SPRINGFIELD, Illinois (AP):

Barack Obama likes to give himself star billing for his role in enacting ethics reforms in Illinois a decade ago, but he didn't act alone.

"When I was in Illinois, I passed the toughest ethics reform in 25 years there, despite the opposition of Democrats and Republicans," the Democratic presidential candidate told a New Hampshire audience last month.

Building support

In fact, Obama was part of an ensemble that negotiated the legislation and built support for it. And the ethics bill passed by lopsided margins of 52-4 in the Senate and 102-3 in the House, although its riskier moments came earlier during those behind-the-scene negotiations that Obama was heavily involved in.

Part of the price for that victory was leaving a major loophole in the law. While new legislators were barred from using campaign money for personal use, those already in office could keep using the campaign money they already had for anything they wanted Cadillacs, college tuition, whatever.

For instance, Senate President Emil Jones who helped Obama reach the US Senate could walk away with as much as $578,000 when he retires next year. He can use that for political purposes or simply spend it as personal income, as long as he pays taxes on it.

Still, government watchdog groups say the 1998 legislation was a major step in a state with notoriously lax laws on ethics and campaign money. "In Illinois, it was a revolution," said Cindi Canary, head of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

The measure, the first Illinois reform legislation since the Watergate era, modernised campaign disclosure requirements, restricted personal use of campaign money, limited gifts from lobbyists to officials and set up ethics commissions to enforce the law.

Obama played an important role in passing it, say others involved in the effort, but he doesn't deserve sole credit.

"I have seen his role overhyped," said Mike Lawrence, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. "These things happen in a campaign. Your handlers are likely to maximise things and minimise others."

'Legalised bribery'

It's not just handlers.

"I called it legalised bribery," Obama recently said of the contributions that politicians could pocket for themselves. "And while it didn't make me the most popular guy in Springfield, Illinois, I put an end to it."

His presidential campaign defends such statements, saying he played a key role and worked with legislators on both sides of the aisle.