* 2:16 pm - An Illinois appellate court has just ruled that former Gov. George Ryan can keep part of his pension.
The court held that since Ryan’s service in the Illinois General Assembly and as lt. governor had nothing to do with the criminal case against him, he could keep that portion of his pension.
Ryan’s case, by the way, was argued by Kyle DeJong at Winston & Strawn. It was his first argument in any court. Not a bad way to start out, especially since the other side was represented by Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
*** 2:34 pm *** Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office just called to say the AG will file an appeal with the Illinois Supreme Court.
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says he has no immediate plans to lift the state’s moratorium on the death penalty.
The Democrat who last week replaced ousted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich says he supports capital punishment. But he says he worries innocent people have been sent to Illinois’ death row.
The Illinois Toll Highway Authority Board appointed today Michael King as its new acting executive director.
King has been the director of communications and marketing for the tollway for approximately the last three years. He replaces Dawn Catuara at the post after Catuara resigned effective today.
Rauch’s premise is that Rod Blagojevich’s “railroading” will come back to haunt Illinois. He’s flat-out wrong on several points.
* First and foremost, he seems to completely misunderstand Rod Blagojevich. Rauch asks what the hurry was to oust Blagojevich from office. Since Blagojevich was under “minute” surveillance, he wrote, why worry that the governor would do anything else illegal?
That’s easy. Just look at the record. Blagojevich knew very well that he was under intense investigation when he allegedly did all those things contained in the federal criminal complaint. There was an active grand jury, his friends had been indicted, and he knew the FBI was crawling all over him and that US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald had placed a big target on his head.
But the criminal complaint was only one aspect of the impeachment article. The rest of the charges were based on Blagojevich’s repeated willful and malicious attempts at nullifying or sidestepping the General Assembly’s legitimate constitutional authority. And then he even refused to back away from his behavior during his closing argument to the Senate. He had to go.
Plus, government completely collapsed after Blagojevich’s arrest. He could no longer govern. He had to go. The sooner the better.
And, finally, as stated many times during the impeachment process, the object of the General Assembly’s move was to protect the citizenry from this guy. So, again, he had to go.
* Rauch obviously has no clue what went on in Springfield during the impeachment. He writes…
On the basis of six minutes of wiretapped conversation — six minutes out of what the Chicago Tribune reported were “thousands of hours of recordings made of the governor and his allies” — the governor is convicted by the Senate and turned out of office.
Um, no. Those recordings were only a small part of the total package. You’d think he would’ve checked that one.
* Rauch also writes…
And the political class was too cavalier about nullifying an election.
Too cavalier? They stood by for six years while the guy broke one state law after another, then finally acted after he was arrested by the FBI and they were too cavalier? Quite a few people in this state believe they didn’t act quickly enough.
* Rauch’s conclusion…
Whatever his wrongs, Blagojevich was right about this: The rules that removed him are not sufficiently distinguishable from a railroading, and they are wide open to abuse. We may find out, before long, that the door he was just shoved through swings both ways.
The Illinois trial rules were almost identical to the US Senate’s impeachment rules for Bill Clinton’s trial. Clinton was not convicted.
Also, unlike Nixon, Clinton and Reagan during Iran/Contra, this was a Democrat-on-Democrat process. There will be no partisan blowback like there was in DC. Who’s gonna retaliate? Blagojevich’s friends and allies? He has no friends and allies.
But I will admit, as I have before, that the next time a governor spends six years ignoring state laws; watches as pretty much all of his top fundraisers and advisors are indicted, imprisoned or are under investigation and/ior seeking immunity; is arrested by the FBI at 6 o’clock in the morning along with his chief of staff because he was caught on surveillance tapes doing some seriously dirty deeds; and then instead of attending the House impeachment hearings and the Senate trial, goes on national TV to blame all of his problems on a mythical “political witch hunt,” then he or she will also be impeached and removed from office. I guarantee it. This is really the only precedent set here.
…Adding… From comments…
The proper question is, what precedent would the GA be setting if they did nothing and let this guy stay in office? What would an Illinois official have to do to be thrown out of office? How much corruption are the citizens supposed to tolerate?
Head Start, Education for the Disadvantaged, School improvement, Child Nutrition, Firefighters, Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Prisons, COPS Hiring, Violence Against Women, NASA, NSF, Western Area Power Administration, CDC, Food Stamps
Reductions:
Public Transit $3.4 billion, School Construction $60 billion
Those last two, especially, won’t go over well in the big cities, and Obama was supposed to be the president who understood cities.
* There are some increases…
Increases:
Defense operations and procurement, STAG Grants, Brownfields, Additional transportation funding
* Earlier this morning, the Washington Post had this list of items on the chopping block…
· $39.8 billion for state education departments to shore up school budgets.
· $14 billion for education programs, including special education and Head Start.
· $9.5 billion for Energy Department programs, including an environmental cleanup fund.
· $6.5 billion for space exploration, science programs and grants for local crime-fighting efforts.
Those education dollars are sorely needed. But I’m not sure yet what the exact impact will be on Illinois’ budget.
More as it develops.
*** UPDATE - 12:21 pm: Here’s the latest roundup…
* Politico: Education groups are flooding Capitol Hill with calls and e-mails to fight the push by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to slash around $50 billion from proposed new federal grants for state education aid.
* Gallup: Public Support for Stimulus Package Unchanged at 52%
* CBS Poll: Fifty-one percent of those surveyed support the stimulus package, while 39 percent do not. An additional 10 percent don’t know. Last month, 63 percent supported the package and just 24 percent opposed it.
* Congress Matters: C-SPAN2 says the working group looking to make cuts have gotten their number up to about $107 billion, going in the opposite direction from the walk-back we heard about yesterday.
* TPM: New Executive Pay Limits Added to Senate Stimulus
* NY Times: Democrats Cite Jobs Report as Stimulus Talks Continue
* 538: On Stimulus, Democrats Beating GOP On Party Unity [RedState view here]
* National Journal: How Obama Gets To 60 - Four GOP Senators Have Shown A Willingness To Cross Party Lines Consistently During The Stimulus Debate
The complicated state of the Senate stimulus debate just got more intense.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (ME), one of the four Republicans considered genuinely open to cooperation with Democrats on a workable economic recovery bill, just released a statement saying she was approached by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to come up with a list of trims from the $275 billion-plus tax section of the stimulus.
To be clear, this is separate from the $80 bilion-plus package of spending cuts that are being hashed out by a group of 15 or so centrist senators from both parties.
Several of the GOP’s most prominent governors blasted the stimulus plan making its way through Congress Thursday, urging Senate Republicans to resist passing the bill and taking aim at what they called unnecessary spending in the package.
My advice: Take away all their state specific programs for budgets, infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc. and give them to Illinois.
Amid stunning new job losses and yet another bank failure, key senators and the White House reached tentative agreement Friday night on an economic stimulus measure at the heart of President Barack Obama’s recovery plan.
Two officials said the emerging agreement was for a bill with a $780 billion price tag, but there was no immediate confirmation. […]
One Republican-proposed document outlined proposed cuts of more than $85 billion. Most of that –$60 billion — would come from money Democrats want to send to the states to avoid budget cuts for schools as well as law enforcement and other programs.
Talk of cuts in proposed education funds triggered a counterattack from advocates of school spending as well as unhappiness among Democrats.
One, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, told reporters he and others hoped that some of the funds on the chopping block would be restored next week when negotiations open on a House-Senate compromise.
The deal is believed to include about $80 billion in spending cuts, and possibly around $10 billion in tax benefits that would be eliminated, although details had not yet been made available.
Democrats were meeting this evening to sign off on the deal, with a series of votes scheduled to take place after 7 p.m. Unless Republicans object to moving forward, a final vote on the bill could happen at the conclusion of those votes.
Calling a state senator’s push to get him axed from his public university job as “frivolous,” William Ayers today said lawmakers have more important things to do than to go after him.
Ayers, a former member of the radical Weather Underground group and a topic of heated discussion during the 2008 presidential campaign, was responding to a downstate Republican’s proposal to forbid a public university from employing someone who has “committed a violent act” against the United States or Illinois.
“This is absurd,” Ayers, 64, told a mostly young audience in a speech at Riverside-Brookfield High School. “It’s a waste of time.”
The Weather Underground bombed government buildings in protest of the Vietnam War. In a 2001 book, Ayers said he participated in the bombings but never hurt anyone. Charges were filed against him but were dropped in 1973.
Creates the Prohibition on University Employment Act. Prohibits a public university or a private university that receives State funds from employing a person who has committed an act of violence against the government of the United States of America or the State of Illinois.
* The Question: Should the General Assembly involve itself in this issue? Explain.
And, please, let’s not turn this into a rehash of the 2008 presidential campaign. Stick to the question. Thanks.
* I expected that yesterday’s Question of the Day would attract far fewer comments than the previous day’s question. Wednesday’s question, which asked you to identify $1 billion in government cuts, attracted 152 answers. Yesterday’s question, which asked you to identify another $3 billion in cuts, prompted just 61 responses.
Slashing that much government just isn’t easy, as you most likely discovered. And regardless of what newspaper editorial writers blather about, it’s even more difficult to do that in a legislative process, where everyone has political ideologies, constituencies, pet programs, etc. to protect.
Confronted with the [$9 billion deficit] number, numerous state officials have said this week they want to look at the state’s $61 billion budget and find ways to cut things out before thinking about raising various taxes.
[Anthony Liberatore, a professor of economics at Millikin University] says that might be hard, because some of the state’s biggest expenses, such as paying medical bills for the poor and its employees costly pensions, aren’t optional and can’t be cut.
“I don’t think you can trim your way out of $9 billion,” Liberatore said.
For example, the entirety of the state’s payroll, not including universities, is about $3.5 billion. So layoffs won’t cut into the deficit much, and union officials argue state services are more necessary during an economic downturn.
Pension payments are optional. The payments to the pension systems are required by law, but laws can always be changed. Quite a few commenters, including myself, suggested slashing pension funding. Former George Ryan budget director Steve Schnorf has done yeoman’s work in comments this week and offered up a critique of that viewpoint on Wednesday…
Pushing pension funding off is how we got here. If we hadn’t deferred pension payments in the past, our pension spending next year would be down the better part of $3 billion.
The battle we are fighting here, one in which we had some chance of victory, was lost when the Blagojevich administration paid its first pension payment out of one-time revenues. There was no way to recover after that. They needed to freeze spending (effectively, cut it) for at least two and probably three years except for pension contributions and Medicaid payment cycle. With 3 years of a billion +/- in revenue growth we would have gone into this current downturn in decent shape.
But that was predictably not possible for a D Gov with 2 D houses in the GA to do. Who was going to be the bad guy who said “no”? No one.
More than five years ago I told a group of eaters,”The good news is we are going to have an income tax increase in the future. The bad news is all the new money will already be spent.” Here we are.
But we can’t go back in time. And we’re in bad shape now with little way out. From a Schnorf comment this week…
Most of our state spending in Illinois is pass-thru; grants to community agencies who provide mental health, DD, adoption services, etc, Medicaid payments to vendors, school aid grants, etc. We have the lowest number of state employees per capita of any state in the Union.
That makes it extremely difficult to cut, because you’re putting business (both not for profit and for profit) and employees out of existence or out of work during a period of extreme employment crisis. Do we really want to toss literally tens of thousands of gainfully employed taxpayers onto the street right now?
[Gov. Pat Quinn] opened the door to reforming the state’s tax code.
QUINN: I think what we have to do is have a fair tax system in Illinois. We should look at that, and if we can enact reforms, we will do so, especially now, in hard times, when people are really suffering.
Quinn says he’ll “try hard” to make the tax system more progressive, a change he’s supported in the past. Illinois currently has a so-called flat tax, set at 3-percent of a resident’s income.
He can’t actually make the tax system totally progressive because the Constitution requires a flat tax. Make it too progressive with various income exemptions, and the courts may toss out the law as unconstitutional. Changing the constitution requires a three-fifths vote in both chambers and then a public referendum in 2010. That’s too late.
Christopher Kelly, a former campaign manager to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, received another federal indictment today, this time alleging he rigged roofing contracts with two major airlines to pay for gambling debts and a house, among other things.
The most recent indictment says he allegedly funneled more than $1.18 million in proceeds from fraudulent contracts (see U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s news release here). He’s the president and owner of a roofing firm, which allegedly rigged bids to steer $8.5 million in “inflated contracts” for roofing work done on American Airlines and United Airlines facilities at O’Hare International Airport. The scheme allegedly helped Kelly pay $383,000 in personal gambling debts, $700,000 for a personal loan to buy a house and $40,000 in personal expenses. The scheme also granted $450,000 to a president of the consulting firm allegedly involved in the activities.
Check this out…
Kelly was charged with 11 counts of mail fraud and six counts of money laundering.
Each count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The government all but lit an inferno under a former ally of ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Thursday, searing him with a second indictment just three weeks after he pleaded guilty to a first.
Yet, former prosecutor Joel R. Levin, who helped put former Gov. George Ryan in prison and now is in private practice at Perkins Coie LLC, said it’s no secret that new charges give a new reason for Kelly to tell whatever he knows about Blagojevich.
“It just stands to reason that the higher penalties you’re facing, it just increases the incentive (to cooperate),” Levin noted.
More often than not, the tactic works for prosecutors.
“Obviously, there are some people who dig their heels in … but for most people, if the penalties they’re facing are severe enough, they are going to consider cooperation,” Levin said.
Kelly is important to the government because he was, for years, the go-to guy for fund-raising under Blagojevich and extremely close personally to the governor. He could fill in the blanks on alleged older schemes and help verify information provided by another potential key witness — indicted businessman and onetime fund-raiser Tony Rezko.
Word around the campfire is that somebody very close to Rod Blagojevich ratted Kelly out on this one.
State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago), a candidate for a vacant North Side congressional seat, was the only one of 118 Illinois House members who skipped [yesterday’s] vote to create a new ethics committee. […]
State Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago), one of her rivals in the March 3 special primary in the 5th Congressional District, voted for the measure and made it a point to note Feigenholtz’s absence.
The excuse…
Feigenholtz instead spent the day in Chicago trying to “raise awareness of the threat” to funding for certain programs in the federal economic stimulus legislation being debated in Washington, campaign spokesman Kevin Franck said.
But…
Feigenholtz also spent part of the day attending a fundraiser for her congressional campaign.
That ain’t good.
* Mike Quigley’s campaign responded this morning via press release…
Instead of carrying out her legislative duties Thursday and vote for the reform legislation, the Chicago Tribune reported that Feigenholtz chose to attend a campaign fundraiser to help finance her Congressional race.
“As this incident shows, the contrast in this race could not be more stark,” said Tom Bowen, campaign manager for the Quigley for Congress campaign.
“Mike Quigley has fought Todd Stroger and politics as usual for 10 years on the county board. Sara Feigenholtz, on the other hand, cannot even be bothered to put her campaign on hold for a single day to cast a vote for reform.”
“Sara Feigenholtz’s campaign claims that she was busy ‘raising awareness’ about issues on Thursday. The only thing she was raising was cash,” Bowen added, “and voters are well aware that we need to end ‘politics as usual’ in Illinois. The way to do that is by electing a real reformer like Mike Quigley.”
It’s not like this was a close vote. The measure passed 117-0, after all.
The problem is more of perception. Feigenholtz held a fundraiser yesterday during the first ethics vote of the year, and was the only legislator of either party who missed that vote. Like I said above: Oops.
Watch for Quigley to try to turn this into a theme.
* Related…
* Petition challenges shrink field in race for Emanuel’s seat
* Interviews with Four Candidates Running for the 5th Congressional District
*** UPDATE *** Rep. Fritchey was endorsed by the Illinois AFL-CIO today.
The complex agreement, the first of its kind in the United States, nets the city a one-time cash payment of nearly $1.2 billion when the deal is closed this month.
But the city could have earned $1.5 billion—in today’s dollars—if it kept the meters and simply raised rates to the same levels it granted the winning bidder, according to H. Woods Bowman, a professor of public service at DePaul University. That’s nearly $300 million more than Chicago Parking Meters, a limited liability corporation formed by Morgan Stanley to operate the meters, will pay upfront, Bowman said.
For much of the last year, the controversial sale of a rail line that runs through the Chicago region has pitted communities against each other. The debate is all about rail traffic congestion and the price tag that comes with it, a cost cities and suburbs are clamoring to avoid. The deal that finalized Canadian National’s bid to buy the EJ&E line was inked last weekend. But it still faces resistance.
Citing the need for new investment to boost the sagging local economy, Wal-Mart is preparing a new push for approval of as many as five new stores in Chicago, sources said today.
Hispanic activists on Thursday demanded a bigger share of city jobs and contracts.
Although they vowed to boycott city-sponsored leadership events, they accepted Mayor Richard M. Daley’s invitation to discuss their grievances face-to-face.
With employers in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate is expected to jump to 7.5 percent in January from 7.2 percent in December, according to economists’ forecasts. If they are right, that would mark the highest jobless rate in 17 years.
And after suffering heavy job losses last year, the country probably lost another 524,000 jobs month, getting the new year off to a rotten start. Some think the number of jobs reductions in January will be higher - 600,000 or 700,000.
After announcing Tuesday night that 24 of the city’s total 267 positions will be eliminated beginning Feb. 27, the mayor said challenges are still ahead as police and fire pensions continue to rise along with health insurance premiums and the cost of road-repair materials and utilities.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin introduced legislation today to name the new federal courthouse in downtown Rockford for retired U.S. District Court Judge Stanley J. Roszkowski.
Embattled Township Assessor Sharon Eckersall defended herself Monday night against allegations that lawsuits brought against her in firing past deputy assessors have cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
