Echoes from a recent City Bureau webchat, an online space for Chicago Documenters and Civic Reporting Program alumni to share knowledge, skills and ideas.
By India Daniels
(Photo: Maria Alejandra Cardona)
You can’t talk about Chicago and Illinois politics without talking about the Democratic machine, the apparatus of political power that has historically run on backroom deals and kickbacks. At a recent City Bureau webchat, Documenters and fellowship alumni took a look at how the local machine skirts open elections to control who gains power.
Illinois is one of just four states in which vacancies in the state legislature are filled via appointment by the political party of the outgoing officeholder (specifically, committeepeople who represent wards or townships in the vacant district). As Documenter and rent control organizer Helena Duncan explained, this particular appointment process is often compared to a game of musical chairs, as political insiders (in the Chicagoland area, almost certainly Democrats) shuffle around to make sure their people end up with a seat.
Helena had already started planning a webchat on “appointed electeds” when Michael Madigan announced his resignation from the Illinois House of Representatives. This inevitable but nonetheless seismic development lent us a real-time case study, in addition to the recent appointments of State Senators Robert Peters (13th District) and Michael Simmons (7th District).
At this webchat, Helena asked us to consider:
How can community members hold representatives accountable within the existing system?
How could the process for filling vacancies be made more democratic?
Here are three main themes from our discussion.
BETTER INFORMATION
We spent a lot of time talking about our information needs and how challenging it is to find out what’s going on with a vacancy—you need to consider Illinois law, district maps, the political party’s committee rosters, population counts and relative geographic distribution. There isn’t usually a public list of all candidates, and someone might decide to throw their hat in the ring at the last minute, as it happened at the Madigan hearing. It all adds up to be pretty confusing.
Margo Gislain, who organized with 48th Ward Neighbors for Justice around the Illinois Senate District 7 vacancy on the North Side, shared this perspective: “The reason that these appointments happen is to throw community groups off guard. It is to keep power entrenched with the people who already have it so that people cannot mobilize fast enough or have a chance at winning this seat unless they have connections.”
MORE OF A HEADS UP
Helena pointed out that the current law requires that a successor be appointed within 30 days of the vacancy, but there is no required notice period. What’s more, the section in the state Election Code (10 ILCS 5/25-6) pertaining to state legislature appointments specifies what the appointing committee needs to do, but not how it should be done.
What does this look like in practice?
All told, just a week elapsed from Madigan’s resignation to the appointment of Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar (with the short-lived career of Edward Guerra-Kodatt sandwiched between). It was barely enough time for residents and community groups to find out what was happening.
While several months elapsed between when Illinois Senator Kwame Raoul was elected Illinois Attorney General and when he was sworn in, the appointment hearing to fill his senate vacancy also flew under the radar. Helena found out about the appointment hearing on the day-of, from a neighbor's tweet. She decided to walk down the block to Cook County Board President and ward committeeperson Toni Preckwinkle’s offices to see what was up.
She ended up in a cramped conference room, watching as the committee asked four candidates some basic questions. Helena recalled, “the committeepeople went into a closed door session to make their decision. They emerged a half hour later and announced that Robert Peters was the pick. There was a judge who was waiting there in his robes and the judge immediately stood up and swore him in. And that was that. Suddenly, we had a new senator.”
For comparison, Helena cited the Open Meetings Act (OMA), a state transparency law that requires that government business be conducted in the open (the OMA is also the foundation for most Documenters assignments!). While not all public bodies fully comply with the OMA, it’s a good baseline to apply to these appointment hearings. Under the OMA, a meeting notice and agenda must be posted at least 48 hours in advance and any votes must be made in open session.
A SPECIAL ELECTION
In most other states, legislature vacancies are filled by a special election. Special elections have their drawbacks: candidates would need political connections and funds in order to quickly put together a campaign and residents would almost certainly be less likely to go out of their way to vote on a single race.
As Margo noted, however, “Unless you actively bring in voters, there’s no way it’s going to be a democratic process.” Andrew Herrera, City Bureau’s Director of Growth Strategy, added that even if a special election has lower turnout, it will still bring out more votes (and provide more advanced notice) than the current appointment process.
***
While there’s something of a backroom deal for each of the appointments we considered, the Cook County Democratic machine doesn’t run as smoothly as it once did.
Michael Madigan’s series of exits (as Speaker of the House, 22nd District Representative, Chair of the Illinois Democratic Party) indicate that the ComEd bribery scandal has caught up with him. And members of the public can continue to scrutinize legislature appointments. Margo explained that while 48th Ward Neighbors for Justice didn’t reach consensus on the Mike Simmons appointment, they and other local independent political organizations worked to raise community awareness; “we felt we did have enough power to influence the results, even though we weren’t one of the five committeepeople that had a vote.”
Simmons and other appointees are, in fact, in a position to advocate for a rule change. While it may be a long shot, appointed electeds will eventually have to face a referendum on how they’ve spent their time in office: the next popular election.
Related event
Public Newsroom 137: Exploring Communities of Practice
What do apprenticeships, 12-step groups and online message boards have in common? The Public Newsroom is exploring communities of practice. Join us on April 1 at 6 p.m.
Webchats are stipended, hourlong events planned and hosted by Documenters—for Documenters—to put the full range of interests and expertise on display in our community. To learn more visit Documenters.org.
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