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This just in… G-8 summit won’t be held in Chicago

Monday, Mar 5, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* 3:14 pm - Tribune…

The G-8 summit will be held at Camp David, not in Chicago as had been scheduled.

The White House announced the change in the following statement:

“In May, the United States looks forward to hosting the G-8 and NATO Summits. To facilitate a free-flowing discussion with our close G-8 partners, the president is inviting his fellow G-8 leaders to Camp David on May 18-19 for the G-8 Summit, which will address a broad range of economic, political and security issues.

“The president will then welcome NATO allies and partners to his hometown of Chicago for the NATO Summit on May 20-21, which will be the premier opportunity this year for the president to continue his efforts to strengthen NATO in order to ensure that the Atlantic Alliance remains the most successful alliance in history, while charting the way forward in Afghanistan.”

That news will come as a relief to a whole lot of Chicagoans, and to some of the rest of us. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.

* 3:51 pm - Sun-Times…

City Hall insisted that it was President Obama’s decision — that Mayor Rahm Emanuel did not ask the White House to take the more controversial of the two summits off Chicago’s hands. […]

Andy Thayer, a spokesman for the Coalition Against NATO-G-8, didn’t buy the City Hall spin. He believes that pressure from local business leaders concerned about an international onslaught of protesters convinced the mayor to cut the risk in half.

“There’s been a lot of grumbling from business leaders in the city about what a total pain in the neck this thing would be. [The White House] probably looked at what a mess they were gonna make of the city and decided to move part of it to Camp David,” Thayer said.

“I really think the business community began to lean on Emanuel and Emanuel probably realized he was in over his head.”

Although the economic summit will be held in the secluded environment around Camp David, Thayer stressed that the demonstrations in Chicago “will go forward, but maybe not on the 19th” of May.

56 Comments

Unsolicited advice

Monday, Mar 5, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Dear state Sen. Bill Brady,

Taking huge, multi-billion dollar short-term gains up front from long-term pension reform will only undermine the reforms, or mean that the reforms are so drastic they couldn’t possibly pass…

Legislators on a panel tasked with bringing the cost of the state’s pension systems under control have yet to identify potential solutions, but the Senate Republican on the committee said he wants no extension of the 2011 state income tax increase past its expiration date in 2015.

“That’s a line in the sand for me,” Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, said in an interview last week. “Everything should be negotiated from a base of the tax increase falling off. Whatever we do, it’s got to be a long-term plan that has a fiscal forecast that coincides with the rolling back of that tax increase as prescribed by today’s law.”

To me, this looks like a setup for voting “No” on a possible compromise.

* Dear Illinois Senate,

What took you so long?…

The Illinois Senate is giving itself some extra options when it comes to weighing in on Gov. Pat Quinn’s top hires. […]

Under the new rules, the Senate panel that screens all appointees before they are brought before the full Senate floor for confirmation can now vote to not recommend prospective agency heads and Cabinet members.

Previously, the Executive Appointments Committee did not have the formal ability to issue a negative ruling on a gubernatorial appointee.

“It strengthens the actual committee to either recommend or not recommend certain appointees,” said Rikeesha Phelon, spokeswoman for Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago.

Seems logical to me.

* Dear Illinois House candidate Danielle Rowe,

When you send out a press release with “Chicago Style Intimidation” in the e-mail subject line, I’m not sure I think of this particular charge…

DANIELLE ROWE WON’T BE INTIMIDATED BY CHICAGO-STYLE BULLYING TACTICS

In the latest Chicago-style intimidation tactics used against tea party conservative Republican candidate for State Representative Danielle Rowe, Rowe’s billboards have disappeared from multiple locations throughout the district. The billboards were 4 feet tall by 8 feet wide, solidly constructed on sheets of plywood, pegged into steel poles, pounded down two feet into the ground, and valued between $1500 and $2000. They are not to be mistaken for paper signs on wire hangers commonly found on the side of the road.

Sign stealing is as old as political campaigns. It’s the height of geocentricity to claim that this is a Chicago thing. It ain’t. Besides, few in Chicago are silly enough to spend two grand on a yard sign.

Also, your “bullying” headline just made me think of this recent story…

Danielle Rowe said she responded sincerely, and what she thought to be truthfully, when she disclosed an 11-year-old arrest on her Daily Herald candidate questionnaire.

Rowe, who’s in a three-way GOP primary race for the 52nd House District seat, wrote that she slapped her sister during a heated argument, but that charges were dropped. However, McHenry County court records show she received one-year supervision and a $342 fine for misdemeanor battery.

Later in the piece, you are quoted as saying, “I don’t even remember being on supervision.” Are you gonna remember your campaign promises?

* Dear Chicago Tribune,

More specifics, please…

Under the federal consent decree, DCFS violates the rules if an investigator is assigned more than 12 new cases a month. For three months of the year, that number may go up to 15. Since investigators must close out their cases within two months, the theory is they will not juggle more than about 24 combined cases at one time.

A Tribune survey of investigator caseloads showed widespread noncompliance. In Cook County, for example, 80 percent of 126 investigators were assigned more cases than allowed during at least one month last year. A majority of them had caseloads that were too high for several months, records show.

“Several months” could be three months, which wouldn’t be in technical violation. How many months is several? And how many actual violations are occurring?

* Dear Fran Eaton,

I’m not sure we ridiculed you at all at the event you referenced today. We (or, perhaps just I) challenged some of your more out there assertions, but whatever…

No one outside Breitbart’s inner circle is privy to exactly where “The Bigs” are headed, but this excerpt from Breitbart’s own fingers is the first in a series that purports to unveil the Barack Obama Chicago and Springfield journalists knew well, but refused to reveal, even when they knew well the nation and the world would be affected.

At a Northwestern University School of Journalism panel in 2008, a couple of those key Illinois journalists ridiculed and mostly ignored Illinois Review when we warned that someday the world would hold them accountable for not doing their jobs and writing about the real Barack Obama they knew so well.

While several excellent books about the Obamas have made their way into the mainstream and New York Times’ best seller list, America should look forward to Big Journalism’s branded vetting. And as the truth comes forward, those who so irresponsibly ignored and kept under cover should be held responsible for aiding and abetting the Obama agenda.

The reason few take you seriously, Fran, is you say things like journalists “refused to reveal” the fact that state Sen. Barack Obama spoke after a Chicago play about Saul Alinksy, along with Cook County Clerk David Orr, Studs Terkel, AFSCME’s Roberta Lynch and a group of old, has-been lefties.

We didn’t “know it well,” Fran. Actually, we didn’t know it at all. And I doubt anybody would’ve cared back then or care today.

* Roundup…

* 2 lives shed light on dispute over Illinois move away from institutions for mentally disabled

* University employees defend tuition break

* With potential oil boom on horizon, IL lawmakers want to update fracking law

* Lincoln Tomb awaiting renovation

* Parents Ask For Notifications Of Pesticide Use: Illinois Legislators Scoff

* Gun group wants extra tax on residents of violent neighborhoods: “After imposition of our proposal, I’m quite sure that homeowners and business people in high-tax areas would be highly motivated to reign in their fellow residents responsible for violent crime,” he says. Great idea! I’m sure that higher taxes is just the kick in the pants that gang-afflicted areas need. Apparently, fear that you and your loved ones might be blown away if you step outside the basement isn’t enough.

* New McPier board rounded out

* Nonprofits Criticize State’s Lack Of Transparency, Public Input

* ADDED: Sheyman goes negative in 10th District Democratic race

52 Comments

Question of the day

Monday, Mar 5, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* From an op-ed by Charles W. Hoffman, an assistant defender in the Office of the Illinois State Appellate Defender…

One year ago this Friday, Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation abolishing the death penalty in Illinois.

The rightness of that decision is more clear than ever. Violent crime rates have not climbed. The public is no less safe. And the pursuit of justice has been served, not undermined.

Although hundreds of convicted murderers had been sent to Death Row since Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977, only 12 men had been executed in the 34 years the death penalty law was on the books. Yet during that same period, 20 innocent men were convicted of murder and sentenced to death, only to be exonerated after spending decades in prison facing execution for crimes they didn’t commit.

The last execution in Illinois took place in 1999, one year before former Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on the death penalty, as the only way to avoid what he termed “the ultimate nightmare” of the state wrongfully executing an innocent person. That moratorium remained in effect until capital punishment finally, and officially, ended last year.

Death penalty proponents had long argued that capital punishment was necessary to deter murders. But no evidence ever supported such an argument. In fact, in the year since abolition, the Chicago Police Department reports that the murder rate in the city remains at a 40-year low.

* The Question: Do you think most of the furor over abolishing the death penalty has subsided? Or do you think the anger will reappear in this fall’s general election campaigns? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please. Thanks.

Online Surveys & Market Research

38 Comments

Candidate: State should be giving money to churches

Monday, Mar 5, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* A Democratic House candidate has one of the odder ideas I’ve ever seen. He’s campaigning on a platform to get state money for churches. From a press release…

Chicago Businessman and Police Officer Richard Wooten, a candidate for State Representative in Illinois’ 34th District and Committeeman in Chicago’s 6th Ward, said if he is elected to those offices, he will fight for programs to revitalize struggling churches.

The churches are struggling, Wooten said, because high unemployment led to a decline in church attendance and tithing, resulting in a growing number of churches going into foreclosure or severe debt. In many churches that are able to keep their doors open, Wooten said the pastors are spending less time addressing the needs of members and residents, because they have to spend too much time making sure the electric and gas stays on. This week churches received even more bad news when Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration announced that the mayor wants churches to start paying water bills, adding to the mounting utility debts.

“If Wall Street and the automotive industry can be bailed out, why can’t we provide support to our churches?” asked Wooten, an associate pastor at Faith Walk Church International in Chicago. “The economy has had a devastating effect on our churches, which have been the backbone of our communities. When they are healthy, our families are healthy, and when our families are healthy, our communities are healthy. If we truly want to help people in need, we have to help our churches.”

Wooten will gather with pastors on Tuesday, March 6, 2012, at 10 a.m. CT. for a press conference. The press event will be held at 434-440 E. 79th St. in Chicago.

Black churches have always been very influential on South Side politics, so this is a pretty darned blatant attempt to win over their support.

* From the Illinois Constitution…

SECTION 3. PUBLIC FUNDS FOR SECTARIAN PURPOSES FORBIDDEN

Neither the General Assembly nor any county, city, town, township, school district, or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation or pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money, or other personal property ever be made by the State, or any such public corporation, to any church, or for any sectarian purpose.

I asked the Wooten campaign how the candidate justified his proposal in light of the Constitution, but haven’t heard back. Whatever. This isn’t about constitutionality. It’s about votes. Plain and simple.

Discuss.

36 Comments

Nobody is in for a pleasant experience

Monday, Mar 5, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* My weekly syndicated newspaper column looks at the upcoming budget…

Last year, the Illinois House was able to control the Statehouse budget process by releasing low-ball state revenue estimates early on and then vowing to stick to those numbers no matter what.

The Senate Democrats wanted to spend more money but were eventually stymied by the House’s revenue estimates. There was just no way around the problem.

Some Senate Democrats thought about forcing the spring session into overtime, but that would’ve been stupid because it would’ve required a three-fifths majority to approve the budget — and that would’ve given the Republicans a seat at the table. And the Republicans wouldn’t want to spend more money.

It’s too early to tell, but this year may be different. Last week, the House kicked off the budget process by locking in the chamber’s new revenue estimates. The estimates are $221 million below the governor’s projections and $271 million below those of the General Assembly’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

The main differences are in income tax revenue. The House’s estimate for personal income tax collections is $302 million below the governor’s, while the corporate income tax estimate is about $50 million above the governor’s.

The differences aren’t nearly as dramatic as last year’s round of budget-making, when the House’s estimates ended up being about $1 billion below the Senate’s. But a difference of $221 to 271 million is still quite significant, particularly in a year when so many popular state programs are facing the chopping block.

The Senate Democrats basically got rolled last year and had to swallow cuts that many members did not want. They were hampered not only by the House’s lower revenue projections but also because their two new appropriations committee chairmen got bogged down in the details of the state’s new “budgeting for results” law. The hearings on that new law slowed the Senate’s budget process and allowed the House to pass its appropriations bills first.

Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) said last week that there would be some changes in the way his chamber deals with the budget this year. He also said he had spoken with House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), and as a result, strongly believed that this year’s process would be far more cooperative than last year’s.

And, indeed, there have been changes. The new House revenue forecasts were devised in cooperation with the Senate Revenue Committee.

Even so, expecting lower revenue won’t go down well with the more liberal members of the Senate Democrats, most of whom are outraged at the cuts proposed by Gov. Pat Quinn and who have a unified and powerful voice. Finding another $250 million in cutbacks will undoubtedly be seen as a bridge too far.

These estimates also come in the context of the enormous pressure to slash Medicaid spending by $2.7 billion. The liberal push-back against that demand by Quinn is enormous — despite the very real and credible evidence that ignoring the problem, or even just coming up with a partial solution, will lead to a systemic crisis in a few years.

Doing nothing will create a roughly $21 billion mountain of overdue Medicaid bills in five years. And the total will keep going up after that. The whole system could crash.

But the people who run the government might also try a bit of old-time Statehouse fudging.

OK, we’re now going to do a little math, but it isn’t hard, so stay with me.

Quinn wanted to take $162 million next fiscal year and pay off past-due bills. Steve Schnorf, a former state budget director, suggested last week that Quinn might put that $162 million back into state spending programs. The cuts that would then have to be made would total $59 million ($221 million via the House’s revenue forecast minus $162 million returned to the budget). That would be a lot easier to swallow.

Even so, the uproar over Quinn’s proposed budget and Medicaid cuts is so intense that even if the legislative leaders and the governor do manage a bit of fudging, there are going to be some very furious people in the Statehouse the rest of the spring. Nobody is in for a pleasant experience.

* Related…

* Finke: Looks like state will try rerun of budget process

* DNR director: Expect even more cuts: Marc Miller said Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget reduces DNR spending by 13.5 percent, which includes 9.4 percent less in general revenue. This comes on top of federal cuts, he said.

* Editorial: Can state officials deal with budget ‘reality’?

* IL debate arises over prison transition centers

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Protected: SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Supplement to today’s edition and a Statehouse and campaign roundup

Monday, Mar 5, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

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Protected: SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Today’s edition of Capitol Fax (use all CAPS in password)

Monday, Mar 5, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

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