Madigan’s Illinois House replacement quits at Madigan’s request
Two days after he picked his replacement as state representative, Mike Madigan asked that replacement to resign over ‘questionable conduct.’ Edward Guerra Kodatt then quit after serving two days, entitling him to $5,789 in salary.
“Questionable conduct” by Mike Madigan’s hand-picked replacement as Illinois House representative led Edward Guerra Kodatt to resign three days after his appointment.
“After learning of alleged questionable conduct by Mr. Kodatt, it was suggested that he resign as state representative for the 22nd District. We are committed to a zero tolerance policy in the workplace,” Madigan said Feb. 23 in a joint statement with Chicago 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn.
They did not elaborate on the “questionable conduct.” Kodatt has not commented.
The resignation came Feb. 24. His two days as a representative entitles him to a full month’s salary of $5,789.
Kodatt, 26, since 2017 has worked in the constituent services office Madigan shares with Quinn, making $42,456 as a bilingual outreach and budget assistant.
Madigan quit as representative Feb. 18 a month after he was ousted as House speaker. He controlled 56% of the vote as Democratic ward committeeman when Kodatt was selected Feb. 21 and will again control the vote now that Kodatt resigned.
While he is entitled to a month’s salary, State Comptroller Susana Mendoza said Feb. 24 that her office had Kodatt’s resignation information but no payroll information. She is championing legislation to pro-rate legislative salaries to days worked.
“In the spirit of good governance, I ask Mr. Kodatt to decline the month’s salary he is entitled to under this arcane law,” Mendoza, a Democrat, told the Chicago Tribune.
Madigan’s district surrounds Midway Airport. It has the state’s third-largest Latino population, according to the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus. Kodatt speaks fluent Spanish and his mother is from Ecuador.
The caucus and some ward leaders were pushing Madigan to pick other Latino candidates as his replacement. Those candidates included Silvia Villa, a professor of Latino studies who works with new immigrants, and Angelica Guerrero Cuellar, a Latino community services volunteer. Ten candidates sought Madigan’s position Feb. 21.
Madigan’s downfall was also driven by “questionable conduct.”
He was implicated in a more than $1.3 million bribery scandal involving Commonwealth Edison, which told federal prosecutors it was buying Madigan’s influence.
U.S. Attorney John Lausch, who led the ComEd and Madigan probe along with a slew of other public corruption investigations in Illinois, was recently asked to resign along with other Trump-appointed federal prosecutors. It now appears he may remain in his spot for some additional time after appeals by U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.
Also, Madigan’s political operation and speaker’s office were both embroiled in harassment scandals. His campaign paid nearly $900,000 to settle a sexual harassment claim that Madigan failed to stop sexual harassment by Quinn’s brother against a campaign worker. Madigan lost his long-time chief of staff, who also was executive director of the state’s Democratic Party, over allegations of inappropriate comments, suppressing complaints and harassment of a female clerk in the office.
Madigan resigned as chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois on Feb. 22 – a day after he said he saw no need to resign. He will begin collecting his $7,100-a-month pension from his House service in March. His monthly pension benefit will then jump to $12,600 a month a little more than a year later, thanks to a pension sweetener Madigan helped pass that is no longer available to lawmakers. The General Assembly Retirement System has only 17% of what it will need to pay Madigan and other lawmakers’ retirement benefits.
The system of cronyism and corruption that kept Madigan in power for so long has been costly for Illinoisans. It kills at least $556 million in economic growth every year, which between 2000 and 2018 took $830 in additional income from every Illinoisan.
A new report ranking federal corruption convictions per capita named Chicago as the most corrupt city in the nation and Illinois as the No. 2 state, behind Louisiana. The biggest headline-grabbing corruption revelations of 2019 were not even included in the latest federal data, the report released Feb. 22 by the University of Illinois at Chicago stated.
Madigan leaves Illinois with a pension crisis that is the worst in the nation measured by the state’s debt-to-revenue ratio. It got that way thanks largely to his alliance with public sector unions and trading generous benefits for campaign support.
Madigan’s legacy of pension and corruption problems will continue unless Illinois state leaders champion pension reform, ethics reform and budgeting reform.