State Representative candidate Dan Ugaste today urged the Illinois General Assembly to begin a full review of the state laws governing the appointment and operation of the office of the Legislative Inspector General when it convenes its veto session on November 7th. The position has been vacant since 2014 until former federal prosecutor Julie Porter was appointed on Friday in response to the publicity surrounding the three year backlog of ethics complaints against legislators.
“It is clear that the General Assembly has proven unable to police itself by the lack of action on 27 complaints filed with the General Assembly’s Legislative Inspector General’s office. The very fact that they did not have an Inspector General for three years and no official action was taken on complaints against legislators tells me that much stricter oversight is needed,” said Ugaste. “In order to make people believe that their state legislators will conduct themselves in a legal and ethical manner and will be held accountable if they do not, we need to have unbiased and truly independent oversight.”
In addition to the lack of action on complaints, the Office of the Inspector General has been funded with $1.875 million dollars since 2014 although no complaints have been upgraded to case status and no Legislative Inspector General has been appointed.
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“The sexual harassment complaint filed Denise Rotheimer should have been adjudicated by now and the accused State Senator should have either been vindicated or forced to resign. Instead, she got the run around,” said Ugaste. “I hope that the appointment of a new Legislative Inspector General and the process to expedite the backlog of complaints will happen before the end of the year. In the new year, I would urge legislators to amend the law to empower any future interim Inspector General’s to act on complaints.”
