* Gov. Pat Quinn contradicted House Speaker Michael Madigan today. Madigan said earlier in the week that Quinn had asked him to pass another lump sum budget. But Quinn said today that he did not ask Madigan for that.
“That really isn’t true,” Quinn said, claiming that he told Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton that “if they want to do” a lump sum budget, then, “OK, I’ll do that.” Listen…
Quinn also said that when the General Assembly proposes cuts to education, as the House has done with its $200 million cut to schools, it should be seen as an “alarm bell, and we have to look very carefully at their proposal.”
* The governor was also asked about yesterday’s federal judge’s ruling which tossed out a provision in the McCormick Place reform law that eliminated some union contract rules at the facility.
“It wasn’t exactly a surprise,” Quinn said, pointing out that the had used his amendatory veto power on the legislation. “I thought there were some shortcomings in that bill,” Quinn said, but noted that the General Assembly “had decided to plow ahead” by overriding his AV.
But Quinn’s AV had nothing to do with yesterday’s judicial ruling. He never touched the language which was so hotly opposed by the Teamsters and Carpenters unions. That disputed language was in a new chapter created by the General Assembly (70 ILCS 210/5.4). Nothing in the AV referred to that section of the bill, except for one provision by Quinn that effectively killed off two small unions (on behalf of the Teamsters and Carpenters).
* Federal rights for state workers upheld: [Terrance McGann, who represented the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters] said the [McPier] ruling could have implications in other states. State governments legislating worker rights “is exactly what they are trying to do to public employees in Wisconsin, in Indiana, in Ohio,” he said.
Leaders of the Illinois Assn. of Chiefs of Police voted Wednesday to change their stance on the issue. They now support legalizing concealed carry.
It’s a big boost for those trying to repeal Illinois’s ban on the concealed carrying of handguns. The group of top cops had long opposed the idea. They voted two years to go neutral on the issue. […]
Supporters of concealed carry admit privately that their prospects have vastly improved since Richard M. Daley announced his impending retirement.
Daley is a vigorous opponent of concealed carry. But his influence in the State Capitol is vastly diminished since he became a lame duck.
* Two residents were allegedly murdered and more allegedly tortured at a Downstate group home for the developmentally disabled and we haven’t heard a thing from the attorney general’s office. But, man, don’t let your pool get dirty…
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Wednesday she issued a temporary restraining order against ABVI Management Inc., which owns America’s Best Value Inn in O’Fallon, to keep the hotel’s indoor pool closed following numerous sanitation violations.
Inspectors with the St. Clair County Health Department said they found a pool that was so dirty, the pool’s bottom wasn’t visible. They said the pool lacked a mechanical system to prevent humidity and mold. Hotel staff also allegedly failed to fill out daily reports monitoring the pool’s chlorine and pH levels.
The other day, it was the “road-kill bill,'’ allowing Illinois hunters to scoop up fur-bearing mammals from highways.
Today, it was a bill cracking down on people who steal those plastic stackable milk crates from behind grocery stores, to recycle them for money.
It was during floor debate over the milk-crate thing that Jack Franks had had enough. The Woodstock Democrat launched into an angry speech about Illinois’ already-overcrowded law books, and the Legislature’s habit of hyper-legislating on petty issues while virtually ignoring its looming fiscal crisis.
During the tirade, he tossed out this off-the-cuff remark: “Maybe we should have a law that if you pass a law, you have to take two (laws) off the books!'’
Hopes that Illinois farmers could grow industrial hemp went up in smoke Thursday in the Illinois House.
House Bill 1383, sponsored by Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago, which would have allowed farmers to get permits to grow hemp, was soundly defeated in the House. […]
However, Dunkin’s House colleagues overwhelmingly disagreed with the measure. They defeated his bill on a 28-83 vote.
One argument was that the plants would still be classified as a controlled substance, and growing them in Illinois would conflict with federal law.
* Some might call this political correctness. I think I’d disagree with them…
The Illinois House Thursday took a step toward wiping offensive terms used toward people with disabilities out of the state law books.
Rep. Emily McAsey, a Lockport Democrat, said she worked closely with the Arc of Illinois, an advocacy group for people with disabilities, to encourage the state to take the lead on using empowering language and eliminating offensive terms. […]
The measure would change all occurrence of the phrase “mentally retarded” in state statute to “intellectually disabled.”
A similar proposal pending in the Senate also would change “crippled” to “physically disabled” in state laws. That measure is sponsored by Palatine Sen. Matt Murphy, and was inspired by Palatine-based attorney Kerry Lavelle, who has a disabled sister and approached Murphy with the idea.
Currently, universities set their own tuition rates and fees. However, Senate Republicans suggested as part of their recently unveiled budget plan that lawmakers should have some say in how the universities spend the money they collect from students. Sen. Matt Murphy, a Palatine Republican, said legislators should consider capping how much tuition revenue public universities can spend each year. […]
Tom Hardy, spokesman for the University of Illinois, said if the Republican plan were approved, some academic programs might have to be cut completely. “We’re going to lose ground,” Hardy said. University employees have not had a general salary increase since 2008, according to Hardy. […]
Murphy said, however, that under the Republican plan, tuition dollars would not be lumped into the general revenue fund and could not be diverted to other state costs. Instead, lawmakers would only have the power to limit how much tuition revenue universities could spend.
* The Question: Should the General Assembly have control over how much tuition money that universities can spend? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
* The Teamsters and the Carpenters unions both said from the beginning that their case against the McCormick Place reform law was a slam dunk winner. Round One proved them right…
Efforts by Illinois to preserve McCormick Place’s position as one of the country’s premier trade show venues were upended Thursday when a federal judge ruled that the state overstepped its bounds by revising work rules for unionized tradespeople on the show floor.
The ruling threw out passages of the law enacted last year that allow exhibitors to do more of their own booth setup and limit labor overtime and crew sizes.
The decision, which appeared to stun state political leaders, is a clear setback for efforts by Chicago and the state to remake the image of the convention center as a less expensive and more accommodating facility for trade shows and conventions. The city was taking a beating as high-profile trade shows left or threatened to leave for lower-cost cities such as Orlando and Las Vegas.
Now a major component of the changes that already were proving popular with show organizers and exhibitors has been tossed aside.
Guzman told the Legislature “it had no business trying to interfere with collective bargaining,” said Marvin Gittler, an attorney representing Local 727 of the Teamsters. Gittler said the city-state agency that runs McCormick Place, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, used the General Assembly to enforce concessions it could not get in bargaining.
Guzman held that the National Labor Relations Act pre-empts the Legislature from dictating terms for unions working at McCormick Place. His ruling let stand other aspects of the reform involving the authority, commonly called McPier because it oversees McCormick Place and Navy Pier. […]
The judge attacked the legislative rationale about cost control. “Despite its breadth, it’s not clear that [the reform bill] advances the state’s goal of reducing exhibitors’ costs,” he wrote.
Guzman noted that exhibitors, companies that rent space at a show to tout their wares or services, don’t pay for union work directly but are billed for it by show contractors. Without intruding on labor relations, the General Assembly could have limited contractor markups on labor or regulated the profit McPier gets from facility rentals and parking, the judge said.
* McPier’s full response…
All of us at the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) are greatly disturbed at today’s ruling by the U.S. District Court overturning the labor reforms enacted by the General Assembly last May. As all observers of the convention and trade show business are aware, the implementation of those reforms has, virtually overnight, transformed McCormick Place from a great convention and trade show facility that was rapidly losing its customer base into an industry power house.
Not only were our existing customers convinced to keep their events in Chicago but new shows have been rapidly signing up, and these reforms have had a strong positive impact on the economy of Chicago during these difficult economic times.
We believe the ruling is faulty in several ways and are very hopeful that it will be overturned on appeal. On Monday, we ask the District Court to stay execution of the order pending appeal to the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. We are confident that we have ample grounds to support that request.
The ruling does not affect other aspects of the reform legislation. These include the Trusteeship, the power of the Interim Board to put in place a private firm to manage McCormick Place and MPEA’s ability to enter into a lease with Navy Pier, Inc., the recently formed not-for-profit corporation governed by a Board of civic minded Chicagoans.
* The budget battle is starting to shape up, and it has multiple fronts…
Governor Pat Quinn says any budget plans being floated by lawmakers must include sufficient funding for education.
Quinn’s comments come Thursday in Mokena after the Democratic and Republican leaders in the Illinois House drew up a budget outline that would cut state education funding by $200 million. Another $400 million in federal funds could also disappear. Quinn wants to see cash increases to education, not cuts.
“We want to have a budget that invests in education,” Quinn said. “We aren’t going to have good jobs unless we have smart, well trained workers. So I’m not going to be making radical, severe cuts in our schools. That is very, very the wrong way to go.”
* The Senate Democrats are not enamored with education cuts, either. They had this to say in response to a much larger proposed cut by the Senate Republicans, but it might very well apply to the House as well…
(I)n a letter penned by State Sens. Heather Steans (D-Chicago) and Dan Kotowski (D-Highland Park) that responds to the Senate GOP’s budget-slashing plan, the senators write that, “Reductions that add to the disparity of per pupil spending among school districts in our State will likely gain little support within our caucus.”
* Speaker Madigan more than hinted that the House is going its own way…
After two years of giving Gov. Pat Quinn a lump sum budget and allowing him to make most budgeting decisions, the House and Senate appear to be gearing up to take a more active role in piecing together a spending plan for the coming year. […]
“I think you’re going to see a member-driven budget-making,” Madigan said. “We’ve already started among the Democrats, and I presume that the Republicans will do the same thing where a large, large share of the budget-making decisions will be made by the members.”
The numbers are the House’s estimate of the amount of tax revenue that will come into the state during the next budget year. The House approved a resolution establishing that number at $33.2 billion.
That is far less than the $34.3 billion the Senate officially set as its estimate for revenues for the budget year that starts July 1. Quinn’s own revenue figure is about $600 million higher than the House’s, but his budget plan is nearly $2 billion above the House revenue estimates.
Cross and House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, have vowed that the House will produce a budget based on its revenue estimates and not the higher numbers used by the Senate and governor. That will mean significant cuts to some programs. Under the House outline, education would be cut $200 million. Quinn’s budget plan called for education spending to increase.
* Meanwhile, Speaker Madigan all but said the other day that the governor’s school consolidation plan was dead in the water, and now the state schools superintendent is casting doubt on its viability…
Some of Illinois’ 868 school districts may come together before the start of the next school year. But it will not be because state school leaders have ordered them to consolidate.
Illinois State Superintendent Chris Koch said Thursday that Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposal to force school consolidation is all but dead.
“I doubt there is going to be anything that comes out this year that gives that kind of direction, that says you have to consolidate,” Koch said.
A Board of Education report compiled last fall cautions that cutting jobs could be difficult if new merged districts are too large. It also noted that a state panel in 2002 said high schools should have enrollments of at least 250 and elementary districts at least 625 students. Using that guideline would mean eliminating 359 districts, not the 568 that Quinn has suggested.
The report found no clear correlation between district size and student performance. Small districts did better than large ones by some measures and did worse by others.
* Related…
* Kotowski, Democrats respond to Senate GOP budget cuts
* Senate votes to eliminate treasurer and comptroller offices: The Illinois Senate voted unanimously Thursday to eliminate the offices of state treasurer and comptroller in favor of a single constitutional office - comptroller of the treasury. Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said “there was a lot of debate in the constitutional convention about having the two constitutional offices.” “This is an idea that’s been around time after time after time,” Brown said. “We’ll take a look at it and go forward.”
Federal investigators have opened a wide-scale criminal probe into the way state government compensates its injured workers, targeting three state arbitrators and a rash of claims at a downstate prison and in seven different state agencies.
Federal prosecutors in Springfield and Fairview Heights in southwestern Illinois issued subpoenas in February seeking records on workers’ compensation claims filed since Jan. 1, 2006 by scores of government employees.
The subpoenas obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show an emphasis on claims filed by workers at the Menard Correctional Center, where the Belleville News-Democrat has reported more than $10 million has been paid to 389 prison employees since 2008, including the prison’s warden.
That total included more than 230 guards who have claimed they developed repetitive-stress injuries caused ostensibly by manually locking and unlocking prisoner cell doors, the downstate newspaper reported.
“This is not common,” Illinois Department of Corrections spokeswoman Sharyn Elman said of the volume of on-the-job injury claims coming from Menard, one of Illinois’ oldest prisons. “We haven’t seen anything like that in our other prisons, and we have prisons almost as old as Menard.”
* Any email about workers’ compensation claims made by employees of Menard Correctional Center or other state agencies.
* Email, personnel records, employee vouchers and reimbursements for CMS employee Susan Lemasters for the past five years. Lemasters decides workers’ compensation settlements for Department of Corrections employees.
* Email and personnel records for Bill Schneider, the former Assistant Attorney General who handled the workers’ compensation claim of Matt Mitchell — the Illinois State Police Trooper who slammed into a car at triple-digit speeds while using his in-dash computer and talking on his cellphone. The crash killed Collinsville sisters Kelli and Jessica Uhl in November 2007.
* Email and personnel records for Workers’ Compensation Arbitrators Andrew Nalefski, Jennifer Teague and John Dibble.
Federal prosecutors demanded emails and personnel records from commission arbitrators Jennifer Teague and John Dibble. The state put Teague and Dibble, who make $115,840 a year, on paid administrative leave Feb. 15, the day after four subpoenas were issued by U.S. Attorney James Lewis of the central district.
Teague was suspended following a News-Democrat report that she tried to conduct a high-profile workers’ comp hearing “on the sly with no press,” according to an email, and offered to speed up another hearing in return for a quicker payment in her own injury case. The newspaper reported that Dibble, who approved 125 of the Menard prison cases, also received a workers’ comp payment of $48,790 for a November 2009 fall that did not show up in commission records. […]
The lone subpoena from U.S. Attorney Stephen Wigginton of the southern district of Illinois, dated Feb. 23, demands all email account information for Dibble and Teague.
“We need to get to the bottom of everything and I’m very happy that this is happening. Back on the 28th of January I appointed a special person to look into the whole matter of No. 1 we gotta make sure that we look at the work comp commission. To make sure everything is done right there. Any wrongdoing has got to be ferreted out. Number two we’ve got to reform the whole law in Illinois. Next week we are going to be proposing a work comp reform that I think is good for workers as well as businesses across our state. I think it’s also good for Illinois because we’re an employer, one of the biggest employers in the whole State of Illinois. State government. And we want to make sure that everything is done right when it comes to workman’s compensation. Those who are injured, we want to make sure they get fair compensation. At the same time, if there is any fraud, if there is any abuse, if there is any monkey business if there’s any wrongdoing it’s gotta be prosecuted. I appointed someone from our Department of Insurance to oversee all this. The federal government and law enforcement is involved as well.”
Thoughts?
* Related…
* Worker’s Comp Bill Progresses in Illinois: A state Senate committee unanimously approved a bill that would deny worker’s compensation to people who are injured while committing “reckless homicide [that] caused an accident resulting in the death or severe injury of another person.” The committee voted after hearing emotional testimony from the mother of two sisters who were killed in a head-on crash with a state trooper.
* Unemployment benefits extended for thousands in Illinois
* Caterpillar visitor center project still on track: Caterpillar Inc.’s visitor center, long viewed as the development that helps maintain Peoria’s relationship with the Fortune 100 company, could be under construction by next month. No talks of discontinuing the project have been considered, according to a company spokeswoman, despite the hullabaloo raised about CEO Doug Oberhelman’s letter to Gov. Pat Quinn in which he admits other states have been wooing the heavy equipment manufacturer to leave Illinois.
* Feds probe scandal-plagued Cook County jobs program
