Jordan Matyas

 Jordan Matyas is the Illinois State Director for HSUS, overseeing all legislative and lobbying activities in that state. He has been at HSUS since 2008. (Click here for HSUS's Illinois-specific Facebook page.)

Matyas, who holds a law degree from George Washington University, previously worked in Illinois politics, including for the state Speaker of the House and the governor's office at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulations.

On July 3, 2010, Matyas married Tiffany Madigan, the daughter of Illinois House Speaker and Illinois Democratic Party Chairman Michael J. Madigan. Matyas's sister-in-law, Lisa Madigan, is the attorney general of Illinois.

In 2005, Matyas helped draft the Illinois Payday Loan Reform Act, ostensibly consumer-protection legislation to track payday lenders that hold unsecured loans. However, Matyas has been employed since 2008 as a lobbyist for Veritec Solutions, the Jacksonville, Fla., company that contracts with the state to do the tracking. Vertiec has charged lenders more than $840,000 as a result of the legislation. But under a revised version of the payday law set to go into effect in March 2011, Vertiec's profits are slated to soar by as much as 900 percent, as more lenders become eligible for tracking, according to the company's CEO. Veritec stands to make $2.9 million from the state in the deal, reports the Chicago Sun-Times, not including what it charges the affected lenders.

The paper trail has led the Illinois Republican Party to accuse Matyas and his in-laws of pay-for-play politics. Spokespeople for Michael and Lisa Madigan claim that since Matyas had not yet married into the family when the law was enacted (Matyas and Tiffany Madigan wed two weeks later), they weren't aware of Matyas’s connections with Veritec.