As the clock ticks down toward the new year, budget talks remain at an impasse in Illinois and the stopgap budget will expire on Dec. 31.
The Illinois Republican Party launched a website on the same day House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) again skipped a meeting with Gov. Bruce Rauner and legislative leaders in Springfield.
Following an election year rife with accusations aimed at the “Madigan Machine” and other factions in Springfield, Chicago Sun-Times writer Mark Brown said recently that the time for term limits may have arrived in Illinois.
The Illinois Republican Party launched a robocall linking venture capitalist and possible gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker with House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) and imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Emerging as big-money players in the perpetual Mike Madigan Machine are businessman Chris Kennedy, son of the late U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, and attorney, entrepreneur and philanthropist J.B. Pritzker, according to recently released financial data.
This year’s holiday wish list for Illinois state lawmakers ought to include a new House speaker, an Illinois Policy Institute writer says, as constituents brace themselves for the speaker vote set for Jan. 11 in Springfield.
The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board has publicly called for the ousting of longtime House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago), predicting that if he is not unseated, the state faces two more years of “dysfunction.”
New concerns regarding potential gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker have surfaced following the exposure of cash contributions made from Pritzker-associated groups to Illinois House Democrats prior to November elections in amounts possibly as high as $200,000.
Chris Kennedy may have the family name, but according to the state GOP, “he doesn’t act like it,” as he recently rejected reporters’ overtures in Chicago and simultaneously created a commotion in a downtown office building.
Chris Kennedy does not appear to be a man who seeks the spotlight, as he coped with the GOP’s new digital ad linking him to House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) by eluding the topic — both on tape and afterward.
Invoking an old wives’ tale referring to ambivalent, “average" amphibians, the Chicago Tribune recently created an analogy between disinterested Illinois taxpayers and a hypothetical pot of frog stew to illustrate the state’s simmering fiscal status.
Illinois Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno is at the heart of a bold new plan aimed at ending the state’s two-year budget stalemate, which includes income and corporate tax hikes and billions more in added borrowing.
Several Illinois legislators have responded to the House’s latest capitulation to longtime Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago), decrying the body’s utter lack of independence or apparent motivation to value representation of home jurisdictions over the speaker’s sway.
In a public statement, state Rep. LaShawn Ford (D-Chicago) recently said term limits would be one way to help bridge the gap with GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner on his calls for reform and possibly help end the budget impasse -- a rare departure from the usual Democratic Party protocols in the General Assembly.
Republicans say that, in Illinois, there exists a democracy of one — Mike Madigan, to be exact — with the longtime House speaker managing affairs as if the state were a dictatorship rather than a system of egalitarianism.