SPRINGFIELD — After almost 10 years of improvement, public corruption in Illinois spiked in 2019, and the state remains the second most corrupt in the nation, while Chicago still is the most corrupt city, according to a new report from the University of Illinois at Chicago. “We’re making progress, but we ought to be making progress a lot faster,” said former Chicago Alderman Dick Simpson, a political science professor at UIC and principal author of “Corruption Spikes in Illinois,” the 13th anti-corruption report produced by the university since 2009. Simpson said federal charges in 2020 against several people in the ongoing bribery investigation involving Commonwealth Edison and former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan likely will contribute to the city and state’s corruption rankings in years to come.