12 Comments - Maria Nino - Sunday, Jan 7, 07 @ 9:40 am: Carina Sanchez was fired by the State of Illinois for running for office. She is getting Michael Shakman as her lawyer. The Feds have been asked to investigate the roles of Reyes, Harris, and Martinez. The question is did Rod know? If elected Carina Sanchez (a former staffer for House Speaker Michael Madigan and other legislators) would be the FIRST, Mexican American FEMALE in the City Council, AND the only Hispanic female in the Council at all. - Gregor - Sunday, Jan 7, 07 @ 10:54 am: Finke points out Obama, Durbin, and the rest of the Washington Illinois contingent are taking a pass on attending the Inaugural. I think they must know something we don’t already. - Huh? - Sunday, Jan 7, 07 @ 11:20 am: The article about governot vetoing the $450 million school plan leaves me flabbergasted. It shows that what he says and does are two different things. Here is a school district that has the forward thinking to start building and remodeling schools. So what does elvis do, he vetos the legislation. So my question is - Is public official A really interested in increasing educational opportunities for the children of Illinois? Is he really interested in reducing class room over crowding? His mouth claims to be in favor of increasing educational funding and reducing over crowding. Unfortunately, his hand isn’t doing what the mouth is saying. What I also find interesting is that the money that Oswego wanted to use wasn’t state money - it was borrowed money. The oswego school district must have had some ideas about how to repay the money, otherwise they wouldn’t have floated this idea. In the course of my previous employment, I worked with that school district on a propject. They aren’t dummies. They have a plan and have determined that there is a need for the 14 new schools. Why is the the governot standing in the way of a school district that wants to do exactly the things that he is supposedly espousing. - Huh? - Sunday, Jan 7, 07 @ 11:21 am: P.S. If there are parts of the bill that he doesn’t like, that is what the line item veto is to be used for - striking those parts he doesn’t like. - Cassandra - Sunday, Jan 7, 07 @ 12:14 pm: Wait a sec. Can people simultaneously hold a state job and run for a political office? What if they win…do they get to double dip on the salaries and pensions and stuff? Maybe our corruption ridden state of Illinois bureaucracy is doing something right for a change by telling Ms. Sanchez (whose ethnicity and gender are irrelevant to this debate) she can’t have her cake and eat it to. As for Oswego, if they want to build all these brand new expensive schools, that’s nice, but I don’t live in Oswego and my taxes are high enough already. Maybe they should consider raising their property taxes instead of sponging off others. - Squideshi - Sunday, Jan 7, 07 @ 12:29 pm: Martire focuses only on State government and fails to look at spending and efficiency in all of the various local governments in Illinois; and Illinois has more units of local government than any other state in the United States, by far. What ever happened to the Local Government Consolidation Commission that Blagojevich created anyway? - Huh? - Sunday, Jan 7, 07 @ 2:03 pm: Cassandra - Oswego was floating bonds to pay for the new schools. They weren’t sponging off anybody. The general assembly had to enact legislation to allow them to increase their indebtedness to get the bonds. Regarding the holding office while a state employee - The way it works is that state employees may run for non-partisian elected offices. - Angie - Sunday, Jan 7, 07 @ 6:12 pm: “Pay-to-play scams, hired truck, and hiring scams are rampant in the government of Illinois. So what does the Executive Investigator General target for investigation? People who take the annual ethics test too fast because they know the material already (or have an IQ above 70).” That’s from the piece on the Ethics Exam issue. Wow. This is just an embarrassment for our state. Can you imagine the national media picking up on this bit of nonsense? Unbelievable. - Anon again - Monday, Jan 8, 07 @ 12:00 am: Amen Angie, Last 3 quarters of FY06 there were 980 accusations made to the OEIG,of these 980 cases 1 was refered to the AG, that is .001 percent. Either these guys are totally useless or the OEIG is running block defense for the Gov’s office. I know(I was called) of a case of major abuse of state property with several witnesses and to date not one thing has been done and yes all of the witnesses were interviewed by the OEIG. - Pat collins - Monday, Jan 8, 07 @ 10:18 am: Getting the viking vote Well, does that surprise anyone? Sweden is a super high tax, high spending country. Of COURSE they like him! - Angie - Monday, Jan 8, 07 @ 2:46 pm: And half the kids in Sweden are apparently born out of wedlock, so they probably welcome the idea of government as a dad figure for all those kids! - Squideshi - Monday, Jan 8, 07 @ 11:39 pm: Speaking of Sweden… Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.