What happens to Motorola’s subsidy now?
Monday, Aug 15, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Google is buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. But what about those supposedly guaranteed Illinois jobs? The Daily Herald takes a look…
Libertyville Mayor Terry Weppler said he talked with representatives of both companies early this morning and was reassured operations here are expected to continue without major changes once deal closes later this year or early next year.
“Instead of losing Motorola, we’re gaining Google,” Weppler said.
However, Google’s announcement that it will acquire Motorola Mobility still left some state officials wondering about the deal that was signed in May to keep the Motorola spinoff’s headquarters in Libertyville in exchange for more than $110 million of tax incentives. As part of that deal, Motorola Mobility agreed to keep 2,500 workers at the headquarters, but Gov. Pat Quinn said the company made “an oral commitment” to keep 3,000 jobs. Motorola Mobility currently employs 3,290. […]
State Rep. Ed Sullivan, a Mundelein Republican whose district includes the Libertyville offices, said if Motorola leaves, the tax breaks would be void. And if Google sticks around and honors the terms of the agreement, they’d get the tax breaks promised to Motorola Mobility.
Also, Sullivan said, the state has yet to spend any money in the deal, so Google wouldn’t be grabbing state money and running.
* The Beacon News also took a look…
Gov. Pat Quinn said Monday morning that, after speaking to Google, he is confident the company will increase Motorola Mobility’s presence here. The state will look at the provisions of incentives package but the money is tied to jobs staying the in the state. Quinn said Motorola Mobility makes the hardware Google wants.
Motorola Mobility was separated from the rest of Motorola in January. The company has remade itself as a maker of smartphones based on Google’s Android software, but has struggled against Apple Inc. and Asian smartphone makers.
“Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies,” said Google CEO Larry Page in a statement. “Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers.”
* Speaking of technology and communications, check this out…
Pundits are panning leaders of San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway system for turning off underground cellular service on Thursday from 4-7pm in an attempt to prevent protest organizers from communicating and organizing via mobile devices.
Although critics contend that the move evokes thoughts of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, when government-mandated cellular disruptions were used to try and prevent Egyptian protesters from organizing in a similar fashion this past January, BART officials maintain that the shutdown was intended to keep its service running and subway riders safe. The protest was planned in response to a recent shooting by a BART officer.
“A civil disturbance during commute times at busy downtown San Francisco stations could lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions for BART customers, employees and demonstrators,” says a statement on BART’s official site.
According to officials, BART’s method for blocking cell phone signals didn’t involve any kind of signal jamming–which could run afoul of the Communications Act of 1934, a measure that expressly forbids “maliciously interfering with the radio communications of any station licensed or authorized under the Act.”
An initial statement by BART made it seem as if the organization had contacted cellular service providers and asked them to flip their respective switches, but further interviews with BART officials indicated that the organization itself has the power to, and did, turn off the wireless signals it provides for transit riders. The official decision to cut service was a two-pronged effort by BART police and Sherwood Wakeman, BART’s interim general manager.
* Back to money…
Officials with the Illinois Department of Central Management Services said they have eliminated 1,111 desktop printers, 194 fax machines, 264 copy machines and 276 scanners, for an annual savings of $1.4 million.
The state also has renegotiated its electronic equipment recycling contract to save an estimated $2.2 million on the more than 61,000 electronic devices it generates each year.
The state also has terminated 117 office leases, which represents a 25 percent drop since the governor took office in 2008.
Central Management Services spokeswoman Alka Nayyar estimated it amounts to the elimination of about 1.5 million square feet of leased space.
Although final tallies aren’t in, Central Management Services reported in July that the office space reductions have saved about $1.5 million.
The elimination of 1.5 million square feet of office space saved just $1.5 million? Weird.
* And back to tech…
The District of Columbia is not thrilled that its residents are traveling to Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia to gamble in casinos. Starved for cash, like states across the country, the district wants some of the millions in revenue that gambling generates each year.
So district officials want residents to gamble closer to home — inside their homes, actually. Or in cafes, restaurants and bars. By year’s end the district hopes to introduce an Internet gambling hub that would allow Washington residents to play blackjack, poker and other casino-style games.
“They can do it from Starbucks, a restaurant, bar or hotel, or from a private residence,” said Buddy Roogow, executive director of the D.C. Lottery, who expects the new games to eventually raise $9 million a year. “That’s real money in D.C.”
* Related…
* Patents Are Driving Google’s Purchase Of Motorola Mobility–But Will The Deal Hurt Competition?
* Defunding of state water, geology agencies worries county
* Microsoft’s “decision engine” more likely to lead users to a Web page than searches through rival Google, study finds.
* Kraft, Sara Lee take dog fight over ads to court: The long-running legal battle pits two Chicago companies against each other. Sara Lee Corp. makes Ball Park franks, while Kraft Foods Inc. makes Oscar Mayer. The case could clarify how far companies nationwide can go when boasting that their product is better than a competitor.
* Jakobsson won’t seek to override Quinn’s changes on surveillance camera bill
* Editorial: The Illinois Tollway is a highway system, not a jobs program
* IL panel on race and drivers stuck in park
* Why you should care about the way garbage is picked up: In every other major city in the United States, garbage routes are drawn to cut financial and environmental costs—and collection costs much less. Many cities use software to design the most time- and cost-effective routes, taking into consideration factors as specific as the extra time needed to make left turns, navigate busy intersections, or get past schools when they’re letting out for the day. Over the course of a year, minutes here and there can add up to millions of dollars in wasted labor and fuel costs.
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Question of the day
Monday, Aug 15, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The Chicago Tribune has made some demands of Gov. Pat Quinn on the gaming bill…
Tell the sponsors you’ll veto any effort to make the Illinois Gaming Board more responsive to politicians. The stench of Illinois pols trying to influence gambling decisions — legislators and two governors interfering in where to locate a casino, and now a new bill that would short-circuit state efforts to keep the mob at bay — gives you plenty of reason to tell lawmakers that you won’t change how Illinois regulates gambling.
Note that, despite the history of meddling by George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich, legislators want the Gaming Board administrator to be named not by the independent board, but by the governor, with Senate confirmation. The sponsors have smooth explanations for every regulatory change they propose.
Baloney. This is about clout: They’re fed up with those pesky state regulators and all their rules. Governor, tell the Legislature you’re sticking with the regulatory scheme that for two decades has protected the integrity of Illinois gambling.
The governor, with Senate confirmation, appoints members of the Gaming Board, which then in turn appoint the administrator.
* The Question: Should the Gaming Board’s top administrator be appointed by the governor with Senate confirmation, or should s/he be appointed by Gaming Board members, as is currently the case? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please. Thanks.
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Are we self-segregating by partisanship?
Monday, Aug 15, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The New York Times had an interesting story over the weekend about how Americans have allegedly intentionally self-segregated by ideology…
“Americans are self-segregating,” said Bill Bishop, author of “The Big Sort,” a 2008 book that examined, in the words of its subtitle, “why the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart.”
Mr. Bishop said Americans now choose “in their neighborhoods and their churches, to be around others who live like they do and think like they do — and, every four years, vote like they do.” He tested his thesis with an examination of the shifting geography of presidential politics, beginning in 1976, when Jimmy Carter won the presidency by the slimmest of margins, with 50.1 percent of the vote.
That year, 26.8 percent of Americans lived in “landslide counties,” which voted either Democratic or Republican by 20 percentage points or more. By 2000, when Al Gore and George W. Bush split the popular vote, 45.3 percent of Americans lived in landslide counties. In 2008, the figure was 47.6 percent.
Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, reported the same phenomenon at the state level in his book “The Disappearing Center.” In the 1960s and 1970s, he said, big states like New York, California, Illinois and Texas were evenly split in presidential elections, making them battlegrounds. “Now,” Mr. Abramowitz said, “a lot of the big states are lopsided.”
Political clustering is reflected in religious participation and even shopping choices. David Wasserman, of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, recently calculated that 89 percent of the Whole Foods stores in the United States were in counties carried by Barack Obama in 2008, while 62 percent of Cracker Barrel restaurants were in counties carried by John McCain.
Much of this is due to people moving. But some, at least here in Illinois, is also due to changing attitudes. For various reasons, people have hardened their partisan positions here, particularly since the 2000 election of George W. Bush and George Ryan’s troubles afterward. That softened considerably last year during the governor’s race and the biggest GOP landslide since 1946, but not quite enough to unseat the Democratic governor. A decade ago, the Republicans were considered the governing party in this state. No longer.
…Adding… From a commenter…
It is a lot likelier that the parties are sorting their respective appeals by geography than people are basing living decisions on partisan preference.
* Meanwhile, Sen. Dick Durbin is endorsing Tammy Duckworth for Congress…
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) will take sides in a Democratic House primary and endorse Tammy Duckworth over rival Raja Krishnamoorthi on Monday during a press conference in Elk Grove Village, several sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Durbin endorsement was expected and is not surprising, as the contest in the newly remapped northwest suburban eighth congressional district heats up. Durbin’s move comes as Krishnamoorthi, a business executive and former deputy treasurer, and Duckworth head into what may be the marquee Illinois Democratic matchup in the March primary.
Durbin is a longtime political patron of Duckworth, a former assistant secretary of public and intergovernmental affairs for the Department of Veterans Affairs who ran the Illinois state veterans department.
Krishnamoorthi’s response…
“I respect Senator Durbin, but the economic suffering millions of Americans face today means this election will be decided by the candidate who best demonstrates a depth of experience, passion, and ideas for creating jobs and helping the middle class. I respectfully submit that candidate will be me.”
* And the Daily Herald has a piece about Congressman Joe Walsh’s reelection that relies heavily on commentary from Kent Redfield…
In the best of circumstances, Redfield said, having a candidate with a messy financial past run on a platform of fiscal conservatism, “is a huge problem. If you want to you can really make it a metaphor for larger issues,” he said.
In order to be a viable candidate, Walsh must, Redfield said, resolve the child support issue.
“What you really need at this point is if you’ve got the ex-wife on the same stage saying everything is fine, or we worked it out and divorce is hard but he really cares for his kids, etc.,” he said.
How effective he is in getting the issue behind him and rebuilding his image is going to have a “huge impact on whether he’s going to be able to compete,” Redfield said.
There is, however, another dynamic not explored here. Many die-hard Republican adherents have adopted a “victimization” mentality. Media hits are successfully brushed aside as the “lamestream media” working on behalf of liberal Democrats. That attitude, if successfully mined, is Walsh’s clearest path to victory. The line will be that he stuck up for his principles and was then kneecapped by the liberals.
* Related…
* New political map means new faces in GA
* Obama heads to Illinois to rally voters on midwestern bus tour
* Speaker John Boehner to fundraise for Schock
* Boland enters crowded contest for Illinois’ 17th Congressional district
* Council’s Lack of Debate Surprises Chinese Interns: This summer, a group of college students from China interned at the office of the city clerk, Susana Mendoza, and found City Hall, well, a lot different from what they were used to at home. But their comparisons may not be what some Americans would expect. “I’m surprised to see there is no debate in the Council meeting,” said Yana Huang. “There is some debate, even confrontation, in the council meetings in Hong Kong, but everything goes peaceful here.”
* Warren: A Diverse Ward’s New Leader
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* Subscribers know a bit more about this, but suffice it to say that things are moving forward…
Illinois House leaders say they still are working on legislation that would ease the state’s crushing pension burden, although they are closed-mouthed about what those changes will be and when the General Assembly will be asked to consider them. […]
Madigan and Cross co-sponsored Senate Bill 512 in the House, which gives state employees three options for their pensions: Keep the same level of benefits but pay more. Accept the reduced benefits approved last year for new employees. Choose a defined-contribution plan commonly known as a 401(k). […]
[Tyrone Fahner, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago] has been meeting with organizations and lawmakers to explain SB512, which is “kind of at the bottom line of what would be fiscally feasible” for fixing the state’s pension debt.
“The Civic Committee and I are still trying to push 512,” he said Friday. “Putting it bluntly, they are the legislators. They tell me what’s going on, I give them suggestions. (Cross and Madigan) have both been terrific in working it hard. I can’t be sure it will pass in the veto session, but we’re going to bring it in the veto session. Speaker Madigan has told me that we were.”
Thoughts?
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* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
As we are all too painfully aware, the past several days have been beyond crazy.
Congress and the president took the nation to the brink of default. Standard & Poor’s lowered the federal government’s credit rating by a notch. The markets devolved into a swooning bipolar frenzy. And the political rancor emanating from Washington, D.C., showed no signs of abating.
I focus on state politics, however, so I’ve been trying to keep a close eye on how all this insanity would impact Illinois. S&P lowered the federal credit rating, but bond interest rates actually dropped in response. That wouldn’t be the case for a state like Illinois, which is far more sensitive to ratings changes than the feds apparently are. If Illinois is downgraded yet again, then the interest rates the state pays would undoubtedly rise, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars that they don’t have.
Last Monday night, S&P issued a report that said state bond ratings weren’t necessarily tied to the U.S. debt rating. “This means a downgrade is unlikely,” was how a spokesperson for the state’s budget office responded.
Ironically enough, one of the very few “advantages” that Illinois has right now in comparison to D.C. is the absence of a government bitterly divided along partisan lines. There’s one party rule here, which means things can get done.
If you read S&P’s full statement from last Friday and the firm’s statements since then, you’ll see that the bone-crushingly partisan federal gridlock during the debt ceiling debacle was as important to the agency’s federal downgrade (or even more so, depending on your perspective) as the nation’s mid and long-term debt problems.
Unlike D.C., Illinois showed it could act by raising its income tax rates earlier this year, which has mitigated some of its near-term problems. That action (and other things like pension reform last year and some budget cuts this year) did prove that the state, unlike the federal government, can move itself when necessary.
But while our state government is more “stable” than the federal government in that one, single, very narrow partisan aspect, it is still severely hobbled by an undeniably huge debt load, particularly when $80 billion of future pension obligations are included in the mix.
And if federal payments suddenly stop during a congressional budget-related shutdown, for instance, or are reduced via a federal budget deal which drastically or even significantly cuts aid to states, then Illinois would have almost zero room to maneuver. The same is true if the economy tanks again.
That was essentially the message another ratings agency delivered to Illinois last Thursday night.
Moody’s whacked Illinois for its billions of dollars in past-due bills and its failure to control pension and retiree healthcare costs, which it claimed are on an “unsustainable ascent.”
The ratings agency also worried that the state will allow its income tax increase to expire on schedule in 2013 without first shoring up the underlying budget problems.
The ratings agency may have been so pessimistic about Illinois’ future because it wasn’t exactly impressed with this year’s budgetary effort. “The state may be able to use increased tax revenue to chip away at its large balance of past-due budgetary payment obligations, but it has not adopted a comprehensive plan to do so,” Moody’s rightly claimed.
The revenue from January’s income tax hike is about equal to the state’s annual pension payments, which the state earlier couldn’t afford to pay without borrowing. If the problems with pensions and the rest of the budget aren’t addressed, then there’s no way the state can get rid of the “temporary” income tax hike without causing yet another serious crisis.
Earlier this year, Gov. Pat Quinn promised the CEO of Caterpillar, Inc. that the tax hike would expire on schedule in 2013. The company is the state’s largest private employer, and it was getting really nervous about the Illinois’ negative business climate.
But last week, Quinn toned down his prediction. “We’ll have to take it year by year,” Quinn told reporters. “Hopefully, we’ll have a much stronger economy than we have four years from today.”
Hope is not a plan, of course, and bond ratings agencies very often have more influence over state governments than any big business. Quinn has even admitted that the tax hike was all but forced on the state in the face of a major credit downgrade.
Somehow, some way, this state has to finally get its act together.
Discuss.
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Caption contest!
Monday, Aug 15, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sarah Palin and her family were in Springfield over the weekend and visited the Lincoln Museum…
Do not go off on her kids, please. Otherwise, have fun.
Winner gets a free beverage at an Illinois State Fair beer tent. Friday’s winner was OneMan.
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Sen. Lauzen to run for county board chair
Saturday, Aug 13, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Very little surprise here…
State Sen. Chris Lauzen announced Saturday that he will be leaving the Senate at the end of his term, and will run for Kane County Board Chairman in the 2012 general election.
Lauzen is the second politician to declare his candidacy for the position. On Tuesday, Geneva Mayor Kevin Burns became the first to announce his run for board chairman.
Current County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay has announced she will run for the state Senate in the 33rd District.
More than 800 people turned up at Lauzen’s annual Porky’s Picnic barbecue fund-raiser on Saturday evening to hear the anticipated announcement. Lauzen, an Aurora Republican, represents the 25th Senate District, but supporters from across the state were on hand to offer their good wishes.
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Stephens replacement picked
Saturday, Aug 13, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Local Republican Party leaders chose a replacement for former Rep. Ron Stephens today. O’Fallon attorney Paul Evans…
The party chairmen met Saturday at Hidden Lake Winery in Aviston and interviewed applicants for the position. Twelve people applied, and seven were interviewed. Madison County GOP chairwoman Deb Detmers said Evans was the unanimous choice of the chairmen.
“Paul gave a great presentation…a great deal of passion,” Detmers said.
She said he spoke of how doctors suggested aborting his daughter, who was born with spina bifida and is now attending Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
“That’s what really made him the person he is today,” Detmers said. She described him as “absolutely a strong conservative — fiscally and socially.”
Evans said his daughter will be a sophomore but now, after many surgeries, is fully independent, despite doctors’ early predictions that she’d never smile, swallow or speak on her own. He said one of the reasons he wants to be a legislator is because he’s familiar with government bureacracies that parents of special-needs children have to deal with.
Evans lives in the “overlap” area that straddles Stephens’ current district and a new, vacant district.
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