In a further step to uphold its collective bargaining agreement with the state of Illinois, the largest union representing state employees today filed suit in federal court in Springfield.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31 asked the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois to rescind the pay freeze announced one week ago by Governor Pat Quinn, and to restore the negotiated pay schedule for the nearly 30,000 affected employees in 14 state agencies, boards and commissions.
The union’s lawsuit names as defendants Gov. Quinn, Acting Director of the Illinois Department of Central Management Services (CMS) Malcolm Weems, and the State of Illinois.
The AFSCME suit argues that Governor Quinn’s action to cancel scheduled pay increases is a violation of provisions against the impairment of contracts found in the United States and Illinois Constitutions, that the pay freeze constitutes a denial of the equal protection of laws under the federal and state constitutions, and that by violating the union’s collective bargaining agreement it amounts to breach of contract under the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act.
Riverboat casinos battling the racetrack industry lost an appeal Friday when the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a law signed by convicted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, which siphoned money from casinos to support racetracks.
The law, dubbed the Racetrack Bill and referenced repeatedly in Blagojevich’s trials, was passed by a majority of the state legislature in 2006 and 2008 and signed by Blagojevich both times. It aimed to correct a blow dealt by riverboat casinos perceived to be luring away gambling dollars, giving racetracks proceeds from a 3 percent tax on riverboats to reverse the damage.
Casinos with annual earnings less than $200 million were exempt from the tax, leaving four Illinois riverboat casinos suing five racetracks and Blagojevich, who they accused of setting up the tax in cahoots with racetrack executive John Johnston, who owns two tracks.
Quinn said Friday he hopes the court upholds the law. If they don’t, he says lawmakers would have to come back to Springfield to deal with the situation, something he called “a job emergency.”
Quinn said they should be prepared to take action again if the Supreme Court strikes the law down. The governor said he would be “open minded” to raising taxes on cigarettes to pay for construction projects. But some lawmakers said they should stick to the original funding sources while finding a way to redraw the legislation so it passes legal muster.
A spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan said an alternative funding plan for the construction program has not been discussed because “we are confident that the bills passed by the legislature will be upheld.”
* Listen to today’s gubernatorial press conference…
* If they have a special session, perhaps the GA can override some of the governor’s budget vetoes. Then, maybe, the regional superintendents will be paid. But this press release by the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools suggests a deal is imminent…
“A meeting took place with the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools (IARSS) and the Governor’s staff. We have agreed that the Regional Offices of Education will remain open and the Regional Superintendents will fulfill their duties. The Governor’s staff indicated that there is a desire to fund the salaries of the Regional Superintendents and their Assistants. There will be future meetings to work out the details.”
In fact, I’m told, a deal is imminent.
But, get this, the governor will reportedly use his 2 percent “reserve” authority to move money around within the state budget. The governor line-item vetoed the superintendent salaries. Those salaries were appropriated from the Common School Fund to the Illinois State Board of Education. Keep in mind, however, that his reserve authority applies only to intra-fund or intra-agency cash moves. He can’t move money from the Department of Corrections to the Board of Education, for example.
So, in other words, the governor will apparently be moving money to the regional school superintendents from the very same state funding source that he vetoed.
If true, then that was possibly the stupidest veto ever. Somebody was simply not thinking ahead.
* So, what happens if a previously vetted casino town elects a corrupt mayor? Perhaps they should explain this idea a bit more…
Des Plaines Mayor Marty Moylan and the mayors of seven other riverboat casino towns recently met with Gov. Pat Quinn to discuss the merits of the state’s massive gambling expansion plan. […]
Des Plaines, which was awarded the 10th and what was then the final casino license in late 2008, is gearing up for the July 18 opening of the Rivers Casino. […]
Moylan said the mayors asked Quinn to keep the oversight of any new gambling licenses under the Illinois Gaming Board’s authority.
“They should have to go through the same vetting process that we did,” he said.
Caterpillar Inc. avoided approximately $2 billion in U.S. taxes in recent years by fraudulently using Switzerland and Bermuda subsidiaries, according to a report on an executive’s lawsuit.
The executive, Daniel Schlicksup, alleges Peoria-based Caterpillar sold and shipped parts from a warehouse in Illinois and improperly accounted for $5.6 billion in profits on those deals to an arm in Geneva, Switzerland, according to Bloomberg News.
Now we know why they’re so sensitive to Illinois taxes. Apparently, they hate paying them so much they allegedly use foreign subsidiaries to hide taxable income. From Reuters…
The Geneva subsidiary, Caterpillar SARL, or CSARL, had no spare-parts employees and did no work to sell or ship the parts, Schlicksup claims in the lawsuit. The parts are shipped to dealers around the globe from a warehouse in Morton, Illinois, about 10 miles southeast of Caterpillar’s Peoria headquarters, according to the lawsuit, which also describes the spare-parts business as the company’s most profitable line.
“In order to shift profit to Switzerland, Caterpillar pretended to shift the management and control of a large portion of its most profitable business segment to Switzerland, but in reality the management and control of this business remains in the United States,” Schlicksup said in an 88-page declaration he filed as part of the suit.
“Everything is done the same way it was done before except that on paper, now CSARL is doing it, not Cat, while in practice Cat is doing everything,” O’Day said in an interview. While the Swiss unit nominally buys the parts from suppliers, it maintains its inventory in the U.S. unit’s Morton warehouse, where Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) employees ship it and send invoices, he said. […]
While the Swiss structure moved income to Geneva, Caterpillar had New York-based accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP devise a complementary “Bermuda strategy” aimed at returning some cash to the U.S. without paying tax on it, according to a Nov. 13, 2006 memo from Pricewaterhouse and internal corporate tax summaries from 2006 and 2007 written by Schlicksup’s then- boss, Robin Beran, Caterpillar’s chief of global taxation. The documents are filed as exhibits to the lawsuit.
Starting this fall, the Indiana Department of Education will no longer require Indiana’s public schools to teach cursive writing.
State officials sent school leaders a memo April 25 telling them that instead of cursive writing, students will be expected to become proficient in keyboard use.
The memo says schools may continue to teach cursive as a local standard, or they may decide to stop teaching cursive altogether.
The debate over the need for cursive isn’t a new one. The worries range from more emotional concerns, like a growing detachment from the written word, to more practical ones, such as fears that a sloppy, simplistic and inconsistent signature is much easier forged.
Those who support the move, meanwhile, say that classroom time is limited and teachers should use the time they have to build computer skills and typing prowess at a time when more and more communication takes place online.
* The Question: Should Illinois make cursive instruction optional? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please. Thanks.
*** UPDATE *** Well, this is kinda funny. According to the Board of Education, Illinois never has mandated cursive writing instruction. It’s still an interesting question, though, so carry on.
It’s a story about Peoria firefighters and police officers who were attacked by professional bottle rockets while responding to a dumpster fire at Taft Homes the other night. Notice the photo? It portrayed a vehicle destroyed by explosives amid a street that is littered with debris. It has nothing to do with what happened in Peoria. Nothing. It’s odd, because the photograph that ran in the Journal Star was pretty dramatic in its own right.
The headline screams “mortar shells” were lobbed at firefighters, but the article says that “mortar-style fireworks” was used.
Whatever. It’s Fox News. The entire organization has only a casual relationship with the truth.
A large-scale illegal fireworks display in a housing complex adjacent to the state’s largest Fourth of July celebration turned into what police termed a near-riot Monday as tens of thousands of revelers tried to filter out of Downtown.
As the grand finale of the Red, White and Boom! event exploded over the Illinois River, emergency responders were called at 9:46 p.m. to a trash bin fire in nearby Taft Homes, where commercial-grade fireworks had been shooting into the sky since before the riverfront show began.
A fire engine and two Peoria police officers responded, but encountered what police described as a crowd of hundreds of people and an impassable Hancock Street choked with trash and fireworks — both live and spent. The debris blocked access to the burning trash bin.
Police at that point began ordering the crowds to disperse, and firefighters hosed down the live fireworks and smoldering remnants of spent shells. That’s when mortar-type fireworks began firing toward and exploding near the officers and firefighters. Some people also hurled bottles and rocks, according to police.
At least three shells exploded on the engine, causing burn marks, and one hit a firefighter in the shoulder, charring his heat-resistant gear and temporarily initiating hearing loss. Division Chief Gary Van Voorhis said Tuesday the firefighter declined medical attention at the scene and remained on duty.
A few weeks ago, hundreds of people, most of them white, gathered in Lincoln Park to celebrate Peace Fest, which featured DJ sets, jam bands, and enough open marijuana smoking that passersby on surrounding streets could get a contact high. Not that anyone was complaining.
That week at the Cook County courthouse at 51st and Wentworth, dozens of people, almost all of them black men, went before a judge to face marijuana possession charges. Some of them ended up with fines and jail time.
Yes, marijuana is illegal. Yet studies show—and come on, everybody knows—that it’s widely used by all racial groups. By and large, however, black people are disproportionately getting busted for it.
The ratio of black to white arrests for marijuana possession in Chicago is 15 to 1, according to a Reader analysis of police and court data. And by the time the cases make their way through the court system, the gap widens even further: the ratio among those who plead or are found guilty is 40 to 1.
Chicago police made tens of thousands of arrests in 2009 and 2010 for marijuana possession, including 47,400 in which that misdemeanor was the most serious charge. So how egregious are the racial discrepancies?
• Of those arrested, 78 percent were black, 17 percent were Hispanic, and 5 percent were white.
• In those years 4,255 people pleaded or were found guilty of low-level marijuana possession after being arrested in Chicago: 89 percent were black, 9 percent were Hispanic, and 2 percent were white.
Maybe now would be a good time for Gov. Pat Quinn to pay off his bet with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. After all, according to AFSCME, they’re practically soul brothers these days.
Quinn bet Walker way back in January that the Bears would beat the Packers for the NFC Championship title. The Bears lost, and Quinn was supposed to volunteer at a Wisconsin food bank wearing a Packers jersey.
But Quinn canceled his scheduled Milwaukee appearance after Walker attempted to strip his state’s public employee unions of their collective-bargaining rights and the state exploded with political rage.
Tens of thousands of protesters descended on the Cheesehead Statehouse and the entire Wisconsin Senate Democratic caucus fled to Illinois in an attempt to halt Walker’s agenda. Quinn firmly declared his solidarity with the teeming northern masses, welcomed the fleeing Democrats with open arms and declared Walker an anti-union heathen.
Quinn made some good points during Wisconsin’s troubles. For instance, Quinn was proud of being the first governor in Illinois history to persuade AFSCME to reopen its contract and defer its members’ pay raises. That was no mean feat, even if Quinn did have to agree to no layoffs and no facility closures.
AFSCME, which represents state workers, is about the most obstinate group of hardheads you’ll ever meet. They take their contracts seriously, and they’ve never budged before. Even so, Quinn cut them a decent deal last summer and the union endorsed his re-election soon after.
Quinn has since insisted that his way of doing things was far superior to those heartless right-wingers to our north. They should talk to the unions and work things out, he said. Unions are reasonable if you treat them with respect and dignity.
The problem with kicking the budgetary can down the road is that the bills eventually come due.
AFSCME’s pay raises were deferred to July 1 of this year, and the General Assembly didn’t appropriate enough money to cover all of them.
Rather than slash much-needed programs, the Legislature cut personnel costs. In the end, the budget shorted payrolls for 14 state agencies.
But Quinn had boxed himself in. He couldn’t lay off anybody or close a state facility because he had given AFSCME his word. His staff says he couldn’t move money around within agencies to pay for the raises without harming crucial programs. He couldn’t veto the budget, because then the Republican minority would have a seat at the table, and they would demand even more cuts and wreak loads of havoc.
Ignoring the Legislature’s mandated payroll cuts and handing out the promised raises anyway could result in a minor fiscal crisis next year if he couldn’t persuade the General Assembly to increase the appropriations.
So, the governor decided to reinterpret an old state law that was originally written to protect union contracts in a way that allowed him to break AFSCME’s current state contract.
Without first sitting down and attempting to cut a deal with the union, Quinn unilaterally declared there would be no pay raises for those 14 agencies.
AFSCME was furious with Quinn’s move and the way he handled it. The union’s executive director blustered that Quinn was actually worse than Walker ever was.
Gov. Walker can be excused for experiencing a hugely satisfying rush of schadenfreude right about now.
If you can’t honor your union contracts, Gov. Quinn, you can at least honor your bet.
Go get yourself a Packers jersey, swallow hard, and take off for the Great White North.
A legislative committee could vote next week to block Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to rescind pay raises for 30,000 state government workers. […]
However, Rep. Angelo “Skip” Saviano, R-Elmwood Park, a co-chairman of the committee, said there is little time for the committee members to review the 376-page emergency rule.
“I don’t know if we are going to be ready or willing to take it up,” Saviano said Thursday. “I would think something as complicated as this would need more time.”
The committee’s next scheduled meeting is in August. An emergency rule can stay in effect for up to 150 days.
* Also, Don Moss has penned an open letter to JCAR…
Dear Members of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules -
We advocates for people with disabilities do not begrudge pay raises for the thousands of hardworking state employees. However, we do wish to point out the inequities between what they receive and what their private non profit community services “partners” have received over the past several years. Please see the two charts below and keep them in mind when 1) You consider the Governor’s freeze on state raises, and 2) the next time you vote on the funding of community service providers.
And here are the charts. Click the pic for a larger view…
