Eye On Illinois: Auditor reports on General Assembly aren’t shocking, but still illuminate

Information doesn’t have to be sensational to be interesting.

Last month’s Auditor General compliance examination report on the Illinois Department of Employment Security portrayed an agency failing its statutory obligations and unable to properly audit millions in benefits shepherded through federal COVID relief.

Last week the office released similar documents on both General Assembly chambers. To call them dull by comparison is an insult to the very concept of boredom. But they are no less important to people who really want to understand how government happens.

According to the reports, which cover the two years that ended June 30, 2023, four of 14 new Senate employees completed their ethics and sexual harassment training between 132 and 485 days late, while one of 15 existing employees tested didn’t complete the modules at all in 2022.

For its part, the House didn’t implement “adequate internal controls over its service providers.” More clearly, the House clerk and Democratic leadership didn’t provide a complete list of vendors, required for assessment of whether those officials reviewed the controls purportedly in place.

You probably woke up this morning not knowing the term Complementary Subservice Organization Controls, which means you can’t explain how that’s different from Complementary User Entry Controls. Perhaps you can’t identify the chief fiscal officers or general counsel of the House and Senate leadership for both major political parties.

Yet all those terms and titles remind us of the work and workers who keep the legislative branch churning. The audit specifically tells us where even the lawmakers are falling short of their own obligations, which provides at least a little ammunition for sincerely probing their ability to demand more from the rest of our public servants.

It all falls under the same umbrella as the flaws the IDES report identified: state government gives itself more responsibility than it effectively administers. Whether lawmakers are doing it to themselves or an agency, the end result is fairly questioning how the rules and regulations can be important enough to be on the books, yet not so essential as to be entirely enforced.

WHAT HAPPENS IN CHICAGO… I’m not a Chicago resident, nor are most people who read this newspaper. So while the business of the Chicago City Council is interesting, we try not to give it too much attention except in a few cases: Where corruption investigations reveal something about our entire state, when pilot programs are clearly test runs for broader implementation or when Springfield has to get involved, especially if money is on the line.

The ongoing drama with the city’s school board doesn’t yet check those boxes, but high alert is warranted. There will be little appetite for solving those problems with state resources.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.