Writing frequently about Illinois government presents a concerning amount of opportunities to leaf through the personal archives, copy an old paragraph or two, change a few nouns and present the information as new.

Consider a headline from December 2020: “Evenly split committees increasingly likely to result in anything but deadlock.”

The subject then was a House Special Investigating Committee considering “Speaker Michael Madigan’s role in a Commonwealth Edison bribery scandal, which concluded its business Monday afternoon by doing effectively nothing.”

Per House rules, the committee had three Democrats and three Republicans. The Capitol News Illinois report on the final meeting was entirely predictable and even more stark in hindsight: “The House Democratic members – state Reps. Chris Welch of Hillside, Natalie Manley of Joliet and Elizabeth Hernandez of Cicero – voted no on a motion, presented by Manley, that Madigan engaged in conduct unbecoming of legislator. With a deadlocked vote along party lines, the motion failed to pass.”

Madigan’s ensuing federal prison sentence might indicate otherwise, but set that aside for a moment and consider how few details need to change to be relevant this week, when the CNI headline reads “Elections board deadlocks on $10M fine for Senate President Don Harmon.”

The State Board of Elections is a permanent body of appointed officials instead of a temporary panel of lawmakers. and state campaign finance rules are different from federal bribery statutes. But we’ve got the leader of a legislative chamber in potentially hot water and a fate to be decided by a simple majority vote from a panel where four members represent his party and four come from the other.

“We are pleased with today’s results,” Harmon’s office said of the outcome, because at the Statehouse a tie is a win if it means you can keep your job and your money.

“The idea of ideologically balanced committees and commissions is well intentioned, but as Illinoisans have seen repeatedly, impasse is inescapable,” I wrote in 2020, adding “A codified partisan divide signified a standoff from the outset. Wrongdoing must be investigated. But with preordained outcomes, these committees do more harm than good. It’s increasingly difficult to construct anything nonpartisan, yet it’s clear politicians won’t effectively investigate other politicians. So who will?”

For Madigan the answer was the FBI. Harmon is unlikely to face such a fate. Voters could see some future relief in the unlikely event the General Assembly amends state law to clarify donation and disclosure timetables, but at worst Harmon has only reputational damage via a hearing officer’s recommendation to reject his appeal of the fine.

If we continue relying on lawmakers and their appointees to regulate Statehouse conduct, significant internal repercussions – especially for majority party members – is highly improbable.

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