Lisa Madigan
5 Reasons We Love Lisa
1. She fights the big fights: nursing home reform, ethics reform, sex offenders, financial reform—the list goes on and on.
2. In 2007, she fought a high-profile battle against electric utilities to protect consumers and won several concessions (including $1 billion worth of rebates for consumers).
3. When Lisa found out that thousands of rape kits across Illinois were never sent to state crime labs by local law enforcement officials, she drafted and worked with legislators to pass a groundbreaking law that requires sexual assault evidence kits be submitted to crime labs within ten days.
4. She is taking on the nation’s top mortgage companies for illegally discriminating against minority borrowers.
5. She is dedicated to her job, the residents of Illinois, and her family—including two wonderful daughters.
Meet Lisa
As the People’s Lawyer, Lisa Madigan has presided over what can only be described as a groundbreaking tenure as the Attorney General of Illinois. She has proven herself to be an innovative champion of consumer rights and a tough and unwavering advocate for children and senior citizens.
Protecting Children: After being elected as Illinois’ first female attorney general in 2002, Lisa Madigan made protecting children her top priority, increasing compliance with Illinois’ sex offender registration laws to its highest point since the registry’s creation, initiating a new law to allow lifetime supervision of sexual predators and overseeing a high-tech task force that is responsible for the arrest and prosecution of over 400 online sex predators, achieving a remarkable 100 percent conviction rate. Madigan forced social networking site, MySpace.com, to remove over 1,800 registered sex offenders from their site. Her ongoing efforts to curb the devastating effects of domestic violence and sexual assault include passage of a tough anti-stalking measure, a new initiative called “Operation Serve To Protect” to reduce the number of unserved orders of protection in the state and expansion of specially trained nurses to treat victims of sexual assault. Most recently, Lisa Madigan drafted a new law to require that rape kits be submitted for DNA testing within ten days and initiated training for parents, educators and law enforcement on cyberbullying and sexting.
Safeguarding Seniors: Protecting nursing home patients, our state’s most vulnerable residents, from violent criminals and sexual predators has been a priority for Attorney General Madigan. In 2005, after complaints by officials in Evergreen Park about violent offenders at the Emerald Park nursing home prompted Madigan to take action to close the facility, she initiated new laws to require background checks and criminal histories for nursing home residents to identify those that might pose a threat to others. The new laws also require nursing homes to annually report on their care, service and security so residents and families can make more informed decisions about their care. After reports recently came to light that nursing homes were failing to comply with the new law, she initiated “Operation Guardian,” a coordinated city, state and federal effort to conduct unannounced inspections of nursing homes to find dangerous fugitives living among nursing home residents and identify unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
Financial Reform: As Attorney General, Madigan has become a national leader in holding predatory mortgage lenders and Big Banks accountable for recklessly placing homeowners into mortgages that they didn’t understand and couldn’t afford. Madigan was early to recognize the threat posed by fraudulent sub-prime lending. Before national attention turned to the foreclosure crisis, she drafted laws to protect consumers from unfair lending practices and mortgage rescue fraud. In 2008, Madigan successfully led a national effort to get Countrywide’s new parent company, Bank of America, to agree to an $8.7 billion settlement for predatory lending. This settlement required the company to assist homeowners who face foreclosure; and, unlike the federal bailout, the lender pays to fix its mistakes, not taxpayers. She also sued Wells Fargo and Countrywide for fraudulently and unfairly targeting African-American and Latino borrowers and created a mortgage foreclosure hotline to help Illinois families stay in their homes.
Fighting Corruption: It’s fair to say that no one is more committed to rooting corruption out of Illinois’ politics than Lisa Madigan. She fought hard to have the Illinois Supreme Court remove Rod Blagojevich from office after he was caught trying to sell off President Obama’s Senate seat. She also said “no!” to the commutation of former Governor George Ryan’s federal corruption sentence and successfully defended the state’s right to deny George Ryan a state pension. And in 2009, Madigan successfully negotiated new laws increasing public access to government records and strengthening the powers of the Executive Ethics Commission.
Protecting Consumers: The Attorney General takes consumer rights very seriously. In 2007, Madigan was at the center of a high-profile battle against electric utilities and won numerous concessions, including $1 billion in rebates for residential customers. Madigan is also responsible for ending the cable TV monopoly in Illinois. And, as a mother of two small children, Lisa Madigan knows how important it is to make sure that toys and other children’s products are safe. That’s why she pulled lead-laden toys off store shelves when the federal government failed to act: she knew federal standards weren’t good enough.
Battling Drugs: Fighting crime led Lisa Madigan to launch a statewide effort to curb the manufacture, sale and use of methamphetamine in Illinois by passing one of the toughest meth laws in the country which increased penalties for meth production and restricted sales of pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in meth. The new laws have significantly decreased the number of meth labs in Illinois.
Lisa’s Inspiration: Lisa Madigan’s commitment to serving as the People’s Lawyer is deeply rooted in her belief that one person can make a difference, a principle that she learned from the late U.S. Senator Paul Simon.
While pursuing her undergraduate degree at Georgetown University, Lisa Madigan interned and later worked in the office of U.S. Senator Paul Simon. After graduating in 1988, Madigan went on a mission to South Africa during apartheid and taught algebra and English to underprivileged Zulu girls. After returning, Madigan helped develop an innovative after-school and weekend program to keep kids away from gangs and drugs in the Austin and Logan Square communities of Chicago. “The Positive Alternatives Project” was a partnership between Wright College and the Chicago Police Department. It combined community policing with educational opportunities to help children gain self-confidence and build a healthy outlook on life. Looking for a way to further make a difference, Madigan enrolled in Loyola Law School. She graduated in 1994 and served as a litigator at a Chicago law firm.
Public Service: With the encouragement of Senator Paul Simon, in 1998, Madigan left private practice and ran for the State Senate. She won. Four years later, she ran for Attorney General, convinced that she could do more for the people of Illinois as the state’s top lawyer. And, as a result of her long list of trailblazing accomplishments, Madigan won a second term in 2006 with over 70% of the popular vote, the largest vote of any statewide elected official.
Awards: Her long list of innovative accomplishments has resulted in her being honored as the 2005 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, an honor given to an American elected official who best represents the spirit of public service embraced by President Kennedy. In 2006, she received the Aspen Institute Rodel Fellowship which is awarded to 24 outstanding young elected officials and is focused on ethics and the responsibilities of public leadership.
In sum, during her time as attorney general, Madigan has successfully balanced raising two beautiful daughters while blazing new trails as the top law enforcement official of the nation’s fifth-largest state. Lisa Madigan has demonstrated a commitment to fight for the people of Illinois, regardless of the opponent – big utilities, sex offenders, mortgage predators or corrupt public officials. Lisa Madigan represents a new generation of public servant who puts ordinary people above political gain.
(Source: www.lisamadigan.org)