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.
Deputy Minority Leader Ryan Spain has focused on systemic reform. Spain has called out clear conflicts of interest in the Democratic majority and emphasized the need for campaign finance transparency. Spain is a co-sponsor of legislation that would ban politicians from using campaign funds for legal defense.
“Mike Madigan spent millions of dollars on his legal defense in a public corruption case that stemmed from his time in office,” Spain said. “He was raising these dollars while he was on the public dole, while he was putting his own financial interests first, and while, as it turns out, he was committing felonies. The fact that he could use campaign cash he raised while on this crime spree to mount his legal defense is wrong. The practice must end.”
State Representative Blaine Wilhour has sponsored an aggressive reform agenda. Wilhour, who is also a member of the House Personnel and Pensions Committee, says Illinois is no longer at a crossroads regarding corruption.
“The corruption car has crashed right into the faith that the citizens of Illinois used to have in their government,” Wilhour said. “I’m pushing for a strong anti-corruption agenda to restore our state’s reputation.”
Wilhour’s ethics reform agenda includes freezing pensions for indicted lawmakers, mandatory ethics training for all legislators and staff, and stronger lobbying disclosures and financial transparency.
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.
EDUCATION
Illinois children could get a second chance at better schools and choice. The State of Illinois had a successful school-scholarship tax incentive program, “Invest in Kids,” until 2022-2023. The “Invest in Kids” program was then allowed to expire, despite House Republicans fighting to keep it alive.
Through Invest in Kids, Illinois taxpayers could make tax-free donations to the fundraising groups of the private school or school system of their choice. The fundraising groups were mandated to use funds raised through Invest in Kids to provide scholarship opportunities to selected students. The young people participating in the Invest in Kids program received reduced-tuition or tuition-free education at the schools to which they had been admitted.
A recent change in federal law has given this concept a new chance of life in Illinois. A new federal tax law contained within the “One Big Beautiful Bill” has created a new, nationwide program for opt-in states, and their taxpayers, to participate in a new package of income tax scholarship incentives. For opt-in states, the new federal scholarship program would operate in a manner like “Invest in Kids.”
The Chicago Tribune has called upon Illinois leaders to opt into the school-choice provisions of the new Trump tax law. House Republicans have supported the reinstatement of “Invest in Kids” and the restoration of school choice to thousands of Illinois students and their families.
FIRST RESPONDERS
Illinois State Police graduates the largest cadet class in 25 years. The newly sworn troopers will be assigned to join all ten regional locations of the Illinois State Police (ISP). Commending the graduates, State Police Director Brendan F. Kelly noted that the new troopers marked the largest ISP cadet class in the past 25 years.
The State Police will consider qualified adults for cadet training and sworn standing. Qualified new applicants may be chosen to initiate 29 weeks of traditional cadet training. In addition, persons who have already won standing as certified police officers with prior experience may choose to apply for entry to an accelerated 12-week State Police entry program, open only to persons with prior police experience.
In both cases, after undergoing State Police academy cadet training, future ISP troopers are then invited to participate in a final 14-week field training program, for hands-on experience-based learning. After completion of the field training program, the 95 members of the summer 2025 Illinois State Police cadet graduate class were sworn in as State Police troopers.
HOUSING
Illinois near the bottom among the 50 states in new home building. Construction Coverage recently ranked America’s 50 states and its large, medium and small metro areas by their share of the approximately 1.5 million new homes built in the U.S. in 2024. To construct a series of ratios, Construction Coverage compared each raw number of new year-2024 homes with the state or metro area’s stock of existing housing units.
As calculated by Construction Coverage, the overall national U.S. housing construction rate was 10.1 units per 1,000 existing homes. This reflected a “replacement rate” dropping down towards 1%, which implies the medium age of a U.S. home as 50 years and a housing unit lifespan of 100 years.
With 3.7 new homes being built in Illinois for every 1,000 existing housing units, Illinois ranked 48th among the 50 states in terms of new home construction as a percentage of existing housing stock. Illinois was building new homes at less than one-half of the rate of the U.S. building and construction industry. By contrast, North Carolina was building 18.8 new homes per 1,000, Texas was building 17.9, and Florida was building 16.3.
An analysis of the same data for individual metro areas showed similarly slow or absent housing construction patterns in many key Illinois metropolitan areas. A series of charts showed Illinois cities at or near the bottom of these nationwide charts for cities their size. With only 1.4 new houses built per 1,000, greater Peoria displayed the lowest rate of home construction of any midsize metro area in the U.S. Among smaller metro areas, the Decatur, Illinois metro area posted even lower numbers at 1.2 new houses per 1,000 existing units.
JOBS
Illinois’ unemployment rate falls to 4.6%. Illinois’ unemployment rate fell -0.2 percentage point to 4.6 percent in June, the first monthly decrease since February of this year and the lowest unemployment rate since August 2023, based on preliminary data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The revised May unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.8 percent.
The number of unemployed workers was 307,300, down -3.5% from the prior month, and down -9.5 percent over the same month one year ago. The labor force decreased (-0.2%) over-the-month and was down -0.3% over-the-year.
The US unemployment rate edged down to 4.1% in June 2025 from 4.2% in May, defying market expectations of a rise to 4.3%. The rate has held within a narrow 4.0%–4.2% band since May 2024, signaling broad labor market stability.
Illinois’ unemployment rate remains persistently higher than the national rate.