Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » Smoking law could be changed

Friday, Jan 11, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* If the governor continues to play games with JCAR, we’re going to see a whole lot more stories about this topic…

Confusion over the state’s new smoking ban may force lawmakers to take up the issue again, said the suburban lawmaker who sponsored it.

A state legislative panel rejected Wednesday several enforcement provisions proposed by the Illinois Department of Public Health. Those on the panel said the proposed rules were confusing or didn’t address concerns about how the ban should be enforced and citations handled. […]

State Sen. Terry Link, a Waukegan Democrat and the ban’s sponsor, said Thursday the full General Assembly might have to get involved again.

“We’re going to be introducing some follow-up on those concerns, that way … it’ll be as clear as clear can be,” said Link.

Legislators are increasingly frustrated with the governor’s excessive power grabs and, as I’ve said before, will likely want to write far more details into their bills to prevent the governor from implementing whatever rules he wants. They could even go back and try to change some statutes to stop him from promulgating new rules as he sees fit.

This is a real mess, and is a direct result of a governor who obviously rejects the notion of co-equal branches of government. Remind you of anyone?

8 Comments

- GoBearsss - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 9:42 am:
More importantly -

JCAR could have accepted the rules, and asked that a second set of rules be adopted to address the appeal process.

In fact, they could have adopted them at the LAST JCAR meeting in December. But they put it off. And now they rejected them.

The result? There are now no rules for a very controversial law that has been in place for over a week.

- one of the 35 - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 9:57 am:
If I were a sitting member of JCAR, I would resign. Why bother to meet and discuss anything? It is a waste of time since their decisions have been declared “tangental” by our king….. I mean governor.

- VanillaMan - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 10:14 am:
Ugh! I know!

When Blagojevich stiff armed JCAR, he as a governor, set an ugly precident. Now, we are seeing a possible result. More gridlock, more confusion, more suspicion, and more cynicism.

See how important trust and honor is between office holders? When we discovered that Blagojevich wouldn’t honor his word, or even honor a precident like JCAR, gridlock arose. There has to be a level of trust within government for it to function at all. We have to believe that the people elected will honor their word and honor the system they were elected to function under. Blagojevich has damaged this and we will not see this vital element returning to Illinois government while he is in office. Even after he is through, there will remain those who were burned by his antics and will be leery of future leaders.

Part of Blagojevich’s legacy is where we saw that the honor and trust necessary for a functioning government went into a coma and government stopped functioning as a result. And that isn’t even the worst part of his legacy.

We will need a “healer” after Blagojevich. We will need a guy/gal with a similar image to Obama’s. Unfortunately, The Eloquent Facade isn’t interested enough in helping us anymore now that his head with it’s tin foil halo have gotten too big for the state that first elected him in the last Senatorial election. Obama should be our governor and prove his leadership so that he wouldn’t have to rely on puffery and teleprompters to cover up an empty resume.

- Southern Right - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 10:34 am:
Illinois is not the first state to ban smoking. Lets cheat and look at some other states answers. This is not even close to being cutting edge legislation. The JCAR issue goes to court 1/18/08? Will that end it? I didn’t think so.

- Bookworm - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 10:38 am:
Van Man, you make an excellent point… really, I don’t want Obama to get elected president this time around. It’s way too soon. He should run for governor in two years, serve a full term and THEN if he still feels like running for president try again in 2016, when he’ll be 55 years old — still relatively young for a president.

- one of the 35 - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 11:22 am:
The more alarming thing about the Governor’s treatment of JCAR is that it is so situational and self serving. If JCAR takes a position the Governor likes, he repsects their authority. If JCAR takes a position he does not like, then he ignores them.

- DC - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 2:17 pm:
The most alarming things about the Governor and JCAR is that he has brazenly and openly failed to uphold the law, a glaring violation of the Oath of Office he swore to uphold. Now he’s doing it again with the smoking rules. I’m not an attorney or a constitutional expert, but it would appear to me that failure to follow the laws of the state could be considered misfeasance of office and subject to impeachment. I’m not a fan of having impeachment hearings in general, but at some point, and out of principle, that issue needs to be elevated to a public question, not just my blog rantings.

Picking and choosing which laws a Governor will abide by is not a model of governing, it’s a “precipice” for executive branch anarchy.

- question the JCAR process - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 4:41 pm:
I think it’s good that some legislators want to “write more detail into their bills.” Clear, straightforward and definitive laws should be the rule, not the exception.

I agree that the Governor has abused his power, but I also believe that JCAR violates the separation of power provisions in the state constitution. I would note that JCAR-type processes have been found unconstitutional in several states.

Better drafted laws in the first place would be a better and cleaner solution to dealing with Governors who try to exceed their executive authority.

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