Former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan is resigning as a state representative after 50 years in office. It came a little more than a month after he was ousted as speaker.
Former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan and Chicago Ald. Ed Burke are among the politicians curbed by Chicago’s current U.S. Attorney. A bipartisan group is trying to keep him in place to continue public corruption prosecutions.
The House Rules allowed Madigan to accumulate unprecedented power in the Illinois speaker’s office and helped enable a culture of corruption in Springfield. With Madigan out, reformers have a shot at changing the House Rules.
Decades of institutionalized financial mismanagement left Illinois with the nation’s worst fiscal health. Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan has been at the center of nearly every bad decision along the way.
Illinois averaged over one federal public corruption conviction a week during the Madigan era. That is the most convictions per capita among the top 10 most populous states between 1983 and 2018.