Robinson Daily News

Madigan’s legacy: The No. 1 reason for term limits



Michael J. Madigan is out.

The former Illinois House speaker is now a former Illinois state representative, after expediting his departure to the close of business last Thursday.

Madigan initially released a statement that said he’d depart at the end of February. Then he curiously, and without explanation, filed a resignation letter that he submitted to the Illinois Clerk of the House, John W. Hollman, that stated:

Dear Mr. Clerk:

I, Michael J. Madigan, do hereby resign the office of State Representative of the 22nd Representative District, effective today, February 18, 2021. This letter serves as my letter of resignation.

With kindest personal regards, I remain

Sincerely yours,

Michael J. Madigan

It’s the “I remain, Sincerely yours, Michael J. Madigan,” that’s worthy of a closer look.

I am not sure that there was a single moment in his political tenure that Democrat from Chicago’s southwest side was personal with anyone that didn’t benefit his aims, regarded much of anything that wasn’t good for him or his hyper-partisan approach to governing, or was the slightest bit sincere in the way that he approached his speakership.

In the end, he rattled around the Illinois House for more than 50 years – 36 of them (a national record among state legislators) as its speaker. The state of Illinois was admitted to the union in 1818. For about a quarter of Illinois’ existence, Madigan, a clear case for term limits, legislated in it.

Still embroiled in the ongoing Department of Justice investigation of ComEd, Illinois’ largest power distributor, Madigan was a throwback to a time that should have been scrubbed from politics decades ago. Arrogant, untouchable, beyond reproach. Only in Illinois would such be possible.

A tax lawyer by trade, he was a masterful backroom operator well into an era where calls for transparency reign. Weak, lapdog statehouse media allowed this unchecked authority to operate in plain sight. Again, only in Illinois, where speaking truth to power means you get limited press access.

The carefulness of his business dealings and insulation by the machine he’d inherited and built might best be explained in one anachronistic sentence: Madigan didn’t – and doesn’t – carry a smartphone, and the man has no known active email account.

From his statement to the media, which initially said that he was hanging around until the end of the month, Madigan acknowledged that he’d faced “vicious attacks by people who sought to diminish” his legislative focus to improve the lots of “the working people of Illinois.”

He left out the part about steering the state into financial ruin and running up unfunded pension obligations for the state’s public-sector employees to $144 billion, according to The Bond Buyer, while creating the most chasmic separation between legislative Democrats and Republicans in the center of the United States.

While a parade of corrupt and ineffective governors came and went, and as Illinois’ population trickled out in U-Haul trucks to live elsewhere to flee insane property taxes and a degrading quality of life, Madigan was the lone constant.

Forget about the governors. They bent at Madigan’s knee, or didn’t. Madigan ran the show. He called the shots. No piece of legislation under Madigan’s House rules reached a vote without his approval. It all ran through him and was run by him.

While history is written by the winners, and Illinois remains a deeply Democrat-controlled state mired in historic financial ruin, history will not – and should not – be kind to Madigan.

Chris Krug is president of the Franklin News Foundation, a non-partisan 501(c)3 non-profit news organization, and publisher of The Center Square.

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