From the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

Ill. Senate backs ethics bill
By Kevin McDermott
POST-DISPATCH SPRINGFIELD BUREAU
04/17/2008
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois Senate, long criticized for refusing to take action on a major ethics bill that would limit political donations from state contractors, advanced its own, similar ethics legislation on Wednesday — a move that some critics suspect is designed to prevent either measure from making it into law.
The new measure is similar to House Bill 1, an omnibus ethics bill that passed the House more than a year ago and would bar state contractors from giving political donations to the state politicians who control their contracts. Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, hasn't allowed a Senate vote on HB1, drawing the ire of reformers who say he doesn't want to rein in the "pay-to-play" system that has shadowed Springfield's political system for decades.
On Wednesday, though, Jones and other members of the Senate Executive Committee unanimously approved a competing ethics bill that would do much the same thing as HB1. Proponents say it's a better bill because it produces even tighter restrictions on donations from contractors.
But others said the move smacked of an old legislative trick in which the House and Senate each advance separate, similar reform bills, but fail to vote on one another's legislation — thus allowing lawmakers in both chambers to go home and claim they voted for reform, without actually passing any.
"I'd almost bet you dinner (that) nothing passes" in the end, Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson, R-Greenville, told the new legislation's sponsor, Sen. Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, in committee debate on the bill.
Watson and others have continued to press for a Senate vote on HB1, which would go directly to Gov. Rod Blagojevich for approval if the Senate were to pass it without altering it.
The new ethics measure now moves to the full Senate. If it passes there, it would have to start over in the House.
The issue of political contributions from state contractors has long been a controversial one in Illinois, which has no campaign donation limits or restrictions. Former Gov. George Ryan is currently serving a federal prison term for crimes that included steering state contracts to major campaign contributors.
Testimony in the current federal trial of Blagojevich fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko has included allegations of the same thing going on in Blagojevich's administration.
The new ethics legislation is contained in Senate Amendments 3 and 4 of HB824.