Dear Friend,
As a medical school Professor and Department Chair for 22 years, I taught an ethics course to aspiring medical professionals. For 13 years, my husband Bill was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago who specialized in prosecuting wayward public officials at all levels of government. Therefore, I was relatively well-acquainted with real-world ethical needs and problems when I was first elected to the Illinois Legislature in 1996. From day one, as a legislator, I have made ethics reform a priority – with some successes over the years. I have helped enact campaign disclosure laws, mandated ethics training, and helped to create the Illinois Gift Ban.

Yet, the recent continuing ethical lapses in Illinois politics – from fundraising, to conflicts of interest, to outright criminal corruption – which have led to the arrest, impeachment, and indictment of Governor Blagojevich and the conviction of too many others, demanded a renewed focus on the issue. Governor Quinn established the Collins Commission and the Legislature appointed me to serve on a newly-created Joint Government Reform Committee, to craft and submit to the Legislature proposals to change the way Illinois politics and government should operate.

I can report to you that the just-recessed Legislative Session produced, as a result of these efforts, a number of worthwhile reforms, yet failed to enact many of the most-important changes that are needed. So, I have reintroduced legislation to adopt and enact ALL of the recommendations put forward by these two commissions, and will continue to work hard for their adoption.

We did pass significant new rules for state contracting that will open the process to public scrutiny and make “pay-to-play” for state contracts more difficult. We also strengthened the state FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) to make information more readily available to the public and the press. But, other needed reforms were blocked by the majority in the Legislature, which seemed at times more interested in protecting their own power than in changing the system. Legislation which ostensibly “caps” political contributions in Illinois passed both houses of the Legislature, but only after it was so watered down and riddled with loopholes that the Collins Commission, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Sun-Times all called the bill a “sham.” I was the Chief Sponsor of the original recommendation to cap political contributions and transfers, including “in-kind” contributions to political campaigns, but I could not, in good conscience, support the “sham” bill that passed to the Governor’s desk.

Provisions to give State prosecutors the same tools used so successfully by Federal prosecutors to combat official corruption were also rejected by the Legislature. I have also re-introduced these provisions and we will try again to have them adopted.

Illinois politics and public corruption have reduced Illinois to a laughing-stock across the country. I will continue to fight the status quo and the entrenched powers-that-be so that we can bring real reforms to the process. As always, I rely heavily on – and greatly appreciate – your feedback and your ideas. We are, after all, in this together!

Sincerely,
Elizabeth Coulson

State Representative – 17th district