* The Illinois Municipal League has geared all the way up to stop lawmakers from cutting local revenue sharing. I’ve seen several media reports documenting the push, including this one…

Northlake Mayor Jeff Sherwin gets hot under the collar at the idea of the state retaining money that’s traditionally gone to local governments.

“They can’t discipline themselves, so let’s just take it from (local governments),” Sherwin said. “If we have to cancel senior grass cutting and cut police, (state office holders) will face the price at election time.”

That’s quite the range of essential service cuts. Senior grass cutting and coppers.

* Here’s why the locals are so upset. The IML recently published a briefing paper entitled “The End of State-Collected Local Government Revenue?“…

The state budget crisis has reached such an unprecedented level that there is a very real danger that state-collected local government revenues could be reduced or even lost altogether.

I know of no credible person who is talking about eliminating revenue sharing altogether. Nobody. The Senate Republicans have called for a $300 million reduction, but that’s hardly an elimination. Notice that I wrote “credible.” I don’t consider the Illinois Policy Institute to be a credible organization since it can’t seem to get even basic facts straight and won’t correct the record when challenged, but instead lashes out at its critics and accuses them of grand conspiracies, myself included.

But that’s how you fire up your troops. Go for the extremes and point to the most extreme player and make it look like that player is more important than it really is. Sure enough, the IPI’s report was trumped up in the Municipal League’s white paper as if it had tons of Statehouse allies. The IPI has proposed alternative budgets for the last two years running and nobody has sponsored them in the General Assembly. That’s not what you would call a great track record.

The Municipal League’s lobby day is Wednesday. Expect a big turnout.

* Speaking of the locals, some are still angry that Illinois passed a law to stop them from regulating political speech…

Thanks to a state law that took effect Jan. 1, local governments no longer can require residents to remove signs within a specific time frame on residential properties.

The measure, signed into law last summer by Gov. Pat Quinn, prohibits any ordinances that establish a time limit and essentially allows residents to keep signs up year-round.

State officials have said the issue is one of free speech. But some local officials complain the state has overreached.

“It’s kind of disconcerting that the legislature stuck its nose into a local issue,” Wheaton City Manager Don Rose said. “Taking down campaign signs seven days after an election certainly seems to be a reasonable regulation that gets rid of all of the clutter around town.”

While unfortunate that candidates haven’t all picked up their signs, the real problem was that the locals had incredibly onerous ordinances about when and where signs could be placed. I always thought that was weird because how could you legally restrict 1st Amendment rights like that?

* Meanwhile, we have this bit of inflammatory rhetoric from AFSCME…

State workers and teachers have staged a week long, statewide series of rallies to voice their opposition to legislation that limits collective bargaining for state employees. Hundreds were in Springfield Thursday, where Jeff Bigelow, regional director of AFSCME Council 31, said bills in the Illinois legislature are starting to mirror what’s happening in neighboring states.

“These bills both for education employees and state employees are representative of exactly what’s happening in Wisconsin, exactly what’s happening in Ohio, exactly what’s happening in Indiana,” said Bigelow. “And we’re not going to put up with it.”

What are these bills he speaks of? One of them would be to stop the growth of union representation in state government, which is already at 95 percent representation. It would also eliminate some of the union membership rights of management types who’ve joined AFSCME and other unions.

While I can certainly understand why AFSCME and the impacted members are upset about this proposal, it’s hardly a full-on assault on orgainzed labor’s rights. Yes, it’s the camel’s nose under the tent, or foot in the door, or slippery slope. But taking high-up managers out of the union is hardly something that would rouse Mother Jones from her grave.

More from the story…

“I do not consider this to be even close to what’s happened in Wisconsin,” said Currie. “But I do think it’s important that state government needs to manage its workforce, and there are some work sites in the Department of Transportation where nobody’s in charge because everybody’s a part of the collective bargaining unit.”

But Bigelow says Currie’s bill would go even further. “They’re saying they want to take people out of collective bargaining who currently have it,” he said. “The state’s working now, and it’s working just fine. It’ll work just fine without any further modifications to the law.”

Um, dude, the state is not working “just fine.”

I was raised to believe that all workers are better off in a union and I still believe that and you can’t dissuade me of it, so don’t try. But I never thought I’d see the day when even legislative liaisons were singing “Solidarity Forever” while brandishing their union cards. It’s gotten out of hand. I get why managers and others want to join the union - they’ve been mistreated and not given raises. But shouldn’t there be limits?

* In other news, the Chicago News Cooperative’s subscriber-based publication has folded. From an e-mail…

Dear Reader,

Chicago’s election cycle has finished, so now Early And Often will wrap up. We will no longer update the content on our site, although the content of the site will continue to be available to subscribers. Today is also the last day that we’ll send out the Daily Palm Card.

Early And Often has been a joint effort between Aldertrack, Inc. and the Chicago News Cooperative. The Aldertrack team, Jimm Dispensa and I, had a tremendous time serving you and creating this new, unique news service for Chicago. We also enjoyed working closely with the Chicago News Cooperative and can say without reservation that CNC is one of the best teams of journalists Chicago has ever seen.

I’ll do my best to avoid over-heated rhetoric here, but I never thought their service would work because I never really understood their business model. The subscriptions were based on a single election cycle, not the actual doings of government. Government is how I survive. Campaigns most certainly help, but government is where the subscribers are. Plus, when Rahm Emanuel avoided a runoff, the campaign cycle was radically shortened and their business model was hurt even worse. Also, the Chicago media rarely covers legislative campaigns. They do cover city campaigns, however, including aldermanic races. There was simply no gigantic hole which needed to be filled.

Anyway, I was hoping it would work. Really, I was, mainly because I’ve long thought that a subscriber service was possible for Chicago. I still do. Just not the way they did it. But, nobody asked me.