* Lots of comments this week. That’s a good thing, even if I do complain now and then. Y’all are entertaining, and often enlightening, so I thank you for that.
It’s time to go, but make sure you stop by Illinoize this weekend (which you should be doing every day), and make extra special sure to hit InsiderzExchange. There are tons of upcoming fundraisers posted, and lots of other ads, including a couple of new help wanted posts that you should check out. Also, two of my buds have resumes online, ArchPundit and PeoriaPundit.
* Joan and Bob will will play us out…
* Also, if you’re looking for the arrangements for “Foz” Foster, here they are…
VISITATION
Monday, July 14 FROM 3 TO 7 PM
KIRLIN-EGAN & BUTLER FUNERAL HOME
900 South 6th St
Springfield IL
FUNERAL
Tuesday, July 15 AT 9:00 AM
18TH HOLE AT PANTHER CREEK COUNTRY CLUB
3001 Panther Creek Drive
Springfield IL
The Chicago production of “Jersey Boys” has excised all smoking from the show so that the production complies with Chicago’s indoor smoking ban, a spokesman for Broadway in Chicago confirmed Tuesday.
The city’s ban does not offer any exemption for smoking as part of a theatrical performance.
It also does not allow herbal cigarettes to substitute for tobacco, as has been common practice in the theater.
The city sent a “notice of complaint” to Broadway in Chicago after a complaint by a patron about smoking in “Jersey Boys,” said Tim Hadac, spokesman for the Department of Public Health. […]
Seven scenes have been changed.
Expect a proposal next week to provide a statewide solution as well. The idea would be to allow theaters to petition with the local or state boards of health for temporary exemptions from the statewide smoking ban.
* The question: Should the city and state smoking bans be altered so that performers can smoke on stage? Explain.
* House Republican Leader Tom Cross talked to Sun-Times columnist Steve Huntley about the upcoming campaign…
Polling in six battleground legislative districts in the northwest suburbs commissioned by Cross found the Democratic-led General Assembly earning only a 24 percent approval rating, with 62 percent of voters disapproving.
Blagojevich fared even worse at 20 percent approval vs. 76 percent disapproving. “Suburban voters are very aware of the lack of state government, that the Democratic leadership can’t do anything of substance,” Cross said.
* Huntley didn’t publish head-to-head numbers from the six districts, leading me to wonder how the individual GOP candidates are actually faring, despite the low approval numbers for the General Assembly….
In the once solidly Republican suburbs, the poll found only a 1-percentage-point advantage for Republicans on the generic ballot.
That doesn’t bode well, considering these were all once solidly GOP districts.
* The “Obama Factor” is undoubtedly helping Dems in those districts - four of which are GOP held and two that are represented by Dems Crespo and Froehlich…
“It’s going to be a very tough year with Obama, the hometown guy with lots of appeal, at the head of their ticket,” Cross acknowledged. “But I don’t know why the voters would reward the Democrats [in Springfield] with more members.”
The reason voters may “reward” House Democrats for the gridlock is that the House Dems have refused to cooperate with the most unpopular governor in modern Illinois history - a governor who is also facing possible indictments on federal corruption charges.
Huntley also doesn’t mention Cross’ work with Blagojevich on the capital plan, and Cross’ repeated attempts to tamp down impeachment talk, going all the way back to last year when GOP Rep. Mike Bost demanded Blagojevich’s impeachment.
Cross is penned in because his political godfather, Denny Hastert, helped put together the capital plan. So now Cross is forced to say he trusts the governor to follow through on his capital promises, when everybody knows that this is highly unlikely. He’s in a tough spot. Blaming Democrats for not getting along with the governor is not the best message he could have going into November.
* Yeah, it’s tongue in cheek, but it makes a couple of points that needed saying. Here’s my latest Sun-Times column…
One of the biggest knocks on Barack Obama is that he lacks experience.
It’s a standard political attack. Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, has more Senate experience, but he has no experience running a government or solving problems on his own. But McCain’s many years in the U.S. Senate, his extensive foreign travels and his military service allow him to claim that he’s more “experienced” than his much younger opponent.
All of that is a red herring, of course. The only people with the sort of experience that truly qualifies them to be president are former presidents. The job is so unique and unusual that everybody starts out like a babe in the woods.
Instead, we judge presidential hopefuls based on how they campaign. How do they operate under stress? Do they have what it takes to succeed in a super-tough environment? Can they bring enough groups together to obtain a majority? All those questions and more are supposedly answered during campaigns, yet candidates often turn out to be much different presidents than we were led to believe.
George W. Bush said eight years ago that he was a compassionate conservative and a uniter, not a divider.
Didn’t exactly work out that way, did it?
So, I have a different solution. One that would almost assuredly tell us whether Obama can survive the presidency’s unimaginably hostile environment.
Let’s make him come back to Springfield and solve the gridlock.
Sen. Dick Durbin said months ago that he’d rather go to Iraq and work on that mess than stick his nose into the unending war between Gov. Blagojevich and House Speaker Michael Madigan. I can relate.
“Toxic gridlock” doesn’t even begin to describe our state’s embarrassing political battle, which has held up just about all progress for more than a year. Unemployment is rising, yet a jobs-producing capital construction bill for our roads, bridges, schools and mass transit is stuck in limbo. People are going without health insurance, but solutions can’t be reached because one side doesn’t want to work with the other. Nothing — literally nothing — is being accomplished because the governor and the speaker want to crush each other.
The Israelis talk to the Palestinians more often and with more sensitivity than Madigan speaks with Blagojevich.
Nobody is getting killed at the Statehouse, at least not yet. There are no bullets and bombs in this fight, no mass slaughter like the Darfur catastrophe, no Iraq-style religious war.
But that makes it the perfect training exercise. If Obama fails, we’ll just muddle on like always and hope that somebody comes to his senses.
The consequences of failure in Illinois are not nearly as great as they would be in the Middle East. So, he can’t screw things up too much.
Obama knows all the players because he was a state senator for several years. His political mentor, Senate President Emil Jones, is also part of the problem. Those relationships give him an advantage he won’t have when he tries to solve the rest of the world’s problems and deal with the Congress. But if he can work out a solution to our intractable morass, he’ll prove himself worthy of the presidency, at least in my mind.
I am fully aware that there is not a chance in the world that Obama will take up this challenge. No candidate ever wants to deliberately set himself up to fail.
Our only alternative, however, is to rely on soundbites, gotcha games, TV ads and our woefully inadequate national media to inform our votes.
Gov. Blagojevich spared his own office from deep cuts but aggressively wielded his budget-cutting cleaver against fellow statewide officeholders, who rank among his loudest critics and are considered potential rivals to him in the 2010 election.
As part of $2.1 billion in trims to the 2008-’09 budget, the governor lopped as much as 25 percent from the office of Attorney General Lisa Madigan while cutting only 3 percent from his own bottom line.
* Zorn has some details on the cuts to AG Madigan’s budget. It’s not really a 25 percent cut because that figure includes a proposed increase for this fiscal year. It is, however, a 17 percent cut from last fiscal year, and that’s huge. The cut also brings Madigan’s appropriations back to FY 2003 levels…
FY 2003 — $40,710,000
FY 2004 — $39,638,700
FY 2005 — $41,222,400
FY 2006 — $42,505,300
FY 2007 — $48,142,400
FY 2008– $48,633,000
FY 2009 — $52,637,500 (in the budget as passed by the General Assembly); reduced this week to $40,000,000
“I don’t think there’s any question it was done in a petty and vindictive manner,” said Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, who lost 17 percent from his budget after leading efforts to give voters the chance to recall Blagojevich. “I think every press conference I had on recall cost me another percentage point.” […]
Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, another potential 2010 rival to Blagojevich, saw his office budget cut by 13 percent after condemning Blagojevich’s acceptance of campaign contributions from state contractors and opposing his failed gross-receipts tax on businesses last year.
“It’s no secret that the treasurer has been critical of the governor’s policies, and the cuts made to our budget suggest that there’s a price to pay for that,” Giannoulias spokesman Scott Burnham said.
Comptroller Dan Hynes, another gubernatorial critic, had 11 percent cut from his budget. Secretary of State Jesse White had 14 percent cut from his office, a Senate Republican budget analysis showed.
Keep in mind, those totals are reductions from the proposed increases. But, they still represent real cuts in the end.
Also, the governor’s spokesperson claimed that the guv’s office budget has been cut over the years. What he didn’t mention was that the governor mostly just moves things off-budget by forcing state agencies to pick up the tab.
* Meanwhile, remember how the governor made a big deal of giving seniors free transit rides this year? Remember how this was such a high priority? Times change…
Wednesday, Blagojevich pulled the plug on $37 million that had been allocated to the Regional Transportation Authority to partially reimburse the agencies for offering reduced-fare rides to seniors, students and people with disabilities.
* Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s interview by the State Journal-Register didn’t cover much ground, but it leaves you with the clear impression that Blagojevich plans an all-out political war over the capital construction plan…
“The game is on now, and these are all little skirmishes along the way in the big war to create jobs for people across Illinois,” Blagojevich said at his Statehouse office. “Unfortunately, there shouldn’t have to be a war. It should be easy.”
* The story itself is kinda light, but you can listen to audio files from the interview at this page.
“Everybody, virtually, is on board except for one man” [the governor said about Madigan and the capital plan.]
Hmm. Let’s see. Mayor Daley opposes the gaming proposal and the governor wants to seize control of the decision over which Chicago schools get capital money, which the mayor also opposes. That means more than “one man” opposes the capital package. And deliberately jabbing Daley does not make this process “easy” in any way. But that fact wasn’t tossed back at him.
* Here’s another quote I found somewhat entertaining…
“You can’t go to Madigan because he doesn’t talk to anybody or meet anybody. For sport, I’ll just arbitrarily pick up the phone and call him, leave a message. I’ve been doing this for months, knowing I won’t get a call back.”
Actually, Madigan does talk to people. The governor refuses to just walk up to Madigan’s office, like governors have done for years (and not just to see Madigan - Pate Philip was well known for not returning gubernatorial phonecalls). Blagojevich did this once last year, at my urging, but spent most of his time with Madigan talking about sports. It was a wasted opportunity. Also, the guv surely knows where Madigan eats dinner almost every night in Springfield. Just drop by. Others do.
* The governor does have a point when he says that if Madigan switched his position, so would lots of rank and file House Democrats. But check out this quote from the story…
“We’ve just got to get the rank-and-file members to stand up for something that’s more important than their allegiance to one man,” Blagojevich said
Not. Gonna. Happen. Stop dreaming.
Note to governor: You have a 13 percent job approval rating, making you the least popular governor in the US of A. The US Attorney has several open and active investigations of yourself, your office, your friends and your campaign. You’re not going to make all that go away by fighting a war to the death with Mike Madigan.
“I don’t attend meetings with Gov. Blagojevich because I’ve come to the view that my presence in meetings with Gov. Blagojevich is not productive for the meeting. I’ve been fully represented in meetings with the governor by Rep. Currie… and Rep. Hannig. They’re excellent legislators, they’ve done excellent work in those meetings.
“But don’t take it from me. Ask others that have been involved in these meetings with the governor. There’s something about my presence in the room with the governor that just brings on a whole new personality from the governor. Clearly not productive.”
In Illinois, 8,157 homes received at least one foreclosure-related notice in June, up 41.7 percent from the same month last year but down 15.6 percent from May, RealtyTrac Inc. said. Nationwide, 252,363 homes received at least one notice in June, up 53 percent from June 2007 but down 3 percent from May 2008, the company reported.
On Friday, July 11, at 11:30 a.m., in anticipation of the statewide referendum on whether to call a Constitutional Convention this November, Lt. Governor Pat Quinn will join in a debate hosted by the Union League Club and the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the Union League Club Main Lounge, 65 W. Jackson Blvd.
* Celebrating a Decade in Public Office: Lisa Madigan
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich continues to earn poor ratings from voters. This month, just 13% of Illinois voters give him good or excellent ratings, while 60% give him a poor rating. Blagojevich ranks as “Least Popular Governor” according to Rasmussen Reports By the Numbers.
[Emphasis added]
Another 26 percent rated his performance as “fair,” so using the traditional ratings method, we get 86 percent “negative”.
That compares to President Bush’s Illinois rating of 26 percent positive and 57 percent poor [with 17 percent saying he’s doing a “fair” job].
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin is currently cruising towards re-election in his home state. The Democrat leads Republican challenger Steve Sauerberg 61% to 27% in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll in the Prairie State.
When “leaners” are included Durbin leads 63% to 28%.
The incumbent leads by over thirty points among both men and women in Illinois. Durbin is backed by 93% of Democrats and 19% of Republicans. Sauerberg’s support comes from just 68% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats. Among unaffiliated voters, Durbin leads 52% to 24%.
Senator Barack Obama leads John McCain 50% to 37% in his home state of Illinois, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state. When “leaners” are included, Obama leads 52% to 41%.
As in many states, Obama has a strong lead among women in Illinois, but not among men. He leads 55% to 35% among women, but just 43% to 40% among male voters. […]
Most (56%) Illinois voters see getting the troops home from Iraq as more important than winning the war while 35% disagree and think winning the war is more important.
Fifty-seven percent (57%) favor drilling in offshore oil wells to ease gas prices, while 32% are opposed. Forty-eight percent (48%) of voters think it is at least somewhat likely that gas prices will decline if this practice is allowed, while 41% find this outcome unlikely.
…Adding… Considering the president’s numbers, it’s not surprising that a Bush fundraiser for Aaron Schock will not include a public appearance…
President George W. Bush is coming to Peoria on July 25 for a fundraiser for state Rep. Aaron Schock, a candidate for the 18th Congressional District.
The $500-per-person event will be at a private residence. Couples will have the opportunity to take photos with the president for $4,600. No public appearance is planned.
* 11:08 am - The House is preparing to vote on legislation that would allow the governor to finish some of the capital projects that were halted earlier this month. The House Democrats initially said (and continued saying it right up through yesterday) that they were not going to allow the governor to proceed with the projects because they were not pre-approved by the General Assembly, but the HDems appear to have backed off.
Here is the list of projects that were halted by the Capital Development Board and here is the House proposal. You can find some background on this fight by clicking here.
* 11:21 am - The governor’s office defends the decision to not veto out pay raises for himself and lawmakers…
“According to state statute, the amount authorized per year for each lawmaker shall be increased by a percentage equivalent to a cost of living increase,” said Kelley Quinn of Blagojevich’s budget office.
But that view is far different from what Blagojevich espoused in 2003, when he vetoed raises totaling $791,000 for himself and legislators.
“In these difficult times, when state agencies are being consolidated, when the number of state personnel is being reduced — in short, when others are being asked to sacrifice — this is not the time to give pay raises to the governor, the lieutenant governor, to the constitutional officers, to the men and women of the General Assembly, or to the Supreme Court, the Appellate Court or the Circuit Court judges,” Blagojevich said at the time.
The Illinois House is coming back to work next week to determine the fate of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s massive budget cuts.
House leaders say after lawmakers wrap up a special session today, they’ll come back for session Tuesday through Thursday of next week. They’ll decide then how to handle the $1.4 billion in budget cuts the governor made Wednesday.
*** 12:42 pm - *** Apparently, Senate President Emil Jones was not happy with the City of Chicago’s testimony yesterday against the gaming expansion bill and the capital bill…
“We’re going to put a tax on the mayor,” Jones told reporters as he walked past the pressbox in the Illinois Senate.
This was after Jones said the city of Chicago should have to send money to Springfield to help pay for the rest of the state, a reference (I think) to the city complaining about having to pay millions for a state gambling license under the expansion plan Jones wants.
*** 1:24 pm *** The House just voted down part of the gaming expansion bill. The vote on Senate Amendment 3 was 47-55. So much for that one.
* 1:28 pm - The Senate Executive Committee will likely take up another bill today to require insurance companies to cover autistm. A previous bill was caught up in legislative bickering over whether to allow the administration to write administrative rules.
* 1:31 pm - After passing the above-mentioned bill to allow the stalled capital projects, Speaker Madigan announced that the House will return next Tuesday and vote on the governor’s budget vetoes on Wednesday. The chamber is in the process of adjourning.
* 1:47 pm - Speaker Madigan will hold a press conference in about ten minutes. Check back.
Blagojevich says it’s “mindboggling” Madigan has put all his “resourcefulness and cleverness” to preventing the House from voting on a $34 billion capital construction program.
*** 2:04 pm *** House Speaker Michael Madigan just told reporters: “Given the conditions here in Springfield, it is my view that the proposal for the expansion of gaming is a dead issue.”
* Asked about the governor’s claim that Madigan is setting up a post-election income tax increase, the Speaker said: “I’m not going to support an income tax increase during a lame duck session of the Legislature.” Asked about next spring session, Madigan said “Next spring is next spring. It’s a long time away.”
* 2:53 pm - The Senate Executive Committee passed an amendment today to restart the horse racing industry’s subsidy from casinos. The committee also passed a bill to require insurance companies to cover autism.
*** 4:42 pm *** Senate President Emil Jones just said that he does not intend to bring the Senate back in to session next week unless the House passes some revenue enhancers. “We do not intend to come back next week because we have done our business.”
…Adding… I think what happens now is if the House doesn’t pass revenue bills and the Senate doesn’t come back to town, the vetoes of the Senate appropriations bills will stand. That means some bigtime cuts for the AG, SoS, treasurer, etc.
* Imagine, for a moment, that a friend was visiting from out of state. Let’s say this person had never been to Illinois and knew nothing about our politics. Let’s also say that your friend asked you to sum up Illinois politics with one word.
Michael J. Madigan is an old-school Democratic politician, the kind that believes a good compromise is one that has everyone walking away from the table angry, but in agreement. […]
Rod R. Blagojevich is a new-age Democratic politician, one who revels in the spotlight, is prone to talk about “win-win” policies and is loath to put his name on anything that could lead to political pain. […]
And that, in a nutshell, is one of the key reasons why the two don’t get along - the eternal battle between an optimist and pessimist.
Patterson admits there’s lots more, enough to fill a book. He’s certainly right about that point.
Blagojevich is definitely an “optimist,” but sometimes that optimism is a bit bizarre. After getting roundly booed in Quincy last year, for instance, the governor’s face was glowing as he exclaimed, “We should do this every day!”
* Patterson also delves a bit into how the fight has been made so personal…
Blagojevich, on the other hand, often has been accused of making it personal from the beginning. As a candidate in 2002, Blagojevich criticized Madigan getting taxpayer subsidies for a college pal’s livestock show. As governor, he’s derided the speaker’s daughter - Attorney General Lisa Madigan - fired the wife of the speaker’s top aide and slashed funding for the Illinois Arts Council run by Madigan’s wife.
Madigan’s staff and some of his top lieutenants have been getting personal with the governor for months, suggesting or outright saying that Blagojevich has some sort of mental illness, for instance. The Speaker, himself, usually doesn’t sink to those depths, but his people are putting out his message.
Now it’s your turn to put both men on the couch and come up with your own explanations for why they don’t get along.
* The governor issued a press release yesterday afternoon slamming the House for not approving his revenue generating proposals, even though the House had scheduled votes in committee later that day and even though the governor had already abandoned his pension obligation bond idea, which would’ve freed up $400 million. The reaction from both sides of the aisle was swift…
“There is something wrong with the mind of a person that drags 177 legislators down to Springfield to do some work and before we have a chance to act one way or another says, ‘You know what? I am going to do these cuts anyway,’ ” said state Rep. Lou Lang (D-Evanston).
But the House showed some wiggle room in transferring about $500 million in special dedicated funds to pad the state’s general fund — but not before gutting the governor’s original version that already received Senate approval in the spring. Madigan said the intent of the revised “fund sweeps” measure is to show a willingness to work with the governor on the idea. (It’s a blank slate — they still have to insert the language.) But Madigan’s caucus wants to spell out which funds could be swept and where the money would go. Otherwise, his members object to giving free reign to the governor to sweep about half a billion dollars and spend it on whatever he pleases. Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, a Chicago Democrat and point person on human services, said she would be willing to consider fund sweeps if it saved human services from the budget ax. The governor’s cuts on Wednesday did reduce funding for human services by $210 million, erasing increases for autism programs, substance abuse treatment and mental health services.
And earlier Wednesday, Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, made it clear the House would shoulder all the blame if it didn’t pass plans to generate more money and the governor was forced to make cuts. Senators met briefly in session Wednesday but took no action.
“If they don’t like the revenue that was passed, pass some other revenue,” Jones said. “But don’t sit there and put money in the budget for programs and tell people you’re going to do all these things but don’t put any money in the bank. That’s legal check-kiting.”
* Keep in mind that many of these “cuts” are actually reductions in proposed increases…
# $210 million for social services. Includes elimination of a 50-cent-an-hour rate increase for mental health direct-care workers and no funding increases for rape-prevention services and domestic-violence shelters.
# $100 million for senior citizens’ and veterans’ services. Includes elimination of expansion of the Elder Abuse Hotline and delayed payments for home-care workers for seniors.
# $230 million for economic development and transit. Includes reduced operating and administrative spending for the Lincoln Bicentennial and elimination of fare subsidies to mass-transit agencies to assist students and disabled people.
# $100 million for education. Includes elimination of grants for health-services education and reduced funding for community college districts.
Corey Novick, a former lawyer for the state’s child-welfare agency, is suing two aides to Gov. Blagojevich. His claim: They fired him in 2007 for cooperating with “the federal probe into illegal hiring.”
“Novick was questioned by the FBI regarding the state’s illegal hiring practices,” Novick’s federal whistle-blower suit states. “Defendants Robin Staggers and Victor Roberson ended Novick’s employment because of his cooperation.”
* To give you a bit of background, this is from a column I wrote back in 2005…
The Chicago Tribune disclosed the day before the governor’s speech that the feds had widened their probe of the Department of Children and Family Services with a fresh subpoena of hiring records and that federal prosecutors had sent an unusual letter claiming that “the government is conducting a grand jury investigation regarding allegations of criminal wrongdoing of Victor Roberson, Robin Staggers and Joe Cini in relation to public corruption.”
The subordinate told state investigators that Robin Staggers, the deputy director for human resources at the Department of Children and Family Services, hired people without having specific jobs for them, pressured an underling to hire someone and increased the use of interns who didn’t have to go through normal employment procedures.
* Blagojevich responded at the time to the revelation thusly…
“What we’re talking about here are requests for information, period. Nobody in this latest round of these requests has been accused of any wrongdoing,” he said. “Not the personnel director, he’s not been accused of any wrongdoing. Not his assistant, he’s not been accused of any wrongdoing. Or not Miss Staggers at DCFS, she’s not been accused of any wrongdoing.”
Look for the trial of Chris Kelly — a onetime top Blagojevich fund-raiser and adviser — to be delayed. Kelly was to go on trial in November on charges he cheated on his federal income taxes by paying off his gambling debts through his company, BCI Roofing. But his lawyer, Michael Monico, wants a delay until February because of other trials he has this fall, including that of former Ald. Edward Vrdolyak. Prosecutors would prefer January. A judge will decide.
That’s apparently why Daley is standing by his man — even after all of the second-guessing. Asked if Weis still enjoys his full confidence after six months on the job, the mayor said, “Oh, definitely. Definitely. He’s a very good superintendent.”
