A spot of good news for a change
Tuesday, Sep 9, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Let’s hope a majority of aldermanic spines remain visible long enough to kill this goofy idea…
Political opposition has given the boot — at least for now — to Mayor Daley’s proposal to drop the Denver boot threshold from three unpaid tickets to two.
The City Council’s Finance Committee took no action today on the mayor’s plan to squeeze scofflaws to put a $48 million dent in Chicago’s $420 million budget shortfall — and Ald. Bernard Stone (50th) thinks he knows why.
“They didn’t have the votes to carry it. A lot of us don’t want to vote for it. I don’t think you should boot a person who has two tickets and on goes the boot. I thought three was too little,” Stone said.
Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said the two-ticket threshold has “a disparate impact on poor and working people who have trouble paying their tickets in the first place.”
It’s beyond tough to successfully appeal a parking ticket in Chicago, no matter how bogus. So a whole lot of people would be in danger of being booted. This was about revenue, not justice.
* A new state law and a federal investigation appear to have put a stop to some outrageous towing fees in the south suburbs…
Towing companies that preyed on motorists at accident scenes in Chicago, sometimes charging more than $4,000 per tow, appear to have changed their ways since a new state law went into effect July 1.
One of the most egregious offenders, City Wide Auto Recovery in Blue Island, appears to have gone out of business.
It has allowed its corporate registration with the Illinois secretary of state to expire. The secretary of state’s office said the corporation was involuntarily dissolved July 11.
When you call City Wide’s phone number, a tape recording says the number no longer is in service.
A spokesman for State Farm Insurance, headquartered in Bloomington, Ill., reports the number of tow charges in excess of $1,000 is “way down.”
“We’ve seen a sharp decrease in the number of ridiculously high tow charges since July 1,” said Lori Reimers, a government affairs officer for State Farm.
* An advisory question on recall is off the ballot in DuPage…
DuPage County voters won’t get a chance to weigh in on the recall debate after all.
The county election commission is pulling off the Nov. 4 ballot an advisory question that asked voters whether they support recalling officials holding statewide offices. Currently, those officials cannot be removed from office by a vote of the people.
Election commission Executive Director Robert Saar said a review of the paperwork submitted to get the issue on the ballot uncovered too few signatures on the petitions. Supporters needed more than 21,000 signatures and garnered less than 7,000.
Cook County required 100,000 signatures for the recall ballot question, but supporters only collected 1,000. However, nobody objected to the Cook petitions.
Why is the failure of getting this measure onto the ballot good news? Because it won’t distract attention from the very real issue of the constitutional convention vote. At least, that’s my opinion.
* This, meanwhile, is pandering in the extreme…
State Republican leaders have proposed legislation that would ban family members of elected officials from being appointed to political office.
The law is intended to prevent such situations as the one that tapped Cook County Board President Todd Stroger to replace his father on the ballot two years ago.
I can’t see how this idea would be anywhere close to being constitutional.
- Wumpus - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 9:47 am:
The ban on family members is just an attempt to bring attention to the issue and show that the GOP is better than the Dems. No chance of passing, but at least it will look nice on campaign literature.
- The Doc - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 9:54 am:
The new boot law will pass. Daley doesn’t let his votes go to the city council unless he’s certain they’ll pass, which is why he pulled it off the table. Apparently, the administration is “tweaking” the bill, which is code for pressuring non-compliant aldercreatures to accept a very similar version of said bill. For Burke to claim he had no idea why the bill was yanked prior to a vote by his committee is laughable.
- Levois - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 9:55 am:
Isn’t there a law against say a President appointing a member of his family to his cabinet. A la JFK appointing his brother RFK to attorney general. Is that unconstitutional?
- Legal Eagle - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 10:09 am:
Banning elected officials’ family members from having any public position is an asinine idea! It sure is family-unfriendly. What would it do to the many two-career couples, when one gets elected to something, and the spouse, quite on his or her own, gets appointed to a board or panel in their professional field? Can’t the GOP come up with any substantive ideas anymore?
- VanillaMan - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 10:22 am:
The GOP Guarantee
When political parties nominate excellent candidates and do so consistently -
When political parties take a stand and refuse to nominate or renominate a poor candidate regardless of whether they can win -
When political parties “guarantee” their nominees and back up that guarantee -
Then voters will prefer a party-nominated candidate over a family member. As political parties increasingly show voters they prefer winning elections over qualified candidates, defend undefendable behavior just to win elections, they do not generate support from voters. This huge hole in our election system leaves voters unfamiliar with candidates preferring family members, since there is no other supportive criteria to make their decision.
The GOP can play this anti-nepotism game. If they really want to win voter support however, they should promote a signed guarantee with each of their nominees. That guarantee would clearly state that if the nominee fails in their elected office, becomes indicted while in office, is exposed as unethical, they will not be renominated by the GOP.
Then enforce it by pulling party nominations from scumbags who win GOP primaries.
It is a two-part process. Write it up, then enforce it. If the GOP had done this a decade ago, voters would have seen them invoke this guarantee against George Ryan and have seen the Illinois GOP take a principled and meaningful stand against corruption.
What does the GOP have to lose? They don’t have a strong chance of winning a statewide election, right?
- Snidely Whiplash - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 10:44 am:
Rich said:
“State Republican leaders have proposed legislation that would ban family members of elected officials from being appointed to political office.
“The law is intended to prevent such situations as the one that tapped Cook County Board President Todd Stroger to replace his father on the ballot two years ago.
“I can’t see how this idea would be anywhere close to being constitutional.
I heartily agree. You cannot deprive someone of their right to hold public office based on birth. There are other ways of preventing these abuses, ways which would actually be legal and effective. This sounds like a cheap stunt to me.
Ideas? (Not endorsing any, just throwing out some possibiliies.) Start by first selecting the individual who came second to the leaving office holder in the primary election. If there was an uncontested primary, require a caucus (run by election authorities) of voters of the party of the vacating office holder. Much cheaper and quicker than a special election.
- Snidely Whiplash - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 10:54 am:
“Political opposition has given the boot — at least for now — to Mayor Daley’s proposal to drop the Denver boot threshold from three unpaid tickets to two.”
Wow, pay hundreds of dollars in fines and costs for $100 in parking tickets, and lose access to your vehicle for several days, to boot (pun intended). What a great idea, especially when the entire system seems designed to discourage people from contesting these tickets and forcing them to either pay them outright, or wait until the fines quadruple, the boot to be applied, and pay 8-10 times the fine (or more) to get your car back.
The boot was a drastic measure meant to apply to obvious scofflaws with dozens of tickets who thumbed their noses at ineffective means of enforcement, not some poor schmuck who may not even have known about 2 lousy tickets which may have blown off their windshield. Just another attempt to shake down innocent citizens for more blood money to feed the Machine.
- cermak_rd - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 12:33 pm:
Snidely Whiplash,
If the tickets blow off the car, doesn’t the city warn the individual by mail about the unpaid tickets? And if not, why not?
In Berwyn, if you don’t pay your tickets, they send out a warning prior to any further enforcement action. Since your mailing address is supposed to match your car registration, it should work.
- The Doc - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 1:17 pm:
Cermak,
The city does provide warning, but it frequently arrives weeks, and sometimes well over a month, after the ticket was issued. And in the interim, one additional ticket , under Hizzoner’s scheme, results in the boot. Seem reasonable? Methinks not.
Also, consider those who contest tickets. That process is time consuming, and can drag on for over a month. Meanwhile, you’ve already got one strike against you, with one left. It’s very much conceivable to envision a scenario where someone receives a ticket erroneously (and it occurs with alarming frequency), contests it, and in the meanwhile gets another ticket that results in all of the fees and hassle associated with the boot.
Look elsewhere, Mayor Daley. No creativity - simply attempting to gauge the public with another sneaky, punitive, Orwellian scheme.
- Snidely Whiplash - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 1:34 pm:
Cermak,
Well, yes and no. They give a notice to the person to whom the plates are registered at the address to which the vehicle is registered. But, as the Doc said, it comes well after the period to contest the ticket expires, something like 4-6 weeks later, by which time your fine is now $200 and by which time a second ticket may already have been issued.
If you didn’t know you had the ticket to begin with, you are now advised that you owe an uncontestable debt to the city for an exhorbitant amount and, unless you have a day to take off and go downtown to sort things out, it can take 20 hours over several days on the phone to get the right person to figure things out. Still, of course, you either pay up or get the boot.
I really don’t have a problem with the defaults and penalties if a ticket isn’t contested, since its hard for a city of 3 million to absolutely ensure that the driver will see the ticket on his car and that a later notice will get to the actual vehicle owner. I do have a problem with basically confiscating someone’s car and charging them all the associated and astronomical fees for it over two lousy parking tickets. Even if someone knew about them and didn’t have the money to pay them, we are still talking about TWO tickets, which can happen to anybody. We are not talking about scofflaws here. Scofflaws are people who just don’t give a hoot about the law and are basically daring authorities to do something about their constant abuses. In other words, the punishment should fit the crime, so to speak.
- PhilCollins - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 3:25 pm:
In the majority of the states, whenever a vacancy occurs, in a legislature, county board, or city council, a special election is held. If Illinois did this, no relatives would be appointed because no one would be appointed.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 5:50 pm:
The idea of lowering the threshold is all about revenue, certainly. Here’s the deal: On the boot list, there are hundreds of worthless cars with thousands of dollars of tickets. They get booted, the car’s abandoned. No revenue.
Get a Board of Trade dude’s Benz with two tickets, he’ll pay it.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 5:55 pm:
–Then enforce it by pulling party nominations from scumbags who win GOP primaries.–
Why you hatin’ on people you don’t agree with, VMan? Overturning democratic elections? Not only illegal, but perhaps — oh, a lot of things. You could write a little less, too.
- GOP'er - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 6:03 pm:
The Repubs in Springfield hadn’t done anything really dopey for about 10 minutes to I guess they figured they would come out on this “anti-nepotism” thing.
Geesh. If the GOP goofs down there can’t find anything productive to do, why don’t they at least give their state paychecks back. It’s all silly gimmicks with those guys.
Absolutely it’s unconstitutional. On its face. Tom Cross for one is supposedly a lawyer. How do you push something you know is wrong from the get go?
As a Republican who backed W Bush after H.P. Bush (and wouldn’t mind seeing Jeb Bush run), I’m not really comfortable beating this nepotism horse anyway.
Are Watson and Cross TRYING to lose more seats this year? Wait, don’t answer that.
- ANONYMOUS - Tuesday, Sep 9, 08 @ 7:28 pm:
The election bill does not say anything about family members. It requires earlier withdrawal from ballot (unless afflicted with disabling condition) and special primary elections after withdrawal. Let people decide not ward and township bosses. Read the bill, not the press account.