standards in a state government the electorate already holds in low regard.
Blowback to Harmon's action, particularly from inside the House Democratic caucus, was so severe it derailed an entire package of new election measures that would have required severe warnings about penalties for noncitizen voting, mandated curbside voting access for the disabled, broadened the ability of voters to cast ballots in centralized locations and provided more detailed public information about voting results.
'This is a terrible look,' said state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat who recalled being one of several who spoke out in a closed-door House Democratic caucus meeting. 'I don't recommend that anybody in our caucus take a vote like that. There was not a single person in that caucus that could defend that vote. … There was a visceral reaction to it in caucus — both to the substance of it and the lack of forewarning.'
But in an interview with the Tribune, Harmon repeatedly maintained his effort was justified and disputed criticism that it was self-serving.
Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker — who previously said former Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan's February conviction was a 'vital reminder that we must maintain our vigilance in cleaning up government' — also defended Harmon and said their political party takes ethics seriously.
Still, Harmon's activity is reflective of a political culture in Springfield where officials talk a good game about the importance of ethics in government but routinely stop short of adopting robust laws governing their conduct.
After a legislative session that ended last weekend with lawmakers never advancing significant ethics bills, Democratic House Speaker Emanuel 'Chris' Welch of Hillside maintained that such legislation 'remains a top priority' for him. He pointed to ethics proposals approved during his first year as speaker in 2021 after Madigan was ousted while federal investigators were closing in.
Welch said current 'ethics laws and the laws of the state of Illinois worked' in Madigan's case — though his predecessor was charged and convicted under federal, not state, law.
'The system worked. We don't need to rush and react. We need to take our time and get things right. We don't need to react to headlines,' he said. 'We need to make sure things get properly vetted, that the House, the Senate and the governor's office can all come to agreement on these things, and we're committed to doing that.'
Madigan, 83, once the state's most powerful politician, faces sentencing Friday after being convicted Feb. 12 by a jury on federal bribery conspiracy and other corruption charges that alleged he used his office to enhance his power, line his pockets and enrich a small circle of his most loyal associates.
But pieces of the post-Madigan changes that Welch points to still draw criticism because they are weaker at holding lawmakers in Illinois accountable than laws in other states. In particular, a revolving-door clause only requires lawmakers to wait a maximum of six months to become a lobbyist if they leave office in the middle of their term. And, if they complete their term in office, they can start as a lobbyist the next day.
Rep. Patrick Windhorst of Metropolis, the top Republican on the House Ethics & Elections Committee, said the lack of substantive action on ethics this spring should make it 'clear to any objective observer — any observer, really, of the state government — that the Democratic majority does not care about ethics reform, does not believe we need ethics reform and is not going to take serious action to enact ethics reform.'
Rep. Maurice West, the Rockford Democrat who chairs the House committee on ethics, said his panel never held hearings on major ethics proposals during the spring session because there was no agreement with Senate Democrats to advance any bill. During the session, West repeatedly said the committee was set to meet to take testimony on proposed ethics changes.
'That was my expectation and hope, that there was going to be a robust conversation on ethics, but I also knew that I had to go through a process. This had to be agreed upon in both chambers to ensure … that we can get it signed into law,' West said. 'And if there's not an agreement, then it's an automatic brick.'
After lawmakers adjourned, a spokesperson for Pritzker referred questions about proposed ethics laws to West, who said he had a brief conversation with the governor toward the end of the session about 'how we can partner … and collaborate on ethics over the summer.'
'That's all I have to say when it comes to the governor,' West said, declining to elaborate on any specific proposals.
Cassidy, the House Democrat, said it may be time to take up each proposal on its own merits rather than jam them into one bill that requires Democrats in both chambers to agree before a vote is taken on ethics, elections and campaign finance matters.
'I just wonder if maybe we should rethink that,' she said.
While any legislative movement on ethics languished in Springfield, Harmon, on the final scheduled day of the session, attempted to statutorily quash his case before the State Board of Elections, which acted following a Tribune review and inquiry about political contributions Harmon received last year.
Elections board officials in March informed the Senate president that he had improperly accepted nearly $4.1 million in contributions exceeding the allowed campaign finance limits, and they threatened to levy a substantial fine. Harmon has filed an appeal and said he 'fully complied with the law.'
At the heart of the disagreement between Harmon and election officials is a significant and controversial loophole in state campaign finance law. It allows politicians to collect contributions above state limits if any candidate in the race in which they are running — themselves or an opponent — reports reaching a 'self-funding threshold' in which they have given or loaned their campaign funds more than $250,000 for statewide races and more than $100,000 in races for the state legislature or local offices.
Originally described as a method allowing a candidate to compete against a wealthy self-funded opponent or to counter a well-funded opposing group's independent expenditures, the loophole has instead become a way for candidates — even if they face no opposition — to accept unlimited contributions by purposely breaking the limits themselves.
Harmon, who sponsored the earlier law, has repeatedly done that himself, giving or loaning his campaign fund more than $100,000 — sometimes by just a single dollar — to trigger the so-called 'money bomb' loophole.
Harmon did it again for the 2024 campaign season when, in January 2023, he gave his state Senate campaign committee more than $100,000 even though he was not running for office last year. While members of the Illinois House are up for election every two years, state Senate seats have one two-year term and two four-year terms every 10 years.
In paperwork filed with the state elections board, Harmon indicated the move allowed him to keep collecting unlimited cash through the November 2024 election. However, board officials informed him that the loophole would be closed after the March 2024 primary.
Still, from the March 2024 primary through the end of that year, state records showed his Friends of Don Harmon for State Senate campaign committee collected more than $8.3 million, nearly half of which the state board has now said was over the campaign contribution limits.
In appealing the board's case, Harmon's campaign fund acknowledged that, if it loses, it could be subject to a penalty of up to $6.1 million — a figure based on the 150% of the amount the board deems a candidate willingly accepted over the limits — as well as a payment of nearly $4.1 million to the state's general operating fund.
Such a massive penalty, however, is unlikely. Politicians frequently challenge the board, and negotiations can result in final fines that are a fraction of the potential penalty. And if Harmon wins the appeal before the elections board, he could end up paying no penalty.
In a Tribune interview last week, Harmon defended his eleventh-hour attempt to change state law with a clause that could have eliminated his elections board dispute and potential fine. He said the language he sought to insert in the statute was 'existing law.'
But that is Harmon's interpretation of 'existing law,' not the elections board officials'.
'A fundamental notion of campaign finance law is that House candidates and Senate candidates be treated the same,' Harmon told the Tribune. 'The state board staff's interpretation treats House candidates and Senate candidates fundamentally differently.'
When pressed on the political optics of his move, Harmon said the new clause 'was just intended to call attention' to differences in the way the board addresses House and Senate candidates.
'We'll revisit the bill after we win the case,' Harmon said, adding, 'We're going to proceed with the case under the law as written.'
Welch acknowledged it was a backlash among his House Democrats over the Harmon-backed provision that resulted in the overall bill never advancing.
'I did inform (Harmon) after our caucus that we didn't have support for that, and if a bill came over with that in it, we would not take it,' Welch told the Tribune.
Good-government advocates, stymied on key proposals again this spring, were taken aback when the Harmon clause appeared late in the session.
'I thought I'd seen everything, but I was shocked to see it in the bill,' said Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois. 'It clearly would have changed the law, but it was framed as just a clarification of existing rules so it would apply retroactively to Harmon's case. And it was buried in an enormous omnibus bill … at the last possible minute to minimize discussion.
'Just a breathtakingly cynical use of legal language and procedure,' Kaplan said, adding: 'It's bad enough that legislative leaders regularly abuse the self-funding loophole. We should be closing the loophole, not blowing it wide open for even more opportunities for pay-to-play politics and corruption.'
The two-sentence clause Harmon backed would have generally expanded the period that a senator in a four-year term who breaks the caps can keep them off. But the second sentence in the Harmon clause caused the uproar on both sides of the aisle: 'This amendatory Act of the 104th General Assembly is declarative of existing law,' phrasing many lawmakers interpreted to mean that, if passed, could have eliminated Harmon's election board dispute.
Sen. Jil Tracy, a Quincy Republican, called the clause 'mind-blowing.'
'The language was brazen,' she said. 'My initial reaction was shock. I couldn't believe the majority would be that brazen.' She said she learned of the clause in the waning hours of the legislative session when a legal staffer told her the proposal would erase Harmon's case before the board.
'That bill would have condoned and made it appropriate to go beyond what the election code allows and to supersede the limits and create a path (to) interpret what President Harmon had done was OK,' said Tracy, a former assistant attorney general who served under both former Republican Jim Ryan and Democrat Lisa Madigan, the former speaker's daughter.
'He still argues what he did was OK, but why do a bill?' asked Tracy, a member of a Senate subcommittee on ethics.
At an unrelated appearance in West Chicago on Thursday, Pritzker sought to vouch for Harmon while he said that he and his fellow Democrats in Springfield have sought to clean up a state with a culture of corruption.
'I know that the Senate president doesn't have any intention other than to make the law better,' he said. At the same time, the governor acknowledged he didn't 'know enough about the violations that have been alleged.'
Another provision that raised eyebrows in the Harmon-backed legislation would have allowed statewide elected officials and state lawmakers running for federal offices to hold fundraisers on session days and the day before, as long as they're held outside of Sangamon County, which includes Springfield. A statewide ban on such fundraisers was a provision in the 2021 ethics law touted by Pritzker and other top Democrats.
The new provision would have benefited Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, Pritzker's two-time running mate who's running for U.S. Senate, and a handful of state legislators who've declared their candidacies for the U.S. House. The candidates also would have been able to transfer money raised on session days for their federal campaigns into their state accounts, as long as they adhered to state contribution limits.
Welch, Harmon and Pritzker's office all said they didn't know the origin of the language, which was presented in a brief committee hearing late on the final day of session as an attempt to align state law with rules governing fundraising for federal candidates. But West, giving the overall package its only public airing, couldn't explain how leaving a restriction in place only for Springfield's home county would pass legal muster.
There was a feeling that it would be more ethical to keep in-session political fundraisers 'as far away from the state Capitol as possible,' West said.
But Rep. Carol Ammons, an Urbana Democrat, called the provision problematic, saying: 'I don't know what difference it makes what county you're in. If you're fundraising while we're in session, you're fundraising while we're in session.'
.