Sangamon Sun

Reform for Illinois (RFI) Executive Director Alisa Kaplan joined Illinois State Representative Kelly Cassidy (14th District) in a recent webinar conducted by The League of Women Voters of Illinois, in which they discussed some proposals to ethically move Illinois forward.

Creating a legislative reform is one step that Kaplan suggested, specifically doing an ethical change.

Citing an example which former Illinois Legislative Inspector General Julie Porter talked about, Kaplan said it is very important to reform the ethics culture.

“Julie Porter spoke about this last year, she found violations and ethical violations of sitting legislators which she called serious substantiated violations,” Kaplan said. “She asked the legislative ethics commission which was a group of legislators again to publish that report and they said no. So, there are findings of serious ethical violations in the legislature that the public still doesn’t know about and we think that’s wrong.”

There should be a “culture of transparency and accountability” which can’t be achieved if there are ethical violations.

Ethics, according to her is “about the fundamentals of making the government work for the people that it’s supposed to work for. It’s about putting the public interest first, and it’s about making people’s lives better.”

RFI supports that the Legislative Inspector General should be empowered to conduct independent investigations and publish such reports.