U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, a former Pritzker aide, is expected to testify next week
CHICAGO – In the weeks following now-Gov. JB Pritzker’s November 2018 victory over one-term Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, powerful Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan busied himself preparing for a brand new administration after years of conflict with governors of both parties.
One of his first priorities was finding jobs for his political allies.
Less than a week after Election Day, Madigan’s chief of staff sent an initial list of names to Pritzker’s campaign, which had already begun putting together a transition team for work leading up to inauguration in January 2019. Madigan was also trying to arrange an early December meeting for the two Democrats. The two kept a healthy distance from one another during the 2018 campaign while Republicans tried to paint the billionaire candidate as the longtime speaker’s puppet.
But before that meeting, then-Chicago Ald. Danny Solis visited the speaker’s office on Chicago’s Southwest Side. In the post-Thanksgiving meeting, the alderman told Madigan that he’d decided not to run for a sixth full term on city council in the February 2019 election.
It was a reversal of what Solis had been telling Madigan for five months since he first requested the speaker’s help in eventually getting him appointed to a lucrative position on a state board post-retirement. He’d envisioned that might happen in 2021, halfway through his next term. Madigan immediately recognized the disclosure as an implicit request to speed up plans to get Solis an appointment.
“You should get me, like, a resume,” the speaker said. “Because I want to have a meeting with Pritzker the week after next.”
A federal jury saw the exchange last week in a secretly recorded video Solis made toward the end of his 2 ½ years working undercover as an FBI cooperator. Prosecutors allege Madigan promised to help Solis get appointed to a board seat in exchange for the alderman continuing to introduce him to real estate developers whom he could recruit as clients for his property tax appeals law firm.
Solis spent more than 23 hours on the witness stand before he departed Madigan’s corruption trial Tuesday afternoon. The trial is in its seventh week of testimony and, despite earlier warnings it might last until mid-January, prosecutors on Wednesday indicated they may rest their case as early as next week.
In the Nov. 23, 2018 body camera video, Madigan comes into frame only a few times. But the smiling face of Rauner – the speaker’s political nemesis – appeared in much of the footage, in the form of a custom punching bag in Madigan’s office.
“I want to let Pritzker know what’s coming,” Madigan continued, referring to the recommendation he’d promised to Solis. “Now, that doesn’t have to be in writing. I can just verbally tell him, ‘Look as we go on with these boards and commissions – ’ and I’ll monitor what goes on with the boards and commissions. We’re doing that already. We’re sending names over.”
Madigan’s list of recommendations eventually grew to 85 names according to a version the jury saw Wednesday from July of 2019. Madigan’s former chief of staff Jessica Basham, who testified Wednesday, maintained the list.
Prosecutors showed Basham several iterations of the list, including three from February of 2020. Solis’ name did not appear on any of the versions. By that time, though, Solis’ legal troubles were well-known after the Chicago Sun-Times revealed Solis’ FBI cooperation in late January 2019.
Prosecutors did not show the jury any version of the list dated to November or December of 2018 while Basham testified Wednesday. But they might ask about those earlier versions when they call U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski for testimony early next week. Budzinski was a Pritzker campaign advisor and then a senior staffer in his administration before she ran for Congress in 2022.
On cross-examination, Madigan’s lawyers showed Basham an Oct. 2019 version of the list of recommendations from the speaker’s office, which had grown to 91 names. Attorney Dan Collins pointed out Basham’s handwritten notations all over the pages, which indicated who had ultimately been appointed.
At the end of the three-page list, Basham noted that 43 of the 91 recommendations had been taken up by the Pritzker administration – a “47% success rate,” she wrote.
“Did you ever witness Speaker Madigan taking any adverse action toward Gov. Pritzker because one of his recommendations was not acted on?” Madigan attorney Dan Collins asked.
“No,” Basham responded.
Basham’s list indicated that 17 of the 91 names on the list were recommendations from others, including then-House Majority Leader Greg Harris, D-Chicago, and state Reps. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur, Will Davis, D-Homewood, and Lisa Hernandez, D-Cicero.
Five of those recommendations came from Emanuel “Chris” Welch, who succeeded Madigan as House speaker in 2021. Welch recommended his wife and mother for jobs that they did not ultimately get, but one of his recommendations did get an appointment, the list indicated.
And a couple recommendations came from retired Statehouse lobbyist Mike McClain, Madigan’s longtime confidant and co-defendant in the current trial.
Basham said she didn’t know Madigan’s relationship to each one of his recommendations, but many on the list are well-known in Springfield circles. Among the former legislators and other government appointees was Madigan’s wife Shirley, who’d long been chair of the Illinois Arts Council. Under the Pritzker administration, she was reappointed to that role. The governor removed her from her position after the speaker’s March 2022 indictment.
Other evidence shown to Basham on Wednesday included handwritten notes Madigan and Basham took while they met with Pritzker on Dec. 4, 2018.
They discussed several major policy initiatives, according to the meeting notes. At the top of their agenda was a graduated income tax, which Pritzker had made a central campaign promise. Madigan helped push a proposed constitutional amendment to allow the tax change through the General Assembly in May 2019. To take effect, though, voters had to approve the amendment in November 2020.
Voters, however, rejected what Pritzker branded as the “Fair Tax” after opposition groups spent millions tying the idea to Madigan. By then, the speaker had been named “Public Official A” in charging documents in July 2020 alleging ex-lobbyists and executives of electric utility Commonwealth Edison bribed the speaker. One of those ex-lobbyists was McClain, who was indicted in the weeks following the November 2020 election and convicted along with his former colleagues last year.
The second item on the notes from the Madigan-Pritzker meeting was a hike in the state’s minimum wage, which Pritzker secured in February 2019, signing a bill gradually increasing minimum hourly pay to $15, which will take final effect on Jan. 1, 2025. It was the new governor’s first major policy win.
Other discussion items from the meeting – including legalizing recreational cannabis, green-lighting sports betting and authorizing a major infrastructure plan – were enacted during Pritzker’s first legislative session in spring 2019.
But some policies they discussed never materialized. One was a “public option to buy into Medicaid,” which only three states have so far done.
Madigan also floated ideas to raise salaries for agency directors “to help w(ith) recruitment” and totally reconstitute some state boards, meaning the governor could start fresh with all new appointments, according to Basham’s notes and testimony.
Lawmakers indeed approved salary hikes for agency directors during their lame duck session before a new General Assembly was seated and Pritzker was inaugurated in January 2019.
They also approved legislation to reconstitute the scandal-plagued board of the Illinois Tollway State Toll Highway Authority, which was the one entity Basham had noted as an example on her meeting notes. Pritzker appointed an all-new Tollway board in February 2019.