Chambana Sun

Rep. Dan Caulkins (R-Springfield) is well aware of the U.S. Attorney's Office bribery allegations that have descended upon the Commonwealth Edison utility company and implicated Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

As previously reported, ComEd agreed to pay a $200 million fine after a federal investigation exposed payments of more than $1.3 million to associates of Madigan who is named in a U.S. Attorney's office document as "Public Official A."

“What this is doing is making public the way business is done, and that it is pay-to-play,” Caulkins told the Chambana Sun. “The speaker has been in office 50 years. He's been the speaker for 30 some years and the longest-serving head of the general assembly body in the history of this country. He is also the head of the Illinois Democratic Party and has accumulated a tremendous amount of power over these years.” 

Madigan, through a spokeswoman, denied any wrongdoing.

“He has never made a legislative decision with improper motives and has engaged in no wrongdoing here,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “Any claim to the contrary is unfounded. This morning the speaker accepted subpoenas related to his various offices for documents, asking for, among other things, documents related to possible job recommendations. He will cooperate and respond to those requests for documents, which he believes will clearly demonstrate that he has done nothing criminal or improper.”

No charges have been filed against Madigan, and Caulkins believes he knows why federal officials didn’t investigate sooner.

“They zeroed in on Commonwealth Edison because of an incident that happened last year in which a lobbyist, friend and confidant of Speaker Madigan got fired because of inappropriate conduct with a female and miraculously several lobbyists decided on their own, allegedly, that they ought to hire this guy, send him some money and retain him because he was out of work," said Caulkins in an interview. "All of those people were somehow or another connected to the speaker but he had plausible deniability so he escaped that but because it involved Commonwealth Edison lobbyists, I think that opened the door for the feds to look into this."

Caulkins equated Madigan with the gangster and businessman Al Capone, who reigned in the 1920s and dominated organized crime until he was imprisoned in 1931.

“Al Capone never told members of his mob to murder someone but they knew when Al Capone was mad at someone for not paying protection money, not buying his booze or not running his gambling and there was a price to pay for that,” Caulkins said. “Mr. Madigan’s statement may be factually correct but, in reality, the key to the passageway to getting legislation heard and passed on the floor of the General Assembly is solely reliant on the judgment and approval of Speaker Madigan. He chooses who runs these committees, he and his team.” 

Caulkins is among the House Republicans who have proposed term limits on leadership to remove Madigan but to no avail.

“We proposed a constitutional amendment for term limits to put on the ballot but the speaker is not going to allow that,” Caulkins said. “We've had two petitions statewide presented that the speaker, through his allies, has successfully weaseled out of at the Illinois Supreme Court because it's five-to-four controlled by Democrats who won't go against the speaker. He wields a tremendous amount of power, which has lead to corruption, and now that corruption has been exposed.”