* Our quote of the day goes to Chris Mooney, a professor of Political Studies with the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Springfield speaking about the governor’s new budget.illinois.gov website, which allows people to post suggestions about ways to cut the state budget…
“I think blogs are a terrible thing in the American public because there is no responsibility,” Mooney said. “It’s interesting and a good thing that many people [on the governor’s budget site] are owning what they say, which is unlike a lot of blogs.”
Actually, the worst commenters are found mostly on newspaper websites, not blogs. Whatever the case, Mooney’s thesis is not wholly correct. There are lots and lots of pseudonymous and anonymous comments on the governor’s budget site. Have a look for yourself. And quite a few of the ideas are a little silly…
“It won’t save millions of dollars, but is it really necessary to use a new pen, that I’m sure isn’t a 10-cent Bic pen, every time the governor signs his name on a document?” Kevin Taylor, Chicago.
Here’s a clueless one posted this morning…
Susan Nikka Chicago Since most of the budget goes to the employee payroll and all benefits, I suggest taking back the last pay raises of ALL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES, which means local and state-wide, administrative, congressman, alderman — EVERYONE!
“Most” of the budget does not go towards employee payroll and benefits. And how is cutting congressional and aldermanic salaries gonna help the state budget?
Finke finds evidence of astroturfing on the governor’s site…
Several commentators wrote to promote hospital funding. They appeared to be form letters. Suggestion to writers: Don’t use form letters. Quinn may be an exception, but many politicians routinely ignore form letters.
* Another Mooney quote…
“How could anything on this (Web site) have an impact on what is going to be said?” Mooney said. “The budget is put together over the course of an entire year and has the input of hundreds of people and specialists. And now two weeks before, (Quinn) sets up a blog to get input?”
What Professor Mooney fails to grasp is that Quinn can use some of the more lucid suggestions for political cover in his budget address. He can incorporate the suggestions into his speech and portray himself as a man of the people. Used properly, it could be an effective little gimmick.
* The Chicago Tribune laid out its own budget cut proposals yesterday. The paper wants a two-year solution with not tax hikes. One item on the list was the pension funds…
The most ambitious initiative to rein in costs now and in future decades comes from the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, which has proved up its legal and financial implications. The plan would freeze, and guarantee, pension benefits already earned, but would set somewhat lower benefits going forward for current state employees and new hires. Retirement ages would increase, while accrual rates and annual cost-of-living bumps would decrease. An offsetting drop in employee pension contributions could put more money in some workers’ pockets.
These changes appear to be constitutional and parallel how private-sector employers have moved tens of millions of workers to less costly retirement plans, such as 401(k)s. One huge difference: The Civic Committee proposal keeps all employees in a defined-benefit plan — a golden nest egg that many private-sector workers no longer have. None of this would affect current retirees, whose pensions are constitutionally guaranteed for life. Actuarial studies estimate that these changes would reduce the state’s unfunded pension obligations, now approaching $95 billion, by about $20 billion. Budget savings: At least $2.1 billion.
A $2.1 billion savings right away? I haven’t been able to find anything at the Civic Committee’s website with that number, but I’ve been told an answer will be forthcoming. I’ll share the info when I get it.
That editorial also called for cutting local government revenue sharing in half, which would only transfer the problems to somebody else.
* Related…
* Dems must OK cuts to get tax increase: If, in the end, the Republicans refuse to play ball, Madigan should move forward without them, the political price be damned. He owes it to Illinois to use his power to deliver for the state — not just to accumulate even more power.
* Quinn: Lawmakers not cheering for tax increase: But Quinn has said he won’t back down from an income tax increase if House Speaker Michael Madigan and Illinois Senate President John Cullerton ask him to do so because lawmakers hesitate to support one in an election year.
* Range of services at risk due to city, state budgets: Like a frog in a gradually warming pot of water, not everyone notices the trouble brewing. But budget problems have already hurt the Chicago area’s way of life — public transit is shrinking, library hours have been cut, and public schools are laying off employees by the hundreds. And it looks like things can only get worse.
* By the numbers: How Illinois’ fiscal picture adds up
* Ideas to fix Illinois budget run from the ordinary to the exotic
* Take your own whack at state’s budget mess
* Online budget plan has obvious holes
* A Titanic mistake or nothing at all: This ship of state is steaming full speed ahead as people scream, “Iceberg!” That’s what this State of Illinois budget mess looks like to me.
* College tuition costs causing heartburn: One year at Illinois State University, my alma mater, costs more than $16,500. If prices kept pace with inflation from the time I graduated, one year at ISU should cost $10,000. Instead, the price more than doubled.
* Time to reform pensions, not add more sweeteners
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* I don’t doubt this Bloomberg lede at all…
Fridays are getting tense in the Chicago campaign office of Alexi Giannoulias, the Democrat seeking the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama. That’s the day regulators announce which troubled banks they’ll close.
Broadway Bank in Chicago, owned by Giannoulias’s family, must attract at least $75 million in capital by late April to meet terms of a consent order with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. prompted by losses on commercial real-estate loans. Even if successful, the family could lose control before November’s election, dealing a blow to Democrats and an Obama friend.
“The last thing that Alexi Giannoulias needs right now is another round of bad news stories and stories raising questions about the family’s business,” said Stu Rothenberg, editor of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report. “The one thing you don’t want to spend in a campaign is a lot of time defending yourself.”
The Tribune explains why it will be so difficult for the bank to get itself out of this mess…
Demetris Giannoulias, a Yale University economics and sociology graduate, said one of the few options for Broadway Bank to raise money is through private-equity firms.
But that won’t be easy. For one thing, many private-equity firms won’t bother doing deals of less than $100 million, he said. For another, banking regulations make it unappealing for private-equity firms to take more than, say, a 25 percent ownership stake. Exceeding that threshold would force such firms to register as bank holding companies. That would open up a typically secretive industry to more scrutiny in the highly regulated banking world.
A purchase of Broadway by another bank is virtually off the table, Demetris Giannoulias said. That’s because many healthy banks believe it makes more sense to wait until a lender fails before swooping in for the deposits, assets and branches. That way, the acquiring bank can usually strike a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that limits its losses.
Also, with only four branches, including its 5960 N. Broadway headquarters, Broadway has scant franchise value, providing little incentive for another institution to fashion a deal before its collapse.
Sen. Durbin said over the weekend that he believes Giannouolias will address all these issues soon…
“There are a lot of people who want to attribute all sorts of things to him, but most people in fairness will say, you know ‘he’s been away from this for four years, and banks are failing’ he needs to answer these questions, he’s prepared to answer these questions and it will happen soon.”
And this factoid from the Bloomberg piece can be expected to be part of that explanation…
[Giannoulias’] campaign presented figures showing 9 percent of about $240 million in non-performing assets now on the bank’s books originated while he was there.
Watch Giannoulias being asked about the bank by the Sun-Times…
* You may have noticed the new polling app in the center column for the US Senate race. I’m gonna keep it for a while unless it slows down the site (as these sorts of apps often do). I’ll also be adding the gubernatorial trendlines as soon as some more polls are taken so we can have some trendlines.
* Related…
* Kirk: Waive $1M penalty against district
* Giannoulias works Kane audience to build momentum in Senate race
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* John Patterson at the Daily Herald has a must-read retrospective today about what went wrong last year with the Illinois Reform Commission. Go read the whole thing, but this excerpt is quite important. Former GOP state Sen. Duane Noland was a member of Patrick Collins’ hand-picked Illinois Reform Commission. He was the only former legislator on the commission and has now become the first commission member to openly criticize the way the IRC handled last year’s push for reforms…
[Noland] said many of his commission colleagues had no idea what awaited at the Capitol and when advised what was coming chose not to engage the system even if it meant their proposals might falter.
“I tried to talk about ways we could be more effective,” Noland said in a recent interview. “But they wanted to be independent and above the fray.”
Noland said his advice was “hit singles and advance runners,” but the feeling of the commission was they’d been assembled “to hit a home run.”
The problem, he said, is those who swing for the fences often strike out.
“I sensed real quickly - it’s getting ugly and our people don’t know how to engage the process,” Noland said. “I could just see it, we were grinding to a halt.”
While that may look to many of my readers like common sense advice, engaging the system and coming up with reasonable compromises was obviously seen as somehow dirty by the commission.
Patterson’s article revolves around the controversy over Collins’ and the commission’s apparent overreaction to what looked like a fairly benign meeting between one commission member and the spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan. Former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar added his own two cents…
Edgar said negotiations are part of the process, the earlier they begin the better the outcome, and, while some things shouldn’t be sacrificed, wiggle room is needed. He said Collins should have reached out to legislative leaders.
“I can’t believe … that everything there was chiseled in stone,” Edgar said of the reform report. “And if it is, then you’re going to have a tough time.”
Again, go read the whole thing.
* Meanwhile, the Sun-Times has a report about how Northwestern University allegedly managed to keep a lucrative county traffic school contract. A cousin of Mayor Daley was involved. And so was Senate President John Cullerton. The Sun-Times provided his full explanation…
Like most members of the General Assembly, Cullerton serves as a part time state senator while continuing his professional career. As a partner with Thompson Coburn LLP, he continues to practice in law in areas of zoning, licensing, assessments, nonprofit law and other matters that come before Cook County and City of Chicago. The City of Chicago and Cook County lobbyist registration ordinances broadly define the term what constitutes “lobbying,” including traditional legal services. Out of an abundance of caution to ensure compliance with these ordinances, Cullerton has registered as a lobbyist for the traditional legal services he provides to clients with matters before the City of Chicago and Cook County.
The [National Safety Council] asked Cullerton for representation in the traffic safety school bid. Later the NSC issued a Request for Proposal for general representation on all legal work across the U.S. After submitting a proposal, competing with other law firms for the work, and a series of interviews, Thompson Coburn (the largest firm in St. Louis with offices in Washington D.C., Chicago and Belleville) was awarded the representation.
* Related…
* New law cuffs commissioners’ campaign cash
* Now is no time to water down FOIA law
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* As you already know, Sen. Bill Brady gave up his sponsorship of a bill last week to re-legalize mass euthanasia of dogs and cats by gas chambers after the press got wind of the legislation. But that wasn’t the only bill which Brady dumped…
The Illinois State Senate is considering a bill (SB3447) to roll back some protections of the Illinois Human Rights Act, which currently prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. […]
The bill was authored by State Senator Bill Brady, Republican gubernatorial hopeful, though the chief sponsorship has since changed to State Sen. John O. Jones. The bill has been assigned to the Judiciary Committee and a hearing on the bill is scheduled for Tuesday, March 2.
I wish I had known about that when I wrote my syndicated weekly newspaper column on Friday. The beauty of the column is I can somewhat bypass the Associated Press if they’re not covering an issue. The column appears in over 100 newspapers statewide, so I do reach a lot of eyeballs. This time around, the AP has so far completely ignored the uproar over Sen. Bill Brady’s bill to re-legalize gas chambers for dogs and cats. My column uses the legislation to partially illustrate how Brady’s campaign is doing so far, along with another related development…
Jerry Clarke is not easily ruffled. Not only has he seen it all in his years running campaigns in Illinois, but he’s served several tours of duty in Iraq as a combat helicopter pilot.
But I thought Jerry might actually faint last week when I called him with an update on his candidate’s latest piece of legislation. Clarke is running state Sen. Bill Brady’s gubernatorial campaign.
Sen. Brady’s bill would undo a compromise worked out over two years to stop the practice of mass euthanasia of dogs and cats. The animals were often put into auto exhaust gas chambers and killed en masse, sometimes allegedly by so-called “puppy mills” when the animals weren’t sold. The gas chambers were deemed cruel because it could take as long as 30 minutes for the animals to die, and some even survived the ordeal.
One of the state’s animal gas chambers is in Brady’s Senate district, and Brady has said he sponsored the bill on a local veterinarian’s behalf. Brady’s new legislation would delete the law’s requirement that “companion animals” be euthanized one at a time.
The Humane Society of Illinois blasted Brady’s legislation. “This bill would allow numerous animals to be gassed at the same time, in the same chamber, which will cause fear and panic, at the same time these dogs will be gasping for their final breath.”
That’s not exactly the image you want associated with your gubernatorial candidate, to say the least.
The point here is that Bill Brady is obviously not yet thinking like a statewide candidate. For crying out loud, you can’t introduce a bill to help out your local puppy gas chamber when you’re trying to be governor. I mean, seriously, what kind of thought process concocts an idea like that?
Clarke called me back to say that Brady would introduce an amendment to delete the bill’s content. The next day, Brady handed off sponsorship to someone else. At least his campaign is finally learning that they’ll have to keep this guy on a short and tight leash.
Jerry has no time to spare, either. As I write this, the Senate Democrats are drafting a state budget based on Sen. Bill Brady’s proposals from his Republican primary race.
During the primary race, Brady told the Chicago Tribune: “I believe Illinois needs to prioritize its programs and cut state spending by approximately 10 percent, saving $5.5 billion on the $55 billion base budget.”
Brady’s answer was dismissed by most budget experts because about half that $55 billion figure can’t really be altered much. You can’t, for instance, just tell Wall Street that you’re cutting your bond payments by ten percent. So a ten percent across the board cut to the operating budget would only provide about half of Brady’s projected savings.
And now the Senate Democrats have decided to show the world just what, exactly, Brady’s proposed ten percent cut and billion dollar tax cut would mean to Illinois - agency by agency.
The Senate Democrats have already passed a legislative scholarship “reform” that was specifically designed to call attention to Brady’s granting of a tuition waiver to the child of a campaign contributor. The ploy didn’t work, though, because Brady uses an independent committee to award the scholarships. Also last week, the Democrats forced a hearing on Brady’s campaign finance reform bill. The legislation was so poorly drafted that Brady was forced to agree to make numerous fixes, but the hearing got absolutely no media coverage.
The “Brady budget” proposal may finally break the media logjam, so this budget hearing could be a major test of Brady’s campaign, and its early reaction was fairly strong.
“When are they going to hold hearings on Quinn’s budget?” Clarke thundered last week when told of the planned budget hearings. Brady’s campaign manager accused the Democrats of using a Senate committee and state agency higher-ups for pure political gamesmanship while their own party - which has a huge majority in the chamber - hasn’t yet come up with solutions of their own. Gov. Pat Quinn’s budget address will not be unveiled until a full week after the scheduled “Brady budget” hearing.
If Jerry can just get a hold on his guy, he may have a real shot here.
As subscribers already know, the Senate appropriations hearing is scheduled for Wednesday morning.
* Gov. Pat Quinn got in some licks during the annual International Kennel Club dog show on Saturday…
“As long as I am governor, we’re never going to pass any kind of legislation that allows cruelty toward animals, whether it be dogs, cats or any other living things,” Quinn said to applause, barks and woofs.
Quinn spoke amid the booths of organizations that rescue abandoned pets and finds homes for them, holding the leash of a German shepherd.
“The governor has a veto pen and we’re going to make sure we protect our animals from any kind of cruelty,” he said, then added, “There are some folks in our society unfortunately they have dollar signs for eyes, and that’s all they think about is money. We’re not going to let that kind of monetary compulsion get in the way of treating our animals in a proper, dignified, friendly manner.”
Asked if that was a direct shot at Brady and his bill, Quinn said, “That was a terrible piece of legislation and I think everybody in Illinois knows it. A bill was put in to allow a mass killing of dogs and cats in the gas chanber. Putting all those animals together… many of them obviously very fearful as you put them in a small, contained place, perhaps fighting with each other, for them to be subject in their last minutes on earth to that kind of cruelty, is just plain wrong… There may be firms out there that think they can make money by mass killings of dogs, puppies and kittens. But that’s not what our state stands for and that law will never be approved.”
WBBM Radio got to a point that Quinn will probably use several more times before this campaign is over…
Quinn accused Brady of caving in to business interests by sponsoring the bill.
* Related…
* Saying ‘yes’ can be dangerous
* Abused scholarship program should be ended, not altered
* It’s time for politically connected tuition waivers to end
* Same problems at the state level
* Quinn turns heat up on Brady over dog bill
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