If legislators want to show voters they are serious about cleaning up government corruption, they will approve limits on contributions by contractors and they will do it now.

A year has passed since the House unanimously approved House Bill 1. It would, among other things, prohibit campaign contributions from businesses with state contracts of more than $25,000 annually.

At last count, 49 of the 58 members of the Senate had signed on as sponsors. But apparently that was not enough to get a vote on this straight-forward bill.

Instead, Sen. Don Harmon, D-Oak Park - listed among the sponsors of HB 1 - tacked an amendment on another bill, HB 824, which would do essentially the same thing as HB 1 but with a trigger of $50,000 in total contracts rather than $25,000.

Frankly, the difference between $25,000 and $50,000 in this context is not important. Either bill would be an improvement over the "pay-to-play" games in which big state contracts go to big campaign contributors.

Former Gov. George Ryan is in federal prison, in part, because of pay-to-play politics.

Current Gov. Rod Blagojevich, although facing no charges, has had his name come up repeatedly in the federal corruption trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a major fundraiser for Blagojevich.

To quote Rep. Jack Franks, D-Woodstock: "How many of our governors have to go to jail before we wake up?"

Passing HB 1 makes the most sense. Its passage by the Senate would automatically send the measure to the governor for his signature.

If HB 824 is passed, it would have to go back to the House for another vote - further delaying, if not killing, implementation of pay-to-play reforms.

Voters have a right to cynically inquire whether House action on the amended HB 824 would be a meaningful vote for reform or political gamesmanship aimed at letting everyone claim to have supported "reform" while failing to actually enact any reforms.

If the Senate moves forward with the amended HB 824, then the House should join them.

This measure is too important to get caught up with the political infighting that has tainted nearly every other issue in Springfield. The issue is too important to quibble about the difference between $25,000 in contracts and $50,000 in contracts for triggering its provisions.

Pass HB 1 or pass HB 824 - but get something on the book that attacks the implied notion that to land state contracts in Illinois a business has to pay the political piper.

Maybe then the overall costs of those contracts would go down and maybe then Illinois would stop exporting its former governors to federal prisons.