From State Rep. Dan Ugaste:
CORRUPTION
John Hooker, first of ‘ComEd Four’ to be sentenced, gets 1½ years in prison
A former executive for electric utility Commonwealth Edison has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in bribing ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan for jobs and contracts for the Democratic power broker’s political allies.
John Hooker, a career employee at ComEd who worked his way up from the mail room to a job as the utility’s top internal lobbyist, is the first of the “ComEd Four” to face sentencing; his co-defendants are scheduled for their own hearings in the coming weeks. […] In wiretapped phone calls played both at trials for Madigan and the ComEd Four, Hooker and his co-defendant, longtime ComEd lobbyist Mike McClain, talked about having come up with the arrangement to conceal the no-work contractors within existing legitimate lobbying contracts.
In a February 2019 recording, McClain said the utility “had to hire these guys because Mike Madigan came to us,” and Hooker agreed, saying their use of ComEd lobbyist Jay Doherty as a pass-through entity was “clean for all of us.”
“We don’t have to worry about whether or not, I’m just making this up, whether or not Mike Zalewski Sr., is doing any work or not,”
McClain told Hooker in the phone call, referring to the former Chicago alderman who’d been put on Doherty’s contract the previous summer.
“That’s up to Jay Doherty to prove that.” Hooker concurred.
“We came up with this plan and between him (Doherty), our friend, and Tim (Mapes) and the alderman, they thought it was great,” Hooker said, using “our friend” to mean Madigan, as established across both trials, and referring to the speaker’s former chief of staff Tim Mapes. Read more from Capitol News Illinois.
Convicted former Speaker Madigan asks to remain free on appeal
In a landmark public corruption case closely affiliated with the “ComEd Four” case, former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan was convicted of bribery and influence peddling.
On June 13, Madigan was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison.
Madigan, a longtime Illinois political power broker, who also served as chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party, has appealed his conviction and sentence.
Under standard conditions, the conviction and sentence are assumed to be valid, and the defendant is expected to pursue his or her appeal while imprisoned.
However, this week Madigan’s attorneys asked for special treatment for the former Democratic boss.
They asked that the convicted Madigan, who is to report to prison by October 13, be granted continued freedom while his case works its way through the appeals process.
The Madigan legal team’s request was submitted to the federal court on Monday, July 14.
Illinois must embrace ethics reform now Illinois politics is no stranger to corruption.
Considering our state’s history, the past few years have brought an unfortunately unsurprising wave of scandal that shook public trust and exposed blatant abuses of power.
From the Capitol Dome to Chicago City Hall, a multitude of indictments and convictions have made one thing clear: Illinois has an ethics problem, and the time for action is now.
On February 12, 2025, Michael J. Madigan, the longest-serving state House Speaker in American history and the most powerful politician in Illinois history, was convicted on ten felony counts.
A jury of his peers found Madigan guilty on charges that ranged from conspiracy to bribery to wire fraud and stemmed from a decade-long scheme involving utility giant Commonwealth Edison.
The former Speaker was implicated in a scheme to shake down the company for lobbying contracts and no-show jobs for Madigan’s political allies for legislation favorable to the company passing through the legislature. Madigan’s convictions drew but a whimper from fellow Democrats in Illinois.
We can only guess that it is because Illinois Democrats’ political machine is so entrenched, so insulated from accountability, that it believes it can operate with impunity under the status quo. Madigan’s fall from power was not an isolated event, but certainly the most dramatic in an embarrassing and corrupt era of Illinois governance.
Illinois House Republicans have been leading the charge to pass a bold anti-corruption agenda.
To date, Democrats have largely ignored arrests, indictments, guilty verdicts, and the stain that each place on the public’s trust by ignoring a sweeping package of reforms proposed by key lawmakers.
House GOP Floor Leader Patrick Windhorst serves as the Republican ranking member and spokesman on the House Ethics & Elections Committee.
Windhorst has been a longtime advocate for anti-corruption reforms. Upon Madigan’s conviction, Windhorst said, “The time to start cleaning up Illinois government was many years ago.
“But today offers another opportunity.
“It’s time to get serious.”
Windhorst has authored and co-sponsored legislation to strengthen economic interest disclosures and ensure real consequences for misconduct.
He also favors slamming shut the revolving door that allows legislators to become lobbyists quickly after leaving office.
I have supported ethics reforms since first joining the General Assembly, sponsoring six bills.
We need stronger ethics laws and a more powerful and independent Legislative Inspector General’s office to help root out corruption.
If the public’s faith in Illinois government is at an all-time low, it’s because the citizens of Illinois have lived through too many examples of officials using their office as a place of self-service and personal profiteering rather than as a place to serve the public first.
Immediate, serious, sweeping ethics reforms are needed to save the state from further swirling the drain and maintaining an embarrassing reputation as a hotbed of public corruption.
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And today, CpomEd’s Ex-CEO was sentenced:
