Despite being sentenced to 15 months in prison for a financial crime intended to cover up his sexual abuse of high school students, former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert will continue to receive $28,000 annual pension payments for his six years as an Illinois state representative.
House Bill 5522 would require local governments and school districts in Illinois to maintain websites with links to vital public information such as budgets, expenditures and officials’ names and numbers.
Several instances of corruption and mismanagement of public property and trust came to light in March and included new developments in cases involving Chicago Public Schools’ former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
From taxpayer- and donor-funded spending sprees by the president of an Illinois public college, to Chicago’s red-light-camera ticketing and kick-back schemes, 2015 has been rife with instances of public corruption and lack of government transparency.
November saw Chicago’s City Council let the term of the legislative inspector general, who is tasked with overseeing City Council, expire without hiring a replacement, as well as several other instances of breach of public trust and influence peddling around the state.
October saw a former Chicago Public Schools CEO plead guilty to wire fraud and several other instances of criminal charges and civil lawsuits against public officials, as well as crony deals between businesses and government.
Flawed property valuations and the process required to fix them are a cash cow for law firms, including those of House Speaker Mike Madigan, Chicago Alderman Ed Burke and Illinois Senate President John Cullerton.
Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.