* I’m not really sure that anyone cares all that much about this except a handful of Springfield residents, but this is from the Illinois Republican Party…
Hopefully Quinn lied about keeping his underwear in Springfield
Today, Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady issued the following statement:
“In 2010, Governor Pat Quinn said: ‘My clothes are at the governor’s mansion in Springfield - even my underwear is there. I think that establishes residency, doesn’t it?’
“In 2011, Quinn stayed only 40 nights in Springfield.
“For the sake of everyone working in his Chicago office, I really hope the Governor was lying about where he kept his underwear.”
Gov. Pat Quinn spent 68 days in Springfield between March 2011 and March 2012, according to an analysis of his personal schedule by WCIA 3.
Of that time, Quinn only spent 40 nights in the capitol city, according to the schedule, and it’s assumed all of those nights were spent in the Illinois Executive Mansion,.
When Quinn took office in 2009, he told he reporters he was moving in to the mansion. His predecessor, Rod Blagojevich, was criticized for not spending enough time in the executive mansion, which costs Illinois taxpayers about $500,000 to operate each year.
Former governor Jim Edgar, who lived full time in the mansion, told WCIA that he thinks Quinn spends more time in Springfield than Blagojevich did, but that it’s important the governor spend time in the mansion.
“It might be not the same level as the White House,” Edgar said, “but it’s our equivalent here in Illinois.”
Two things about Edgar’s comments.
1) Yes, Edgar lived in the mansion for a while, but then he moved out to a log home in the country.
2) The mansion is nowhere near the equivalent of the White House. It’s been over 30 years since a governor lived there full time for an entire term.
* That being said, the governor has, indeed, repeatedly claimed that he lives in the mansion. It’s not true now and it never has been true.
I’ve never fully understood why Quinn would make that claim when the evidence obviously shows he’s not telling the truth. Yeah, it probably had some political benefit during the 2010 campaign, but that benefit is wiped out when the data shows his statements to be utterly false.
Just three months after teetering on the issue, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has come out in favor of marriage equality.
“Governor Quinn joins with President Obama in supporting marriage equality and looks forward to working on this issue in the future with the General Assembly,” said Brooke Anderson, a spokesperson for the governor, in an email to Windy City Times.
The Chicago Tribune first reported Quinn’s announcement, which comes on the heels of President Obama’s proclamation to ABC News that he supports marriage equality.
* The Question: Should Illinois legalize gay marriage? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please. Thanks.
Gov. Pat Quinn is enlisting the support of Chicago’s business community to sell his Medicaid and pension reform plans to state lawmakers before the Legislature adjourns at the end of this month.
WBBM Newsradio’s Regine Schlesinger reports spoke to civic leaders at the City Club of Chicago on Monday, urging them to pressure the Illinois General Assembly to approve his proposals.
“Our state is really at a crossroads,” Quinn said, telling business leaders he can’t wait until next year to tackle the state’s Medicaid and pension problems, which are strangling the state’s budget.
“We’re not the Chicago Cubs. We’re not going to wait till another century,” Quinn said. “We’re going to do things and do them now, and we’re going to be like the White Sox were in 2005. Nobody expected them to win, and they won.” [Emphasis added.]
* The Illinois Times has a very good article about Illinois Statehouse News in its latest edition. “Write wingers” takes a pretty even-handed look at the outfit, which offers free state politics stories to newspapers and radio stations throughout Illinois…
Even papers that pay for Associated Press coverage of state government are turning to Illinois Statehouse News.
“I think they move some pretty good stuff,” says Jim Shrader, publisher of the Alton Telegraph. “We trust the content, and that’s why we choose to use it. … It’s one more news service that doesn’t increase my expenses.”
Shrader says that Illinois Statehouse News produces stories that the best-known wire service doesn’t provide.
“I understand that AP is short of manpower – they’re (the wire service is) going to get what they’re fed,” Shrader says. “I don’t want to say it (Illinois Statehouse News product) has more of a downstate focus, but it’s not quite as necessarily Chicago-centric.”
* Their funding is opaque, to say the least…
The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, based in Alexandria, Va., is paying the bills for Illinois Statehouse News and similar bureaus set up in several other states. The center also gives grants for journalism projects to conservative think tanks and online publications that typically say they want to hold government accountable and spotlight fiscal foolishness.
Jason Stverak, Franklin Center’s president, is former head of the North Dakota Republican Party. According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Franklin Center was launched in 2009 with help from the Sam Adams Alliance, a Chicago-based nonprofit which has also given grants to such organizations as the Tea Party Patriots Foundation.
Neither the Franklin Center nor the Sam Adams Alliance will reveal where they get their money, saying that donors have a right to privacy. That’s problematic for critics who find irony in the Franklin Center and its news bureaus railing for transparency in government. The source of money to pay for reporters while mainstream media outlets are cutting back is irrelevant, according to the Franklin Center. What gets reported is what counts, the center says.
* Myself and others have given ISN a chance…
Charlie Wheeler, director of the public affairs reporting program at University of Illinois Springfield that provides interns to help newspapers and broadcasters cover the legislature, also took a wait-and-see approach when Illinois Statehouse News asked for students.
“There had been serious reservations raised,” Wheeler recalls. “In general, it was concern that this would be some kind of shadow right-wing operation, because of who the funders were purported to be, and they would be churning out propaganda in the guise of news.”
After reading the product for the better part of a year, Wheeler agreed to provide interns. The stories, he says, showed no slant, and they were getting picked up by media outlets throughout the state.
“It looks like pretty straightforward news to me,” Wheeler says. “I think they have a pretty decent following.” […]
“I think they’re always going to be suspect because of who funds them,” says Rich Miller, publisher of Capitol Fax and capitolfax.com. “Overall, they have a conservative slant on some things. So what? Are they unfair or ridiculous? No. Are they a decent addition to the Statehouse? Sure.”
* But if this ISN story had been published before I was interviewed for that article, I might have had a slightly different take. It’s called “Priorities for IL women voters: Jobs and economy, not abortion,” yet it has precious little evidence to support the headline or the lede…
As the country’s two main political parties continue to duke it out in the so-called “war on women,” women voters in Illinois say they believe the hubbub is merely a tool to distract from the bread-and-butter issues they care about.
There’s one poll referenced in the article, but it was a national poll, not an Illinois poll. The premise is almost solely based on “woman in the street” interviews.
There’s no mention of how abortion-related issues played an outsized role in the 2010 statewide election, when the economic future was pretty darned bleak here. Just stuff like this…
Indeed. Women are worried about finding a job, putting food on the table, paying for their children’s college tuition and trying to secure their family’s financial future. The “bedroom issues” of gay marriage, birth control and abortion are on women’s radar but aren’t priorities.
Women may not say that the issues are priorities, but those issues can be extremely effective campaign tools. Just ask Gov. Pat Quinn or state Sen. Bill Brady.
* But while this story overtly appears to be “Women don’t care about social issues,” it’s actually much more nuanced…
“I really think, especially in Illinois, people have taken that and run with it as a diversion,” said Laurel Bault, a 54-year-old suburban Chicago married mother of two grown children. “So while we’re standing on the corner with signs saying, ‘I’m not livestock,’ they’re selling our state out. It’s kind of a divide-and-conquer tactic to distract from things that are really going on.”
It’s just too bad that nuance got lost in all the hype.
* Illinois Review, however, is not so worried about the nuance thing. Check this one out…
Earlier in the week, we noted Kimberly Strassel’s excellent reporting on the Obama campaign’s strong arm, Chicago Way of dealing with anyone who dares to exercise his right to oppose B. Hussein’s re-election. The Community Organizer in Chief hasn’t forgotten his Alinskyite training, a key feature of which is demonizing those who disagree with him. Nor has his key apparatchik David Axelrod, forgotten how he vaulted this narcissistic, unaccomplished, petulant, affirmative-action assisted C-player from obscurity into the Oval Office.
Exelon and ComEd, along with the State Chamber, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Civic Federation and others support Governor Pat Quinn’s call to action to reform Illinois’ pension laws and review Medicaid policy this session.
Chicago - Exelon and ComEd, along with the Illinois State Chamber, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Civic Federation and others support Governor Pat Quinn’s call to action to reform Illinois’ pension laws and review Medicaid policy this legislative session. These steps are required to improve the financial health of the State of Illinois, rebuild a sustainable platform for economic recovery and growth, and improve the business climate necessary for job growth.
We recognize that pensions are important to everyone and provide a level of security and quality of life that people work their entire lives to achieve. However, the current structure is in dire need of change that, without it, threatens the entire financial integrity of the state and the future of many public employees.
The Governor and the leaders of the General Assembly are taking bold, courageous steps to improve the financial integrity of Illinois, and thereby enhancing us as an economic powerhouse in the country.
These guys are always at the Statehouse either asking for special treatment or trying to stop somebody else from getting a leg up on them, so backing the leaders certainly helps them because it shows they’re “on the team.”
But it sure rubs me the wrong way. “Zap the workers and retirees, zap health care for the poor, but keep those special favors coming for the giant utility company!”
* State, teachers far from deal on pension reform: For the first time, the Illinois Federation of Teachers is hinting they might be willing to give a little. “Our members are willing to sacrifice more to help solve the pension crisis, but they are definitely not willing to bear the whole burden by themselves,” federation spokesman David Comerford said. “Although we have made our pension payments through every paycheck, we’ve offered reasonable changes that will result in billions of dollars of state savings over the coming years.”
* Quinn, business form unlikely alliance on budget cuts
Illinois Senate President John Cullerton has been telling some of his members for weeks that he was resigned to an overtime session.
The General Assembly likely wouldn’t be able to adjourn by the scheduled May 31 deadline, there was just no getting around it, so people should just accept it and move forward, he said.
But then Cullerton (D-Chicago) reportedly came to the conclusion that if the spring session did go into overtime, the Republicans would likely keep everyone bottled up in Springfield all summer long. So, now his focus is on getting everybody out of town by the end of May.
May 31 is an important deadline because all bills voted on after that date will require a three-fifths majority to pass rather than a simple majority. That means no budget can be approved, no Medicaid solution can be found, no pension systems can be reformed without a three-fifths supermajority.
The Democrats control both legislative chambers, but they don’t have three-fifths of the votes in each. They’re seven votes shy in the House and one vote short in the Senate. One vote may not seem like a lot, but partisanship can sometimes get so intense in the General Assembly that one vote might as well be 100.
Cullerton has been hoping for bipartisan agreement on the three major and gut-wrenching issues facing the Legislature — Medicaid, pensions and the budget. And even though the Republicans deny it, Cullerton has come to the conclusion that the GOP is stalling everything to push the session into overtime to try to create as much political chaos as possible.
The majority party always takes the blame for overtime sessions, so tying up vulnerable Democratic incumbents in an unpopular and chaotic overtime session would further damage the Dems’ image and prevent members from walking precincts and going to events back home.
When I asked Cullerton about a Senate Republican demand that the state budget be cut far more than it was in a bipartisan agreement in the House, he shot back that “it’s just an excuse to vote ‘no.’ ”
The House approved that agreement, which limits state operational spending to $800 million below the revenue forecast, by a lopsided 91-16 vote in late March. But Senate Republicans want that spending limit lowered by another $1.4 billion.
State Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), a GOP budgeteer, picked up sponsorship of the House spending cap resolution March 30, the day it passed the House. But Murphy has refused to call the measure for a vote in committee.
Committee chairman Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) asked Murphy whether he was prepared to move the resolution. Murphy’s umpteenth refusal prompted Democrats to demand that the Republicans “move their other budget recommendations in a bill.”
The fight over the House spending resolution is an important piece of evidence that Cullerton sees as proving the Republicans want to force an overtime session.
The Democrats don’t have enough votes to pass legislation on those big issues on their own right now, when bills only require a simple majority.
Steep budget cuts, slashing Medicaid and whacking union members’ pensions are not appealing to most Democrats. So they need the Republicans on everything.
Murphy admitted last week that his caucus knows the Democrats can’t pass a budget by themselves, so the Republicans are using their leverage to maximum advantage to force more spending cuts. Murphy also refused to make any significant budget proposals of his own, saying they should be negotiated.
Murphy said the proposed $2.2 billion in cuts would put the state on track to balance the budget by the time the temporary increase in the state income tax expires.
But Cullerton and the Democrats maintain that the Republicans just want to create chaos with a long and nasty overtime session that they can exploit for partisan advantage this fall.
Both sides are probably right. That gives me no comfort at all.
* I think I’ve told you that I get my brains from my mother and my story-telling abilities from my paternal grandmother. Both women have been very important figures in my life, along with my mom’s late mother. I’ve been truly blessed by the presence and love of those women, not to mention all the wonderful aunts and great aunts who’ve influenced me over the years.
Despite all this love and inherited abilities, I spent much of my twenties kinda bumming around without any real direction or purpose. I finally realized I could write and tell interesting stories and decided I ought to figure out how to build a life around those skills. Somehow, it all came together, so this never happened, thank goodness…
Workin’ hours without rest, wanted me to have the best
Oh she tried to raise me right, but I refused.
Thanks, Mom. Thanks, “Grandma Cuz.” Thanks to all the mothers in my life. I love you all.
Roger C. Marquardt, a longtime Springfield lobbyist who served briefly as a state lawmaker from Lombard, has died, it was announced on the Illinois House floor Friday.
Marquardt served as head of the DuPage County airport starting in 1981, before later working under Gov. Jim Edgar in the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Later, in 2002, Marquardt was appointed to finish a term in the Illinois House, where he served for about a year.
Since then, he had run Roger C. Marquardt & Co., a lobbying firm with current clients including several DuPage County communities, College of DuPage, the Illinois High School Association and others. Past clients have included Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz.
My deepest sympathies to his entire family and his many, many friends. May he rest in peace.
Friday, May 11, 2012 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
Illinois residents want to cut the deficit and create jobs without tax increases or budget cuts. A recent independent analysis shows that a modest expansion of gaming in Illinois would create 20,500 jobs and $200 million in desperately needed new annual revenue.
That’s why Illinois labor leaders are united in support for the compromise legislation contained in Senate Bill 1849:
“With our unemployment numbers still hovering around 9 percent, the state can’t afford to take a pass on this vital piece of legislation. We’ve got men and women ready to go to work today, and SB 1849 would finally give them the opportunity to earn their living.” Tom Balanoff, President, SEIU Local 1
“More people at work means more tax revenues coming in to help balance our city, county and state budgets.” Dave Whitmore, Business Manager, Ironworkers Local 4
“More than 50,000 jobs are at stake! Not only would SB 1849 create 20,000 new jobs, it would save more than 30,000 agri-business jobs that effect nearly every single one of Illinois’s 102 counties!”Former Rep. Bill Black, Chairman, the Illinois Revenue and Jobs Allliance.
* I Tweeted this concept yesterday because it seemed pretty obvious. It turns out that I wasn’t the only one who saw things that way…
Call it the Rod Blagojevich defense.
Indicted state Rep. Derrick Smith, D-Chicago, refused to answer questions from the Illinois House committee tasked with recommending whether he should be impeached.
Instead, he read from a statement Thursday — “I intended to fight this charge and clear my name” — and then punted to his attorney, Victor Henderson, who didn’t confirm or deny accusations related to Smith accepting a $7,000 bribe to steer a $50,000 state grant to a day care.
Henderson ducked direct answers to questions posed by the committee members and House attorney David Ellis and recycled the strategy used by now-federal-inmate Blagojevich’s law team.
“We want all of the facts out,” said Henderson, a partner in Henderson Adam LLC, the same law firm that represented Blagojevich, during the House Special Investigative Committee hearing.
“We want everything to see the light of day,” Henderson said later.
Blagojevich used this strategy when the General Assembly impeached him and during the federal trial that led to his conviction on corruption charges for trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated when Barack Obama became president.
Blagojevich and his lawyers would claim that if only the public could hear the whole tapes, not just excerpts like when Blagojevich said, “I’ve got this thing and its (expletive) golden and I’m just not giving it up for (expletive) nothing,” they would see he was innocent.
Henderson was unmoved by a warning from Rep. Dennis Reboletti, the committee’s top Republican, who said the panel has a much lower standard of fault-finding than Smith would face in federal court.
“I haven’t heard you disagree that the conversations that are in this complaint, on the wire, ever took place,” said Reboletti, who’s from Elmhurst. “I would suggest that is enough for this committee to take action and most likely deliberate and suggest we move forward with the House to punishment.”
Smith is accused of accepting a $7,000 cash bribe from a fictitious daycare center to write a letter of support for a state grant.
House prosecutor David Ellis told Henderson the panel wants to know if the letter exists, as alleged in the criminal complaint.
“The official act that Rep. Smith is accused of committing is writing this letter of support. Is there something that you want to tell us about this, something that you can point to in the criminal complaint that is incorrect, taken out of context?” Ellis asked. “We’re trying to figure out… did he write this letter?”
Henderson wouldn’t confirm or deny the letter exists. He said he’s waiting for the federal government to release all its information so he can compare it with the criminal complaint. The committee’s timetable is unclear, but Smith is expected back in court at the end of the month.
Victor Henderson, Smith’s attorney, said he will ask a federal judge May 30 to release all available information but noted that prosecutors oppose doing so.
Henderson told lawmakers that he is “not in a position to confirm nor deny” the allegations in the federal complaint because he has not received much information to date. He urged lawmakers to wait until more information is available before the House takes action in the Smith matter.
“You don’t want to shoot and ask questions later. You want to ask questions and then decide,” Henderson said.
Whatever. His client is doomed.
* Related…
* Indicted Rep. Smith refuses to answer House panel’s questions
Today, Congressman Walsh will finally have his first debate with Tammy Duckworth. You can watch the debate live on CTLV or wgntv.com at 6PM Central. For those who still would like to submit their questions for Joe and Tammy, you can submit them on the “Politics Tonight” website.
* The Question: What would you like to see asked at tonight’s debate?
* Back in October of 2010, Gov. Pat Quinn said he fully supported civil unions, but had this to say when he was asked about gay marriage…
Quinn said wasn’t opposed to legalizing gay marriage in Illinois. He said he wouldn’t “stand in the way, if the voters of Illinois want to have it come to pass.”
Asked on Valentine’s Day if he would sign a gay marriage bill, Quinn said, “I haven’t looked at that yet; I’ll take a look at it.”
Soon after, Quinn told Chicago public radio that he looks “forward to working with the advocates on this issue to build a majority.”
* But then President Obama announced recently that he supported gay marriage. The announcement came in the wake of North Carolina’s statewide vote against the issue. The Democratic National Convention is in NC this year, so the plebiscite became a big dealio with the national media. Then there was the uproar about Mitt Romney giving a gay high school classmate a forced haircut, and the vice president’s comments recently about supporting gay marriage.
Spokeswoman Matsoff maintained that Quinn isn’t changing his position, because he had said before that he wouldn’t stand in the way if a gay marriage bill passed the General Assembly.
State Rep. Greg Harris, an openly gay Chicago Democrat who helped lead the successful push to bring civil unions to Illinois, also suggested it was unlikely a push for gay marriage would take place anytime soon.
“I never put a time frame on the civil union vote. I won’t put a time frame on this one. I’ll keep counting noses,” Harris said.
But, Harris said Obama’s announcement this week represents a huge step forward for supporters of gay marriage.
“History was made by the president when he came out and made that statement,” said Harris, who is sponsoring a gay marriage bill. “Change is happening, and it’s happening more quickly than I would have thought.”
Strategically, Garcia said, gay rights activists in the state had no expectation that marriage rights would be politically palatable this soon after the civil unions law passed.
“Our plan was to pass civil unions and then let everybody who voted yes on civil unions get through their next election, which is this November,” he said.
There will be a ton of lame ducks who might be able to vote for this in January, when a simple majority is all that’s needed to pass a bill.
* If you were watching yesterday’s live session coverage post, you saw that the Senate passed a bill to repeal the state law giving retirees with 20 years of active service free health insurance premiums. Gov. Pat Quinn issued a statement not long after the bill passed…
“I am encouraged that legislators have taken this step towards restoring fiscal stability to Illinois. This legislation will help ensure that our retirees continue to have access to quality health care, while also lowering the cost to taxpayers.
“I would like to thank Senate President Cullerton, Senate Minority Leader Radogno, House Speaker Madigan and House Minority Leader Cross for their collaboration and leadership. I plan to sign this legislation and look forward to continuing to work together to make the difficult decisions necessary to return Illinois to sound financial footing.”
The legislation allows the Illinois Department of Central Management Services to negotiate the premium rates annually with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.
Whatever CMS and AFSCME negotiates will be applied to retired lawmakers, retired judges and retired university workers.
If the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules balks at the rate, AFSCME and CMS would return to the negotiating table.
“It will be a collectively bargained retiree benefit,” said Robb Craddick, who is deputy director of labor relations for CMS and the chief labor negotiator for the state. “The intent of this legislation is to allow the Department of Central Management Services to negotiate a means-based plan.” Craddick said that if JCAR rejects the number, then AFSCME and CMS would return to the table.
“I support and respect the collective bargaining process. … These benefits are going to be collectively bargained. So I certainly hope that in the public discussion, there’s no representation that it’s going to be anything but that,” Schoenberg said.
The benefits will be collectively bargained, but the GA has essentially given a super-committee veto power over the end result. So, it’s not exactly collective bargaining.
But union officials say the plan impedes the collective bargaining process and allows CMS to arbitrarily set the amount the state would pay. […]
Cameron argued that while working, retirees gave up other things through collective bargaining, such as raises, as a trade off for their paid health care. “The health insurance is a benefit that was earned. It’s not a perk, it’s not a privilege, it’s not a giveaway,” he said. “While working members, they negotiated to make sure that their retiree health care benefits were affordable. And as a consequence, they took less in salary, less in wage increases. That reduced their pension, so they have less [retirement] income. But again, they were operating under this framework that they were guaranteed affordable health benefits.” He said that the new plan does not give retirees a way to predict what their health care costs would be from year to year.
Cameron said the rising cost of health care is a serious issue, but he said the proposal does nothing to address that problem. “Let’s be clear: What we’re doing here is both breaking a promise to those retirees and shifting the cost of that health care liability onto their shoulders. We’re not reducing it. We’re not eliminating it. It remains unaffordable, but we have decided to stick the bill to those who can least afford it.”
* Not surprisingly, Springfield’s Republican state Senator voted against it…
Sen. Larry Bomke, R-Springfield, said he thinks the bill is unconstitutional because it applies to people who retired years ago from the state with the expectation of receiving health insurance at no premium cost if they worked 20 or more years for the state. The benefit was put into state law in 1997. Bomke said the change should only apply to future retirees.
“I don’t disagree we need to do something about the health care and the costs, there’s no question about it, but prospectively,” Bomke said. “To vote yes on this bill will simply mean that we’ll have a court challenge, we’ll spend millions of dollars we don’t have trying to defend it, only to realize it’s not constitutional.”
State Sen. Larry Bomke, R-Springfield, predictably voted against the bill. Too many state workers in his district. Too much union pressure. Not enough moxie.
I had a chance to sit down for half an hour with Mayor Rahm Emanuel when he was in Springfield on Tuesday.
Most of the conversation was off the record. Going off the record was my choice because Emanuel was sticking so tightly to his script that I wasn’t getting anything new or interesting out of him.
“I’m spending my Springfield political capital on pensions.”
“I’m serious about cleaning up this pension problem.”
“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
He didn’t actually say that last sentence, but that’s what it sounded like after a few minutes, so off the record we went.
The unscripted Emanuel was a lot more interesting, but off the record is off the record, so I can’t tell you what he said.
Suffice it to say that he’s pretty much on top of Statehouse events.
The mayor has some definite holes in his understanding of Springfield’s sausage-making process, but that’s to be expected from anybody who has never spent time down there. There’s a reason why people hire lobbyists. Navigating Springfield’s ever-complicated currents is treacherous work for all but the most experienced deckhands.
And while I can’t tell you what the mayor said, I can tell you what I told him.
Emanuel was in Springfield to ask the Legislature to include Chicago’s pension systems in its planned pension reform bill. The mayor had previously indicated to other reporters that he thought pension reform could be put off until the lame-duck session next January. Delaying a vote would give him and other mayors around the state more time to put pressure on the General Assembly.
The reality, though, is that at least one New York bond rating agency has warned Illinois that any delay in fixing pensions and Medicaid (which is bleeding red ink right now and facing a $2.7 billion deficit next fiscal year alone) would result in a dangerous double-downgrade of Illinois’ credit rating. The state has been threatened twice with double-downgrades in the past couple of years. The first time, in 2010, resulted in a drastically scaled back pension plan for new state employees. The second time, in late 2011, resulted in the 66 percent income tax increase. New York bond houses rule the state’s world, unfortunately, and they have to be heeded.
Since that conversation, I’ve been told that top legislative Democrats are hesitant to include a city pension fix in the mix because of worries that it could draw even more opposition to the bill. They think they have the votes for pension reform, but when the city unions crank up the heat, that might all fall apart.
I also talked to him about guns. Downstate is in the process of seceding from the Democratic Party. So every time the brash Chicago Democrat mayor starts screaming about guns, that secession movement grows even bigger.
This is a remap year. Downstate Democratic legislators have tons of new turf to represent. That means they have a lot of new voters who don’t know who they are and likely don’t care.
If Emanuel is perceived as hurting Downstate Democratic interests, he’ll be shunned at the Statehouse.
And, finally, I told him he should probably go a bit easier on Gov. Pat Quinn in private. Emanuel got all up in Quinn’s face last year during a meeting over a Chicago casino and angrily issued some not-so-veiled threats.
Quinn’s favorite line when he feels disrespected is, “I’m the governor!” — usually bellowed when he’s pounding on a table.
He’s like Eddie Murphy’s character on the old “Saturday Night Live.”
“I’m Gumby, damn it!”
Is a wide grin off the record?
* Related…
* Chicago teachers conduct ‘dry run’ for strike vote
Friday, May 11, 2012 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
It finally became obvious that Tenaska’s original proposal was too costly for Illinois consumers, didn’t make sense environmentally, and had little support in the Assembly. As a result, Tenaska’s proposal for the Taylorville Energy Center proposal has been seeing a lot of changes lately. But the facts about what remains the same just can’t be ignored. Tenaska’s plan would still mean:
• Electric rate increases for consumers and business;
• A giant subsidy for a private, out of state company that guarantees an 11.5 percent Return on Equity;
• 30-year long term power contracts guaranteed by state law; and
• Unnecessary and unneeded electric generation for Illinois.
Before Tenaska sought support from Springfield for this project, they too opposed the idea of states providing subsidies to private power generators. In fact, when New Jersey passed a law to build new power plants, a top Tenaska executive called it “confiscatory” and warned that it could “ultimately put the entire competitive market at risk”. Now Tenaska is singing a new tune.
The STOP Coalition’s goal, as it has been all along, remains ensuring that Illinois consumers aren’t subject to unnecessary rate increases. We urge legislators to vote “NO” on SB 678 or any legislation that supports the Taylorville Energy Center.
