I’ve been working on this story for much of the afternoon, saving it for the Capitol Fax. I’ll have more in tomorrow’s Fax for subscribers (including a very interesting twist not discussed below) and I’ll post the entire lawsuit on the blog after it’s filed.
The Better Government Association is suing the office of Gov. Rod Blagojevich to get copies of federal subpoenas issued to state government by the U.S. attorney’s office between Jan. 1 and July 24 of last year. […]
The organization’s chief investigator, Dan Sprehe, sent a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents to the governor’s office on July 24. The request was denied and appealed, and denied again by the governor’s office. […]
“Since Governor Blagojevich was first elected in 2002, he’s repeatedly touted his administration’s commitment to transparency and openness, but when it comes to providing some basic information about important issues swirling around his office, we get treated to George Ryan-like stonewalling and denials,” [Jay Stewart, executive director of the BGA, said]. “It’s shameful that this administration, which talks about transparency, can’t respond to a simple freedom of information request. They’re more concerned about spinning the reality than providing basic public records.”
Amen to that, bruddah. Amen.
The lawsuit itself is embargoed until tomorrow, but the supporting documents can be found here [.pdf file], including the original FOIAs, denials, the attorney general’s opinion that the subpoenas are subject to FOIA laws, etc.
Sec. 1. Pursuant to the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of government, it is declared to be the public policy of the State of Illinois that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts and policies of those who represent them as public officials and public employees consistent with the terms of this Act. Such access is necessary to enable the people to fulfill their duties of discussing public issues fully and freely, making informed political judgments and monitoring government to ensure that it is being conducted in the public interest.
[Comments closed. Go here instead for new and updated info.]
What specific education reforms do you support and why?
While you’re mulling that over, I thought I’d ressurect part of a pre-election subscribers-only post for you today…
A+ Illinois, which has advocated for an SB750-type solution to education funding and property tax woes, has been active in this year’s election. They’re not giving money to candidates, but they are sending out a lot of direct mail and doing robocalls. Here’s an e-mail from an A+ Illinois spokesperson:
We’ve dropped somewhere around $200K worth of mail and robocalls to targeted voters in over 4,000 precincts across roughly ten days.
Our outreach is targeted with far more sophistication than most legislative races. For example, we’ve been able to cross-reference voter registration lists with marketing data to focus our message on registered voters who are parents with children under the age of 18 in the home. […]
In addition to the direct mail and robocalls, we’ve obtained the e-mail addresses for roughly 1/4 of the voters we’re targeting, and they’ll be getting 2-3 emails from us in coming days
I’m told we can expect this group to spend a ton of money next spring. Here’s pretty much their entire mail program:
The Daily Herald interviews new deputy governor Sheila Nix, a major favorite of this blog’s commenters.
After some background questions, Nix was asked if the governor would “cave” if pressure mounts to sell the Tollway…
He will not. He is very, very pleased with the progress of the tollway and obviously, especially Open Road Tolling. It’s made people’s commutes easier. It makes it easier to get home to their families. And so, I think the governor would like to keep that as a state asset.
She dodged several questions about whether the administration’s tone would move away from confrontation, claimed the administration was following Freedom of Information Act laws (gag… not), and then the topic turned towards corruption…
Q. Are you confident there will be no more indictments in a second term?
A. Yeah, I don’t feel like we’ve had any indictments.
Q. (Blagojevich top fund-raiser) Mr. Rezko was indicted.
A. There’s been nobody in the governor’s office, you know, that’s even implicated in any wrongdoing.
Q. So you’re confident no one will be indicted?
A. Yes.
She may have to eat those words (maybe even soon), but let’s not speculate about names or agencies in comments, please.
No surprise here. Hizzoner says “No” to debates. Daley hasn’t debated anyone since he first won the office in 1989.
…There is no need for Daley to engage in a public debate since he has answered more questions than any local elected official during his nearly two-decade reign, campaign manager Terry Peterson said Friday.
Plus, Peterson said, the proposed debates are “nothing more than a political strategy of our opponents to get their names out there.”
“For the most part, the people of the city know where the mayor stands on the issues,” he said. […]
“I think this is another example of the ‘Daley double,’” said Brown, Cook County Circuit Court clerk. “On one hand he tells the people of Chicago he is going to take responsibility, but then he turns around and arrogantly snubs his nose in the face of the voters by saying he will not discuss the issues with the other candidates. He wants to hide from people.”
On the one hand, Peterson is right. We know where he is on most issues. On the other hand, debates, done well, are a healthy part of democracy. The mayor should be pinned down on the issues, forced to talk about the future, forced to defend his legacy.
Supporters of allowing primary voters in Illinois to keep their party affiliation secret say they hope lawmakers will listen to the outcome of a number of local referendums held in November.
In more than 20 township advisory questions across the state, voters said they support a so-called open primary system by no less than 78 percent. The movement, spearheaded by Springfield attorney Sam Cahnman, who lost his race as a Democratic challenger for a state representative seat, was intended to get the Legislature to act. […]
About 20 states use a variation of the open primary system. Some states have seen court challenges to such rules.
The powers that be have always opposed open primaries, and Chris Mooney from UIS has his theory about why.
“Political parties need that information,” Mooney said. “The party people and the people running for office can go down to the county courthouse and get a list of their voters. It helps them strategize.”
The other, more philosophical reason, is that legislators are, for the most part, party creatures. “Closed” primaries force voters to decide which party to “join,” at least for that election. Perhaps the real problem happens when primary turnout becomes so low that too few people are deciding who will run in the fall.
I don’t really know what kind of ground game that Naisy Dolar is putting together in Chicago’s 50th Ward, but she is actively using the Internet, including posting videos on a regular basis. She also has a MySpace page. Dolar is hoping to defeat broken-down aldermanic warhorse Bernie Stone.
Dog Fight in the 50th seems to have an anti-Dolar bent, but is doing fairly frequent updates on the aldermanic race.
Greg Brewer , an architect and community organizer, is the other major candidate in the contest. He’s also posting videos on YouTube.
Meanwhile, Dick Simpson has the coming aldermanic campaign just about right.
The intersection of several factors could lead to 15 or more competitive races involving incumbent aldermen, according to Dick Simpson, a former alderman and current political science professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago. These factors include a strong pool of candidates and increasingly active unions and community organizations, he said. […]
According to Simpson, the strong showing of Republican Tony Peraica in a number of city wards during his heated contest against former alderman Todd Stroger for the Cook County Board presidency is one indication of this disruption. Peraica won 12 of the 50 wards outright, and carried a significant percentage in many others. Stroger beat Peraica in the contest for president of the Cook County Board.
While not directly linked to the city elections, the unusually strong support for Peraica could be taken as a sign that voters are seeking a change in the status quo within local government. […]
“You have to have a credible challenger and there are better challengers than there have been since the ’80s,” [said] Simpson. “Most of them have had time to position themselves and do the early fundraising, which is different from most years.”
And as I’ve told you before, SEIU is gearing up for battle.
The Service Employees International Union is one organization trying to flex its muscle in February. It has targeted incumbents in several wards -including Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) for opposition to the Big Box ordinance - and plans to place its support behind candidates considered more supportive of key union issues. SEIU officials are still in the process of determining which candidates will receive their attention. The SEIU is also recruiting “block captains” from its 78,000 Chicago members to canvass their neighborhoods for the elections, the first time the union has done so.
Do you have any local races in your area? If so, give us an update.
When the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago released its budget and tax hike blueprint several weeks ago, most mainstream media reporters and columnists never picked up on the fact that the group specifically recommended that the “tax swap” idea be dumped. I wrote about it, and the Southtown gave it a brief mention, but until John McCarron’s Tribune column during the holidays, none of the bigs had really broached the subject.
That muffled “thud” we civic wonks discerned a few weeks ago was neither a sonic boom nor rooftop landing of reindeer on a practice run.
It was another crash landing of the so-called “tax swap”–the complicated proposal for state fiscal reform that has been the centerpiece of the liberal-progressive agenda hereabouts for more than a decade.
Not that the swap is dead dead. Like Mr. Dumpty, it could be reassembled and offered once again this spring to the Illinois General Assembly. In fact, civic types already are busy with the glue. They are practiced at repair, having kept the swap idea alive since its initial tumble in 1997, when then-Senate President James “Pate” Philip shoved it off the wall.
The nudge this time came from the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. These are the corporate chieftains who, nearly a century ago, commissioned Daniel Burnham’s seminal Plan of Chicago. More recently they led the charge to expand O’Hare International Airport. They have clout.
McCarron supposes that the federal tax deduction for property taxes provides an incentive to keep the property tax system in place. I think there is also a legit worry for families who move to areas with good, expensive schools that if the state takes over primary funding the government will screw up their kids’ futures.
Meanwhile, a big push for a big tax hike is coming soon to a General Assembly near you.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich has pledged not to raise the state income tax and won’t back down, his staff said.
But a new, bipartisan caucus of lawmakers wants to bolster state aid for per-student spending by more than $1 billion, and it is expected to include a state-tax hike in its education proposals.[…]
The [legislative] education caucus’ goals include reducing reliance on local taxes for schools. That system creates inequities because wealthy districts can afford to spend more on schools than poor districts.
The caucus also wants to increase state aid guaranteed per student to a level recommended by the Illinois Education Funding Advisory Board. Currently, that recommended figure is $6,405 per child, but the advisers plan to update that in 2007. This school year, the per-pupil amount is $5,334. It would take an estimated $1.6 billion to move to the $6,405 figure.
But Jim Edgar and Dawn Clark Netsch, among others, are skeptical that anything will happen this year.
“I’ll be awfully surprised if something happens,” said former Gov. Jim Edgar, who believes a tax hike is necessary because of the state’s financial problems. “The governor has said he is adamantly opposed to any tax increases. It’s awfully difficult to get a major tax increase when the governor indicates he is opposed to it.” […]
“You’re going to have a lot of legislators say, ‘Why should I stick my neck out on a tax increase if the governor is going to veto it?’” Netsch said. “He (Blagojevich) has the bully pulpit more than anyone else. He has got to be willing to be involved.”
Ralph Martire, who has made a career of pushing for a tax swap plan that nets the government lots more money, is more optimistic, first noting that Senate President Emil Jones is already in favor of providing more cash for schools, then adding…
“If (House Speaker Michael) Madigan becomes engaged, it will become a priority to the state,” Martire said.
And in that event, Martire said, even Blagojevich might be convinced to go along, no-tax-hike pledge or not, because education also is one of his top priorities.
If the governor’s people injected politics into federally funded IDES job placements, there could be real trouble afoot.
Federal authorities have questioned current and former employees of a state agency already under fire for alleged hiring irregularities and political influence, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Unfolding over the last few weeks, the interviews concerning the Illinois Department of Employment Security show that the sweeping investigation into state hiring continues to dog the administration of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, even as it prepares to embark on a second term in January. […]
Agency employees who have been questioned said federal authorities are asking whether they know of any cases in which politics played a role in hiring and promoting people into jobs that were supposed to be free of political influence. […]
The employees said investigators asked specific questions about alleged violations of what is known as the Rutan decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that most state hirings, promotions, transfers and firings should be free of political influence.
Also in the piece…
Employees interviewed this month said they are unclear why federal investigators waited this long to seek them out.
It sometimes takes a long time for the federal wheels to turn. But they rarely stop turning once they start.
Meanwhile, some merit comp employees could be up for a raise soon.
An estimated 6,000 nonunion state employees would be eligible for performance-based pay raises in the new year under an emergency rule filed Friday by Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration.
In the not so old days, post-election raises for many workers would be based at least partly on political performance. I certainly hope that with the feds watching over their shoulders the administration doesn’t try anything stupid.
Sen. Obama told the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board that he had never done any favors for Tony Rezko.
Obama added that he had never “done favors for [Rezko] of any sort. Most of the time, I’ve never been in a position to do favors for him. I don’t control jobs. I don’t control contracts. There were no bills that he was pushing when I was in the state legislature that I know of or that he talked to me about. And there were no bills in federal legislation that he was concerned about, so there was no sense of the betrayal of the public trust here.”
Then, over the holidays the Tribune ran a story entitled “Obama intern had ties to Rezko” in which we learn that Obama gave a 20-year-old a five-week internship answering phones and logging mail.
“Mr. Rezko told the senator of John Aramanda’s interest in an internship and asked that he be considered,” Gibbs said. “Sen. Obama advised him to contact the office, which he did. The application was put into the internship pool, where it was considered, and he was eventually offered an internship. Rezko did provide a recommendation for John.”
Hardly blockbuster material. Tom Bevan over at Real Clear Politics (not exactly the center of the Obama for President campaign) called the Tribune story a “joke” and a “gotcha” piece in a recent posting.
Please. If we went and made a federal case over every Congressional internship that’s been doled out over the years to the child of a friend or political contributor we’d run out of trees and ink by next Thursday.
Backlash to the blacklash?
Meanwhile, the LA Times had a decent backgrounder on Obama the other day, including several quotes from his colleagues in the Illinois state Senate. But this was the best paragraph, I thought.
Just a generation ago, when Harold Washington was campaigning to become the first black mayor of Chicago, he and Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale attended Sunday Mass at St. Pascal’s, a white Roman Catholic parish in Northwest Chicago. They were spat upon, cursed and lucky to leave unharmed. In his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama carried every precinct but one in St. Pascal’s Portage Park neighborhood. Talk to people who live there now and you could get the impression that Obama grew up one block over.
