Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » 2005

Friday, Feb 11, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Last week’s photo of JBT was so horrendous that I felt compelled to balance it out this week with a couple of good pics.

These photos were taken for a 2002 article in Today’s Chicago Woman. They’re the best I could find, and they’re pretty darned good.

From the article:

As a senator she gave a talk to a medical group on health care issues. Afterward, a female doctor asked her how she kept her house clean. â€œShe would never have asked a man,â€ Topinka thought, so she replied, â€œâ€˜Maâ€™am, I open the front door and the back door, and I let the wind blow the tumbleweed out.â€ Even today she gets comments about her hair or other appearance issues that male politicians rarely confront.

As a child, she saw the criticism her mother received because she ran a real estate business. Later, as a single mother in late 1970s, Topinka took her son to an amusement park but wasnâ€™t permitted to ride on the kiddy car with him because she was a womanâ€”she had to find a man to accompany the boy for the ride. […]

Topinka likes to read, especially newspapers and newsmagazines, a â€œdisease,â€ she jokes, shared by many former journalists. For years sheâ€™s played the accordion and even has a musicianâ€™s union card. Plagued with a bad back, she plays less often now because of the weight of the instrument. She likes movies, especially science fiction, and also loves history and watches the History Channel.

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More good news

Friday, Feb 11, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

I just received an e-mail from the State Journal-Register’s web guy, and it appears that my suggestions for improving their site may be implemented during the upcoming revamp.

Thanks for the submission regarding our “Breaking News” addition to Sj-r.com. I read it yesterday, but just had a chance to read the second comment. You are correct that we will be reworking Sj-r.com. The two points you brought up in your initial posting regarding upgrades should make it to the new site.

The power of blog.

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Good news

Friday, Feb 11, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Former Gov. James R. Thompson said he felt great as he left a Chicago hospital Friday, nearly a week after undergoing emergency surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain.

Thompson, 68, underwent a craniotomy Saturday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Doctors said the clot formed from bleeding inside Thompson’s skull after he slipped and fell on ice near his Chicago home in early January.

“I’m doing great,'’ Thompson told reporters before leaving the hospital lobby. “I came through, I think, remarkably well.'’

Thompson, who appeared with his wife, Jayne, and daughter, Samantha, said he has been pain free since the three-hour surgery and has not felt any side effects. He wore a blue baseball cap to conceal 37 staples left in his head from the incision.

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Governor backs down

Friday, Feb 11, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Embarassed perhaps by his exploitation of a glaring loophole in the state’s ethics laws, Governor Blagojevich backtracked today.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration has asked a California insurance company to stop using a picture of his family in a company newsletter after it drew criticism from state Republicans and campaign reformers.

Woodland Hills, Calif.-based 21st Century Insurance Co.’s newsletter features a photo of Blagojevich, his wife and a child with a company official. It touts the company’s work with needy children and bears the governor’s name and Illinois’ seal next to the firm’s logo and the phrase “Good People to Call.” It was mailed along with brochures and other solicitation materials. […]

“He cannot claim to be the champion of ethics reform in Illinois when he’s doing something that blatantly goes against the spirit of the law he signed,” said Andy McKenna, GOP chairman. […]

“What’s most troubling is the use of the state seal in a commercial pitch,” said David Morrison, deputy director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. “It looks to me like the governor is endorsing this insurance.”

The state ethics law forbids private companies from using the image, voice, name, etc. of state officials in television, radio and newspaper advertising. The statute doesn’t mention direct mail “newsletters,” however, and that’s why this action isn’t illegal, although it certainly appears to fly in the face of the law’s spirit.

Sec. 5â€‘20. Public service announcements; other promotional material.

(a) Beginning January 1, 2004, no public service announcement or advertisement that is on behalf of any State administered program and contains the proper name, image, or voice of any executive branch constitutional officer or member of the General Assembly shall be broadcast or aired on radio or television or printed in a commercial newspaper or a commercial magazine at any time.

(b) The proper name or image of any executive branch constitutional officer or member of the General Assembly may not appear on any (i) bumper stickers, (ii) commercial billboards, (iii) lapel pins or buttons, (iv) magnets, (v) stickers, and (vi) other similar promotional items, that are not in furtherance of the person’s official State duties or governmental and public service functions, if designed, paid for, prepared, or distributed using public dollars. This subsection does not apply to stocks of items existing on the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 93rd General Assembly.

(c) This Section does not apply to communications funded through expenditures required to be reported under Article 9 of the Election Code.
(Source: P.A. 93â€‘615, eff. 11â€‘19â€‘03; 93â€‘617, eff. 12â€‘9â€‘03; 93â€‘685, eff. 7â€‘8â€‘04.)

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Balancing act

Friday, Feb 11, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Today’s State Journal-Register picks up on my Capitol Fax story from yesterday about how the governor wants to use cuts to future pension benefits to trim $800 million off of next fiscal year’s budget.

When Blagojevich gives his third budget speech Wednesday, one of his focal points will be the five state-funded pension systems and their $2.6 billion price tag for the fiscal year that starts July 1, according to an administration official who asked not to be identified.

The governor is expected to ask lawmakers to adopt cost-saving recommendations made by his Commission on State Pensions that include reducing pension benefits for new state employees.

If the General Assembly goes along, Blagojevich could pick up $400 million to $800 million in savings for use on other state programs.

The actual savings won’t occur for a couple of decades, but the governor will propose capturing those savings right away.

As I intimated yesterday, this is mostly just a PR device to balance the budget on paper, because it’s doubtful that the Legislature will go along with steep cuts in pension benefits that are so hotly opposed by the unions.

The SJ-R article also includes these little tidbits:

[House Speaker Michael] Madigan’s staff believes the latest AFSCME contract will cost the state an additional $28 million in fiscal 2006. Worse, skyrocketing costs for prescription drugs and health care in general will force a $1 billion increase in Medicaid spending just to keep the program at current levels. About half of that expense will be reimbursed by the federal government.

And despite the state’s financial problems, spending under Blagojevich has continued to grow. The state budget in place when he took office called for $22.3 billion in spending from the general fund that pays for most state services. In the current budget, that spending is up to $23.6 billion.

When Blagojevich took office, the state planned to spend $5.1 billion on Medicaid. In the current budget, Medicaid spending is just over $6 billion.

Bottom line: we’re screwed.

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ICPR files complaint

Friday, Feb 11, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

You may recall that the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform was unjustly accused this week of pimping for the trial lawyers. Today, the group filed formal complaints about two groups on each side of last year’s contentious Supreme Court race.

Complaints were filed Thursday with the Illinois State Board of Elections against two organizations on opposite sides of the nationâ€™s most expensive contest for a state supreme court seat.

The complaints allege both organizations violated state requirements for public disclosure of campaign contributions on behalf of candidates in the 2004 election for the 5th District Illinois Supreme Court seat. The original sources of at least $830,000 in campaign contributions have been hidden from the public. The complaints were filed against the Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth and Prosperity (Coalition) and the Justice For All Foundation (JFA). […]

The business-backed Coalition and the labor-backed JFA collected and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars but did not file statements of organization or any of the required public reports identifying the sources of those funds and how those funds were spent, according to the complaints.

Somebody could be in trouble.

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The practical Lincoln

Friday, Feb 11, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Abraham Lincoln’s old friend and fellow Republican Lyman Trumbull wrote Lincoln a letter in the spring of 1860 asking whether Lincoln was considering a run for the presidency.

After confessing that “the taste is in my mouth a little,” Lincoln’s reply went on to assess the Illinois electoral prospects of various potential Republican presidential candidates.

Then, Lincoln added this:

Recurring to Illinois, we want something here quite as much as, and which is harder to get than, the electoral vote — the Legislature. And it is exactly in this point that Seward’s nomination would be hard on us. Suppose he should gain us a thousand votes in Winnebago, it would not compensate for the loss of fifty in Edgar.

Things really haven’t changed all that much since then. That could have been written by Mike Madigan or Tom Cross.

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