* Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky was in Peoria over the weekend and made an appearance on Fox Chicago Sunday, as did Patrick Collins. Since I’m having trouble viewing the video, I’ll note that Progress Illinois claims Collins said he wasn’t interested in political office next year.
* That same PI post reminded me to reach out to Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Cook County President and congress. He’s now hinting about a run for governor. Actually, he’s working behind the scenes with some folks and I’ll have more for subscribers tomorrow…
“I have talked to some people about running next year [for Governor] and it is something that we are actively considering.”
Murphy, by the way, rightly points out in a press release that several of the governor’s reform commission agenda items came from bills he sponsored.
* This AP story on Alexi Giannoulias shows how journalistic shorthand is one reason why I believe the PR problem about the SUV is worse for the treasurer than some may reckon.
* The Heartland Institute’s Tom Swiss has a rundown of possible GOP statewide contenders. Here’s his take on Joe Birkett…
Birkett is decent at public speaking, but needs new material. Everyone has heard his “I was a golden gloves boxer who is willing to fight for you” story at least 20 times. In the unlikely event Birkett’s name ID takes off, he will stay in the race, but as other campaigns ramp up, he will need to make some serious changes from his 2006 strategy if he wants to be competitive. Birkett clears the field as the run-away favorite for Attorney General.
And some of what he says about Dan Proft…
Debates could be a two-edged sword for the ideological Proft, he will have no problem with any questions but will need to appear likeable. He is prone to occassional outbursts of righteous anger. Proft will also have to distance himself from Cicero politics.
* If any of those above-mentioned people do run statewide next year, I gotta wonder whether TV reporters will show up or just send the video pool…
Four Chicago television stations are expected later today to announce they soon will be sharing newsgathering resources at general news events, sources said… Stations could be sharing raw video through the arrangement by the end of the month. […]
Rather than send independent crews to shoot the same news conferences, sports events and other non-exclusive news, the local news service will dispatch a single crew to provide pooled raw video. What each competing outlet’s reporters, editors and producers do with the raw video is up to individual rival operations.
House Bill 682, introduced by Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), would require that any state legislator who proposes an increase in criminal penalties that would result in more people going to prison get a fiscal impact statement of what that would cost. The estimate would be made by the Department of Corrections or Department of Juvenile Justice.
In addition, the legislator would have to identify a revenue source, such as a new tax or a reallocation of money from elsewhere in the state budget, to pay the extra cost.
The bill, modeled after a seven-year-old Virginia law, would not prohibit the General Assembly from imposing harsher penalties for criminal conduct, but it would encourage lawmakers to more fully weigh the benefits (such as increased public safety) against the costs.
Back in 1987, for example, it might have been helpful for the Legislature to know what the financial impact to the prison system would be when lawmakers lowered the threshold for a Class 1 felony for the manufacture or delivery of cocaine from 10 grams to just a single gram.
* The Question: Should this Raoul proposal be applied to all new spending bills, not just prison-related legislation? Explain fully.
* The State Journal-Register has spent the past two days giving thumbs up and thumbs down to various aspects of the Illinois Reform Commission’s report. The paper never once mentions, however, that the reform commission chairman and many of its members are demanding that the full report must be enacted or Illinois risks leaving doors open to more corruption. The SJ-R’s ratings can be found here and here.
The paper gives a thumbs down to adopting federal campaign contribution limits, suggesting a $10,000 cap is more reasonable. Another thumbs down goes to the creation of an Office of Procurement, which was the centerpiece of the commission’s procurement reform agenda. More thumbs down went to establishing term limits for legislative leaders and creating a public corruption division within Illinois State Police.
“No endorsement” was slapped on a few areas, including changing the budget process (”It’s unlikely the recommendations would have changed anything that happened over the past six years”), FOIA penalties and establishing an Office of Transparency.
* The Tribune ran a blustery front-page editorial yesterday demanding support for the reform commission’s agenda without revealing that it also has major reservations about some of the reform commission’s recommendations…
Right now, many of Illinois’ 177 legislators are just as determined to protect themselves and their clout. They’ll try to mollify you with reassurances that “I’m open to change” or “We’re discussing this” or “Everything’s on the table.” Not good enough. Reject the pabulum. Demand results.
* But the Daily Herald notes that the reform commission never submitted actual legislation, and quotes the governor’s spokesperson as refusing to comment on when such legislation will be drafted. Still, the headline on the story reads: It may take wheeling and dealing, but Quinn’s ethics reforms may pass.
Rep. Chuck Jefferson and other Democrats want the state’s top watchdog, Auditor General Bill Holland, to complete a full investigation into what harm Blagojevich might have caused during his six years as governor.
“We are just trying to make sure we are doing everything we can to continue to protect our state from the (former) governor,” said Jefferson, a Rockford Democrat. “We are cleaning up after him.”
So, I’m not sure why there’s opposition…
“I think it is an interesting idea, but I don’t really see how that works to the advantage of the citizens right now,” said Sen. Dale Risinger, R-Peoria. “We all recognize the damage the ex-governor did. I mean, after all, we went through an impeachment, we went through a trial. Those issues came out in that.”
A full and complete audit would likely reveal even more damage caused by Blagojevich. Like this, for instance…
In a little-noticed move in December 2006, Blagojevich pardoned the successful Oak Park restaurateur for an old tax-fraud conviction. And the now-impeached governor took the additional step of forever wiping that blemish from Abu-Taleb’s record.
While Abu-Taleb successfully maneuvered through the state’s byzantine clemency process, as many as 20 others who were exonerated of crimes failed to persuade Blagojevich to clear their records.
Something else sets Abu-Taleb apart from those others: the campaign contributions that rolled in to Blagojevich from a powerful Chicago law firm run, in part, by an Abu-Taleb relative who was a character witness in the clemency case.
However, the audit shouldn’t be used to stall reform measures this year. It could be used to help draft more reforms next year, though.
* Related…
* Reeder: If voters think they pick their legislator, they’re wrong
While parents come to grips with major investment losses in a college savings program, public records show that Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’ office spent Bright Start proceeds to buy a $26,000 SUV he uses as his state car.
The purchase is surfacing as the politically ambitious Giannoulias continues to face criticism for his oversight of the Bright Start investment program, which lost $85 million last year.
The details aren’t as horrific as the lede makes them out to be. The car wasn’t paid for with Bright Start profits, but with a fee paid by the investment manager’s firm. Still, not good.
The treasurer’s office claims that staff also use the car…
But Burnham could not provide a breakdown of how often that particular Ford Escape is used for Bright Start-related purposes and said no log is kept of how that car is used or for what reasons.
Again. Not good.
* Meanwhile, Drudge linked to this video last week with an ominous headline about potential US Senate candidate Congresswoman Schakowsky claiming that the “public option” for health insurance would put private insurers out of business. See it for yourself…
* Related…
* ADDED: Vallas says County Board presidency decision weeks away: Vallas has been exploring a Republican run for the County Board presidency since February and had expected to make a decision in mid-June. But now, he said, he has sped up his timetable because “there are other people that are trying to make decisions about what they want to do next and they’re at least a couple of people waiting to see what I will do.”
* Jesse Jackson Jr Speaks About Ethics Probe: “One fact will never change, whatever the outcome…I offered the former governor nothing and the former governor offered me nothing,” Jackson said.
Everybody at the Illinois Statehouse always says they’re for a major, multibillion-dollar public works construction plan.
The problem has been that they could never agree on how to spend the money and how to pay for the massive beast.
House Speaker Michael Madigan has taken the blame for the failure of the “capital plan” during the past couple of years, and rightly so. He used every trick in the book to block it.
Then again, if Madigan hadn’t killed Rod Blagojevich’s extremely loosely written capital bills, Blagojevich would’ve probably tried to steal every last dime. To say that there were billions of dollars in almost completely undefined spending would not be an exaggeration.
With Blagojevich gone, everybody now wants to know where Madigan is on capital. And, as usual, nobody really knows what he’s thinking. But lots of folks believe the tea leaves look ominous. Things just aren’t going well.
The governor hasn’t yet started really working legislators on behalf of his tax hike proposals. Madigan has said that passing a budget and closing the $11 billion to $12 billion deficit is his first priority, and Quinn won’t back away from his income tax increase. Most legislators have never taken a truly tough vote, and hiking the income tax rate by 50 percent certainly qualifies as truly tough. The longer the tax hike is up in the air, the longer the capital plan could be delayed.
House Republican Leader Tom Cross has refused to support any tax or fee hikes to fund the capital bill. Instead he’s pushing a plan derided by Madigan to vastly expand gaming during the worst gaming recession since time began.
Leader Cross and Speaker Madigan have been feuding all year, and Cross has upped the ante lately by publicly embarrassing Madigan almost every day on the House floor with one loudly debated motion after another to move hot-button but obviously dead bills out of committees. The Republicans always lose the procedural votes and then they immediately blast negative robocalls into targeted Democratic districts deriding politically vulnerable Democratic incumbents for voting against Mom and apple pie.
Things are getting awful testy in that chamber.
Using the recent past as a guide, Madigan might be expected to just jam through a no-tax doomsday budget, forget a capital plan altogether and adjourn. That’s essentially what he did last year.
If Madigan did that again this year the result would likely be catastrophic. But perhaps a catastrophe might have to occur to wake everybody up to how serious this situation really is. Voters might be more open to a tax hike if they saw their state and local governments collapse.
There is another historical model, however: The “old” Mike Madigan. Back in 1983, the state’s economic situation seemed hopeless, the state deficit was out of control and Republican Gov. Jim Thompson was begging for tax hikes. Madigan eventually relented and passed a temporary income tax hike and a one cent sales tax increase.
Nobody can really take the chance that “Old Madigan” will return, even if his daughter Lisa Madigan is leading Pat Quinn in all the polls. A recent Public Policy Polling survey of likely Democratic primary voters had Attorney General Madigan leading Gov. Quinn 45-29. A March poll of just Chicago Democrats had Madigan ahead of Quinn by a similar margin.
So, in a desperate bid to stop the unthinkable, a large group of unions and construction industry groups have plunked down a million dollars to run a TV ad during the month of May. The ad, which will air all over the state, lays out the case for a capital plan and urges people to call their legislators.
They wouldn’t bother spending that kind of money if they thought the capital plan was a sure thing and had complete confidence in Madigan. And, yes, it is more than a little ironic that unions have to help ante up a million dollars in advertising to pressure a Democratic legislative leader to enact a major public works bill during the worst economic contraction since the 1930s. To say that Madigan has too much power would be the greatest understatement of the century.
The ad itself isn’t exactly stunning, but that’s probably not the point. Showing Madigan, Cross and everyone else that they’re willing to spend serious cash to back up their words is what will get the attention. Money always talks.
* The winner is . . .: Gov. Pat Quinn and the Illinois General Assembly for not appropriating any state funds to help run the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
* Give Metra credit - they’re adapting : “It’s amazing how the system seems to operate like it’s the 1930s,” Bond told the Chicago Sun-Times at the time. The agency doesn’t accept credit cards even for monthly passes, which can cost more than $200.
Fitch Ratings on Friday revised its outlook on the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority’s credit to negative as it prepares to enter the market as soon as next week with a $500 million financing that - based on current market conditions - could include $400 million of Build America Bonds.
* Steve Stone: Cubs fans will pay high price for Wrigley renovation, big salaries…
Nobody’s talking about the $400-500 million it will cost to renovate Wrigley Field. If they have to play somewhere else, you’re probably talking about losing $100 million per year. The fans who come to Wrigley Field every day might not want to come to U.S. Cellular or go to Milwaukee. You could do the renovation in sections so you can continue to play in the ballpark. But realistically if you want to do it right, you need to shut it down.
So now you have a team that you bought for $850 million, and throw in the renovation, and you have $1.4 billion in the deal. Tell me how you’re going to get that back without the fans paying a tremendous part of that?
In 2007, the General Assembly established the Illinois Power Agency to procure power on behalf of Illinois utilities. For 2009, ComEd is purchasing electricity for its customers through this new process, which is overseen by the ICC.
The resulting electricity prices and winning bidders were made public Friday by the ICC.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan hailed the decrease and the process that led to it. “The 2009 procurement prices demonstrate conclusively that the new procurement process works as intended,” she said in a statement Friday. “The Illinois Power Agency, the new agency that administered the procurement process for the first time this year, is making a difference and that is an economically positive difference for Illinois families.”
The current procurement process originally was proposed by Madigan and adopted in 2007 as part of a settlement of numerous lawsuits filed by Madigan attacking the legality of the reverse auction and raising allegations of market manipulation, a release from her office said. The settlement also included $1 billion in rate relief for ComEd and Ameren customers.
“The decision to replace ComEd’s reverse auction looks even better when we look at what’s happening in other states that still use a reverse auction – where recent prices have been as much as three-times higher than the prices produced this spring by the new Illinois procurement process,” Madigan said.
Like hundreds of Crestwood residents, former residents and those who worked there, Mix is concerned water consumption triggered the cancer she now is battling. She suffers from mycosis fungoides, also known as Alibert-Bazin syndrome. It’s a rare form of lymphoma that affects the skin.
As Mark Kleiman of UCLA has noted, 46,000 Americans die every year on the highways. In contrast, 17,000 die from criminal violence. Granted, emergency medicine has had a big impact on the number of people who die from criminal violence, but the same can be said of highway deaths.
In some sense, the decision to avoid crime by fleeing cities in favor of auto-dependent suburbs is irrational: The move actually increases your chances of dying prematurely. That crude calculation ignores the angst and anxiety that my father had in mind when he told his white lie. No one wants to live in fear. And for any number of reasons, the fear of an impersonal auto collision can’t match the fear of the indignity of being mugged, or for that matter being stabbed or shot dead. The millions of middle -class Americans who fled inner cities were fleeing this psychic turmoil, and it’s hard not to sympathize with them. This fear also led to an explosion in the ownership of personal firearms and a climate of political and cultural polarization that is still with us.
But what if crime isn’t a natural disaster? What if it is a problem that we’ve made worse through wrongheaded policies?
That’s why we applaud the creative maneuvers by Homewood Mayor Rich Hofeld to save a dealership in his town, Steve Peters Chevrolet. We think it could serve as a model for other towns and proactive mayors, so pay attention:
Hofeld worked with the Cook County Board to establish new rules for property tax breaks for certain businesses.
U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, a freshman Democrat whose 14th District would be bisected by the controversial outer-belt, is trying to pull the plug on what would be the Chicago region’s latest major highway. Instead, he wants to spend the money on other road projects but will need congressional approval to do so.
* U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock is GOP’s young, rising star
One particularly fascinating element of the infodemic phenomenon is that the spread of rumors or news throughout society looks exactly like the spread of diseases; they are communicated in the same ways and patterns. (You’ll note that in both the SARS case and the current instance, it was the infection of Americans that kicked mainstream media into gear and elevated the story into a code-one frenzy.)
[Space/time continuum altered and comments opened.]
* I agree with almost every single word in this Collin Levy column. Go read the whole thing…
To be sure, Illinois, which has no limits on campaign contributions, is a sort of wild frontier for reformers who sense an opportunity to crank down on the power of cash, and to test-run all the favorite bans and regulatory hoops they’d like to impose. They’re probably hoping the public will forget Mr. Blagojevich was their champion last time around. After having voted for McCain-Feingold as a member of Congress, he pressed for a state version of the law in 2005, when he was governor, calling it “the right thing to do.” And why not? Even if the law had passed (it didn’t), it would have cost him little. Political money that might have gone to the governor’s coffers would instead have been channeled into shadier environs, just as it has on the federal level. […]
Contribution caps don’t help level the playing field or weaken corrupt pols, either. According to a Chicago Tribune analysis this month of tens of thousands of campaign contributions over the past decade, if the state donation caps had been in place in the 2006 election, Mr. Blagojevich still would have outraised Republican Judy Baar Topinka by 3-1.
For campaign finance reformers, the problem is always “too much” money. But as Illinois shows, the problem isn’t the money, it’s the politicians. Three other states — Utah, Oregon and Virginia — have no contribution limits. Yet they haven’t a shadow of the political scandals Illinois has spawned. According to research by the Center for Competitive Politics, the three states that the Justice Department ranks as having the lowest rates of public corruption — Iowa, Oregon and Nebraska — do not have stringent campaign finance restrictions.
In 2007, the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice issued a report calling Illinois’s relatively unregulated campaign system “broken and badly in need of reform.” But it also called Minnesota, which has contribution limits and public financing, “broken and badly in need of reform.” Ditto Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. As former Federal Election Commission chairman Brad Smith points out, “broken and badly in need of reform” turns out to be the universal condition of campaign systems, which reformers never run out of new proposals to fix.
In Illinois, redistricting is done by the legislators. Though guided by rules that call for compact and contiguous districts with roughly equal population that fairly represent minority groups, politics still dominate. If legislators and a commission of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on a map — which almost always happens — a bizarre tie-breaker scheme kicks in. Two names, one Democrat and one Republican, go into a hat. The winner tips the voting power in his party’s favor, giving that party final say on redistricting.
Iowa lives on another planet. There, a nonpartisan group, with help from a computer software program, creates the maps. The legislature then votes to accept or reject. Out of that process, Iowa created a map in which 64 incumbents were thrown into districts to face other sitting incumbents, said James Nowlan, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois.
We believe the Iowa model can work in Illinois, despite considerable differences in population and geography from Iowa, and we urge the Illinois General Assembly to seriously consider it.
