* Earlier today, I told you that David Hoffman had endorsed Rahm Emanuel. Now comes this e-mail from Forrest Claypool…
Thank you for standing with me this past election in my independent bid for Cook County Assessor. I was humbled to have received such generous support from so many people tired of the status quo.
I want to tell you today about a promising campaign for mayor of Chicago. I’ve known Rahm Emanuel for more than 30 years. We’ve worked together, along with David Axelrod, on campaigns here in Illinois, including Paul Simon and Barack Obama, and I’ve seen first hand his sound judgment, integrity, and commitment to addressing the major challenges of the day. I admire his tenacity and his ability to deliver results to his constituents.
* Meanwhile, if you want to see how Chicago makes it so hard to run a small business, just read this story about a controversial hot dog stand which promotes the fact that it’s staffed by ex-cons. I don’t really care about this particular business. Seems like a bizarre advertising gimmick if you ask me. But, whatever, the case, check this out…
So far, [Ald. Robert Fioretti] hasn’t let Andrews have a permit for a sign to hang outside. A sign frame swings empty over the hot dog stand. […]
A spokesman for Fioretti says he is still waiting for three city departments to weigh in regarding the sign.
Think about that for a second. Not only does the alderman have to approve your sign, but so do three city departments (if, I assume, the alderman wants to slow-walk something).
* After House Speaker Michael Madigan said this week that he wanted to start looking at legislation to reduce pension benefits, Senate President John Cullerton told reporters that he opposed the idea…
Illinois Senate President John Cullerton on Wednesday tossed cold water on the idea of reducing future pension benefits for current state workers, but House Speaker Michael Madigan appeared to forge ahead anyway.
“We’ve asked our staff to do research on it,” Cullerton, D-Chicago, said in an interview. “I’m pretty clear that it would be unconstitutional.”
However, Cullerton left open the possibility of the Senate considering a bill that comes over from the House.
“We’re not going to initiate a bill in the Senate,” he said. “I’d vote against the bill in the Senate. If the House passes a bill and the speaker wants it to be called … we’ll certainly talk.”
Perhaps a more difficult question is whether it is fair. From a state employee’s standpoint, absolutely not. The employees have held up their end of the deal all along. The underfunding has come from the state skipping payments into the system.
From a private sector standpoint, however, it’s hard to argue fairness. Employees in the private sector have seen defined-benefit pensions end and employer matches of their 401(k) contributions discontinued. They’ve suffered under an economy that was nearly killed — through no fault of their own — by careless Wall Street daredevils who, by and large, have gone unpunished.
After failing to confirm top gubernatorial appointees in the previous legislative session, lawmakers are now looking to tighten Senate rules to prevent a string of government employees from working without proper authorization.
A Senate panel on Wednesday approved Senate Bill 1, which bars future holdover appointees and acting appointees from serving without confirmation after 30 days. Temporary appointees will be allowed to serve until the next meeting of the Senate.
Holdover appointees are those who have finished their term, but continue to serve until someone new has been nominated.
The bill passed the Senate this morning on a unanimous roll call.
Advance Illinois executive director Robin Steans said progress is being made in some areas.
“There’s been a high level of agreement that it is time for performance to play a role (in staffing),” Steans said. “The devil is very much in the details. Are they going to do that in a way that’s really serious and meaningful, or is it more of a fig leaf? That’s what the negotiations are about now.”
Lightford said talks are focusing on how to bring performance evaluations into staffing matters rather than rely solely on seniority.
“I think we should look at it this way: Seniority should count, but to what degree? What part does performance count?” she said.
Couple that with issues about who should conduct performance evaluations — a school principal or a panel of the teacher’s peers.
“There’s a lot of moving parts to it,” Lightford said. “We’re trying to set up a system where personnel evaluations are impactful, they matter. Just because you’ve been a teacher for 10, 15, 20 years doesn’t mean you are OK if your performance in a lot of other areas is not up to par.”
* Senate President Cullerton talked with reporters about several of the above issues yesterday. Listen…
* Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday was last weekend. Illinois doesn’t do a whole lot to promote his Illinois ties. We have a tollway named after him. And there are some sites in Tampico and Dixon, plus a Ronald Reagan Trail.
* The Question: Should Illinois do more to promote Reagan’s Illinois roots? And if so, what? If not, why?
…Adding… The Senate began debating a resolution commemorating Reagan today at 10:11 am. Watch or listen here.
* David Hoffman had almost a cult following among reformers during his primary race against Alexi Giannoulias. So, I’m assuming the heads of many of those same reform-minded types are exploding right about now…
David Hoffman, who often infuriated retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley as City Hall’s inspector general, said Thursday that he endorsed Rahm Emanuel to succeed Daley. […]
“He has the potential to be quite independent of the political power structure, perhaps more so than some of the other candidates,” Hoffman told the Chicago News Cooperative on Thursday. “He is very smart. I think he has great potential.”
She is the black candidate, but she is not the best candidate.
Her campaign has not gotten off the ground. There simply is no buzz. Black women have come together to provide voice and reason to her candidacy, but she has failed to promote a positive message, or present her solutions to the city’s problems
Oof.
* As well all know by now, Emanuel has taken a lot of heat for his service tax proposal. He’s attempting to turn the issue to his favor with a new mailer…
The campaign flyer features a Photoshopped image of rival Gery Chico in front of a limousine. The mailer takes Chico to task for criticizing Emanuel’s sales tax plan.
“Gery Chico wants you to pay more and let the rich to pay nothing,” the flyer being mailed out to Chicago voters says.
Chico hasn’t proposed hiking any taxes, but he does oppose Emanuel’s plan which would lower the overall sales tax rate by a quarter point by imposing a new service tax on “luxury” items for the “rich.” So, by Emanuel’s logic, Chico favors the wealthy and is against the hard-working middle class. Mailers can be so fun, can’t they?
* All six mayoral candidates debated for the first time yesterday. I didn’t watch it because I was otherwise occupied. Apparently, there wasn’t much substance because the focus of most of the stories was over the fantasy issue of slave reparations…
With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, the candidates for Chicago mayor veered Wednesday from debating city issues to talking about whether they support reparations for descendants of slaves.
They all supported the notion of reparations but had different ideas about what reparations were, gave no details about who would pay them or where the money might come from at the forum sponsored by the Chicago Defender, the city’s historic black newspaper.
They might as well have discussed whether unicorns existed. This, apparently, was not a major topic of debate…
The City of Chicago and related local governments like the Chicago Park District collectively under-funded their worker pension plans by $5.1 billion in the past decade, according to a new report by the Civic Federation.
As a result, the retirement plans now have as little as 36.5% of the assets needed to pay promised benefits, the taxpayer watchdog group says.
Oy.
* And the Tribune has a new poll out which shows Chicagoans thought the city’s response to last week’s blizzard was OK by them…
Nearly three-quarters of the Chicagoans surveyed — 73 percent — gave the city an overall passing grade for how it handled the storm.
In fact, when it came to the storm’s most conspicuous consequence — the hundreds of vehicles snowbound along Lake Shore Drive — respondents were more likely to blame the stranded drivers than the city.
Overall, Chicagoans said they were satisfied with how the city removed snow from their neighborhoods, with 59 percent saying it was cleared as well as could be expected, compared to 38 percent saying it wasn’t up to par. North Siders believed the city did a better job clearing their neighborhood streets than did South Siders.
African-American residents were the most critical of snow removal in their neighborhoods, with those in areas that had a majority of black residents saying snow removal was not as good as they expected.
* Mayoral debate gets heated when slave reparations come up
* New police superintendent, more cops on street at top of new Chicago mayor’s crime list - All 4 top contenders say they won’t renew Jody Weis’ contract
* New report details scope of public pension shortfalls - Deficit now equal to more than $11,000 per Chicago resident
* I have no doubt that eventually Indiana, Wisconsin, New Jersey or some other state will lure away a large Illinois business. Some states are putting on a full-court press, so I just can’t see how Illinois can convince all of those companies to stay put. But, I suppose we can savor the occasional victory while we can, if it is indeed a victory…
Under siege by New Jersey’s attempts to lure businesses from Illinois and bruised by the Chicago Bears’ loss to the Green Bay Packers, Gov. Pat Quinn went on the offensive and reeled in a maker of high-speed passenger trains that had set up shop in Wisconsin, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Wednesday.
“The governor (of Illinois) just was able to attract Talgo, which is a train manufacturing company from Wisconsin, to come to Illinois to manufacture train sets, which is quite a coup,” LaHood said in Washington.
Asked for details, federal and state officials hedged their answers while not quite retracting what LaHood said.
“There is no agreement, to our knowledge,'’ said a U.S. Department of Transportation spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. “To the best of our knowledge, they are still working on it.'’
* Wisconsin has a tiny wind power base, so even if we do take one of these away, it probably won’t be huge…
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s revival of the state’s former “Escape to Wisconsin” slogan to invite businesses to escape rising taxes in Illinois has led to some blowback from south of the border.
In response to Walker’s wind energy regulations proposed Jan. 11, the Illinois Wind Energy Association is inviting wind power developers to “Escape to Illinois.”
Walker’s proposed legislation would require wind turbines to be constructed with a 1,800-foot setback from neighboring property lines, a mandate IWEA’s executive director Kevin Borgia said “would effectively ban wind development from the Badger State,” in a press release.
Kmart is among seven companies that have warned the state this month that they are planning closings or mass layoffs. Kmarts in Franklin Park, Ill., and Washington, Ill., will close, the company said, putting 144 employees out of work.
The Illinois Department of Commerce and Opportunity requires employers to provide 60 days notice of plant closures or mass layoffs. The law applies to businesses with 75 or more full-time workers.
Gold Standard Baking, Inc. will close a commercial bakery at 250 N. Washtenaw Ave. in Chicago, cutting 73 jobs by the end of March. 67 workers are expected to be laid off by the end of February at Itasca-based C. D. Listening Bar Inc., which sells DVDs, CDs, books and video games online at DeepDiscount.com.
AGI North America, LLC, a paperboard box manufacturing company in Jacksonville, is closing at the end of March, putting 70 employees out of work. Gray Interplant Systems, Inc. – a warehousing and storage company in Peoria and Mossville – is planning mass layoffs for the first two weeks in April, affecting 167 workers. And Doumak, which manufactures chocolate confectionaries in Bensenville, is planning temporary layoffs affecting 60 workers while new equipment is installed at the facility in March.
Gov. Quinn is right to boast about the numbers of jobs created here in the past couple of years. But he rarely talks about the mind-boggling number of jobs lost here since the start of the recession.
* Related…
* Daley, airline chiefs fail to agree on O’Hare - High-level Washington meeting ends without a deal
* Daley to return to China: A mayoral spokesperson says Daley will meet with business leaders interested in making public and private investments in Chicago. He also hopes to help local companies interested in the fast growing Chinese marketplace. This would be Daley’s fifth trip to China in recent years.
* Casinos might appeal cash-sharing case to Supreme Court
* Press Release: Governor Quinn Announces Manufacturing Company to Expand in Illinois - State Incentive Package Allows Elmhurst-Based The Chamberlain Group to Create Up to 100 New Jobs
Over the years, the Jesse White Tumblers have trained 13,000 young athletes and, according to White, “Only 105 of them have gotten into trouble with the law.” Tumblers who go on to college get $2,500-to-$25,000 grants to help defray the cost of tuition.
Pretty darned amazing when you think about it. Actually, you don’t even need to think about it. It’s an astounding record.
The Illinois General Assembly was sworn in less than a month ago but, as of Tuesday morning, 150 bills have been introduced in the Senate and a whopping 1,151 bills have been introduced in the House.
Almost none of them have anything to do with the subject that on which state should be focusing — cutting costs.
*** UPDATE *** Well, here’s one. From a press release…
State Senator Dan Kotowski (D-Park Ridge) is sponsoring legislation that will cut the Senate Democratic Caucus spending by 5 percent.
The state spends about $473 million a year on health care for retired state employees, [Department of Healthcare and Family Services Director Julie Hamos] said. Very few of them pay any share of that cost, according to Hamos.
About 84,000 retirees enjoy the benefit, including all retired judges and legislators, plus all state workers who retired before Jan. 1, 1998, and those who retired after Jan. 1, 1998, with 20 or more years of service.
Only 6,900 of the 84,000 people in the system pay a premium, according to Julie Hamos, director of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. Contributions from those retirees brought in $11.9 million for fiscal year 2010 — well short of the $473 million in costs Hamos said the state encountered that year.
However, there are factors contributing to the disparity between contributions and costs beyond the relatively small number of people paying into the system.
For example, the state currently makes up the approximately $550 per retiree difference for those retirees not eligible for Medicare. Also, dependents of retirees paid only $40 million of the $150 million it cost to insure them in FY10.
State Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka will be getting a taste of her own medicine, so to speak, on Monday.
Almost 25 years after her legislation eliminating lawmakers and others from jury duty exemptions was passed, Topinka has been called to serve on Monday, Feb. 14 at the Markham Courthouse in South suburban Cook County.
* I’ve been wondering lately how I could better integrate social media into this site. My business model strongly discourages any off-site stuff. But seeing these numbers prompts me to ask you for some ideas…
Touting the auto as the ultimate mobile device, Ford marketing chief Jim Farley outlined the automaker’s social media strategy to open the media preview of the 2011 Chicago Auto Show on Wednesday.
“With 500 million people on Facebook, we can reach more potential customers in a more personal way,” Farley said of the company’s continued move to new media. Its latest efforts are centered on the Focus, which arrives at dealerships next month, and the Chicago-built Explorer.
Three metro-east lawmakers sponsored a bill Wednesday in the Illinois House directing the auditor general to investigate hundreds of workers’ compensation claims by employees at the Menard Correctional Center, as well as claims filed by state arbitrators.
House [Resolution] 52 was introduced by state Reps. Tom Holbrook, D-Belleville; Dwight Kay, R-Glen Carbon; Dan Reitz, D-Steeleville, and others.
“We need an independent auditor to look at these things to restore confidence in the system,” Holbrook said.
The action came after the Belleville News-Democrat reported Tuesday that an arbitrator for the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, Jennifer Teague, of Shiloh, attempted to keep secret a public hearing for former Illinois State Trooper Matt Mitchell, who filed a workers’ comp claim for injuries he received in a high-speed head-on collision that killed two Collinsville sisters in 2007.
The attorney for the family of Kelli and Jessica Uhl, says they are ‘outraged’ by allegations that the arbitrator in former State Trooper Matt Mitchell’s workers’ compensation case tried to hold his hearing “on the sly with no press.”
Tom Keefe says the report in the Belleville News Democrat, that arbitrator Jennifer Teague changed the date, time and place of the hearing without notification, is like salt in the family’s wounds, “This just seems like a nightmare and they just can’t wake up from it. They have been consistently betrayed by people who have sworn oaths to protect them.”
Combine this crazy case with the fact that so many arbitrators have filed their own workers’ comp claims, and you’ve got a situation where too many of these arbitrators appear to be in the tank with the plaintiffs bar.
* And here’s a Belleville News-Democrat story I missed. A single workers’ comp hearing site in the tiny southern Illinois town of Whittington had 312 WC cases involving state workers on its January docket. That’s one out of every four of the site’s 1,310 cases. The BN-D compared that to other hearing sites…
By comparison, the Springfield hearing office, located in an urban area where more than 17,400 state workers are employed, listed 207 cases for January that involve state workers, or about one in five of 967 cases. Most of these employees say they were injured mainly by slipping and falling, over exertion, backs sprains and leg injuries.
In Chicago where 15 state arbitrators are assigned to separate hearing rooms in a single office building, a total of 5,037 cases were docketed for January. These cases involved four arbitrators but only 81 cases involved state workers, or about 2 percent.
At two hearing sites in Joliet where 2,574 cases were scheduled for January, 85 involved state workers or about 3 percent. Joliet is located relatively close to two large, maximum security state prisons, the Stateville and Pontiac correctional centers, where more than 1,200 state workers are employed.
A computer printout obtained by the News-Democrat through the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission showed that since Jan. 1, 2008, the combined repetitive trauma injury settlements to workers at these prisons totaled just 18 settled claims, a fraction of the total at Menard. The data showed that repetitive trauma settlements were made to four Stateville prison workers and to 14 at Pontiac.
In the past three years, $30.6 million was awarded to about 725 state employees in settlements who filed workmen’s compensation claims for repetitive trauma injuries caused by typing or unlocking prison cells.
An additional $4.3 million was paid to all state claimants who missed work while recuperating from doctor-ordered time off or corrective surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome.
And about one in three of these taxpayer dollars went directly to guards and other employees at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester, according to a News-Democrat investigation.
