Illinois lawmakers quietly voted in the closing days of their spring legislative session to approve a five-year extension of a 2018 cellular communications law that federal prosecutors say was a product of AT&T Illinois’ alleged scheme to bribe then-House Speaker Michael Madigan.
The measure in question, which was set to expire at the end of 2024, smoothed the way for small cell transmission equipment to be placed throughout Illinois by limiting local governments’ ability to regulate where the equipment was placed and also by capping how much towns could collect from telecom providers that installed the equipment that helps boost cellular service.
With little debate, the Illinois House voted without opposition late Tuesday to approve an extension of the law to Jan. 1, 2030, as part of legislation pushing back sunset dates on a variety of state laws.
Amended onto a bill originally titled “Campground Hot Tubs,” the legislation was approved 58-0 on Sunday in the state Senate. With House passage, it now goes to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who previously signed an extension of the law in 2021.
During a brief House committee hearing Tuesday, sponsoring state Rep. Larry Walsh Jr., a Democrat from Elwood, did not discuss the circumstances surrounding the bill’s original passage and only noted a minor change to the law that allows local governments to charge an annual fee of $270, up from $200, for the small cell micro-towers to be located on utility poles and elsewhere in public rights-of-way.
Despite being described during the Senate debate as a “boring bill,” the measure gives longer life to the law whose origin could play a pivotal role in the upcoming corruption trial of a former AT&T official ensnared in the federal investigation of Madigan.
The allegations involving the small cell legislation surfaced recently in court filings ahead of the scheduled September trial of former AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza, whom a federal grand jury indicted in October 2022 on charges that included conspiracy and bribery.
Although the indictment focuses on a separate bill to end landline service, prosecutors say the small cell bill was part of the same overarching scheme and want to present evidence about its passage to a jury. U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman could take up the issue during a pretrial conference on Thursday.
Madigan, who also faces a federal criminal trial this fall on bribery and racketeering charges that also involved utility giant Commonwealth Edison, helped push the original measure through the House during the General Assembly’s fall veto session in 2017 and helped block an amendment the following spring “that would have been harmful to AT&T’s interest,” according to a court filing from federal prosecutors.
La Schiazza approved a deal to secretly funnel $2,500 a month to former state Rep. Edward Acevedo — once a member of Madigan’s House Democratic leadership team — through a lobbying company already doing business with AT&T Illinois, according to a statement of facts. The move came as AT&T was pushing a bill that would allow the company to end landline phone service in Illinois.
That measure passed in the spring of 2017, but prosecutors allege Acevedo, who later pleaded guilty to tax evasion, performed no actual work for AT&T.
In an email exchange from July 2017 highlighted in the court documents laying out evidence prosecutors hope to present in La Schiazza’s trial, he and another AT&T official discuss the need to stay in Madigan’s good graces even after the company succeeded in passing the landline legislation.
The other AT&T official underscored the connection between “AT&T’s legislative success” and requests from Madigan and Michael McClain, a longtime confidant of the former speaker who is now a co-defendant in Madigan’s criminal case, according to the court documents.
“There is a sensitivity in that office about us going away now that we got” the landline legislation, the unnamed AT&T official wrote, according to the court filing. “That is something to keep in mind in rest (of) 17 and in 18 regarding budget and profile with the Speaker’s office.”
La Schiazza replied: “I will emphasize that to leadership. … Especially if we expect to pass a small cell bill.” The small cell bill passed months later.
Attorneys for La Schiazza are seeking to have the email exchange and other evidence in the court documents excluded from his upcoming trial, arguing in their response that prosecutors failed to show La Schiazza or any other AT&T employee knew “that seeking to influence Mr. Madigan was forbidden,” as required by current Chicago-area case law.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule next month in a case involving James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, that could redefine the word “corruptly” in the federal bribery statute, potentially jeopardizing cases like those against La Schiazza and Madigan.
AT&T Illinois this spring session took no official position on the legislation extending the law, and a spokesman on Wednesday declined to comment about its passage.
The extension did have the support of the Illinois Municipal League, which represents local governments across the state.
