A former federal prosecutor that has worked on high-profile corruption cases will be the Illinois General Assembly’s new top watchdog, as lawmakers continue to try to address the ongoing sexual harassment scandal at the Capitol.

The Legislative Ethics Commission announced former Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie B. Porter was appointed as the new legislative inspector general. She was picked during a private meeting on Saturday afternoon. Porter was a member of the prosecution team in the Conrad Black fraud trial, and worked on public corruption cases including those that led to the conviction of Springfield power broker Bill Celleni and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Illinois lawmakers are hustling to make amends for the disgraceful disclosure that a sexual harassment complaint against a state senator sat untouched in a binder for nearly a year. The job of legislative inspector general — vacant since December 2014, meaning there was nobody to review complaints and decide whether to investigate them — was hurriedly filled in a closed-door meeting Saturday afternoon.

The new IG will work through a backlog of 27 complaints that languished while the office was staffed by a part-time executive director whose job apparently was to put those complaints in the binder. It might as well be a wastebasket.

The position of legislative inspector general has been vacant for four years. But appointing someone to be the “toothless watchdog” will not tame sexual harassment in Springfield.

There’s a new scandal in Springfield, one that has legislators ducking for cover, pointing fingers of blame and promising to do better.

No, it’s not the sexual-harassment hysteria that already has cost one legislator his party-leadership post, although that’s a big part of it.

Turmoil has overtaken Algonquin Township, with officials trading expensive lawsuits – one of which involves a secret security camera the town clerk claims was installed to spy on her.

For months, Karen Lukasik, a 52-year-old school teacher elected clerk in May, has been locked in a court battle with a man who works feet away from her in another office: Highway Commissioner Andrew Gasser, who claimed in a June 1 court filing that the clerk was out to destroy records to cover up years of wrongdoing by Gasser’s predecessor.

The City Council will meet Monday to discuss keeping McHenry’s property tax levy flat next year.

The City Council will meet at 7 p.m. Monday at the McHenry Municipal Center, 333 S. Green St., to discuss the levy and set a public hearing date for the matter. Right now, the plan is to levy for about $4.6 million. This means the city would forgo its allowable increase for the seventh year, deferring revenues of $115,939, according to city documents.

The Des Plaines Elementary District 62 school board president clarified Saturday a news release the district had send out Friday evening concerning the absence of Superintendent Floyd Williams.

The release said Williams has been on leave since Oct. 17, where district officials earlier had said he was working remotely.

The reason developer William Torchia withdrew his special sales tax increase request, putting the construction of a local Portillo’s outlet in jeopardy, may boil down to one number: six.

That’s the number of votes necessary to pass the proposal, and a number that multiple members of the Peoria City Council said last week it was nowhere near achieving.

If you have never heard about a special service area before, chances are, after the uproar over Portillo’s much-ballyhooed arrival in Peoria, you’ve heard of it now.

But the flap over the effort to add an extra 1 percent to the sales tax at the Italian-beef-and-hot-dog restaurant — now apparently in limbo — is only part of the SSA story.