* Greg Hinz on whether Gov. Bruce Rauner’s Turnaround Agenda is worth the price being paid…
In recent days, he has gleefully tried to torpedo a big Chicago Public Schools bond issue, failing in his effort but driving up the already prohibitive cost to city taxpayers.
He has said little about a report from his handpicked state comptroller, Leslie Geissler Munger, that Illinois debt soon may blow by the level reached by Gov. Pat Quinn, the guy who took over from Rod Blagojevich amid the worst U.S. economic downturn since Herbert Hoover was president.
He mostly has just watched as thousands of Illinois college students consider dropping out because their financial aid is gone, some of them never to return. He also lost General Electric’s headquarters when the company chose Boston over Chicago.
I could go on. But here’s the cold, hard fact: This war Rauner is in with House Speaker Michael Madigan is of increasingly questionable value relative to the costs. Though our GOP governor is right that Illinois’ economy is too weak and public-sector unions too strong, is the payoff of his turnaround agenda worth it? […]
Rauner is right that CPS finances have been a mess for way too long. Piling on more debt is a bad idea. But his plan to fix CPS by forcing it into bankruptcy comes out of the same fairy-dust factory as the proposal by Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis to maintain the status quo by taxing commodities trades and rich people and emptying tax-increment-financing districts for the dough.
More real was Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan: to finally bargain hard with the CTU, cut some jobs, get more money from the state and buy more time via borrowing. But Rauner (who actually agrees that CPS needs more state money) turned thumbs down on a deal that would have forced every teacher to take what amounts to a 7 percent pay cut because the deal also would have left CTU alive and capped the number of charter schools.
* DNAinfo Chicago has the react of Jackson Potter, who is described as a CTU staff coordinator who’s involved with the teachers’ contract negotiations…
Potter said while CPS offered teachers a 2.75 percent pay raise that would take effect in the second year of their four-year contract offer, those raises would have been negated by teachers’ increased pension and health insurance contributions. Factoring in those costs, Potter said teachers would actually lose 1.55 percent of their pay if they accepted the contract Monday.
So, Rauner and the CTU both rejected it.
Interesting.
What could possibly be going on?
* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
Last week, a reporter said to Gov. Bruce Rauner that Secretary of State Jesse White had suggested that Rauner bring in former governors, including George Ryan, to help break the long governmental impasse which has prevented the state from having a budget for over seven months.
Rauner laughed and said, “Uh, wow.”
The governor clearly did not take the suggestion seriously.
“I’m not gonna talk about the failures of the past that created this mess,” Gov. Rauner said through chuckles.
“I focus on the future. I don’t live in the past. We’ve had failure in our elected government for decades. This mess didn’t happen over night. And what we’re not gonna do is reproduce the dynamic that created it.” The governor laughed throughout most of that last sentence.
Bringing in graybeards has been tried before without success. Gov. Rod Blagojevich asked former US House Speaker Dennis Hastert and then-Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard to town to help him pass his massive construction proposal that Speaker Madigan refused to agree to. It didn’t work. The two men left town as soon as they realized how hardened Madigan’s position had become against Blagojevich.
While former governors have been through similar troubles, nothing really compares to today’s self-inflicted disaster. Madigan and Blagojevich played hardball, but the game is exponentially meaner now.
And, besides, what would the former governors say or do that could make a difference? They’d probably advise Rauner to cut a deal which doesn’t bash unions. But our governor seems wholly uninterested in doing such a thing.
The simple fact is that nothing – nothing – will change until Madigan and Rauner decide it will.
Madigan’s long history clearly shows he forces the other side to negotiate against itself until he believes they’re close enough to his position. Rauner has clearly not moved far enough away from anti-union proposals and things like term limits for Madigan’s taste.
And Rauner, for his part, seems fed up with the whole process and has taken to issuing repeated dire warnings of political consequences to Madigan’s Democratic members if they continue backing the Speaker.
But as we saw not long ago, when rank and file Senate Democrats rejected the pension reform compromise negotiated by Senate President John Cullerton (even though a majority of that caucus had voted for a very similar bill a couple of years earlier), most Democratic legislators are in no mood to work out a deal, either, and continue to insist that the governor come to the table and finally agree to a budget instead.
Late last Thursday, Chicago State University officially declared a “financial exigency,” which could lead to the reduction of tenured faculty and drastic reductions in programs in order to save the school from closure. The state’s only majority black university had already announced last month that it would run out of money to pay salaries in early March.
CSU gets more than a third of its funding from the state, more than all but one other 4-year public university in Illinois. But the governor has publicly complained that taxpayers have been throwing Chicago State’s money “down the toilet” and wants drastic reforms. For now, anyway, the Democrats are staying on the sidelines and loudly pointing fingers at Rauner.
The governor has been talking about his grand plan for years, long before he was elected.
He never made it a major campaign issue, but it’s clear from looking at his past statements that he believes Democrats will eventually side against the unions and with social service agencies (and places like the CSU campus and the Chicago Public Schools) if he can, in his own words, “drive a wedge” into the party. The object is to make the Democrats choose between money for their pet causes or union rights. He’s shut off the money, but he hasn’t yet driven that wedge.
That’s probably why Rauner looked like he was attempting to tank the Chicago Public School’s bond sale last week with loud demands that it should go bankrupt and be taken over by the state. Without that bond sale, the school system would’ve been in danger of shutting down.
The object here appears to be to create so much chaos that the Democrats finally start negotiating in order to save all the programs and institutions they’ve been building for decades.
So far, that isn’t happening, but the real chaos is yet to come. We’ve seen smaller social service agencies close, we’ve seen larger agencies shut down vital programs, but so far nothing huge has happened.
It’ll probably take the “death” of something very important and very large to test this theory.
* Related…
* Durbin to Rauner: “It’s time to govern”: “What is happening to this state, the state I love and am honored to represent is devastating, devastating,” said Durbin.
- Tumbleweed lines - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 8:06 am:
No money no funny….yeah everyone wants their slice of the pie but with limited revenue sources where are the cuts going to be made? Not until after November will we see a budget passed. You know the major cuts are coming it’s just a matter of when.
- Downstate - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 8:18 am:
Rich,
Great article. I think one of your critical points is this - “Madigan’s long history clearly shows he forces the other side to negotiate against itself until he believes they’re close enough to his position”.
Understand that so many on this board want Rauner to compromise. But is Madigan willing to as well?
- SAP - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 8:23 am:
Is Madigan waiting for Rauner to cave or GOP legislators to cave?
- Oswego Willy - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 8:38 am:
Great work by both you Rich and Hinz. The realities are by far the real news story, not the embracing of one side’s narrative or not.
To the Post,
What is tragically comical to me is the Raunerite’s “Madigan has never dealt with a man like Rauner.”
Ok. Willfully destroying Illinois? Yeah, you’re right. Willing to decimate social services? You got me there, no, Madigan never has. The purposeful hurting of groups and people in order to get everyone to want to end another group’s existence? Yep, three for three, can’t remember Madigan facing that as well.
My point?
Even with all those examples, Rauner isn’t that “special” because Madigan is running the same exact playbook and allowing a governor to own the CSU problems, the hospitals needing $75 million, layoffs… Governors own choices.
Madigan knows this, Rauner still thinks, which is so warped…
“I make a choice, I’m strong, I’m hanging in there, but my choice is someone else’s fault, and my choice is being forced, and isn’t my free will, as I choose the hostages I want”
Whaaah?
It’s the Raunerites in March that should “worry”, or if all the Raunerites win, Illinous should be more than worried at what there will be left for Rauner to destroy.
March 15th. It’s that critical.
- AC - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 8:40 am:
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Madigan caves, just how many Democrats would willing to make themselves unelectable by voting for legislation that reduced collective bargaining rights or eliminated prevailing wage in some instances? Unions are especially sensitive to these issues now, since they know they’re in a fight for their survival.
- Aldyth - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 8:45 am:
When there are deaths directly attributable to shutting down programs and services, things will change. Rauner should, but won’t, remember the lessons of Michael Bilandic and the blizzard of ‘79. Or Daley and the heat wave of ‘95 that cost over 700 lives. Who got held accountable for those? The executive in charge.
- wordslinger - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 8:54 am:
The status quo, the current state of affairs, is a projected $6.2 billion FY16 deficit, the ongoing destruction of the social services network and the starvation of universities and community colleges.
Keep in mind, that the projected deficit doesn’t include billions more that in past years have gone to universities, social services, group insurance, etc.
And, not incidentally, Illinois private businesses, large and small, are not getting paid for goods and services already rendered.
So let’s not hear any Raunerbot nonsense about fiscal responsibility, the importance of education and growing the economy. Not with that 12-month track record.
If Pat Quinn was running a $6.2 billion deficit while social services and universities were being zeroed out and people were being tossed out of work, can you imagine the howling about the incompetence?
But it’s clear at the eight-month mark, this isn’t incompetence; it’s the strategy. Only a lunatic would wreak this much damage for the “hundreds of millions of dollars” in returns projected from the governor’s proposed “reforms.”
The governor isn’t a lunatic; he knows exactly what he’s doing.
For crying out loud, the fiscal meltdown and the crisis in socials services and higher education didn’t even rate a mention in the governor’s SOS speech, didn’t make his Top Ten priority list.
Is that clear enough for you? This ain’t an accident, it’s the plan.
The goal of the strategy is to “squeeze the beast,” to precipitate the “shake out,” as Sen. Radogno explained.
In the post-apocalyptic smoke-clearing, you start over with whatever has survived at a much-reduced baseline.
It’s quite diabolical to disguise premeditated hits as a hostage situation.
But at this point, nothing else makes sense.
It would have been swell, though, if Rauner would have let the voters in on the plan during the campaign, and gave them an honest choice.
- Nick Name - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 8:58 am:
“Understand that so many on this board want Rauner to compromise. But is Madigan willing to as well?”
As RNUG wrote last Friday, Madigan has brought to the floor — and passed — numerous bills that contained 80-90 percent of what Rauner wanted, only without the anti-union poison pills. It is Rauner, and Rauner alone, who has consistently dug in his heels and refused to compromise.
Why is this so hard for people to see?
- Earnest - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:02 am:
What is tragically comical to me is the Raunerite’s “Madigan has never dealt with a man like Rauner.”
Agreed, except he has never dealt with someone with so much money to spend on campaigns. Blagojevich had a well-funded campaign against Topinka and won. My fear is that money will be the difference here as well.
- phocion - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:05 am:
Nick Name,
It’s so hard to see because your version of events never happened.
- Oswego Willy - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:05 am:
- Nick Name - does a good job pointing out the poison pill strategy - RNUG - saw, with other, months and months ago.
Rauner requires the end of Unions.
That is, apparently, non-negotiable and required by Bruce Rauner.
Everything else is just a move to get closer to ending Union bargaining and lowering wages on working people with a union card.
The foolish believe “hanging in there” by Rauner is for a better Illinois.
Nah.
It’s for an Illinois Rauner demands forced on the people of the state, at the cost of the most vulnerable.
That’s not governing. That’s never been a governing tool.
- jim - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:05 am:
Durbin to Madigan — “Hang in there. We can maintain the corrupt, dysfunctional status quo if we’re determined to do so.”
- Oswego Willy - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:07 am:
- phocion -
Start with the Property Tax Freeze. What made the Rauner proposal and the bills ran by Madigan different.
Use the search key.
Get back to us.
- Nick Name - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:20 am:
Thank you, OW.
Phocion, Mr. Google is your friend, as is the search key.
- Wensicia - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:34 am:
What’s horrifying to me about Rauner’s takedown of services, programs and higher education to force Democrats to accede to his anti union demands is how much he’s enjoying this devastation.
- Jocko - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:34 am:
Rauner reminds me of the abusive spouse who says, “You’re making me do this!” when he is, in fact, initiating the action.
- The Captain - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:48 am:
Chaos is what we had last year, we’ve reached the point where this is intentional sabotage.
- Square Pegs - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 9:54 am:
Even if there are deaths that are correlated to the cuts, blame will continue to circulate. It is always someone else’s fault. Or “personal responsibility.” When the Gov announced his budget last year I thought the state would go the way of New York in the 1970s. Seems to be a good foresight. We are early in the cause and effect cycle. Don’t be surprised to see even more homeless, mentally ill adults on the streets, more gang violence, more decay of public works. This is not being “Chicken Little.” It’s reality that support of our state’s infrastructure is needed for a reason.
- Secret Square - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:02 am:
And don’t be surprised to see even more longtime residents fleeing to other states… though I suspect they will mostly be the kind of people Rauner (apparently) would just as soon leave IL anyway — state employees and retirees, elderly/handicapped people, non-wealthy prospective college students,
- Red Tiger - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:11 am:
Amen wordslinger!
- phocion - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:15 am:
Interesting contrast between the comments here and the comments following Hinz’s article. The bubble mindset here is everything is Rauner’s fault, the election didn’t mean people wanted anything to change, and that Madigan is blameless and shouldn’t budge one bit. At least some parts of the rest of the world seem to disagree.
- wordslinger - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:35 am:
Phocion, you willfully misunderstand the points in the columns and most of the comments.
“Blame” implies that the current chaos was unintentional on the governor’s part. It is not; it is the plan in action.
If you don’t like the massive deficits and the abandonment of social services and higher education, “squeezing the beast” to advance the “shake out,” take it up with the governor. It is his plan.
- Oswego Willy - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:36 am:
===The bubble mindset here is everything is Rauner’s fault, the election didn’t mean people wanted anything to change, and that Madigan is blameless and shouldn’t budge one bit.===
Strawman.
Did ya look at that Property Tax thing - phocion -?
What did you find, lol
- Anonymous - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:38 am:
==The bubble mindset here is everything is Rauner’s fault, the election didn’t mean people wanted anything to change, and that Madigan is blameless and shouldn’t budge one bit. ==
For the 100th time, nobody but the completely out of touch have said it is all Rauner’s fault. The mantra I hear over and over here is that the Governor is ALSO at fault.
As for your change nonsense, guess what? The Governor has to work with a General Assembly controlled by Democrats. He has to work within those constraints. The sooner he realizes that the better off we’ll all be. There will not be any compromise until the Governor stops demanding that he get everything he wants.
- Demoralized - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:38 am:
That was me above.
- VanillaMan - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:50 am:
This war Rauner is in with House Speaker Michael Madigan is of increasingly questionable value relative to the costs. Though our GOP governor is right that Illinois’ economy is too weak and public-sector unions too strong, is the payoff of his turnaround agenda worth it?
There was NO NEED for a war. Rauner could have helped our state by using the traditional tools available to each incoming governor - a honeymoon, the benefit of a doubt, and a lot of goodwill. Rauner blew up his electoral mandate when he went to war, instead of focusing on using his office to accomplish goals.
There was no need for war. Rauner was like an Argentinian tin-pot general who declared war before even counting the troops. He did not have the votes - but that did not mean he couldn’t have gotten things done.
What drives me crazy about these Rauner supporters is how they are so flat out ignorant about what a new governor could have done without any political nonsense! ONE year of showing us that he knew how to do the job and show us that he cared enough to address our problems using the tools at his disposal, would have created a lot of goodwill and political support.
Rauner didn’t have any credibility to do what he has been trying to do. He needed to show us that he was trying to get things done within the limits and conditions set for him. Rauner NEVER showed us that he needed the political powers he wanted because he was NEVER showed us that he was using the Office as any previous governor had.
If Rauner was as good as Quinn - we would be in a much stronger economic place in Illinois today. We wouldn’t have the massive multi-billion dollar fiasco bill backlog. We wouldn’t be on the verge of an AFSCME strike. We wouldn’t have had to close down our state museum, sink our social safety nets, force out jobs, force out college students and cripple the already struggling poor.
Rauner is a seriously BAD governor because he never tried to be a governor as good as our worse. Lesson to learn here folks - don’t elect people who hate government so badly they would try to run it.
- Union Leader - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:54 am:
Rich:
Another good article.
- Norseman - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:57 am:
Well said Willy.
- Huh? - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 10:59 am:
Vman - Well said.
- logic not emotion - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 11:03 am:
Is there any realistic chance that rank and file legislators will find the gumption after the primary to craft a veto proof majority on a compromise of their own?
- Sue - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 11:05 am:
At some point, you have to ask is there any possible solution in site. If Rauner agrees to a tax increase, what does he get in exchange. Madigan refuses to move off his standard NO. Rauner is accurate about one thing, both Thompson and to a lesser extent Edgar, bare some culpability for the pension debacle. In exchange for a 5 percent tax rate, Madigan could at a minimum back Rauner on the ACSFME contact and give Rauner a victory upon which he might call it a day and relinquish the balance of his proposals.
- Stuck on the 3rd Floor - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 12:36 pm:
Sue, I’m not seeing where there is a win for Madigan in that scenario. I think there is a conception that Democrats and the people who vote for them are singularly focused on raising taxes, to the point that they enjoy paying them. That’s not true. With a flat tax, increases just irritate everyone, no matter how they vote. Coupling a tax increase with granting Rauner permission to dismantle a union that routinely hires minorities is simply a double loss for Democrats.
- Honeybear - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 12:47 pm:
Sue, very simply if the Rauners Last Best Final contract to AFSCME is adopted/forced it will immediately cause the collapse of the state workforce. I AM ABSOLUTELY NOT KIDDING. I know I’ll be trying to figure out what else I can do.
- Anonnymouse - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 12:51 pm:
Honeybear, update your LinkedIn profile, for starters.
- Square Pegs - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 12:56 pm:
Well said VanillaMan - right on
- Honeybear - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 1:14 pm:
Annonnymouse Ha! lol, it’s actually true. I do need to update my profile on LinkedIn. Although I really didn’t like getting a million notices to link up with people I know. But good suggestion! Maybe I could be Rich’s intern! I’m sure he has a policy that prohibits interns from posting on the blog. It may be worth his while!
- RNUG - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 1:16 pm:
Vman, extremely well written
- Sue - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 1:16 pm:
Honey bear- polish up your resume
- Mama - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 1:23 pm:
“The real chaos is yet to come.” “It’ll probably take the “death” of something very important and very large to test this theory.”
Rich, can you give us an example of what Rauner considers to be very important and to large to fail?
- Rich Miller - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 1:29 pm:
===example of what Rauner considers to be very important and to large to fail===
Those have already been protected.
What matters now is something the Democrats believe is too big to allow to die.
- Mama - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 1:58 pm:
VanillaMan @ 10:50AM: “If Rauner was as good as Quinn - we would be in a much stronger economic place in Illinois today. We wouldn’t have the massive multi-billion dollar fiasco bill backlog. We wouldn’t be on the verge of an AFSCME strike. We wouldn’t have had to close down our state museum, sink our social safety nets, force out jobs, force out college students and cripple the already struggling poor.”
***VM, you speak the truth.
VM, my question to you is, what can Illinoisans do to turn Rauner around to be a better governor for the next 3 years?
- Mama - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 2:17 pm:
Rich @1:29 “What matters now is something the Democrats believe is too big to allow to die.”
What do the Democrats believe is too big to allow to die? Do the Dems’ leaders have a line in the sand?
- VanillaMan - Monday, Feb 8, 16 @ 3:01 pm:
VM, my question to you is, what can Illinoisans do to turn Rauner around to be a better governor for the next 3 years?
Sue him, and sue him often. Bruce Rauner decided before entering office, not to be a governor who succeeds incrementally. Rauner does not want to succeed if it means he cannot succeed without political success. Rauner has decided that it is better to not govern, than to govern with bipartisanship, compromise and half-a-loaf deals.
Rauner wants the whole shebang. This is why he has deliberately chosen to lock up our government until he wins everything he demands.
Rauner is the worst governor in Illinois history by deliberately choosing chaos over compromise. The length of the stalemate we endure exposes Rauner as unwilling to work with other government leaders.
Sue him. He will not change his mind and we must sue him to make him irrelevant until he goes.
- Anon221 - Tuesday, Feb 9, 16 @ 7:58 am:
Sue- “If Rauner agrees to a tax increase, what does he get in exchange.”
****
Hasn’t Rauner TAKEN enough already???
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Feb 9, 16 @ 9:23 am:
–If Rauner agrees to a tax increase, what does he get in exchange. –
Actually, he took an oath to run the state to the best of his ability.
How’s that going?
He was elected governor, not Big Tuna gangster-extortionist, who needs to “get” something to do his job.