* 9:17 pm- I have shot a ton of video that will be coming your way shortly. Most of it has to do with the temp budget, but subjects vary and include the Burr Oaks fallout and ethics reform…
* 9:23 pm - Governor Quinn got a little heated when asked about Burr Oaks, Comptroller Hynes, and criticisms that the Governor has not pushed hard enough for strong regulatory legislation over cemeteries. Watch…
* 9:26 pm - Sen President Cullerton did not want to discuss the temp budget at first, but he gets sucked into a short conversation about the temp budget and the FY 2011 budget hole…
* 9:30 pm - Leader Radogno does not think it is possible to really predict the size of next years budget hole right now, but it won’t be pretty…
* 9:30 pm - Leader Radogno is happy that the a tax hike was not included in the temp budget and continues to push ethics and fiscal reforms…
* 9:33 pm - Sen Harmon discusses the progress on ethics reforms…
* 9:35 pm - I will be posting the rest of the Quinn Presser in its raw form. However, it is 3 videos and each video is about 8 minutes long. The internet is running a little slow at the capitol so it might take a while, but they will be up soon and that will conclude the videos. Thanks for your patience…
* 10:05 pm - Here are parts 1 and 2 of Quinn’s presser…
* 7:43 pm - The Senate has just approved the $3.5 billion borrowing plan to fund the pension systems. The House has already passed the bill as well as the rest of the budget bills.
The Senate is now moving very fast and will wrap up soon.
* 7:55 pm- Senate President Cullerton said he wants to convene in January to address the issue of raising more revenue.
* 5:20 pm - After the Senate Democratic Caucus this afternoon, Sen. Meeks said he will not support the borrowing needed for a temporary budget…
* President Cullerton was not available for comment, but his Press Secretary Rikeesha Phelon said that President Cullerton feels confident he has the votes needed to pass the budget bill. She added that the Senate views the new budget as a “temporary fix, and we are not trying to veil that at all”.
* UPDATE FROM RICH: There are reportedly 29-30 Senate Democratic votes for the pension note and most likely enough SGOP votes to get the roll call to 36. Nothing is guaranteed in politics until the final vote is locked in, but the train may be leaving the station.
* Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney got about 10 percent of the vote in 2006. He wants another shot…
Whitney says now - more than ever - his party is a “viable third choice” for Illinois voters.
WHITNEY: I believe that, if anything, the frustration factor with the Democratic and Republican Party leadership, generally today, is even greater than it was in 2006.
He says the Greens’ platform could attract voters who are fed up with the state’s political establishment.
* 1:03 pm - House GOP Leader Tom Cross just emerged from a leaders meeting with the governor to say that a budget agreement has been reached pending caucus meetings. Those meetings are set to begin soon. We’ll have video in a bit.
* 1:10 pm - The other leaders apparently left out the side door, so Cross’ statement is all we’ll have. GateHouse had a piece from before the meeting started, however…
Cullerton said leaders expect to talk about budget details with their caucuses this afternoon. He predicted his Senate Democrats would be disappointed by a budget that doesn’t include an income tax increase, which the Senate approved but has stalled in the House.
Cullerton also deflected criticism that some lawmakers - including himself - traveled to St. Louis last night for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. He said leaders met with the governor last night and then his staff started drafting budget legislation to be considered today.
“People could have been here at a restaurant watching it on television or actually there if they had a ticket, so it doesn’t bother me,” Cullerton said.
* 1:16 pm - Here’s the Cross video. He thought that the session could be adjourned “by tonight.”
Where: To Be Announced (Northern Suburbs of Chicago)
What: Congressman Mark Kirk will announce his candidacy for statewide office at a press conference in the 10th Congressional District on Monday, July 20. Details, including location and time, will be announced later in the week.
…Also… Has anyone else noticed how the law firm of GOP gubernatorial candidate Sen. Matt Murphy markets itself?
The firm always confines it’s practice to representing plaintiffs and injured persons. We have never represented insurance companies, employers or other defendants.
And doesn’t have a spell-checker, either. But nevermind that. What will the bidniss folks think?
* Charlie Wheeler is no political hack. He’s not a clout-loving insider. He’s one of the most respected former journalists at the Statehouse and he’s now the director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield - a program that trains young reporters to cover government.
Charlie just penned a brilliant smackdown in Illinois Issues of those who have derided the General Assembly’s reform efforts this year…
Some reformers and editorial boards — joined by partisan Republicans — were quick to give the Democratic-controlled legislature failing marks for not adopting all the recommendations from Gov. Pat Quinn’s blue-ribbon reform panel and other change advocates.
In particular, the reform crowd complained that the state’s first-ever proposal to limit some campaign contributions was more loophole than law. GOP leaders grumbled that nothing was done to rein in the power of the majority Democrats and their leadership. Hyper-ventilating editorial writers deplored that lawmakers shelved a plan to allow voters to fire the governor and other elected officials.
Wheeler then goes through the reform legislation point by point to show how the GA addressed the Rod Blagojevich nightmare. It’s freaking brilliant. Go read it.
His big finish…
Overall, the legislative reaction to the reform suggestions followed the pattern predicted here a couple of months ago. Changes affecting executive branch operations were embraced; those that would upset the legislative status quo were not.
In so choosing, did Democratic leaders and their majorities sustain a culture of corruption? Or was that the rational approach, focusing on eradicating the opportunities for clearly documented illicit activities while ignoring certain aspects of the legislative process that some might not like but are hardly corrupt?
Instead of bemoaning what didn’t happen, naysayers might want to look again and see a glass that’s got more in it than anyone would have believed possible this time last year.
I’ve criticized some of the reform legislation, and I stand by that criticism. But I also find it hard to disagree with Wheeler’s overall point.
* Carol Marin writes an incredibly favorable column about Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s future….
Dart — like Barack Obama, with whom he also served in Springfield — has managed to skillfully juggle it all. A member in good standing of the powerful 19th Ward populated by the Hynes, Joyce and Sheehan clans, Dart has been a Daley loyalist and Democratic Party regular. And yet he’s managed to position himself as a New Age politician. He’s run his office efficiently. And he has found issues that resonate beyond the boundary lines of Illinois. And sometimes, as in the Alsip cemetery story, when issues have landed like lightning in his back yard, he’s seized the moment and handled it artfully.
There has been talk that Dart might want to jump into the 2010 Democratic primary for governor. Or rise in the ranks of Cook County by taking on Todd Stroger for president of the County Board.
Neither one looks likely at the moment.
Comptroller Dan Hynes, another child of the 19th Ward, is positioning himself for the gubernatorial race.
And Dart, who had earned high marks in the African-American community even before his takeover of Burr Oak Cemetery, doesn’t gain a thing by antagonizing that same constituency by challenging Stroger. Especially when the job provides neither a national profile nor anything other than a monumental headache.
Tom Dart Superstar, I’m guessing, stays where he is right now. On a platform that someday soon will rocket him higher.
It’s received little notice amid all the recent maneuvering for the U.S. Senate and the governor’s mansion. But the Illinois Republican Party is showing signs of fielding a competitive team for two jobs it actually has a decent shot at winning in the 2010 elections: state treasurer and comptroller.
State Sen. Dan Rutherford of Chenoa, who picked up some name recognition in an earlier bid for secretary of state, officially announced his candidacy for treasurer on Monday. He already has more than a quarter of a million dollars in his campaign war chest, a good starting point.
Even better, former treasurer and GOP gubernatorial nominee Judy Baar Topinka is continuing with her plans for a comeback.
* Meanwhile, Republican state Rep. Jim Durkin tells the Daily Herald that he’s kinda, sorta interested in a maybe/possible US Senate run…
Durkin is upset with [GOP Congressman Mark Kirk’s] vote for cap-and-trade legislation, a key element of President Barack Obama’s agenda and favorite target of conservatives.
“I think he is going to regret that vote,” Durkin said [yesterday].
Kirk has faced heat from the party for weeks on that vote, but several GOP representatives and party brass still see him as the best chance for the Republicans to win the seat and cut back the Democrat’s 60-vote super majority.
Durkin says he is “not interested nor disinterested” in a run, but adds “If I decided I wanted to run for statewide office I feel comfortable I could put together a team.”
T-minus ten minutes before Kirk threatens to drop out again?
A federal appeals court in Chicago on Tuesday breathed new life into a long-dormant Illinois law that requires physicians to notify the parents of teenage girls before performing abortions.
Attorneys on both sides of the issue said the law — which was passed in 1984 and updated in 1995 — would take effect within weeks unless its critics ask for a stay and the three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agrees to put its order on hold pending a rehearing. […]
The law does not require parental consent, only that parents be notified 48 hours before an abortion for a girl 17 or younger. A provision of the law allows girls to bypass parental notification by notifying a judge instead, a procedure the ACLU argued would not be practical.
The General Assembly passed the 1995 law, but left it to the state Supreme Court to issue key rules governing how minors could seek waivers in court. The Supreme Court never issued rules — opening the door for the lengthy delay and legal challenges.
Robyn Ziegler, a spokeswoman for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, said she couldn’t immediately comment. Madigan previously said she supported the measure, which the appeals court called “a permissible attempt to help a young woman make an informed choice about whether to have an abortion.” […]
The appeals panel said it recognized that there may be “practical problems” with the expedited procedures created by the Illinois Supreme Court for bypassing the notice requirement. “It may be intimidating for a minor to navigate the process of presenting her case to a judge, for instance,” Cudahy wrote.
Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit dissolved the federal injunction against the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act. As a direct result of the court’s decision (Zbaraz v. Hartigan), Illinois parents will be entitled, for the first time since Roe v. Wade was decided, to notification before their minor daughters are taken for abortions. The decision is the culmination of four years work by the Thomas More Society, particularly TMS Special Counsel Paul Linton, who devised the legal strategy which ultimately led to the lifting of the injunction.
“This is an incredible victory for Illinois parents and their children,” said Peter Breen, Executive Director and Legal Counsel of the Thomas More Society. “Parental involvement laws enjoy overwhelming public support. These laws promote the integrity of the family and ensure that parents are consulted so that their children are not forced into an abortion decision. A wealth of social science data indicates that parental involvement laws lead to lower pregnancy rates, out-of-wedlock births and abortions.”
The Parental Notice Act has been in legal limbo for more than ten years because of the Illinois Supreme Court’s refusal to issue the rules necessary to make the Act effective. Since the passage of the Act in 1995, over 50,000 Illinois minors have obtained abortions, more than 4,000 of whom were 14 years old or younger, without any requirement to notify their parents beforehand.
Following Linton’s legal strategy, representatives of pro-life organizations met with DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph Birkett in the spring of 2005 to ask him to petition the Illinois Supreme Court to adopt the rules required by the 1995 Act. Birkett agreed and filed his petition in June 2006. On September 7, 2006, the Thomas More Society, representing a range of interested organizations, filed a supplemental petition with the state supreme court. Less than two weeks later, the Illinois Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Bob Thomas, unanimously adopted Supreme Court Rule 303A.
After various delays, Attorney General Lisa Madigan returned to federal court in March 2007 and petitioned Judge David Coar to lift the permanent injunction which had been issued eleven years earlier. After Judge Coar denied the petition, the Thomas More Society intervened in the case on behalf of State’s Attorneys Stu Umholtz (Republican, Tazewell County) and Ed Deters (Democrat, Effingham County) to press an appeal against the injunction.
Today’s decision reviving the dormant Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act creates unnecessary, dangerous hurdles to accessing essential health care for young women facing an unintended pregnancy in the State of Illinois. In the decades while this law (and its predecessors) were not enforced, we know that most young women in Illinois consulted with a parent or guardian when making the difficult decision about whether to continue a pregnancy. In those instances where young women did not tell a parent, often because of fear of abuse or neglect, most consulted with a trusted adult family member.
We now turn our attention to counseling teens and medical providers to minimize the harms of the notice and by-pass requirements upheld by the court today.
[Gov. Pat Quinn] proposes passing a budget to keep government operating and allow time to study ways to cut Medicaid spending and other costs. Then officials could decide in November whether to cut spending, raise taxes or neither.
Legislative leaders seemed inclined to support some variation on that plan.
This version would include billions of dollars of financial gimmicks and one-time sources of revenue: borrowing about $3.5 billion to help pay annual pension costs, using about $1.1 billion worth of vaguely defined “inter-fund borrowing'’ and leaving about $3.2 billion in bills unpaid.
[Rep. Jack Franks, D-Morengo], who is considering running for governor, blasted Quinn for wanting to borrow money rather than make meaningful cuts to balance the budget. The $1 billion in cuts unveiled by Quinn last week do not go far enough and are being made far too late, Franks said.
“I’m red hot about this,” Franks said. “What he’s doing is abdicating his position as governor. This way, he doesn’t have to make the tough decisions.”
“[Borrowing is] not a good policy move but it may be be our only option. So, if that’s put before us then we’ll have to weigh it out,” said Rep. Mike Bost, (R)-Murphysboro.
Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, acknowledged the budget would not be balanced. But she defended it as the only way to offer some stability to the people and groups who depend on state government.
“We are at a drop-dead date where we have to adopt a budget. There are no good alternatives,” Radogno said. “This is, I think, the best of a number of bad alternatives.”
* Franks was also sharply critical of his colleagues after a caucus meeting yesterday…
House Democrat Jack Franks of Morengo says a closed door caucus yesterday shows lawmakers don’t want to make the necessary cuts to balance the budget.
FRANKS: Everyone is so worried about who they might offend and what interest group that might get offended. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I was hearing in that caucus. People were worried about their furlough days and how its going to affect their pensions. And I was like, come on. Don’t you guys get it? We are in an absolute crisis here and we need to start cutting.
Amazing what some legislators are worried about at a time like this, isn’t it?
While numbers vary, one estimate by a House Democrat is that the new budget deal could result in service providers receiving about a 13 percent cut, as opposed to a 50 percent cut, as previously approved. The governor vetoed that measure (SB 1197).
So instead of the so-called 50 percent budget for human services, providers would get about 87 percent of what they received in state support last fiscal year.
Or it could be less. Nobody really knows for sure.
[House GOP Leader Tom Cross] said predictions of doom for those [social service] agencies are exaggerated. The leaders also advised Quinn to “tone down the rhetoric” about the effect the new budget will have on social service agencies, Cross said.
“I think the approach a month ago was an attempt to scare legislators into a tax increase,” Cross said. “I didn’t think that was a good approach. I think, at the end of the day, things will not be nearly as severe as the governor portrayed six weeks ago.”
Thousands of state workers are in danger of missing paychecks today unless the governor and legislators reach quick agreement on a budget.
A first round of 5,000 to 6,000 direct deposits and checks are slated to be delayed today and thousands more by the end of the month, said a spokeswoman for Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes. Hynes maintains his office lost its authority to fund payrolls when the state’s new fiscal year began without a budget on July 1.
“Unless there is an appropriation passed and signed, or there’s a court order, payroll can’t move forward,” Carol Knowles said Tuesday.
The union representing 40,000 state workers filed just such a lawsuit on Tuesday in St. Clair County Circuit Court.
From the Illinois Credit Union League…
Credit Union 1 and about 5 other credit unions will be offering zero interest loans to state employees that miss paychecks. The specifics will vary for each credit union. People should contact their local credit union or go to www.iculleague.org or illinois.gov for a listing of participating credit unions.
Now he meets daily with a social worker and attends classes on drug addiction and behavior modification, all mandated by Cook County Veterans Court, a newly formed court geared to military veterans charged with non-violent crimes, mostly drug offenses.
The court links them with representatives from state and federal veterans affairs departments and social and legal aid agencies who offer many services and help cut through red tape that stymies many veterans.
“There’s no extra cost because what this really does is place people into services that are already out there,” said Circuit Judge John Kirby, who started the court this spring.
Following the Stroger administration’s refusal to comply with repeated requests to release cell phone records pertaining to the Tony Cole fiasco, the Better Government Association has filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court to obtain the records under the state’s Freedom of Information law.
BGA Executive Director Andy Shaw will be available to discuss the lawsuit at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, July 15, in the west lobby of the Daley Center at Clark and Randolph.
“The cornerstone of good government is transparency,” Shaw says, “because it allows us to see clearly if public officials are adhering to the other key principles - accountability and fairness - or whether they’re being wasteful, inefficient and crooked, in which case we end up paying a ‘corruption tax.’”
A Cook County judge dropped domestic-violence charges against an ex-steakhouse busboy in a patronage scandal with County Board President Todd Stroger but allowed a contempt-of-court case to proceed against him. Assistant state’s attorneys said they planned to prosecute Tony Cole for failing to comply with his court-ordered home confinement after his release on bail from Cook County Jail last month.
What mattered to the gang members who had gathered on Birchwood Avenue was that Rem was wearing a black hoodie and walking down the street — their street. That was plenty justification to kill a 17-year-old who had no apparent gang ties.
The former head of an Aurora gang testified Monday that Rem was shot by Juan “Ugly Face” Verdugo, 27, of Aurora because Rem wandered into the wrong neighborhood.
“They thought the guy was creeping on us to do something,” Roman Lucio said during the first day of Verdugo’s murder trial in Kane County Court.
A half-block north on Ashland there’s a tidy carwash owned by a businessman eager to open a hot dog stand. To him, it’s a no-brainer: The walk-up food shop would boost business at the carwash and allow him to keep the place open, and it would bring revenue and a few jobs to a neighborhood in dire need of both.
A group of residents, aided by the Target Area Development Corp., have campaigned — thus far successfully — to keep Bernstein from opening the stand.
Their concern is that it will attract gang members and neighborhood thugs, joining an array of nearby fast-food restaurants that have devolved into hot spots for violence.
“We, as regular citizens, would not be able to go to that hot dog stand,” said Jeannie Wainwright, who lives nearby and has stood with dozens of others in opposition to the business. “It would just be another hangout, another place for narcotics exchanges. Any place where they can loiter, they just seem to take over.”
Newly analyzed results from a 2007 national test show Illinois is one of only four states in which the black-white math performance gap is larger than the nation’s at both fourth- and eighth-grade levels.
“In this land of Lincoln, we are really creating a stratified system,'’ said Max McGee, president of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy and former Illinois superintendent of schools. “These results are outrageous and ought to be an immediate call to action.”…
In fourth-grade math in 2007, white Illinois students scored 32 points higher than their African-American counterparts on the 500-point national test. The national gap was only 26 points.
By eighth grade, white Illinois kids scored 38 points higher than black peers. Nationally, white eighth-graders outpaced blacks by 31 points.
Neighbors on Chicago’s Southwest Side are dialoguing again today with Bank of America. The interracial, interfaith coalition wants to prevent more foreclosures in their community. It says all banks need to speed up their loan modification efforts. So far, at least one bank is listening.
Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are among lenders switching fixed-rate credit-card holders to variable rates ahead of recently passed legislation designed to protect consumers from unfair rate hikes. More credit card issuers may follow suit.
The new law, which takes effect in February, requires credit-card companies to give cardholders 45 days’ notice of a rate increase, but only if the card has a fixed rate. It also requires that rates stay the same for one year after a new fixed-rate account is open.
Mayor Daley’s $169,020 chief procurement officer abruptly resigned Tuesday, spinning the revolving door in a department that has struggled to boost black contracting and weed out minority fronts…
Gayles banned Duff from doing business with the city for just three years, even though Duff pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $100 million in janitorial contracts earmarked for minorities and women.
When Daley and African-American aldermen raised the roof, Gayles switched the punishment to a lifetime ban. Shortly before his about-face, Gayles had defended the three-year penalty, telling the Chicago Sun-Times, “I don’t know the Duffs from the Diffs.”
Daley made no effort to conceal his anger and kept Gayles in the doghouse for months. Nevertheless, Gayles remained on the job for 16 months before resigning. City Hall insisted that he was not forced out.
The deadline has passed for two unions to come to an agreement with the city of Chicago. Mayor Richard Daley wanted unions to take unpaid days off among other cost-cutting measures to help close a budget gap.
LINDALL: There are alternative approaches to saving the same money as the layoffs, but without throwing anybody out of work and without reducing city services as layoffs would do.
Lindall says the union is still open to talks.
Almost 300 of AFSCME’s members could face layoffs Wednesday.
Laborers Union Local 1001 agreed to cost-cutting concessions that avert the need for 323 layoffs after persuading newly appointed Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Tom Byrne to make a giant concession of his own — by implementing a disciplinary amnesty for Streets and San employees.
For decades, City Hall has employed a policy of progressive discipline. The more offenses you have, the more severe the punishment.
Byrne’s decision to wipe the slate clean in a department at the center of the Hired Truck and city hiring scandals would turn that time-honored policy on its ear…
“You’re talking about a department with a lot of bad actors — guys who have been around for 30 years and probably should have been fired a long time ago,” said a source familiar with the change.
Scrounging for cash to erase a threatened $300 million year-end shortfall, Chicago is going after motorists with two unpaid tickets older than one year with a vengeance — by mailing 183,293 seizure notices and booting 3,493 vehicles.
The City Council’s controversial decision to drop the threshold for applying the Denver boot for the first time in seven years — from three-unpaid tickets to two — has touched off a booting blitz.
On April 22, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that 65,318 seizure notices had been mailed and 415 vehicles had been booted.
In the three months since that first progress report, the two-ticket booting has increased nearly eight-fold — to 3,493 vehicles. And the number of seizure notices has nearly tripled — to 183,293.
Because there’s less money coming in and more going out, officials expect a $15 million deficit in 2010. So the county board’s executive committee is asking County Executive Larry Walsh and Finance Director Paul Rafac to propose a series of cuts, and they’ll make the formal request during the county board meeting at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.
Some county departments will be asked to reduce budget expenses between 10 percent and 12 percent next year because a voluntary employee separation package likely will not be enough to fill the multi-million dollar gap in revenue shortfalls.
The weak economy has Peoria County facing a revenue shortfall of $3.3 million to $3.7 million and a corresponding budget deficit between $3.9 and $4 million. The second half of 2009 will show slight improvements, but Chief Financial Officer Erik Bush said, “I would charitably call it anemic.”
The number of college students at 25 higher education institutions in the Loop/South Loop grew from 52,230 to 65,524 during the last five years, the study found.
“This is encouraging news for Chicago,” said Ty Tabing, executive director of the Chicago Loop Alliance, the downtown advocacy group that sponsored the study. “At a time when most economic sectors are shrinking, the education sector continues to grow.”
Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009 - Posted by Capitol Fax Blog Advertising Department
[This advertisement is paid for by the Illinois Association of Rehabilitation Facilities]
Until there is a final budget community agencies will be forced to continue to deny services to clients, terminate or reduce hours to staff, and make other cuts to agency budgets.
Community services for people with disabilities, mental illness and autism spectrum disorders cannot exist at 50% funding levels; they cannot exist at 70% funding levels. The state has entrusted the support of persons with disabilities to community organizations.
These agencies have embraced that trust because they are mission-driven with the expertise and commitment to be good stewards of that trust.
Now, it’s the Governor’s and the General Assembly’s turn to do the right thing and fix this mess before it gets worse - pass an FY10 budget that fully funds community services for people with disabilities and mental illness.
