* Want more proof that Gov. Rod Blagojevich is only concerned about health care programs that he dreams up? We talked about this very topic the other day, and I used this gubernatorial quote to illustrate my point…
“We wish the General Assembly and especially the House would be less obstructionist and be more willing to embrace health care for children, health care for working families,” Blagojevich said.
Without the Red Tape Cutters program, 73-year-old Margaret Dobrynski thinks she’d still be living through harsh winters in an unheated trailer, unable to afford her blood pressure and cholesterol medicine.
But the program, which helped her and thousands of other Cook County older adults, has been marked for elimination in this year’s state budget proposal. […]
Last year, on $251,000 in state funding, the Red Tape Cutters program procured $23.6 million in benefits for 14,000 seniors in suburban Cook County.
But in Springfield, Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s belt-tightening effort has led to the program’s funding being eliminated. […]
The idea was to link up eligible seniors with benefits and programs they were not aware of. It evolved into a more involved type of help - navigating complicated application processes with them or even picking up homebound people who can’t easily apply for certain benefits that require in-person registration.
In honor of Autism Awareness Month in April, I strongly urge the governor to release $2.5 million to The Autism Program of Illinois, or TAP.
During the FY08 budget negotiations, the General Assembly approved to increase the TAP’s funding from $2.5 million to $10 million. However, the governor reduced the amount to $5 million through the amendatory veto process.
Unfortunately, TAP has yet to see any of the additional $2.5 million that we approved and to which the governor agreed. The money has been placed on hold by the governor’s Office of Management and Budget.
* During Blagojevich’s first term, the guv wanted to get rid of the Golden Apple program and replace it with something that looked almost exactly like it. There are plenty more examples of this behavior. The bottom line is that too often Blagojevich wants credit for creating bright, shiny new programs but isn’t much interested in continuing to fund programs pushed by others.
In an unusual move in the Fox Valley, village police plan to start writing tickets — instead of making arrests — for first-timers caught with small amounts of marijuana.
Police Chief Bradley Sauer said the change will keep officers from spending long hours in court on minor drug charges and also allow those who slip up just once to keep their records clean. […]
Tickets for first-time marijuana possession or drug paraphernalia possession will be $200. Sauer said those fines were in line with the fees judges typically hand down in court.
Both marijuana and paraphernalia possession are state violations, but towns can change those to town ordinances if they want, said Kane County State’s Attorney John Barsanti. However, village ordinances cannot carry any jail time, only fines. […]
Sauer said police will contact schools if students are caught with marijuana, as they already do with students caught drinking.
He added that police can change the ticket to an arrest if they discover that it’s not a first offense, or if they would prefer to have a judge hear their case.
[I excerpted more than I should because of the Comcast situation.]
* Question: Should all municipalities follow Sugar Grove’s example? Explain.
* The more I think about this Kjellander-Rove-Fitzgerald allegation, the more it sounds like a bunch of guys who think they have power boasting about how they’re gonna take Patrick Fitzgerald out of the game…
“What I anticipate Mr. Ata would testify to would be that he did actually have direct conversations with Mr. Rezko about the fact that . . . Mr. Kjellander was working with Karl Rove to have [US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald] removed,” Hamilton told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve. Hamilton said Rezko told Ata: “Mr. Kjellander is working with Mr. Rove to have Mr. Fitzgerald removed so that someone else can come in to the U.S. attorney’s office.”
“Karl has known Kjellander for many years but does not recall him or anyone else arguing for Fitzgerald’s removal,” Robert Luskin, Rove’s attorney, said Wednesday.
“And [Rove] is very certain that he didn’t take any steps to do that, or have any conversations with anyone in the White House—or in the Justice Department—about doing anything like that.”
That statement was referred to as “unequivocal” by two reporters, but it’s hardly that. Rove “does not recall” the case being made, but he is positive that he didn’t take any steps to have Fitz removed.
* This point about the alleged move against Fitzgerald is also worth noting…
If they occurred, the alleged conversations would predate the Bush administration’s more systematic effort in 2005 to remove U.S. attorneys it perceived as disloyal.
“It wouldn’t surprise me either if Kjellander actually did talk to Rove,” the former senator said.
But knowing Rove, Peter Fitzgerald said, he doesn’t believe the adviser to President Bush would have gotten involved in trying to replace the U.S. attorney under those circumstances. […]
Perhaps Rezko was just bragging to Ata, or maybe it was wishful thinking on somebody’s part, he theorized.
It’s interesting, though, that Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to inject this development into Rezko’s trial, even though the judge didn’t appear to be enthralled with the idea yesterday.
The business group ranked the state’s civil courts 46th, the same as last year. Missouri ranked 31st, according to a report released Tuesday.
The group said reforms in Madison County, once labeled a “judicial hellhole” by business groups, have been balanced out by rampant lawsuit abuse in Cook County, the state’s largest county.
* So, how were the rankings made? Here’s the explanation…
All interviews for The 2008 State Liability Systems Ranking Study were conducted by telephone among a nationally representative sample of in-house general counsel, senior litigators and other senior attorneys who are knowledgeable about litigation matters at companies with annual revenues of at least $100 million. Interviews averaging 23 minutes in length wereconducted with a total of 957 respondents and took place between December 18, 2007 and March 19, 2008.
* Nationally, that’s not a bad sample size at all. However, state by state sample sizes were pretty darned small. Indiana, which ranked 4th best in the nation, had a survey sample size of just 58 people. Illinois’ ranking appears to be based on 131 respondents, but the Harris poll claims 250 were interviewed, so I’m not exactly sure about that.
Greater than one out of every two business decision makers (53%) has made a business decision primarily to avoid a potential lawsuit.
That’s pretty open-ended. Did some of the companies produce a safer product because of the threat of a lawsuit? Did a restaurant go out of its way to clean thoroughly clean its kitchen, for instance? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
* There’s no doubt that the trial lawyers have had the upper hand at the General Assembly over the past few decades, even though the GA did pass a significant medical malpractice reform bill. The Illinois Trial Lawyers had this point-by-point response to the survey…
* Only corporate defense lawyers from companies earning $100 million or more were surveyed. No local attorneys, judges, or media were surveyed.
* The methodology has already been debunked. U.S. Chamber’s own pollster admitted to Copley News Service in 2004 that there is no way to measure the fairness of a state’s legal system.
* In 2006, U.S. Chamber’s CEO and the same pollster confessed to the Charleston Gazette that only a fraction of corporate defense lawyers knew anything about West Virginia’s courts, even though they ranked poorly at 49th.
* There is no margin of error or evidence the “rankings” are statistically valid. U.S. Chamber lists multiple tables pretending to detail the methodology without actually revealing the response rate or accuracy of its poll.
Even so, this is an interesting snapshot and worth discussion.
Try not to spew talking points in the comments, please. Stay reasoned and reasonable. Vitriol will be deleted.
* Yes, there is quite a lot of talk about impeachment these days among Statehouse denizens, but I will beieve it when I see it…
The impeachment drumbeat at the Statehouse grew louder Wednesday, a day after the blockbuster accusation by a former state official that he got his state job after pouring money into Gov. Blagojevich’s campaign fund — including a $25,000 check in an envelope he presented to the governor.
Two House Democrats said discussions on a possible impeachment resolution targeting Blagojevich accelerated after Tuesday’s disclosure by Ali Ata, whom the governor appointed to a $127,000-a-year post running the Illinois Finance Authority. In his surprise guilty plea to federal corruption charges, Ata said he gave two $25,000 campaign contributions to the governor and then got Blagojevich’s assurance of landing a state job in which Ata “could make some money.” Ata is expected to testify against indicted former Blagojevich fund-raiser Tony Rezko.
State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) and Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago) said a decision on impeachment could come within two weeks.
“We now find ourselves in a very different environment, where an individual has pled guilty to being a co-conspirator in transactions involving the governor,” Fritchey said. “Can state government be effectively led by a governor who is apparently at the center of some very significant allegations of wrongdoing?”
* The Illinois Constitution doesn’t mandate an actual reason for impeachment, like the US Constitution does. There is no “high crimes and misdemeanors” language. All that is required for impeachment is a vote of the majority of those elected…
The House of Representatives has the sole power to conduct legislative investigations to determine the existence of cause for impeachment and, by the vote of a majority of the members elected, to impeach Executive and Judicial officers. Impeachments shall be tried by the Senate. When sitting for that purpose, Senators shall be upon oath, or affirmation, to do justice according to law. If the Governor is tried, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shall preside. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senators elected. Judgment shall not extend beyond removal from office and disqualification to hold any public office of this State. An impeached officer,
whether convicted or acquitted, shall be liable to prosecution, trial, judgment and punishment according to law.
You should have a reason, obviously, particularly since there has to be a trial in the Senate. Removing a governor simply because a majority of elected House members thought it was a good idea probably wouldn’t fly. Then again, Blagojevich is so unpopular in and out of the Statehouse, the vote might still be close.
…Adding… I also kinda doubt think that Speaker Madigan wants to give Pat Quinn a leg up on the 2010 gubernatorial primary.
Illinois legislators are going to reach agreement on a long-stalled plan to crack down on “pay-to-play” politics by next week, or not at all, backers of the proposal predicted Wednesday.
“We need to see some kind of an announcement of an agreement within the next week,” said Cynthia Canary of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, which has spent more than a year pushing a proposal to ban campaign donations from state contractors to the elected officials who control their contracts.
“Should this fall apart … we will get out there publicly” and argue that legislators have acted in bad faith on the issue, Canary said.
Since the Senate so brazenly refused to move the recall proposal to the floor, despite overwhelming popular support and tons of pressure from newspaper editorial boards, I seriously doubt that threats from ICPR will have any impact whatsoever.
The problem here is that the House and Senate now have competing bills. It’s the old “criss-cross” maneuver where the House sends the Senate a bill and the Senate sends the House a similar bill, then neither one makes it to the governor’s desk.
“If there’s not an agreement [between the House and Senate] by the beginning of next week, I think that will raise some red flags,” Fritchey said.
My unsolicited advice to Fritchey and the goo-goos: If the Senate approves its own bill and sends it to the House, just pass it and get this over with. It doesn’t appear to be all that different than the House version, and if that’s the case, just do it. All anyone will really be arguing about is credit for getting something done. Go beyond that. Pass the bill.
*** UPDATE *** A Comcast recording says there’s a service interruption in the Springfield area and they’re working on it.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Kevin got through to a Comcast service person who told him that it’s a statewide outage issue and there’s no timeline yet on when it will be fixed. techie
*** UPDATE 3 *** I’m able to access some sites, albeit with much patience, so I’ll post some stuff in a few minutes.
*** UPDATE 4 *** I’d make some smart Alec remark about how I’m so looking forward to competition in the cable industry, but some Springfieldians might disagree…
AT&T has upset some Springfield residents with its plans to install nearly 100 utility boxes around the city, some of them in people’s yards.
The boxes are being installed so that AT&T can begin offering digital video service here. They also will help the telecommunications giant upgrade its Internet and telephone services.
Many of the boxes will be on city-owned right-of-ways between the sidewalk and the street. But others are to be placed in utility easements, which can be in residents’ yards.
*** UPDATE 5 *** It’s beyond weird that some sites are fully accessible to me right now, like the Post-Dispatch, while others are completely inaccessible, like the Tribune, and still others are slow but somewhat accessible, like the Sun-Times.
*** UPDATE 6 *** Man, this is worse than the old dial-up days.
*** UPDATE 7 *** As of 11:35 am, the problem appears to be dissipating.
Sen. Larry Bomke, R-Springfield, said, “As far as the governor coming late and leaving early, it may be obvious to some that he didn’t want to talk to the press.”
Instead of struggling with a 1,600-case backlog that has forced minority businesses to wait two years for certification, Chicago will rely on groups that do certification for the federal government and some state and local governments.
A sewer-inspection company in which Mayor Daley’s son and nephew had hidden ownership stakes has shut down, walking away from a $4.5 million contract with the city’s water department in the face of an investigation by the city inspector general’s office and the FBI prompted by reports in the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Democratic governor attended a public event Wednesday morning without giving notice to reporters, and he quickly left without taking any questions.
In a brief speech at his annual prayer breakfast, Blagojevich did not address the new allegations.
* Listen to the speech...
[audio:GOV-4-23.mp3]
“It’s not like you get a chance to go to governor’s school.”
* Meanwhile, Comptroller Dan Hynes gave a speech in Southern Illinois this morning, which included a few jabs at the governor…
Now we know what leadership isn’t. Leadership isn’t having a big title or flying around in an airplane. And it isn’t fighting. As Dwight Eisenhower once said: “You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.” […]
It’s shocking to think that we’re almost three-fourths of the way through the legislative session – because there’s been very little “getting down to business.” You see, to be committed, you first have to – for lack of a better term – show up. Be engaged. And that starts at the top. A few years ago, the Governor complained that the General Assembly was spending like a bunch of drunken sailors. But I think the real problem is a captain hiding in his quarters.
Think about it.
The economy is slowing. Our revenues are disappearing. The deficit is worsening. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Our backlogs are growing. And our hospitals are closing.
Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn is demanding answers from Govenor Rod Blagojevich about allegations that came up in a federal corruption case. In a guilty plea yesterday, Ali Ata—the former head of the Illinois Finance Authority—said he got the job after contributing thousands of dollars to Blagojevich’s campaign.
Blagojevich quickly left a public event this morning without addressing Ata’s accusations. But Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn says that’s no way to handle the situation.
QUINN: To be running away and not fully engaging the people of Illinois, who are the voters, the taxpayers, the people who we are accountable to, I don’t think that’s the right way to go. I think Governor Blagojevich should speak to the public and answer questions about anything and everything.
And if the allegations about the governor are true?
QUINN: Well, if anyone committed wrongdoing, I think they should, uh, turn themselves in and suffer the consequences.
* The Bush administration’s blatant politicization of the Justice Department is well documented. And now comes word that some Blagojevich insiders tried to take advantage of that environment to oust Patrick Fitzgerald as US Attorney….
As federal investigators closed in, Gov. Rod Blagojevich insiders were angling with Bush administration architect Karl Rove to get U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald kicked out of office, according to disclosures made in federal court. […]
Federal prosecutors said in court that co-schemer Steven Loren was ready to testify he was told Illinois Republican insider Bob Kjellander was working to get Fitzgerald removed.
Powerbroker Bill Cellini “said it was Bob Kjellander’s job to take care of the U.S. Attorney,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie Hamilton said in court late Tuesday, in reading Loren’s earlier grand jury testimony.
The statement was not further explained Tuesday, but in court this morning Hamilton told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve that she expected Rezko business partner Ali Ata, who is cooperating with authorities, to testify Rezko told him the same thing in 2004.
It’s not too much of a stretch to believe that Fitzgerald got wind of the machinations and reacted by indicting Rezko in October of 2006 - just a month before election day. Tradition has been not to interfere with campaigns by making high-profile indictments like this so close to voting.
* During an interview with the Daily Herald, Rep. Suzie Bassi described the Statehouse atmosphere as “toxic,” said she’d rather have “Humpty Dumpty” as governor than Rod Blagojevich, and said…
The nine-year veteran of the legislature in Springfield added that she thinks Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn could “bring people together” [if he were governor]
* Question: Do you think Pat Quinn would be a more stable, unifying force than Rod Blagojevich? Explain.
“As we’ve said many times before, we don’t endorse or allow the decisions of state government to be based on campaign contributions,” Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said.
That’s the standard response to every new bombshell allegation that Gov. Rod Blagojevich traded jobs, contracts and appointments for campaign contributions. And it was issued again yesterday.
But, as I reminded subscribers this morning, Blagojevich has defied all credibility by forcefully denying that he is “Public Official A,” including right up to this very minute…
[The spokesperson said that] based on the descriptions arising from the case, the governor is not Public Official A.
Since that statement has already proved to be false, nothing else should be believed.
A former top official in Gov. Blagojevich’s administration said Tuesday the governor gave him a $127,000-a-year state job in exchange for pouring cash into Blagojevich’s campaign fund, including tens of thousands of dollars out of his own pocket.
That bombshell from Ali Ata came as the onetime director of the Illinois Finance Authority pleaded guilty in a deal in which prosecutors plan to have him testify in the ongoing corruption trial of former Blagojevich fund-raiser Tony Rezko.
The plea deal says that just before the governor took office claiming the mantle of reform, Blagojevich met with Ata at Rezko’s office, accepted a $25,000 check and then started talking about the Lemont businessman getting a high-level state job.
The following year, Blagojevich again thanked Ata at a Navy Pier fundraiser for another $25,000 donation, the court records show.
“During this conversation, Public Official A told defendant that he had been a good supporter, indicated that Public Official A was aware that the defendant had made another substantial donation to Public Official A’s campaign and told the defendant that Public Official A understood that the defendant would be joining Public Official A’s administration,” it said.
“Just before the governor took office,” is actually early September, according to campaign finance documents. That was the height of the season, when Blagojevich was hammering away at the Republican culture of corruption.
Ata, Ali
6719 Stonewall
Downers Grove, IL 60516
Occupation: Marketing
Employer: Nalco Chemical
$25,000.00
9/4/2002
Individual Contribution
Friends of Blagojevich
Beginning in or around mid-2003 and continuing through 2004, the defendant provided large sums of cash to Rezko in response to persistent and urgent pressure from Rezko to do so. The defendant provided Rezko with tens of thousands of dollars in cash on four or five occasions during 2003 and 2004, including while he was the Executive Director of the IFA. In total, the defendant provided Rezko with approximately $125,000 in cash during this period, which monies he had withdrawn from a family food distribution business that he was then operating.
[Ata] intentionally concealed the fact that in 2003 he had provided to Rezko, at Rezko’s insistence, a portion of his partnership interest in a real estate venture, in exchange for Rezko’s use of his influence in state government to reverse a state agency’s decision to terminate a lease agreement relating to
Ata was plucked clean.
* Here’s a tidbit from yesterday’s Rezko trial, which I’ll put in context in a bit…
[Steve Loren, former attorney for the Teachers’ Retirement System of Illinois] recalled once sharing a ride home with Levine, who has also pleaded guilty, and asking Levine who Pekin would split his fee with. He said Levine told him it was to go to Ald. Dick Mell, the governor’s father-in-law.
“I said: ‘How can these people be so stupid?’ ” Loren said, explaining it was an obvious conflict for Mell to get consulting money off a state deal.
According to prosecutors, the deal with Mell never went through, and the money instead went to Rezko associate Joseph Aramanda.
* Ata had contributed $5,000 to Dick Mell’s campaign funds in earlier days, but Mell denies knowing anything about the deal.
According to Ata’s plea agreement, he and “Individual D” formed a real estate company together, Addison Venture LLC. “Individual D” then allegedly helped falsify documents so that Ata could avoid paying all the taxes owed on a quick sale of a Chicago property.
“Individual D” has previously been identified as Joseph Aramanda. Aramanda contributed $10K to Blagojevich’s campaign fund in 2002.
These guys were thick as thieves, perhaps literally.
Ata’s lawyer, Thomas McQueen, said Ata would do whatever the government asked of him, including offering court testimony. He may get that chance sooner rather than later, as a prosecutor at Rezko’s corruption trial said Ata could be called as a witness.
This isn’t the beginning of the end. That started a while ago. But you can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel.
* By the way, I uploaded this video in 2006. It shows Tony Rezko escorting Gov. Blagojevich through a crowd. But is that Ata as well? Here’s his pic from the Sun-Times…
* Martin Ozinga has been slammed by Democrats over a Tribune story from 2005 that alleged he had set up a minority front company to score contracts from the City of Chicago. Ozinga is the odds-on favorite to replace Tim Baldermann on the 11th District congressional ballot against Sen. Debbie Halvorson.
“Our efforts with Metro Mix were always completely transparent, on top of the table, done in conjunction with many, many, many discussions of all the government agencies involved,” he said from his new campaign office in Mokena. “And I am—I was then, and I am to this day—proud of all the people who worked hard, put forth so much effort into trying to create a business opportunity that would have been so very beneficial, but that was probably just not meant to be.”
Ozinga said he started Metro Mix as a way to create jobs and promote economic development in minority neighborhoods.
Metro Mix initially had trouble being recognized as a minority-owned business—officials said Ozinga’s ties to the company were too close—so the group restructured with new minority ownership to meet requirements. Eventually, however, Ozinga had a disagreement with one of the new partners in the mid-1990s, and the company folded.
“I have no regrets, and I appreciate everybody that participated,” he said. “And nowhere along the line did we violate any rules, regulations or attempt to create any kind of an atmosphere that was anything less than above board and straightforward.”
Ozinga has said the same thing to Republican bigwigs, but the allegations remain. Regardless of the latest Tribune story, expect the company to be a big issue in the DCCC’s direct mail campaign this fall.
O’Donnell, a native of upstate New York and a graduate of SUNY-Plattsburgh, most recently served as chief of staff for Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ). Before that, he spent 13 years working for Hare’s predecessor Congressman Lane Evans, nine of those as legislative director.
* Last week, the Chicago Tribune editorial board recused itself from writing editorials on the proposed sale of Wrigley Field to the state. Today, the Sun-Times editorial board mocks Mother Tribune…
And now Sam Zell’s own newspaper has abandoned him. The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board announced the other day that it would “recuse” itself — run to the sidelines, fold its arms and remain neutral — from the debate over Zell’s efforts to sell Wrigley Field to the taxpayers of Illinois.
The Tribune’s “economic self-interest” in the sale of Wrigley is simply too great, the paper explained in a curious editorial, for the paper to take a credibly independent stand — too many readers just wouldn’t buy it. […]
But we also see the paper’s recusal from the debate for what it is — a tacit acknowledgement that the boss hasn’t got a leg to stand on. If Zell’s case for selling Wrigley to the state had any real merit, we suspect those on the paper’s editorial board would take a strong stand in favor of it — and find no need to recuse themselves.
As it is, Zell’s scheme to palm his ballpark off on the taxpayers runs counter to cherished free-market principles the Tribune has championed for 150 years.
Fat chance Zell would let his editors write that.
* According to Forbes, Zell is the world’s 164th richest person, with a net worth of $6 billion. He even has some low-income housing projects in Egypt (hmmm, my wife has been hinting about taking a trip to Egypt for a while).
There is no reason on God’s Green Earth why the government should help pad Zell’s considerable coffers with this Wrigley buyout. The Sun-Times is absolutely correct. Dump this idea.
McCarthy’s lawyer, Patrick Deady, said a three-judge appellate panel that last week affirmed the men’s convictions had nearly “obliterated” previous limits placed on mail fraud. Deady and his co-counsel argue that none of the men personally gained from the scheme, which they say would have been required under the court’s previous interpretation of the mail fraud statute’s “honest services” provision.
