* I told you yesterday that Senate President Cullerton wanted to replace the video gaming component of the capital bill with a cigarette tax. I told subscribers today why I believed he was doing it. Cullerton unveiled his proposal today…
In a surprise move, Senate President John Cullerton Wednesday took steps to gut the controversial 2009 state law that authorized video gambling machines in bars and restaurants throughout the state.
The measure, if passed by both chambers of the Legislature and enacted by Gov. Quinn, would represent a 180-degree shift from when video gambling was regarded as a $534 million cash cow to support the governor’s $31 billion capital program. […]
“It’s obviously a very controversial plan. It has yet to generate a single dollar for the capital program. Right now, the Senate president is gauging whether there is sufficient support to repeal it,” Cullerton spokeswoman Rikeesha Phelon said.
On Wednesday, Cullerton attached the repeal language to a bill he is sponsoring, but the package has not had a hearing. […]
…the Illinois Gaming Board has added about 50 investigators in preparation for the roll-out of such gaming and begun background checks on 116 license applicants after estimating the first video gambling machines would be functioning by late summer or early fall, spokesman Gene O’Shea told the Sun-Times.
Could you be for this swap?
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Question of the day
Wednesday, Mar 16, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Yes, we’re going to do another one. We’ve been getting tons of comments and votes on our polls about this subject, so let’s keep it going.
The concealed carry bill includes this section…
…nothing in this paragraph shall preclude a member of the [General Assembly or local governmental body] or registered lobbyist holding a concealed firearms permit from carrying a concealed firearm at a meeting of the body.
* The Question: Should legislators and registered lobbyists be allowed to carry concealed guns at the Statehouse during session? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments…
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Will Amazon run out of places to flee?
Wednesday, Mar 16, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* If more states enact this law, then Amazon may have no choice but to finally start collecting sales taxes. A federal solution would be preferable, but it doesn’t appear likely. Anyway, leaving California would be a big deal and could eat into the company’s profits…
Amazon.com has threatened to cut off more than 10,000 affiliates in California if state lawmakers pass legislation requiring the Internet retailer to collect sales tax from state residents.
Seattle-based Amazon said four bills introduced in the state legislature are unconstitutional because they would require sellers with no physical presence in California to collect sales tax from its residents, Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy, wrote in a letter (PDF) to the California Board of Equalization, the state agency responsible for collecting property and sales taxes. […]
Amazon has closed its affiliate programs in Colorado, North Carolina, and Rhode Island over similar disputes. And in February, Amazon threatened to close a distribution facility in Texas after receiving a $269 million bill for uncollected sales taxes.
Illinois now has a similar law on its books and the company has announced that it will cut ties with its associates here next month. Amazon has filed suit against a New York law.
* The fight is certainly spreading…
Here’s a list of states with bills pending that would require out-of-state retailers to collect sales tax from online shoppers, if they use affiliates within that state:
* Arizona: HB 2551
* California: AB 153 and AB 155 (similar bill)
* Connecticut: HB 5543; HB 5545 (similar bill); SB 259 (companion bill)
* Hawaii: HB 1183
* Illinois: SB 1783 (would reverse HB 3569’s affiliate definition)
* Massachusetts: HO 1731
* Minnesota: SB 458
* Mississippi: HB 363 (died in House Ways and Means committee)
* New Mexico: SB 95 and HB 102 (companion bill)
* Rhode Island: HB 5115 (would repeal existing Nexus law)
* Tennessee: HB1912
* Texas: HB 1317
* Vermont: HB 143
Keep in mind that an introduced bill doesn’t mean the bill will actually pass. Bills are really easy to introduce.
* The Tennessee fight looks interesting…
Tennessee retailers, led by Walmart, are putting a full court press on the state Legislature to prevent a sales tax exemption for Amazon. The online retailer is building distribution centers near Chattanooga, and with a physical presence in the state it is possible for the state to require the company to collect and remit sales tax on any items bought by Tennessee residents.
But initially, state government—eyeing 1,200 jobs at the centers—has said Amazon doesn’t have to collect sales tax.
Tennessee retailers have to collect sales tax and turn it over to the state and small businesses in Tennessee selling online are supposed to collect sales tax and do likewise.
* Texas insisted that Amazon pay the tax, and now it may be pulling up some big stakes…
As a result of an ongoing tax dispute with Texas, Amazon.com has decided to take its ball and go home.
The online retailer said Thursday that it would shutter its Irving distribution facility April 12 and cancel plans to hire as many as 1,000 additional workers rather than pay Texas what the state says is owed in uncollected sales tax.
Texas wants $269 million from Seattle-based Amazon in past-due sales tax. It sent the bill to the company last October.
“Despite much hard work and the support of other Texas officials, we’ve been unable to come to a resolution with the Texas comptroller’s office,” Dave Clark, vice president of operations for the facility, said in a letter sent to its employees here announcing the closure.
* In the meantime, Wisconsin might pick up some Illinois jobs…
The owner of a Rockford area business speaks out for the first time since the governor signed a bill he says, will force his company out of state.
FatWallet Founder and CEO Tim Strom isn’t happy about the bill. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed it last week. It forces out-of-state companies that do business with companies like FatWallet, to pay Illinois sales taxes. That’s something they don’t do in surrounding states. “We’ve already begun the process of looking at where we want to relocate outside the state of Illinois moving to Wisconsin is the simplest thing to do from an ease point of view,” says FatWallet CEO Tim Strom.
If this new tax bill isn’t repealed, Storm says it’ll cost his company between 30% and 40% of its revenue. Some companies like Amazon and Overstock have already said they’ll cut ties with FatWallet next month. Storm says the law hurts any person or non-profit in Illinois that puts a link to something for sale on their website because the seller has to pay sales tax on it. “There’s going to be a lot of people that are online affiliates that simply use it to supplement their income for posting a link on their website, and there are certainly charities that use this methodology for generating income as well those are going to shut down.”
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* The Chicago Tribune was given exclusive access to cover the governor’s signing of the death penalty abolition bill.
As you might imagine, that didn’t go over too well with the rest of the Statehouse press corps. It’s not that reporters bore a grudge against the Tribune reporter. Heck, most of us would probably have accepted the exclusivity offer. But this was a huge, momentous bill, perhaps the most important legislation that Gov. Pat Quinn will ever sign. So, the decision rankled.
Yesterday, this letter was hand-delivered to the governor’s office…
We, the undersigned members of the Statehouse press corps, object strenuously to your decision to single out one particular news organization to witness and photograph the signing of historic legislation repealing the death penalty.
Your enactment of Senate Bill 3539 carries enormous impact. It affects the accused, judges, juries, prosecutors, the 15 death row inmates whose sentences you commuted and the family members of those murdered in some of the state’s worst crimes. No one media organization deserved greater access than the others in covering this official action and disseminating the historic news to Illinois’ 13 million residents.
Think for a moment what our democracy might be like if a judge could give one news organization exclusive access to a jury verdict. What if a legislative leader could bar all journalists _ except one _ from covering an important vote of the General Assembly? We would all regard those hypotheticals as anti-democratic and serious breaches of the First Amendment.
Our aim in writing this letter is to emphasize the importance of doing government business in the open and to urge you to renew your commitment to that ideal for the duration of your time as governor.
You have said the state’s residents deserve an “open, ethical and transparent government.” Yet, this week, you slammed your office door on that principle by letting only a cherry-picked few witness your official action on one of Illinois’ most important days.
We hope you would acknowledge that no single news organization should arbitrarily be granted special access to an official event.
Regards
I signed the letter as well.
* Meanwhile, in other reform news…
Illinois Republicans are collecting online petition signatures to prevent former state Rep. Careen Gordon, D-Morris, from being appointed to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.
Nominated for the post by Gov. Pat Quinn, Gordon’s appointment has been pending since she left office in January. Republicans charged Gordon, who now lives in Chicago, voted for the 67 percent Illinois income tax increase in exchange for the review board salary of $86,000.
The tax increase passed by one vote in the House and one vote in the Senate.
Republicans oppose the nomination because Gordon voted in favor of the tax increase during a winter lame duck session after denouncing the Quinn’s tax hike ambitions during her failed re-election campaign against Sue Rezin, R-Morris.
The online petition is here.
* And then there’s this…
If you are running for office, should you be able to change parties in the middle of the campaign?
Lawmakers are attempting to answer that question with a proposal that a House committee approved Tuesday.
Sponsored by Rep. Mike Fortner, R-West Chicago, House Bill 2009 will bar candidates from running for office if they have already run under a different party in the same election year. Flip-floppers must wait for the next election cycle before they become eligible again.
“This makes it clearer to the candidates, clearer to the voters what is acceptable under state law, and it really just captures what the Illinois Supreme Court told us,” Fortner said.
But not everybody is happy…
For example, under this measure someone couldn’t run under one political party’s banner in a primary and a different political party’s in the general election.
Ron Michaelson, a political studies professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield, found fault with this idea.
“We should not make it difficult for people to run for office. It should be relatively easy for people to run for office, and then let the voters decide whether these people are indeed qualified candidates,” Michaelson said.
Scott Lee Cohen would’ve been barred from running for governor as an independent last year if this bill had been the law of the land. So, it has that going for it.
What do you think?
* Related…
* Suburbs’ big-money campaigners could face more limits
* Challenges levied at open government
* VIDEO: Fortner on Flip-Floppers
* Flood of legislation greets Illinois lawmakers, lobbyists, interest groups
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* From the Wall Street Journal…
Lawmakers in Illinois say they may try to fix the state’s ailing pension system by asking current workers to pay more into the plan, though the approach faces substantial legal and political obstacles.
The lawmakers are also entertaining the politically difficult idea of applying broader pension changes made this year for newly hired employees to current workers. Those include raising the retirement age and scaling back on annual cost-of-living raises. […]
“There is growing momentum for additional pension reform and this is something that definitely should be looked at,” said [budget director David Vaught].
He added that if the legislature voted to increase employee contributions in the current legislative session, Mr. Quinn, a Democrat, “would not stand in its way.”
House GOP Leader Tom Cross has a bill that would hike current employee pension contributions to 20 percent of salary. The idea would be to “encourage” workers to opt out of the defined benefit system and move to either an annuity program (similar to what SURS uses) or a 401(k) type dealio.
Discuss.
* Other budget-related stuff…
* ADDED: Editorial: Raise cigarette tax $1 to fund road plan
* ADDED: Editorial: Don’t blame unions for fiscal problems
* Quinn budget chief doled out pay hikes: On Jan. 13, while Quinn approved a 66 percent increase in the income tax, Vaught voted to boost the pay of Aaron Carter, director of the Illinois Procurement Policy Board, and Will Blount, who serves as a senior procurement analyst with the five-person agency.
* Chuck Sweeny: Republicans not convinced by sad budget stories
* CollegeIllinois’ promise of tuition benefits looks iffy: That sounds reasonable, except that the unspecified “cancellation fees” are found in the fine print. They are: “The lesser of $100 or 50% of amount paid.” Yes, taken literally, that means you could lose half the amount you deposited by withdrawing from your contract!
* House committee votes to bar 3rd Street rail funding
* Cigarette tax hike runs into opposition: Republicans charged Cullerton is manufacturing a crisis over the construction money as a way to push the cigarette tax hike because he has long sought an increase in the 98 cents-per-pack the state now levies. Officials with both Gov. Pat Quinn’s budget office and the state transportation department said no road or construction programs are held up this year because of the appellate court decision.
* Buck-a-pack cig tax proposed: Steve Brown, spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, said he’s not aware of any discussions about this latest proposal to hike the cigarette tax. He also said there are mixed feelings among lawmakers about the need to reauthorize the capital plan while the case is still in the courts. Some lawmakers think the state will prevail, and others believe there already are enough projects under way to get the state through another construction season.
* Cullerton eyes cigarette tax hike, GOP backs away
* VIDEO: John Cullerton on Cigarette Tax
* Vouchers Bubble Up Again In Springfield: Sponsored by State Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), the bill mirrors the vouchers proposal State Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) put on the table about a year ago. No specific numbers of student and costs are detailed in SB 1932, but Meeks’ bill, which passed the Senate but ultimately failed in the House, would have given up to 30,000 CPS students a voucher worth about $3,700.
* TIF Reform Comes To Springfield: A host of TIF bills have been introduced into the current General Assembly. One of the bills proposed would exempt Chicago Public Schools from the taxing bodies that lose property tax dollars because of the existence of TIF districts in the city. Another would send “surplus” TIF dollars back to the taxing bodies each year.
* Legislator: Metra board wasting money, should resign
* Anderson: Quinn plan off base - Regional superintendent turns to county board for support
* Illinois law signed requiring voter referendums for expanded community mental health services
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WLS shames itself again
Wednesday, Mar 16, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* He compared himself to the Japanese tsunami victims but claims others are cynical scoundrels? Sheesh…
Rod Blagojevich got behind the mic at WLS-890 AM Wednesday morning during which he compared his ousting as governor to the tragedy in Japan, calling it a “tsunami that happened to me” and called Springfield lawmakers “cynical scoundrels.”
* And he still claims he was “highjacked” from office so that the remaining Democrats could pass a tax increase…
Blagojevich set his sights on political life and former colleagues, namely who he called the “unholy trinity of Democrats”: Gov. Pat Quinn, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate Pres. John Cullerton.
“What’s on my mind today are things like the taxes, the Illinois taxes,” Blagojevich said at the start of his 5-9 a.m. stint filling in for Don and Roma on the “Don Wade and Roma Show.”
“I was hijacked from office. Pat Quinn got there, and he made a deal with [Madigan and Cullerton] that he was going to sock it to the people and solve the problems of government on the backs of the hard-working people of Illinois … not by making government more efficient.”
Yeah. His impeachment had nothing whatsoever to do with his arrest. Right.
How WLS could give this convicted doofus a microphone is just beyond me.
* Meanwhile, could Fitz be leaving? He’s apparently on a prestigious short list…
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is reportedly on the short list of candidates being eyed to replace outgoing FBI Director Robert S. Mueller.
Citing sources, both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday included Fitzgerald on the list of top candidates. […]
The leading candidate is reportedly another Chicago native, Michael Mason. Mason is a former top official at the FBI’s Washington field office currently serving as Verizon Communications’ top security chief.
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* We’ve talked before about all the non-agriculture bills which have been assigned to the House Agriculture Committee. Yesterday, the committee held a hearing on two bills opposed by pro-choice forces, which sparked a “Women are Not Livestock” protest…
The House Agriculture and Conservation Committee, which is dominated by conservative downstate Democrats and Republicans, [yesterday] unanimously approved a measure that would require Illinois abortion clinics to meet tougher regulations to continue providing services.
Under the proposal, clinics that perform more than 50 abortions a year would be required to meet the same regulatory requirements as other medical outpatient surgery clinics.
* Three bills were actually assigned for debate in the committee yesterday. Two passed, but one was held up because a pro-choice Senator had already pre-filed to sponsor the bill, effectively killing it in that chamber...
All three sponsors of the bills denied asking that their bills be sent to the Agriculture Committee and did not know who made the decision to put their bills before the panel, though all complimented House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) for giving their bills a chance to be heard.
“I don’t know,” said [GOP Rep. Darlene] Senger, when asked why her abortion-clinic bill was in front of the farming committee. “These committees have been all over the place this time. I got some other bills in some crazy places right now, too.”
But House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), who chairs the House Rules Committee that assigns bills to committees, said rank-and-file legislators make the request as to where their bills go in the earliest stages of the legislative process.
* As you an see, the “why” behind the bill assignments is a bit murky. The sponsors aren’t taking responsibility, but Speaker Madigan’s office is pointing the finger of blame at them…
When asked if the ideological makeup of the committee was the reason for the bill’s assignment, Senger said, “I couldn’t comment on that.”
But Steve Brown, spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, said the legislation went to the committee at Senger’s request.
And…
Senger denies requesting the committee assignment for her bill, or even knowing how it got there. She suggested that other lawmakers or lobbyists may have had some input into the committee assignment.
That could be.
* Back to the protest…
“I’m not sure what agriculture has to do with women’s reproductive health care,” said Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook, who wore one of the shirts on the House floor.
Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, said there were agendas floating to erode the rights of women.
“Even worse, they seem to be going to the most inappropriate committees here in Springfield that deal with livestock,” she said. “Personally, I think it should offend every woman in the state of Illinois that those bills were sent to that committee.”
Asked if she thought they were sent there because of the more conservative makeup of the committee, increasing the proposals’ chances of making it onto the House floor, Feigenholtz said, “You think?”
And…
“They’ve spent more time asking questions about road kill and muskrats than they did (debating) this bill,'’ before passing it 13-0, complained Ed Yohnka of the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the bill.
* An unusual defense…
Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, who testified for the bill in committee, made one of the few attempts to justify the committee assignment. He maintained the bill is an attempt to regulate potentially unsafe abortion clinics, and said: “They say women are not livestock. We completely agree, which is why they should not be treated like that.'’
* The last word…
But even some conservatives, like state Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, question the committee’s catch-all jurisdiction over conservative social issues. Bost got a big laugh from the protestors when he presented an unrelated bill with the announcement that “it might actually be an agricultural bill.'’
“I’m always amazed at what goes through the Ag Committee,'’ he said later. “I’m pro-gun, I’m pro-life, but you have to question it.'’
Discuss.
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