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Comment by blockwriter | Hacker News Reader

Madigan is the Darth Vader of Illinois politics. He was speaker of the Illinois House from 97' until 21', when another scandal involving ComEd, if I recall correctly, finally forced him to resign. His other hustle is lowering the property tax rate of insiders - http://www.madigetz.com. Illinois politics is filled with the most ludicrously corrupt characters you can find. One interesting case from my neck of the woods is the Stephens family of Rosemont, who are, nominally, Republicans, but work with downstate Democrats to pass red light camera legislation, after receiving bribes from the companies that stand to gain - https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2020/10/18/21516422/re....

Rosemont is one of the weirdest places I've ever encountered. It's essentially family-run for-profit operation that caters to the corporate clientele of O'Hare airport.

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don't forget that as far as I know, Illinois must hold the record for governors who have gone to jail for corruption. 4 out of the last 10 went to prison.

A real life Gotham city.

That number could increase soon too. The current governor is under federal tax fraud investigation. He bought the mansion next door to his, purposely removed the toilets, and then declared it uninhabitable to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.

AFAICT that was settled in 2020 when Pritzker paid the extra taxes. I think if there were any charges they would have been announced by now. But it does seem Pritzker has some connections to Madigan (https://patch.com/illinois/chicago/pritzkers-7m-connection-m...), which might sink his re-election campaign. But so far he's doing well in the polls.

As best I can tell the investigation is still ongoing, but for some reason no one in the media really reports on it anymore. I think if the investigation had been concluded there'd be some reporting on that but I haven't found any.

As of early 2022 it was still active:

https://wirepoints.org/why-is-criminal-investigation-of-prit...

That's dated 2020. But I guess you're right, https://madisonrecord.com/stories/614637059-why-pritzker-for... is Dec 2021 and says it's still open. I guess they could be delaying the charges while they investigate related members like Madigan. But the evasion was in 2015, statutory filing date is March 1 2016, and the statute of limitations is 6 years after, March 1 2022, so their window is already closing (I guess they could still do tax year 2016/2017).

Reportedly, Madigan sent Pritzker some kind of note with the names of all the governors that have come and gone while he remained speaker.

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