Kendall County Times

James Marter argues House Speaker Mike Madigan’s refusal to appear before a special House committee convened to look into some of his recent conduct is to be expected.

“He’s always shown that he feels with his power he can do anything he wants to do,” Marter told Kendall County Times. “From all the stories you hear from legislators, nothing in Springfield gets to see the light of day if it isn’t anything he approves of. He controls all the Democrats and they all seem to feel they owe him something.”

Amid the backdrop of an ongoing ComEd federal corruption probe, Madigan recently let it be known he has no intention of answering questions about his suspected involvement before the bipartisan panel. The state’s longest-tenured lawmaker made his feelings clear in a three-page letter he sent to committee members in which he also forcefully defended his widely known practice of patronage hiring as not “ethically improper.”

Marter, who ran in the Republican primary in the 14th Congressional District, said such behavior has sadly become what’s expected from Madigan.

“Every day, we’re paying the price for his actions in terms of our debt and dysfunction,” he said. “Soon, we’ll be at the point where we won’t be able to pay even more of our bills, where we’ll be putting more retirements at stake and vendors everywhere out of business.”

Marter said the only way he sees of changing the trajectory is by showing Madigan the door, which he argues opens things up for all the excessive spending to come to an end.

“The Special Committee is a nice try, but I don’t know how much you can expect members to be able to do if they can’t even get the speaker to show up,” he said.  “Their power seems limited at a time when we need to be pulling out all the stops to get Madigan to go.”