Editorial: For attorney general

An aggressive champion of consumer rights, she has made Illinoisans safer and has put dollars back into the pockets of some who were taken. She has battled such things as identity theft and nursing home and mortgage lending abuses. She’s returned nearly $10 billion owed to the state or defrauded from it since her tenure began. She also dramatically improved government transparency in a state desperately in need of sunshine via tougher open records and meetings laws and creation of the Illinois public access counselor’s office. In many ways, she says, the office is victim of its own success, as private citizens, government officials and media flood it with requests for help.

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In Nursing Homes, Eyes That Never Turn Away

The Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, whom Ms. King buttonholed at a luncheon this summer and who’d been hearing similar complaints from other constituents, agrees. Her office has begun drafting legislation that would allow residents and their families to put cameras in their rooms in the state’s 1,200-plus nursing homes. The families would own and install the cameras; facility administrators would not have access to them.

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Obama Got Early Warning on JPMorgan Breach

A number of state attorneys general, led by Lisa Madigan of Illinois and George Jepsen of Connecticut, have opened investigations into the JPMorgan breach, according to the people briefed on the matter. The inquiries are looking at whether the bank, the nation’s largest, alerted customers in a timely matter. A prolonged delay between when the bank learned that vast stores of information were pilfered and when it alerted customers could put consumers at risk, the people said.

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Cameras in nursing homes would aid patient safety

Attorney General Lisa Madigan has proposed that the state by law allow cameras in nursing home rooms to better monitor patient care. The cameras would be installed on a voluntary basis; patients or their families would bear the costs of setting up the equipment and maintaining it. "The work that I have done ... as attorney general has unfortunately proven that too often when our loved ones are in a nursing home, they are not always safe and they are not always well cared for," Madigan said.

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Illinois will receive $300 million in Bank of America settlement

"This settlement resolves the fourth enforcement action I have brought against Bank of America to fight the widespread fraud that was at the root cause of the economic crisis," Madigan said. "Bank of America, and in particular Countrywide, were major players in virtually every aspect of the market that caused the crisis, from shoddy loan originations and discriminatory lending to African Americans and Latinos to fraudulent marketing of mortgage-backed securities."

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