• 4:02 pm- Take a look SB1103. That’s the Approp the House passed a couple weeks ago to keep state parks open and restore cuts to other programs. The bill was just popped out of Senate Rules. Word is the Senate will go along with the earlier House plan. SB790 is the fund sweeps bill passed by the House.
Bottom line: Weeks of huffing, two days of threats and talks and it’s status quo ante?
• 4:10 pm- Speaker Madigan just confirmed the above scenario. The House will be at ease while waiting for the Senate to follow thru.
MJM also said he didn’t know whether or for how long the House might return for “veto session”. They’ve dealt with the vetoes made to date.
…Adding… Some interesting twists and turns during today’s negotiations. More on that tomorrow.
* 4:31 pm - The Senate is now taking up the package.
* 5:16 pm - Fund sweep bill passed 40-15.
* 5:2 pm - Appropriations bill passed 55-0. These are concurrence votes so they don’t require House action. Next move: Blagojevich.
* 2:34 pm - It’s still early in the fiscal year, and things like this can even themselves out over time (I’ve seen it before), and $200 million isn’t that gigantic in the big budget picture, but this is from an Illinois Dept. of Revenue press release…
National Economy Weighs Heavily on Illinois Revenue Collections
Year to Date Calculations equate to $200 million shortfall for Fiscal Year 2009
SPRINGFIELD – As a poor national economy weighs heavily on state revenues across the country, Illinois is experiencing a triple threat of lower-than-projected revenue for the first two months of the fiscal year. Sluggish income tax collections, along with weak sales tax on an annual basis, would result in as much as $200 million short of the state’s already conservative projections.
The Illinois Department of Revenue (IDOR) reports that revenue from individual income tax is growing at a rate just over 1.2 percent, which is below OMB’s projected 3.3 percent growth anticipated in the FY09 budget. Income tax makes up the largest portion of Illinois’ revenue, and thus has the most influence on a balanced budget. A high statewide unemployment rate at 7.3 percent and stagnant wages suggest this trend could only get worse.
Sales tax revenue for the same period of FY09 was .5 percentage points below the level projected for the FY09 budget, the result of a decline in consumer spending due to rising unemployment, declining home equity, and stagnant wages. IDOR suggests that the ongoing financial market crisis will likely exacerbate already weak credit conditions, meaning further constraining consumer spending. Higher food prices mean people will spend less on other goods.
Finally, the corporate income tax makes the department wary. Since about 10 percent of the corporate income tax comes from the financial services sector, IDOR is concerned that September’s volatile stock market will further hurt FY09 revenue.
For other revenue sources, IDOR also noted that revenue from the real estate transfer tax, cigarette tax, and motor fuel tax is down.
* 2:39 pm - More from the SJ-R, which was apparently slipped the numbers in advance…
Gov. Rod Blagojevich said the budget lawmakers sent him this summer was more than $2 billion out of whack, and he cut $1.4 billion of that out in deep slashing that lawmakers are now trying to reverse. This revenue shortfall could only exacerbate the problem.
Revenue spokesman Mike Klemens said it’s iffy to make projections about the full budget year this early, but the department is basing its estimates on the most stable sources of revenue.
“Just watch out,” he cautions about the rest of the year.
The agency expects the situation could get worse, with motor fuel and real estate transfer tax money also down, financial markets struggling and consumer facing growing spending pressures.
Interestingly enough, the House and Senate are working on crafting a supplemental approp bill and a funds transfer proposal while the Dept. of Revenue makes an unusual early pronouncement of gloom.
* 11:38 am - The Senate is now taking up SB 780, which contains the governor’s language in his earlier amendatory veto of the ethics bill. Listen or watch here.
* 11:46 am - Sen. Ira Silverstein (D-Chicago) is pointing out that there were promises made yesterday in Executive Committee that the bill would be worked on first. The sponsor, Sen. Jim DeLeo, admitted yesterday that the legislation still needed plenty of tweaks.
* 11:49 am - Sen. Don Harmon is pointing out to the sponsor that he is now in the process of negotiating the bill with the governor’s office, so there’s no need for a rush. He also rightly pointed to the bill’s effective date, June of next year, as yet another reason to hold off passage. Harmon claimed moving this bill today would “undermind our negotiating position with the House.”
Harmon asked DeLeo to take the bill out of the record. DeLeo said that this bill is just the “beginning” of the process.
* 11:52 am - Harmon: “I am not accustomed to opposing ethics bills, but I’m opposing this one” at this time. Urges “Present” vote.
* 11:54 am - Sen. Matt Murphy (R) - Wants a “Yes” vote in order to move the process forward.
* 11:59 am - Sen. Susan Garrett (D) says she will support the bill.
* 12:12 pm - Dem Congressman Bill Foster’s first TV ad of the fall season…
* 12:23 pm - Hey, Rickey, I’m listening. lol And I already am in Hell. It’s called covering the Illinois GA.
*** 12:40 pm *** The governor’s ethics bill passed the Senate 50-1-5. Next move: House. If the House refuses to move the bill, then could another special session be in sight? Stay tuned.
* 2:04 pm - Statement from Gov. Rod Blagojevich on the Senate’s passage of the autism mandated coverage bill…
“I would like to commend the Illinois Senate for making the right choice this morning and voting in favor of families with autistic children. By approving the amendment to House Bill 2070, the members of the Senate have once again stepped up and shown that they, like myself, want to take action to make sure these families have the opportunity to receive the care their children need. Parents with autistic children cannot afford to wait on the officials who are elected to serve them to decide whether or not their children deserve to have this vital health care coverage. That is why I strongly urge the leadership of the Illinois House of Representatives to finally take the same positive action on this legislation, now.”
* 2:27 pm - More on the Senate’s ethics vote from the SJ-R…
Senators who pushed the idea said lawmakers need to capitalize on the momentum of yesterday’s ethics vote and go further to clean up Illinois government’s ugly reputation.
“Why not go the next step? Don’t vote this down just because Blagojevich thought of it,” said Sen. Rickey Hendon, D-Chicago.
But critics – including lawmakers who had played a big role in developing HB824 – said this measure wasn’t ready to be voted on.
Sen. Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, predicted it would go nowhere in the House in its current form, and said lawmakers would be wiser to negotiate an agreement instead of sending different bills between the two chambers.
* 3:05 pm - From the governor’s statement on the Senate-approved ethics bill…
“I urge the House to take advantage of this historic
opportunity and pass this legislation now before the
election. The voters and the taxpayers should expect
nothing less. It is my hope that the members of the
House act now and pass these comprehensive and
sweeping reforms.”
Election Day will be something of an afterthought for tens of millions of Americans — they’ll be voting well ahead of time.
In fact, six weeks out from Election Day, some voters in Kentucky, South Carolina and Virginia already are done. | Video
Nationwide, about a third of the electorate is expected to vote early this year, thanks to expanded early voting provisions and fewer restrictions on absentee voting, researchers project. In all, more than 30 states allow any registered voter to cast an early ballot, some in person and others by mail. […]
It’s a trend that is fundamentally changing the home stretch of American political campaigns. October surprises? They’d better come in September if campaigns want to influence every vote. Get out the vote operations? They’re already under way in some states.
“You can’t hold your big guns right to the end,” said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Oregon. “When up to 25 or 30 percent of the electorate has already cast a ballot, it might not be wise to wait until the last minute” to make a game-changing play for votes.
Even the presidential debate series, which begins Friday and runs through Oct. 15, will come after many have voted. However, experts say the earliest voters tend to be party loyalists who wouldn’t be swayed by debate performances anyway.
* The question: Should Illinois keep early voting or drop it? Explain.
* We have two relatively recent polls from Democrat Debbie Halvorson and Republican Martin Ozinga in the 11th Congressional District contest.
* The Halvorson poll is slightly older. Taken September 14-16 of 500 likely voters, Halvorson’s poll shows her leading 43-35.
* Ozinga’s poll is more recent - Sept. 17-18 vs 14-16 - but the survey sample size is smaller - 400 likely voters vs. 500 likelies. It’s impossible to discern how each campaign is defining “likely” voters in their screens, so that could be one reason for the discrepancy. Ozinga claims Halvorson’s lead is just two points - 38-36.
* Judy Baar Topinka actually won the 11th District two years ago 50.3 to 49.7 by almost exactly a thousand votes over Rod Blagojevich. Considering she lost the state by about ten points, that’s pretty good for the GOPs. The following will give you an idea of how closely divided the district is. From the Halvorson pollster’s analysis…
The generic ballot in this district is virtually even (38% Democrat / 40% Republican). Those numbers are better than you’d expect in a Republican-held district
* From the Ozinga polling memo…
The Presidential ballot underscores the competitive nature of this district.
The Presidential ballot is a statistical tie (44% McCain/43% Obama) in an open seat district in Obama’s home state.
* And here’s some back and forth on TV messaging. From Halvorson…
Halvorson’s television buy is doing a good job of expanding her personal popularity, but she needs the resources to sustain it. She currently receives a 38% favorable / 20% unfavorable rating – an increase of 14 points in her favorable rating since May. While Halvorson’s ratio of favorables to unfavorables is nearly 2:1, Ozinga’s unfavorable rating is nearly as high as his favorable rating (28% favorable / 22% unfavorable).
* Ozinga…
Despite significant spending on the part of the Halvorson campaign, Debbie Halvorson holds a tenuous two point lead on the ballot (36% Ozinga/38% Halvorson). This represents a net 15 point improvement for Ozinga since our April survey (26% Ozinga/43% Halvorson) and a net five point improvement since August (33% Ozinga/40% Halvorson).
* Halvorson’s slightly earlier poll showed no movement…
Halvorson has maintained her vote share since May (43% Halvorson / 32% Ozinga). The small amount of movement in Ozinga’s vote is within the poll’s margin of error, in spite of his strong spending on television ads (more than $400,000) and his extensive direct mail
program, which has included more than ten pieces and has been heavily negative.
* Ozinga’s poll did show movement. Lots of it…
Since April, Halvorson has dropped five points (43% to 38%) and Ozinga has climbed ten (26% to 36%). In addition, John McCain is holding his own in IL-11, despite Obama’s favorite son status in Illinois.
* Halvorson’s poll included the Green Party candidate…
Halvorson leads Ozinga by a 43% to 35% margin, with Green Party candidate Jason Wallace at 6%.
* There was no reference to Wallace in the Ozinga press release, but Gov. Blagojevich rated a mention…
Halvorson’s negative attacks on Marty Ozinga have not improved her ballot numbers and have instead reinforced her image as a typical politician who is inexorably tied to the incredibly unpopular Rod Blagojevich (15% fav/72% unfav).
* Halvorson poll methodology…
Anzalone Liszt Research conducted n=500 live telephone interviews with likely 2008 general election voters in Illinois CD-11. Interviews were conducted between September 14-16, 2008. Respondents were selected at random with interviews apportioned geographically based on expected voter turnout. Expected margin of sampling error is ±4.4% with a 95% confidence level.
* Ozinga poll methodology…
Public Opinion Strategies conducted a telephone survey among 400 likely voters in Illinois’ 11th Congressional District. The survey was conducted September 17-18, 2008 and has a margin of error of +4.9% in 95 out of 100 cases.
*** UPDATE 3 *** Our very own Kevin Fanning caught up with Treasurer Giannoulias, an Obama protege, and asked him about the McCain ad flap…
“One of the things that keep people out of politics is sleaze and mud-slinging. I experienced this when I ran, with people trying to make my family look dirty. I’m biased because I’m a friend of Barack Obama, but I thought the ad was ridiculous. It never mentioned what Daley did for Obama, I’m pretty sure it just said something like Bill Daley, brother of Mayor Daley. I actually spoke to Bill Daley this morning, and he told me that John McCain actually helped him become Commerce Secretary. The ad also mentioned something about Barack being responsible for Governor Blagojevich’s failure to lead. Everyone in Illinois knows that is ludicrous. “
In response to a recent ad from the McCain For President campaign, Mayor Richard Daley said Tuesday that “people are desperate.” […]
At an unrelated event on Tuesday, Daley said, “If people throw mud, it comes back in their face.”
The mayor suggested that perhaps there should be more talk of the Keating Five investigation in the early ’90s — which included Sen. John McCain. It was, in Daley’s words, “… the biggest example of greed … as so many lost their homes.”
*** UPDATE 1 *** Bill Daley takes another whack at McCain via CNN…
Daley accused McCain of hypocrisy for attacking Obama on lobbyists: “When I was at [telecom company] SBC, I had to hire [McCain campaign manager] Rick Davis to see John McCain,” he said. “He wouldn’t see anyone unless you hired one of his lobbyist friends. Telecom was his and Rick Davis was his telecom lobbyist. That was in ‘02, ‘03, ‘04.”
***************************
* Bill Daley has been drawn into the Obama-McCain presidential contest, and it appears that McCain goofed in his TV ad, whether deliberately or not. I posted the ad yesterday, but here it is again…
Daley’s son, William Daley Jr., is a former lobbyist for Fannie Mae. Daley Jr. is now with Morgan Stanley, and he is registered with Cook County and the State of Illinois as a lobbyist for the firm.
“The whole thing is an outright lie,” said Daley, who is furious with a new anti-Barack Obama ad released by the John McCain campaign that focuses on Chicago’s shady politics and its political machine. […]
Quoth Daley: McCain “cuts an ad making it look like I’m a thief and a gangster like Rezko” — that would be Tony Rezko, the former campaign fund-raiser for Obama and Gov. Blagojevich who was convicted on federal charges in June.
Added Daley: “The ad claims I’m a lobbyist. I’ve never been a lobbyist! My son, Bill, was a lobbyist five years ago. I don’t know what they’re talking about,” Daley told Sneed.
“A year and a half ago, he [McCain] called me the greatest U.S. commerce secretary ever, at a conference being held at Deer Valley,” Daley said. “I certainly thought he was being extreme, but he even voted for my confirmation as U.S. commerce secretary when he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee!” […]
“This past March, I even went over to visit McCain at his Hilton Hotel fund-raiser — and walked away with an autographed picture!” […]
Daley, who is identified as Obama’s economic adviser, is furious with being associated with Rezko, described in the ad as a convicted felon — and Obama’s patron and money man. Furthermore, he’s included in a list that describes Blagojevich as having a legacy of federal and state investigations.
But the suggestion that Obama is a politician in the classic Chicago mold is way off base. He wasn’t a machine candidate in his bid for the Illinois Senate in 1996, and he won the 2004 nomination for the U.S. Senate seat in a heavily contested primary without Daley’s support. Though he now enjoys the support of establishment Democrats, Obama is a man governed by his conscience, not by his associations.
Obama wasn’t “born of the corrupt Chicago political machine,” and that makes his rise all the more remarkable. But the McCain camp is betting voters know less about Obama than they think they know about Chicago, which can usually be summed up in three words: Dead people vote.
Chicago, regrettably, deserves that rap. Obama does not.
The Chicago Machine concept is one that Republicans in Illinois had long urged the McCain campaign to tell the nation, noting the dysfunction of Democratic-controlled Illinois government. Yet it also is a premise that McCain draws overly broadly in the ad and one that risks confusing voters unfamiliar with the day-to-day players in Chicago politics.
The Obama campaign had anticipated the Chicago Machine card would be played in the campaign and the candidate, himself, noted earlier this year that he felt he had done well in rising politically “without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics.” […]
Obama has worked to distance himself from Blagojevich and notably invited three potential challengers to the governor’s possible 2010 re-election bid to speak at the recent Democratic National Convention. But Obama also has said little about the Blagojevich-led Democratic debacle in Springfield that has largely kept state government in a stalemate.
Obama was not spawned by a Chicago “machine” ward organization. His Hyde Park-Kenwood community is one of the few “independent” outposts in the city. In his early political career, as a state senator, Obama steered clear of local entanglements. He ran and lost a U.S. House race without Mayor Daley’s backing.
The remnants of the Daley machine — a confederation of political families — the best known named Madigan, Lipinski and Hynes — did not back Obama in his U.S. Senate Democratic primary bid, though he did have as his top consultant David Axelrod, Mayor Daley’s key adviser.
As a U.S. senator, Obama rarely used his popularity to force change in the local culture of corruption.
This John McCain ad is mostly accurate and largely pointless.
The one serious distortion is in claiming that Barack Obama was “born” of the Chicago machine. Obama was actually an independent outsider who challenged the party establishment, both in running for the Illinois Senate and in unsuccessfully opposing U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush. Obama did use hardball tactics on occasion but was not embraced by the party apparatus until later in his career.
Three of the four names included here do no damage to the senator from Illinois and serve mainly to reinforce the impression that Obama swims with sharks. Bill Daley may be a lobbyist and the brother of Mayor Richard Daley, but he is a former commerce secretary with a solid reputation. State Sen. Emil Jones gave Obama a boost early in his career, in part by assigning him to shepherd ethics legislation through the legislature. Obama has no connection to allegations that Jones has helped some of his own family members on the state payroll. And while Blagojevich is Obama’s governor — indeed, he is the governor of Oprah Winfrey and Mike Ditka and every other Illinois resident — he and Obama are not close politically.
Rezko is the exception, a major albatross for Obama. He was a key fundraiser for Obama and sold him a patch of land adjacent to Obama’s home — a deal that the Democratic nominee has called a “boneheaded mistake.” But the Chicago businessman, who was convicted of corruption charges in June, was not under investigation at the time of these dealings.
While the ad is a stretch, McCain is trying to tie Obama to the specter of ethically challenged big-city machine politics, undoubtedly hoping the word “Chicago” will turn off suburban and rural voters.
* Despite all the parallel universe pronouncements emanating from the governor’s office, Statehouse reporters didn’t even come close to buying the official spin about the Senate’s override yesterday of Blagojevich’s ethics amendatory veto.
In a 55-0 defeat for Gov. Blagojevich, the Senate Monday rejected his rewrite of an ethics package and reinstituted an earlier ban on political contributions from big state contractors who have been the governor’s financial lifeblood.
“This shows he has zero credibility on the issue,” said Comptroller Dan Hynes, who was one of the guiding forces behind the new restrictions.
In an overwhelming rebuke of scandal-tarred Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Illinois lawmakers on Monday approved the state’s first ban on campaign donations from supporters seeking lucrative state contracts.
The vote is a stinging rebuke to Blagojevich, who had vetoed the ethics bill while offering what he said was a superior alternative. Critics said that move was actually designed to kill the reform and keep in place an unrestricted political system that Blagojevich has used to raise millions of campaign dollars.
* Meanwhile, as I told you yesterday, the Senate Executive Committee advanced the governor’s AV proposal as an amendment…
The Senate Executive Committee advanced a bill including his ethics ideas to the Senate floor Monday evening, possibly setting up a vote today.
Blagojevich applauded the Senate for advancing his ideas while playing down the significance of the ethics override vote.
“The General Assembly didn’t really move the ball forward. They only followed my lead and are just now catching up with something that I did two months ago,” Blagojevich said in a statement.
If that’s voted on today, we could be in session a while longer.
[Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform] testified against the legislation, saying reform groups continue to meet with the governor’s office to refine the ideas, but that they’re not ready to become law. Reformers prefer an across-the-board limit on contributions each election, as is the case for federal races and in most states.
That bill’s sponsor, Sen. James DeLeo, D-Chicago, said if the Legislature wants ethics reform, it should go all out.
“If you do business in government, if you make money off the taxpayers, don’t contribute,” DeLeo said.
Cindi Canary… said it felt odd, but she had to oppose the [governor’s] new measure during a Senate committee Monday evening. She said the more expansive ethics legislation is “not ready for prime time, yet.”
She said she supports the concept but believes the governor’s proposal isn’t the right vehicle for enacting contribution limits on legislators. Banning state contractors from donating to elected officials who have no control over state contracts could invite a legal challenge based on the First Amendment that protects free speech, she said. She also questioned the fallout of prohibiting active state legislators from also working in some public sector jobs but not others. And she said the one aspect that would be ready to go if it were proposed as a stand-alone measure is the portion that would clarify the system of approving legislative pay raises.
I don’t have the energy right now to go into my thoughts on what the Governor will likely do next. But I can’t help but think that, regardless of what his next steps may be, that he would have been a lot better off just signing this bill in the first place.
The Senate also voted to override an amendatory veto on another measure requiring stricter disclosure for campaign committees. Blagojevich had changed that bill to ban campaign contributions from any government employee, state or local. That measure, without the governor’s change, goes to the House.
Sen. Donne Trotter, a Chicago Democrat and budget negotiator, said the Senate Democrats found $42 million of that $221 million that they would like to spend in a different way than approved by the House. That includes $37 million the House included to reimburse mass transit districts for the free rides granted to seniors and people with disabilities enacted earlier this year. The Senate Democrats would take that out and shift the funding, for instance, to increase the amount of money for college grants through the Monetary Award Program. The House also would restore funding for constitutional officers at 100 percent of the original funding level, while the Senate Democrats would restore them at 75 percent.
Republicans are involved in the budget negotiations. According to Patty Schuh, spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson, the GOP Caucus prioritizes restoring funding for state parks, historic sites and human services. But members argue that it doesn’t make sense to restore funding to the parks and historic sites and then sweep money from the special fund dedicated to the Department of Natural Resources.
— Rejected the governor’s third effort to require insurance coverage of autism treatment, even though he called a special session Monday morning specifically on that issue.
— Voted 55-0 to allow another ethics bill to proceed without the governor’s proposed ban on political donations by state and local government employees, saying it went too far.
“The governor’s veto basically had no rational point of view why he vetoed it,” said Sen. Terry Link, D-Waukegan, in pushing for the override.
— By the same vote, overrode Blagojevich vetoes that would have required some hospitals to provide more discounts to uninsured patients, and that would have forced schools to develop policies to deal with students with severe food allergies.
Blagojevich said in a statement he was “extremely disappointed” by the Senate votes, calling the food allergy vote a “regrettable action.”
* My weekly syndicated newspaper column kicks off an election-season series about the upcoming vote on an Illinois constitutional convention…
There is a defect in the Illinois Constitution that is so fundamentally fatal that it practically begs voters to approve a state constitutional convention this November.
You cannot correct this flaw by throwing every incumbent out of office. The prospect of legislating a solution is nil.
The problem is that the Illinois Constitution has allowed three people to accumulate infinitely more power than the framers ever dreamt possible.
Those three people are the House speaker, the Senate president and the governor.
The problem was exacerbated in 1980, when voters were misled into approving a constitutional amendment that slashed the size of the General Assembly by a third. Before then, there were three House members in each Senate district, and both major parties were assured of holding at least one of those seats.
Republicans in Chicago, who currently have almost no voice in any governmental body, all had at least one GOP state representative. The same was true for Democrats in DuPage. But the voters decided that fewer legislators was a better idea.
The independent thinkers were mostly wiped out in 1982, the first election after the Cutback Amendment took effect. A few months later, a brilliant Democratic politician named Michael Madigan was elected House speaker. Madigan was eventually nicknamed “The Velvet Hammer” for the way he consolidated power over the now much more easily governable House.
Ten years later, a new district map allowed the Senate Republicans to seize control from the Democrats and their leader decided to wage war on Madigan’s House. The Senate used the war to justify passing a new set of rules that stripped rank-and-file members of numerous basic rights. Those powers now were completely in the hands of Senate President Pate Philip.
The House Republicans essentially adopted the Senate GOP’s rules when they took control two years later. Madigan took back the House in 1996 and kept the Republican rules in place.
No bill or amendment can advance without the approval of the speaker or the president.
Members are simply powerless.
Throughout time, the legislative party leaders also learned how to control who would be elected to the General Assembly. Once elected, they are beholden to their leaders for literally everything.
Something else happened during this time period. All state budgets were negotiated behind closed doors by the House speaker, the Senate president and the governor. The multibillion-dollar budgets were then presented “as is” to members, who would dutifully pass it so they could leave town for the summer. Then other issues were added to the budget negotiations, and pretty soon all big issues were being decided by the three men.
And then Rod Blagojevich was elected governor.
Blagojevich despised Madigan while he was in the Illinois House during the early 1990s, and he set out to use his new power to fight Madigan at every turn.
Blagojevich has sought to expand the power of his office ever since, and he has accelerated the pace since being re-elected in 2006. He has called umpteen special sessions merely as a tactic to publicly humiliate Madigan. He has abused his amendatory veto power to add radical proposals to legislation in order to put Madigan on the spot. He also has recently abused his power to issue executive orders in an attempt to cut off campaign contributions to the Democratic Party of Illinois, which Madigan controls.
All along, Senate President Emil Jones has used his own rock-solid control of the Senate to back Blagojevich’s every move. And Madigan has retaliated by stifling almost all legislative progress this year.
The power the three men have carved out for their respective offices likely will remain after they’re gone. That’s the thing about expansions of power - it’s a genie that’s almost impossible to put back into the bottle.
Every 20 years, Illinois voters are given the right to call for a constitutional convention. Delegates then are elected and voters have the final say about the endproduct. It’s a reasonable system,and we simply can’t wait another 20 years for change.
We essentially have an elected dictatorship of three men. Our only hope of breaking that stranglehold is a constitutional convention that can force democratic reforms on the process.
So please, vote “yes” this November on the constitutional convention.
I’ll propose some reform ideas in my next column.
* Scott Reeder of the Small Newspaper Group had the same idea for his column this week. Here’s an excerpt, but go read the whole thing…
The drafters of the state constitution wisely mandated that every 20 years the voters must vote on whether to call a constitutional convention. It’s the ultimate way voters can hold state government accountable.
I’ve heard some political insiders say the “crazies” would take over a constitutional convention and talk about guns, abortion and gays — and neglect everything else.
Gee, sometimes, democracy can be inconvenient.
Sometimes if you want your issue debated, you have to listen to someone else’s. Besides, a constitutional convention requires that any changes to the constitution be approved by voters.
Voters aren’t going to accept a constitution that drives jobs out the state through unreasonable business taxes or leaves retired folks without the pensions they earned.
Those asking you to vote against a constitutional convention would have you believe that a group of politicians in Springfield are more likely to bring reform – than you, the voters.
A review of the current system will clearly point out the basic flaws in the governing process in Springfield. Here are a few of the very obvious examples:
1) There is too much power vested in the four leaders, and individual General Assembly members have no say over the issues before them. This was caused by the ability to amass huge war chests by the leaders, which is then doled out to the willing members in exchange for compliance with the leaders requests. Term limits should apply to all leadership positions.
2) The governor’s office should not be able to rewrite legislation, change priorities clearly sent to the governor’s office by the legislature or misuse public dollars by punishing individual legislators or segments of the General Assembly.
There are other issues that can be reviewed and modified by the delegates elected to the 2010 Constitutional Convention, and I believe that a better system of governance can be established in Illinois.
Now is the time to act. The system is truly broken and it needs a total bipartisan review and overhaul.
The piece, which also appeared in the Tribune, was written by Al Ronan, former House member and bigtime Statehouse lobbyist.
* Illinois Republicans Worry About Future of Bailout Bill
BIGGERT: We’ll have to put liquidity back into the system so it’s going to affect us all. Not just our homes and jobs, but our retirement, savings, any type of investment that we have, even student loans and our pensions.
That’s according to today’s Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. which says that while the Collinsville Republican is “not exactly a fresh face,” he has still “emerged this session as one of the GOP’s go-to-guys on the party’s all-consuming issue of energy and gasoline prices.”
Here’s the rest from Roll Call: “Shimkus can give a partisan whack with the best of them, but he has also earned the respect of some Democrats, who see him as someone whom they can work with next year
I mean, if you’re going to have a bailout, let’s take the time to debate this thing. You know, let’s not push it down our throats after one or two days.
The agency announced Monday it has begun test-driving a digital advertising display board, mounted on the curb side of the No. 124 bus, along the Navy Pier route. The board is part of a 10-year deal the CTA inked with Titan Outdoor this year to sell digital advertising on its bus and rail systems.
