Metro East Sun

Illinois state Sen. Jason Plummer (R-Edwardsville) has a simple and direct rationale for pushing reform legislation that would ban members of the General Assembly and family members from benefitting from lobbying.

“If you are an Illinois resident, you live in the most corrupt state in the union – we don’t just need reform, we need significant reform,” Plummer told the Metro East Sun. “We can’t rely on the people who have broken and plundered the system to try and fix it.”

Still in his first term in Springfield, Plummer prides himself on being part of that change. He wasted little time jumping in to co-sponsor a bill introduced by Illinois state Sen. Dale Righter (R-Mattoon) that also seeks to expand the definition of lobbying in the name of bringing about more oversight.

“Some of the headlines we’ve had in recent days reinforce why we’ve needed this kind of legislation for a long time,” Plummer said. “I filed similar legislation as far back as in the spring, but the majority party took zero action. The truth is, we need tremendous change.”

Plummer can only think of one reason why family members being able to lobby other family members for state business would be allowed.

“It’s because state government in Illinois has become a cash cow for certain elected officials and they’re not going to fix something that is intentionally designed to benefit them,” he said. “It’s embarrassing when traveling to other states or talking to people in other states. A lot of us here are trying to clean things up, but again the majority party will not support substantive reform. All they want to do is a lot of window dressing and call it reform. For that to really happen, you have to make sure there is a bipartisan approach, with input from politicians, the legal community, good government organizations and states that do it the right way.”