If you’re sending me a press release, please try mightily to avoid sending me pdf and .doc documents. It’s a lot more helpful to me if you’d just paste the darned text into the body of the e-mail so I don’t have to download your “pretty” files. I’m receiving more and more press releases every day in the form of attached files and it’s starting to get frustrating. If you want your release posted somewhere on this blog, then you might want to try to make my life a little easier. Thanks.
PS: Overly long file names get massively messed up on AOL Mail. Keep the file names short, please.
PPS: Attachments that include supporting documents are fine. But keep the press releases in the body of the freaking e-mails.
* 1:14 pm - That last thread was getting a bit unwieldy and buried, so here’s a new one with some fresh news. CTA union threatens job actions…
“We are about at wits’ end,” said Rick Harris, head of the CTA’s rail union, at a morning press conference in Chicago. “Maybe we have to show you exactly what a doomsday looks like. Maybe that is the signal that needs to be sent.” […]
…the seriousness of the CTA union’s threat of strike-like actions remains unclear. Under state law, transit unions are not allowed to strike, but local AFL-CIO president Dennis Gannon said unspecified “job action” could stifle the system.
“Responsible people have to act now before the end of the year,” said Jim Reilly, head of the Regional Transportation Authority, as he slammed his hands repeatedly on the podium. […]
Reilly said he wasn’t sure using casino money would be politically viable because it would mean downstate residents might end up footing the bill for Chicago area transit. However, he did open the door to a modest fare hike as part of the deal, a concession Republicans see as a bit of sugar to help the tax hikes go down.
* 1:55 pm - The Tribbies reported a little funny last night about the leaders meeting with Mayor Daley…
Meeting with the four legislative leaders and Mayor Richard Daley, Blagojevich hinted that legislative inaction was rooted in endless political sniping. The governor told reporters he opened the meeting by joking with Mayor Daley that “I’ll trade my legislature for his” after Daley’s City Council on Tuesday easily passed a sweeping tax increase package to increase city revenues.
But they didn’t provide the full quote. Here it is…
“We began the meeting by me trying to cut a deal with the mayor: Basically I’ll trade him my legislature for his, because his can vote for all kinds of onerous, terrible tax increases for people, and I’m trying to get mine to save the CTA.”
A bit different, don’t you think? Here’s the relevant audio clip…
[audio:1348.mp3]
* 2:02 pm - Reaction of Sen. Jeff Schoenberg to a federal judge’s blocking of the “moment of silence” law…
“Judge Gettleman has made the right call in questioning whether this unnecessary state mandate is constitutional. For teachers and their students, minutes in the classroom are like precious grains of sand, so we in the General Assembly should instead be concentrating our energies on providing greater investment and innovation into our schools rather than look for new ways to fix the ill-conceived ‘Moment of Silence’ mandate.”
Schoenberg also argued that the ambiguous new law has potential to jeopardize teachers and administrators who could be challenged by individuals or organized political advocacy groups who did not feel that they were sufficiently carrying out the new state classroom requirement, and failed to adequately protect students from overly enthusiastic teachers who might seek to emphasize prayer in their classrooms.
“The expression of faith plays a central role in the lives of many families in our communities and its intrinsic value in shaping our children’s value systems cannot be discounted. These intensely personal experiences should be realized in our homes and in our communities’ fine houses of worship, not in our public schools,” he said.
* 2:04 pm - Sen. Schoenberg was reacting to this news…
A federal judge today ordered the superintendent of the Illinois State Board of Education not to enforce a new state law mandating a moment of silence at the start of the school day, but stopped short of a statewide injunction.
U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said his move was meant to preserve the status quo while a lawsuit against the law goes forward. The order today prevents the schools superintendent from issuing any directions or orders for the moment of silence to be held, but only Township High School District 214 in the northwest suburbs is under a preliminary injunction barring the moment from being held.
*** 3:18 pm *** Democratic state Rep. John Fritchey and GOP Rep. Roger Eddy have just introduced new legislation that could address many of the problems the federal judge has had with the state’s current moment of silence law.
HB 4180 changes the title of the law from the “Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act” to the “Student Silent Reflection Act.” It allows, rather than mandates, a teacher to conduct a brief period of silence at the opening of every school day. It removes language about “silent prayer” and leaves it up to individual pupils. Here’s the actual language striking out the old stuff and inserting the new…
The trouble they’re going to run into is it dilutes the original law, before it was even changed this year. The sponsors of the embattled law wanted to make things mandatory and they wanted the word “prayer” to remain in the statute (where it was before).
* 4:05 pm - It looks like they had a smaller meeting instead…
Gov. Rod Blagojevich did end up meeting with some top lawmakers about mass transit funding as service cuts and fare increases loom for Chicago-area commuters. […]
Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said later in an e-mail that the governor went ahead and met with Republican legislative leaders and Democratic Senate President Emil Jones.
Mayor Daley today accused Republican legislative leaders of demanding unwarranted fare hikes and trying to make the CTA the “scapegoat” for their failure to agree on long-term funding for mass transit. […]
Daley said he walked out of a Wednesday transit summit called by Blagojevich — and refused to attend a second meeting that was scheduled for today but was abruptly canceled — because the primary focus was gambling, not transit.
“This is not all about casinos and gambling and poker machines and slot machines. . . . The highest priority is not about . . . who gets a casino or where the casino’s gonna be. The highest priority deals right now [with] people who use public transportation,” Daley said.
Pressed on why he refused to attend today’s follow-up meeting, Daley said, “My role is not to be the governor of the state of Illinois. That’s his role and not my role. . . . That’s their role to figure this out.”
Daley walked out of Wednesday’s summit at the Thompson Center, disgusted that he had been lured to the meeting in what a top mayoral aide later called a “classic bait-and-switch.”
CLICK HERE or the banner below at 1:30 pm Central for a live CBS 2 broadcast of Former House Speaker Denny Hastert’s Farewell Remarks [Coding changed at 1:34, so if it’s not working, refresh the page and try again.]
Aides to Hastert say the resignation will not be official until later this month, a deadline Hastert wanted to meet in the hopes that a special primary could be held on the same day as this spring’s regular primary.
* There’s been an attempt recently to try to pivot on Barack Obama’s statements about the Clinton archive records…
Barack Obama, who’s been scolding Hillary Rodham Clinton for not hastening the release of records from her time as first lady, says he can’t step up and produce his own records from his days in the Illinois state Senate. He says he hasn’t got any.
“I don’t have - I don’t maintain - a file of eight years of work in the state Senate because I didn’t have the resources available to maintain those kinds of records,” he said at a recent campaign stop in Iowa. He said he wasn’t sure where any cache of records might have gone, adding, “It could have been thrown out. I haven’t been in the state Senate now for quite some time.”
Obama’s statement that he has no papers from his time in the Illinois statehouse - he left in 2004 - stands in stark contrast to the massive Clinton file stored at the National Archives: an estimated 78 million pages of documents, plus 20 million e-mail messages, packed into 36,000 boxes. While any file from Obama’s time in the state Senate would be far smaller, the idea that no papers exist at all is questioned by one historian.
“Most of those guys do keep this stuff, especially the favorable stuff. They’ve all got egos,” said Taylor Pensoneau, a historian who has written about Illinois legislators and governors and worked with them as a lobbyist for the coal industry. “It goes in scrapbooks or maybe boxes. I don’t think it’s normal practice to say it’s all discarded.”
The real issue, Clinton’s campaign said, is the availability of “schedules, memos and other documents” from Obama’s time in the state senate.
On Meet the Press Sunday, Obama said he did not have a scheduler and therefore there are no schedules to be had. A spokesman for the Obama campaign said Obama passed along many of his files to his successor, Kwame Raoul.
* I sent an e-mail to a handful of legislators this morning asking about their record-keeping practices. Here are the responses I’ve received so far…
* Rep. Lou Lang…
I think we all have large file cabinets and diaries that we keep for a while but there is not a special requirement that we keep any particular records in any particular way
* Rep. John Fritchey…
I would venture to say that I keep better files than most, but the only record of my meetings would be on the personal calendar that I keep. I do keep most substantive correspondence going back several years though. I would doubt that at the state legislative level, anybody keeps the type of contact records that they are referring to. There is a big difference between the state house and the White House.
* Sen. Jacqueline Collins…
As it relates to records. No, I don’t keep an account of who I meet with. My secretary may have the information jotted down on a daily schedule but I don’t think she retains that information because of the volume of paper we receive on a daily basis.
* Rep. Sara Feigenholtz…
We have old message books and my Chicago staff puts everything in outlook. I keep a lot of stuff… but after 13 years we have to purge so we don’t hoard.
* I’ll post more as they come in, but it looks to me like this Obama thing is just another national non-issue.
* Rep. Susanna Mendoza…
…I don’t religiously keep a detailed file or anything; it’s more like folders on bills with corresponding notes or info in them. Regarding my scheduling, I definitely don’t keep records of that and don’t really know anyone who does. So many of the meetings we end up having are not even scheduled and end up being with people who drive to Springfield to meet with legislators without a previous appointment. I’d be surprised if anyone keeps detailed records of their schedules and definitely believe Obama when he says that there probably aren’t any files or records of his to look over.
The leaders meeting originally scheduled for 10:00 has been cancelled. Speaker Madigan and Mayor Daley declined the invitation. We’ll try to reschedule a meeting with the leaders soon.
Madigan had a prior commitment and offered to send a surrogate. Daley apparently had enough of the crud yesterday.
* 10:00 am - I just noticed this tidbit in today’s Sun-Times…
State Comptroller Dan Hynes’ new Web site that allows people to search campaign contributions made by state contractors logged 171,768 hits in its first 21 days. The site — www.openbook.illinoiscomptroller.com — went live Oct. 2.
Wow.
Also…
A Web site set up by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn to encourage Gov. Blagojevich to sign a bill aimed at curbing pay-to-play drew several hundred hits in the two weeks it was online.
Not so wow.
* 10:04 am - Yet another round of Hastert’s impending resignation stories has appeared…
Former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) will announce on Thursday that he is retiring from Congress soon, although the exact date of his departure is still unclear, according to House insiders.
Hastert is expected to tell the House Republican Conference of his decision on Thursday afternoon, and then make his final floor speech sometime after that.
Sources told Fox News the former House speaker’s resignation is expected to become effective in December or January, although no date had been set for a formal announcement. Hastert had said in August he planned to leave Congress but at that time didn’t disclose whether it would be before the end of his term.
* 10:54 am - Those Hastert rumors may be true. From an e-mail sent by Hastert’s chief of staff…
Hey everyone. Tomorrow, Thursday, November 15, Speaker Hastert will
deliver his farewell address on the House Floor. Many people have called me to express interest in seeing him do this from the House gallery. We have secured space for people who are interested.
So…. If you want to do this, please let me know.
Speaker Pelosi’s office is telling us that it will happen at approximately 2:30pm; however, I suggest you be in the gallery by 2:10, which means you need to pick up your gallery ticket in H-164, The Capitol by 2:00pm at the latest (1:45pm would be preferable). As you know, timing is never perfect around this place.
Thanks everyone, and PLEASE, email the many others in this town I have
probably left off this email that you think would want to do this.
Thank you.
Sam Lancaster
Chief of Staff
Former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert
* 12:01 pm - From the Union League Club…
Seven of the eight declared candidates for the office of Cook County State’s Attorney will appear in a Candidate’s Forum at the Union League Club of Chicago , 65 West Jackson Blvd., 5th floor parlor, tomorrow, Friday, November 16 at 10 a.m.
I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head all week…
I was a big Thin Lizzy fan when I was 15 or so, and went to see them open for Styx in concert around the same time. Yeah, that dates me, I know. Still, I can’t for the life of me figure out why this song keeps dancing in my brain. It’s not even my favorite Thin Lizzy tune.
Anyway, somebody told me once that if you share a song that’s been playing in your head you can get rid of it. Consider it shared.
Question: Have any songs been pestering your mind lately? Share.
* The post-meeting spinning was apparently fast and furious in Chicago yesterday. Mayor Daley left the meeting with the four leaders and the governor saying nothing but positive things. But his people told a different story to reporters later in the day. Here’s the Sun-Times’ take..
But City Hall sources said Daley departed angry and frustrated because he kept being stymied in his efforts to discuss bailing out the CTA well ahead of the agency’s latest deadline for fare increases and service cuts: Jan. 20.
The mayor walked out after a little more than an hour.
“It felt like a classic bait-and- switch,” one City Hall source said. Daley “was led there to believe they were talking about the CTA when the aim was to talk about gaming.”
A frustrated Daley offered little after exiting the governor’s Chicago office, but his spokeswoman later said Daley left the bi-partisan meeting when the discussion turned to gambling expansion rather than fixing the mass transit crunch, with service cuts looming Jan. 20.
“Clearly the mayor understands that gaming is likely a part of the overall solution to the transit issue, but everybody knows it would take at least two years for that to happen,” Daley spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said. The mayor “kept trying to bring the conversation around to that this morning, but to no avail … I think he felt he said all he needed to say, and there apparently was little interest in talking about the immediate crisis.”
The powerful house speaker stormed out of the meeting after a heated exchange with state Senator Rickey Hendon about how to guarantee that minority investors and communities benefit from an expansion of gambling in Illinois, which was also part of the discussion.
“There was just a lot of nonproductive shouting, threats and allegations,” Madigan said.
“I didn’t raise my voice. You guys know me. I talk loud just naturally. I come from the West Side. You have to talk loud to be heard. That’s all,” said State Senator Rickey Hendon, (D) Chicago.
The meeting was supposed to be for the principals and their top staff, but Jones brought Hendon with him and, well, Hendon is Hendon.
* As I told you yesterday, the governor couldn’t help but jump into the fray…
Speaker Madigan is the only one who doesn’t agree that African Americans ought to participate in the ownership of the [casino licenses],” Blagojevich said.
Madigan denied that through his spokesman, Steve Brown.
Madigan, Brown said, backs a proposal by the House black caucus that minority and women casino owners would be selected through lotteries. Those lotteries, Madigan says, would help prevent problems that plagued the failed Emerald Casino project in Rosemont. When asked whether he perceived Blagojevich as trying to accuse Madigan of being racist, Brown said, “He’s trying to, but it doesn’t wash.”
Abby Ottenhoff, the governor’s spokeswoman, said the governor simply was trying to explain what took place between Madigan and Hendon.
Meanwhile, Cross and his Republican counterpart in the Senate, Minority Leader Frank Watson of Greenville, said transit riders should pay a modest fare increase as part of a funding solution. Democrats oppose a fare hike.
Listen to the raw audio and you’ll hear Senate President Jones dodge questions about whether he could support a fare hike.
* And this, from the same article, is a drastic understatement….
Cross continued to push an alternative idea to tap a share of state gasoline sales tax revenue for mass transit, but that would require filling a hole in the state budget. There are differences of opinion on how to offset that deficit.
There are not only “differences of opinion,” there is no real plan yet.
Democratic Senate President Emil Jones was optimistic the governor and legislative leaders were close to a deal to bail out mass transit agencies and pay for construction projects around the state.
“I believe we can wrap this up in the next day or two, really, because the issues that are separating us are very, very minute,” he said.
The addition of Mayor Daley to the group was supposed to be a positive sign because it would bring all the major decision makers directly into the discussion of how to solve the public transit funding riddle — the ulterior reason for the meeting being to isolate Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan in his running dispute with Gov. Blagojevich.
But the big summit meeting apparently devolved into the same sort of failure to communicate that makes me think we’re going to need to bring in “Dr. Phil” to sort out all the ill feelings before there’s going to be any deal to fund the Chicago Transit Authority. And Daley continued to back Madigan’s play, anyway.
Splitting Daley from Madigan is not gonna be nearly as easy as Blagojevich has hoped.
* More session stuff, compiled by Paul…
* Lawmakers summit ends with angry words, no progress
* Officials discuss transit funding; still no deal
* I had this on the blog yesterday, but the news came in so late that many of you may not have seen it or had a chance to comment…
A federal court judge Wednesday found that a new state law ordering a moment of silence for prayer or reflection at the start of the school day was “likely unconstitutional.”
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Gettleman blocked a northwest suburban school district from following the mandate, and he could extend the ban to schools statewide today. In his preliminary ruling, Gettleman found that the law was vague and questioned how teachers and school officials were supposed to follow it and how it was to be enforced.
Gettleman said the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act isn’t specific enough about what is a “moment” and when it should take place. It also may cross the line into unconstitutionality by giving students a choice to pray, the judge said.
The statute states that students shall be given an opportunity for silent prayer or reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.
That would in essence tell a child “you’ve got to think about praying,” the judge said.
Gettleman said he also is concerned about whether a child could or would do something physical in an act of prayer, such as take out a Bible or a Muslim prayer book.
There are only two choices given by the statute, he said. “One is an endorsement of prayer,” he said. “If that’s the way it’s being interpreted, then I think we have a problem.”
* What will the attorney general do? Uknown at this point, but she has already kinda sorta intervened…
The attorney general’s office had been asked at an initial court hearing two weeks ago whether it intended to defend the law, and it had no specific answer then, either.
“The Attorney General has declined to intervene … from what I can tell,” Gettleman said Wednesday.
He encouraged the office’s representative, Thomas Ioppolo, to come back to court today at 11 a.m. with a more definitive answer.
Lisa Madigan’s office said it never intended not to defend the law, but was simply deciding which legal avenue was best to pursue. Because the statute so vastly deviated from normal legislation in that it did not name any party responsible for enforcing the law, there is technically no constitutional officer responsible for it. The office must now determine if it wants to file a motion to intervene or pursue some other avenue of defense. […]
[Madigan’s chief of staff, Ann Spillane] said Ioppolo had written a 15-page brief defending the constitutionality of the law and had argued as much in court Wednesday.
In fact, Gettleman said, for someone who hadn’t officially intervened on behalf of the law yet, Ioppolo’s brief was so persuasive that it forced Sherman’s lawyers to concede to much of his arguments.
* Meanwhile, Eric Zorn wants the General Assembly to step in and rewrite the law…
The state can either fight for this unnecessary and intrusive law by waging an expensive court battle, or members of the General Assembly can attempt to re-write and pass a similar law that overcomes the Constitutional objections.
* Buried way down in this well-done article is some disturbing news…
Meanwhile, the administration is spending its Medicaid dollars at a fever pace. Lawmakers appropriated $6.9 billion for Medicaid spending through June 30, the end of this fiscal year, said Carol Knowles, spokeswoman for state Comptroller Dan Hynes. But by Nov. 8 — roughly one-third of the way through the fiscal year — the state’s health-care agency had spent 45 percent of that money, she said.
“It has been common for that agency to run out of appropriation authority sometime in the spring,” she said. “But at the pace that the agency is going, it likely will run out earlier than ever before.”
Steve Brown, spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, said lawmakers may need to approve additional spending in the spring, but it’s not clear where the state might find the money. […]
“I don’t know where he finds the money for a supplemental appropriation,” Brown said.
Rep. Dave Winters, R-Shirland, predicts the administration will slow its payment cycle to stretch its dollars.
With the ink barely dry on a new state budget, two recently released financial reports already are raising concerns about whether state revenues will keep pace with spending.
Both the bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability and Comptroller Dan Hynes issued reports warning that income from some state revenues — particularly the sales tax — could be lower than expected. […]
COGFA does economic forecasting for the General Assembly. It found that for the first three months of the state’s new budget year — July, August and September — sales tax receipts are down by $55 million from a year ago, a 3 percent drop. Corporate income taxes also dropped by $18 million during the period, a 4 percent decrease.
A bright spot was that personal income taxes increased by $120 million. But officials are worried about the drop in sales taxes, which provide more than 25 percent of the state’s revenue. […]
Worse, COGFA doesn’t think things will turn around. The report says both the sales tax and corporate income tax “may well find growth elusive over the remainder of the fiscal year.”
The budget was pretty flush this year and we still saw terrible problems getting things done. Imagine the nastiness if cutbacks have to be made. Not pretty.
Thursday, Nov 15, 2007 - Posted by Paul Richardson
* NEWRuss Stewart: Shills, proxies set to do battle in primary
* NEWPress Release: New Study Finds African Americans, Low-Income Voters, Students and Seniors Least Likely to Have Valid Voter ID at Issue Before Supreme Court
Absent from Wednesday’s debate was any discussion on Schock’s earlier proposal to sell nuclear arms to Taiwan as a way to get China to go along with U.S. policy toward Iran. Schock retracted that statement on Tuesday.
* 18th District Republican candidates participate in forum
* Clout Corner: Co defendants out alleged Troutman target
After the last municipal election, many of the aldermen privately boasted that they intended to be the big, bad wolves of City Hall. No longer would the mayor’s every whim go unchallenged. Evidently, though, much of that was empty bravado […]
Maybe the museum folks will step away from their fixation on Grant Park. Maybe the mayor will offer them any of several alternate sites in wards longing for new development and not so burdened with traffic congestion.
Or maybe the Chicago City Sheep will beg Daley to tell them his wishes — and anxiously bleat their approval.
* Dick Simpson: Chicagoans have a lot to say No about
Joe Chicago, Mary Chicagoland and Aunt Molly need us now to amplify their voices to Bush, Daley, Stroger and all the powerbrokers. The people are possessed of more common sense and idealism than many of their leaders.
Chicagoans are saying no. No more Iraq war. No scapegoating immigrants. No corruption taxes. Chicagoans have always been willing to work and willing to sacrifice. We are willing to have a higher, fairer state income tax. But we won’t support bad wars, bad policies and unfair taxes.
Unfortunately, too often we elect bad politicians who don’t listen to the little people anymore.
At the time, three years ago, City Hall had an unwritten policy against hiring ex-cons. But Felske had clout: He was helping register voters for the Hispanic Democratic Organization, then a powerful patronage army delivering votes for Mayor Daley.
“I don’t regret the protest because I brought a lot of people to this question — about Iraq and what it’s doing to our country,” senior Joshua Rodriguez said.
He and other suspended students and parents protested the possible expulsions, along with the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and other activists, garnering national attention.
Rodriguez and others insisted their protest — both against the Iraq war and military recruiters at their school — was peaceful.
