* I can’t believe I forgot that Gov. Pat Quinn’s 63rd birthday is today. Gov. Quinn is without a doubt the state’s greatest country music fan and his favorite artist is George Strait, a true country music legend. I’m not a big Strait expert, but I really love this tune…
He was sitting there beside me
Throwing doubles down
* Did you ever have a moment when you heard a song and just knew that your life as you understood it was over? When you realized that you had suddenly and irrevocably changed and there wasn’t anything that anybody could ever do about it? When you had to admit that you had crossed some sort of other-worldly threshold that you didn’t understand, but you knew right down to your marrow that you could never go back to being the way you were just a few minutes before? When you raised up your head and asked “Is this where it is?” Well, this is the song that did it for me. Turn it all the way up…
* 4:12 pm - It’s a late Friday afternoon, so I can’t say that I’m surprised that Gov. Pat Quinn signed the CME/Sears corporate tax cut bill.
However, the governor’s bill action announcement didn’t include the companion bill, SB 400. I gotta figure Quinn will probably want to do a media event when he signs the Earned Income Tax Credit increase into law. That bill would be “good” press, while the corporate stuff is apparently in need of weekend burial.
* 4:27 pm - From a press release…
Statement from Mayor Rahm Emanuel on the Signing of Illinois Tax Reform Legislation
This tax reform legislation will protect thousands of jobs in Chicago and keep the CME Group where it belongs, here in the city. I want to thank the Governor and the Illinois General Assembly for their work to modernize our state’s tax policy and bolster Chicago’s economic competitiveness now and into the future.
* 4:29 pm - From Sears spokesman Chris Brathwaite…
“We are pleased that Governor Quinn today signed legislation designed to keep Sears in Illinois. We applaud the governor for his leadership and recognition of Sears’ contributions to our state – thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of tax dollars. And, we once again thank the General Assembly for the considerable time and effort lawmakers put into this package to ensure it was passed by the end of the year. In particular, Senate President John Cullerton, House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno and House Leader Tom Cross along with Senate Revenue Chairwoman Toi Hutchinson (D- Olympia Fields) and House Revenue Chairman John Bradley (D-Marion) and our local legislators - Senators Dan Kotowski (D- Park Ridge) and Matt Murphy (R- Palatine) and Representative Fred Crespo (D- Hoffman Estates). We look forward to remaining in Illinois and building on our long and rich history here.”
* 4:32 pm - From a press release…
CME Group Commends the State of Illinois’ Efforts to Address Corporate Tax Disparity
CHICAGO, December 16, 2011 – CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, today commends the State Legislatures’ efforts to address the corporate tax disparity in Illinois.
“We are pleased that Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and the State Legislature have addressed the inequitable distribution of corporate taxes currently levied on CME Group,” said CME Group Executive Chairman Terry Duffy. “This necessary adjustment to the Illinois corporate tax laws will put CME Group on more equal footing with other Illinois companies and other global exchanges. CME Group has been a part of Chicago for more than 160 years and, because of the efforts of Governor Quinn, Senate President John Cullerton, House Revenue Committee Chairman John Bradley, Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, Senator Toi Hutchinson and other members of the State Legislature, we will continue to call the great State of Illinois and City of Chicago the risk management capital of the world.”
Duffy also recognizes Mayor Rahm Emanuel for his extraordinary efforts and leadership in securing CME Group as a mainstay in Illinois and the City of Chicago for the next 160 years.
* 4:43 pm - From the Chamber…
Chamber Applauds Measures to Attract and Keep Illinois Jobs
Chicago - The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce commends Governor Pat Quinn today for signing SB 397, legislation that provides much-needed relief for Illinois businesses, large and small. The bill addresses key concerns of the business community and paves the way for Sears and the CME Group to continue their long history as Illinois-based companies. Additionally, all small, medium and large Illinois businesses and farmers will benefit from the bill signed today.
The Chamber also recognizes and thanks the General Assembly for their hard work on crafting and passing the bill earlier this week, especially Senate President John Cullerton, GOP Senate Leader Christine Radogno, Speaker Michael Madigan, and House Leader Tom Cross. Representatives John Bradley and David Harris, and Senator Toi Hutchinson are commended for their determination to see through the passage of tax relief and incentives for businesses to help keep employers in the state.
“This is a move in the right direction by the Governor and Legislature to make Illinois friendly to business,” said Jerry Roper, President and CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber in response to the Governor’s action. “Not only will Sears and the CME Group continue to remain in Illinois, but the entire Illinois business community will benefit from these important tax changes.”
* The other day, I asked you to help my former intern Paul Richardson win an online contest for one of the blogs that his fledgling, but growing company manages. What I didn’t know was that the contest was sponsored by LexisNexis. So, it was the big time. Anyway he won. And it wasn’t even close. From an e-mail…
Hey Rich-
I can officially send you a huge Thank You, because I just received this….
Congratulations !! The Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog was chosen by our voters as the LexisNexis Top Tort Law Blog of 2011! Your site received outstanding support from your viewers, garnering more than 40% of the votes. It must be gratifying to know that all your hard work on the site is appreciated by so many. We will post the results on our Litigation Resource Community later today once all of the participants have been notified of their status.
In a 25 person race, I think 40% is considered a landslide. Obviously the CapFaxers support made it happen. You’re the best.
Your votes have been counted and the results are in for the LexisNexis Top 25 Tort Law Blogs of 2011. Congratulations to the Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog, which received the most votes for Top Tort Law Blog for 2011 on the LexisNexis Litigation Resource Community!
We were pleased about the volume of voting and the outstanding list of nominees in this year’s Top Blogs campaign. Our Top 25 Tort Law Blogs contain a wealth of valuable information for Tort Law practitioners. All nominees and those selected for the Top 25 can be proud of the important content, expert analysis and tips these blogs provide to Tort Law attorneys.
And we can all be proud of Paul.
* My mom was apparently rummaging around and found a confirmation letter from WGN TV. Back in 1972, when their five children ranged in age from ten down to a newborn, my parents applied for tickets to attend Bozo’s Circus. The station eventually sent my parents a letter saying we had 8 tickets for the November 8, 1979 show - seven years hence.
We were living in Germany by 1979, so we didn’t go. Here’s the letter. Click the pic for a larger version…
Seven years was the standard waiting period for Bozo tix back in the day. Often, parents would request the tickets just after their kids were born. Every schoolmate of mine desperately wanted to go to that show and my brothers and I were the envy of the schoolyard when we got our confirmation.
Just about everybody we knew back then sent in postcards to enter ourselves for the Grand Prize Game, and my brother Denny’s postcard was picked out of the Bozo Drum. The kid who played for him only made it to Bucket Number Two, but Denny was still a hometown celebrity after that.
* Speaking of WGN TV and my mom, remember Ray Rayner? Ray had a great show when I was a kid (actually, he had two shows a day at one point, one, an after-school show, where he was supposedly an astronaut circling the globe). One of the things he’d do on his morning show was make crafts. The staff would make a finished product, and then he’d demonstrate to his viewers how to make that particular project in real time. Ray’s versions were never as good as the staff version, but it was fun to watch him stumble his way through.
My mom was really into crafts, and still is. When I was a kid, we’d all sit at the table and make whatever craft Mom had come up with, often inspired by Ray Rayner. It was a lot of fun, and we all had a great time laughing at our occasional ineptitude. That’s my mom in a nutshell. She taught us how to laugh at ourselves and not take things too seriously, while still pushing us hard to excel and to broaden ourselves with music, sports and reading.
I still have one of those crafts I made. It’s a Christmas Tree topper that’s supposed to be an angel. It doesn’t really look like an angel, but I thought it was cool back then and I’ve often topped my trees with it.
* I thought about Ray Rayner when Mom posted a link on her Facebook page. It was an article about how to make homemade snow globes. What a great Christmas project for the kids…
Snow globes are magical, whimsical, and fun. And they’re super easy to make at home.
The first thing you need are jars, with nice snug lids. Check out your fridge; I grabbed an almost empty bottle of peperoncini peppers (that I have been using on Greek Salads and Greek Tacos, you’d think I was the pregnant one with the cravings I have for those. I am most definitely not.) I also had a bottle of capers that I finally finished by making one last batch of this Grown Up Dipping Sauce (another obsession, you guys need to all try that one), and a big jar from marinara that we used for dipping Pizza Rolls. Marinated artichoke heart jars work really great for these, as do little teeny tiny baby food jars. Really any size jar works; you just have to find things to fit inside of them.
* Speaking of quality stuff, the Tribune has a fascinating story today about pension funding. According to the article, pension laws have been revised “nearly 700 times” since 2003. Many of those revisions was due to duplication because of the large number of pension funds and regulations here. But check this out…
Not all revisions captured in the review by the Tribune and WGN-TV had a fiscal impact, but the legislative record shows that more than half of the pension laws passed during the last eight years came without any fiscal analysis. [Emphasis added.]
One particularly egregious example of the lack of fiscal analysis was George Ryan’s early retirement program…
The original plan targeted up to 7,000 state employees and had a relatively modest price tag of about $550 million. But as Ryan and legislative leaders gathered around the negotiating table to finalize the incentive, a variety of perks were thrown in. The cost estimates, meanwhile, were not updated in time for legislators to weigh the full impact of the program. […]
In the end, more than 11,000 state employees took advantage of the lucrative deal, which caused the immediate cost of the incentive to climb to $2.3 billion, a fourfold increase from the original cost estimate.
When lawmakers realized how expensive the incentive turned out to be, they asked the staff of the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability for options. The commission offered various scenarios to pay down the debt over time, but the Legislature opted for the most costly — stretching out payments over 40 years.
All it took for former state Rep. Robert Molaro to nearly double his public pension was spending one month as an aide to Ald. Ed Burke, the powerful chairman of the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee.
Among Molaro’s duties: Write a 19-page white paper about Chicago’s ailing pension funds. For his services, the former lawmaker was paid $12,000.
That paycheck sent his pension soaring, as many lawmakers’ benefits are based on 85 percent of their final pay on the last day of service. When Molaro officially retired on Jan. 1, 2009, his pensionable salary would be calculated at $144,000 — the amount he would have earned had he worked for Burke for a full year.
Oy.
* Not all “hit pieces” are created equal, but this one in the Reader is close to a classic. It’s about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “New Chicago Committee” and includes this priceless paragraph about a $15,000 contributor...
I wondered why Southern Wine & Spirits was keen on reforming Chicago, but my calls to the company’s corporate office in Miami weren’t returned. In 2008 the beverage distributor gave $20,000 to the governor committed to reforming Illinois, Rod Blagojevich.
If you don’t return a reporter’s calls, you’re in danger of getting broadsided. But that company has contributed to tons of candidates over the years, so pairing Emanuel up with Blagojevich is grossly unfair and totally unwarranted and really shows what sort of “story” this is.
* Chicago Magazine ran a pretty good piece about gangs and Chicago politics this month. The piece mentioned legislators, but offered up no names or evidence. A sidebar story tried to make the connection between legislators and gangbangers by listing the Chicago legislators with the most requests for Department of Corrections prisoner transfers.
The two topics aren’t necessarily connected, but Chicago Magazine never makes that clear. Legislators are often asked by families to help them get family members transferred closer to home. It’s been common practice for decades, if not centuries. The top requester was Sen. William Delgado. And here’s the one gangbanger whom Chicago Magazine highlighted…
RONNIE “MAD DOG” CARRASQUILLO, 53, a founder of the Logan Square–based Imperial Gangsters, fatally shot a Chicago police officer in 1976 and was sentenced to 200 to 600 years. In June 2008, Delgado requested that Carrasquillo be transferred from Hill Correctional Center to Dixon, a lower-security facility closer to Chicago. The transfer was denied.
The guy has been in prison since Gerald Ford was president and this transfer request is portrayed as evidence that Delgado is somehow in league with gangsters? Pretty thin soup.
There are too few folks like him left that are not dogmatic, but willing to listen to the facts and *gasp* change their mind when a reasonable argument is presented to him. He understands that good policy is too often hostage to good politics. He will be missed.
Millner is one of the best legislators in the building. He’s intellectually honest and pragmatic, which are always big plusses in my book. Plus, he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.
* Runner-up is Sen. Matt Murphy…
R: Murphy, a message bulldog who always lands punches. Rarely agree with him, but he makes a pretty compelling case for his party.
Murphy is one of those guys who can ably fight the good fight on the Senate floor and then socialize with the other side when he’s “off duty.” Over the years, legislators have seemed to separate themselves both day and night. Murphy is one of the few remaining who understands that building relationships with all his colleagues is important to the process.
* The Golden Horseshoe Award for best Illinois State Senator - Democrat was a tough one. There were lots of very strong nominations. But I went with Sen. John Sullivan because he’s done some things that could hurt him politically, but were still the right things to do…
Any man who is willing to tackle some of the real problems facing our state (bill backlog, paying ROEs after Quinn’s debacle, etc.) by not only supporting solutions , but leading on those issues time and again, deserves our respect. Then, when you learn he does all this with the kind of district he has… Yeesh, he deserves a medal. Especially on bonding–he is going to catch hell in his district for it, but he did it anyway…because its the right thing to do. We could use a few more with this kind of courage.
Agreed.
* Runner-up is Sen. Kimberly Lightford…
Great at the negotiating table. The education reform bill she passed this year is a testament to her “stick to it” attitude and her ability to get all the stakeholders on an issue together to hash out their disagreements. When the process began, nobody thought that she could craft an agreed bill, and she did it.
That reform bill was really quite something. Lightford ran some of the best negotiating sessions that many people had ever attended. If she sticks to what she knows, she’ll be a true star.
* OK, on to today’s categories…
* Best Illinois State Representative - Republican
* Best Illinois State Representative - Democrat
For the umpteenth time, make sure to fully explain your nomination. No explanation means I won’t count your vote. This is about intensity far more than numbers. And let’s leave the two top dogs out of the competition. This should be about the rank and file, not their two overlords. Also, please make sure to nominate in both categories. Thanks much and have at it.
* The key to political spin is that it has to either be believable enough for most normal people to buy into, or have enough red meat that the base can use it at the water cooler. Pat Brady’s react to yesterday’s unanimous judicial decision to approve the Democrats’ congressional map does neither…
Reacting to the decision of the court last night, State GOP Chairman Pat Brady told reporters that “the serious issues in the case regarding Latino disenfranchisement were thrown by the wayside.”
Sorry, but I don’t see this resonating with either the public at large or the base. It’s no secret that preventing “Latino disenfranchisement” has not exactly been all that high on the GOP’s priority list over the past few years. And I highly doubt you’ll see too many hardcore Republicans arguing that their party wants to enfranchise as many Latinos as possible.
Just sayin…
* Senate President John Cullerton might also want to rethink his words a bit. Asked by a reporter after the Senate passed the corporate tax cut bill “Who’s the next in line, and how do you answer this idea that everybody is going to want to get in line…” Cullerton interrupted and responded thusly…
“They can get in line and I guess they need to pass a bill in Springfield,” is probably not the way to go. This is precisely the argument against doing these sorts of tax breaks. The connected get the breaks, the non-connected pay the full rate.
* Talk about an understatement. The Pew Center on the States released its ratings on state election board websites this week. From the summary for Illinois…
(U)sers could have a challenging time finding the content they seek, accounting for a lower overall score.
More precisely, the Board’s front page is a massive jumble of scattered information which is so disorganized that it almost seems designed to confuse. It brings to mind this brief exchange between Capt. Willard and Col. Kurtz…
I don’t see any method, either. Two of the Pew Center’s recommendations…
Use informational labels to guide users to content from the home page, rather than vague filters such as “Top Documents” and “Top Pages.” […]
Organize information logically, so that users do not have to jump around the website or visit multiple pages to find related content.
Yes, do that, please. And soon. The Board of Elections’ site has always been a bizarre mess. It’s time they got a real developer over there.
Chicago Bears wide receiver Sam Hurd was locked up in federal custody Thursday as his stunned teammates learned he had been charged with trying to set up a drug-dealing network following his arrest with more than a pound of cocaine.
U.S. Magistrate Young Kim ordered Hurd held until at least Friday while prosecutors and defense attorneys work out bond details before he is sent to Texas to face charges.
The handcuffed Hurd declined to comment on the charges. Asked before the hearing if he was still a member of the Bears, he said: “As far as I know.” He shook his head when asked if he had talked to anyone on the team.
“Sam intends to fight these charges, and we intend to defend him fully,” said high-profile defense attorney David Kenner, one of Hurd’s lawyers. “We have complete confidence in him.”
Is former Gov. Rod Blagojevich actually addicted to a substance requiring a prison rehab program?
A top Blago source tells Sneed the answer is “Yes” and the substance is . . . alcohol.
“It’s not drugs,” said the source.
The backshot: “Rod can’t sleep without drinking,” the source said. “So he drinks himself into a condition to do so, and it became an addiction. Considering what he has been through for the past few years, it became a problem. He’s not addicted to sleeping pills or anything like that.”
* There is no doubt that the folks at School District 300 in Carpentersville did a bang-up job in their effort against extending Sears’ tax package without modifications. They used protests, massive grassroots organization, visits to Springfield and a harsh media campaign to hammer their area legislators and pressure the General Assembly to bend to their will. For example…
Parents, students and staff staged two massive rallies, one in Springfield and another in a high school gym with TV cameras rolling. They circulated petitions, organized letter-writing and phone campaigns and went door-to-door in the Capitol, catching legislators on the way to the bathroom, if necessary.
At an October rally, attended by about 3,000 supporters, Bregy closed his remarks with a quote from the movie Independence Day. “We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight.”
The signs in front of all District 300 buildings last week read: “NOT GOING QUIETLY.”
Some legislators didn’t like it at all. Rep. David Harris (R-Arlington Heights) scolded the district in a committee hearing for its antics. But that didn’t stop the protests.
* Throughout it all, D300 portrayed itself as a financially struggling district in desperate need of cash. Here’s the latest such story from the Chicago News Cooperative…
As chief financial officer for one of Illinois’s largest school districts, Cheryl Crates watches the money.
Early this year, she was counting on $14 million more rolling in for Community Unit District 300, after the expiration of a tax break at Sears Holdings’ 800-acre headquarters in Hoffman Estates; it is the Sears corporate campus, which includes an on-site auto center, walking trails and even a hair salon for employees. When Crates met with Hoffman Estates officials in March, she learned the money might not be coming after all because the tax break might not expire.
“I cried,” Crates said. “The school district has cut for the last two years. We’ve had no wage increases, and we were planning on that revenue to bring down our class sizes. We have one algebra class with 47 students. It was devastating.” […]
“Nobody around here has cut as much as we have,” Crates said. “Our neighboring high school district spends $5,000 more per student than we can,” she added.
OK, first of all, according to the state, D300’s average high school class size is 23.1. That rose from 19.7 percent the previous year, but it’s way down from a high of 29.8 percent in 2004. Elementary class size is 22.7.
The closest school district to D300 is Elgin School District 46. It does not spend $5,000 more per student than D300, not even close. It actually spends less. The Elgin district spends $9,860 per pupil while D300 spends $10,514..
But even though it spends less, Elgin’s high school class size is actually smaller than D300’s, at 19, although its elementary class size is much larger at 25.1. And Elgin’s district has far more children in poverty than D300, at 52 percent vs. D300’s 39.2 percent. Elgin’s graduation rate is 88 percent, while D300’s is a bit higher at 88.9 percent.
* I guess the point is, congrats D300. You did well. But spare me the tears.
* Oh, and another thing. Sen. Michael Noland (D-Elgin) has been D300’s hero throughout all of this. Noland has gone so far as to publicly bash fellow legislators for not toeing the D300 line.
But here’s the rub. Sen. Noland voted against the tax hike last January. The revenues from that tax hike took enormous pressure off school funding. Noland was also one of two Democratic Senators who blocked a borrowing bill which would have helped pay off old bills, including more than $5 million owed to D300 as of September. Some education “hero.”
