* Two of Gov. Pat Quinn’s top media spokespersons, Kelly Kraft and Brooke Anderson, just called to try and clarify the governor’s position on the proposal to shift employer pension costs to schools and universities.
As I told you earlier, Quinn told the Daily Herald that the idea isn’t “essential” to his pension reform proposal and said he was putting the proposal “on a separate track.”
But to characterize his comments as backing away from the proposal is “not his position at all,” the spokespeople said.
“In no way shape or form do we want it to get out there that he’s backed away,” I was told. “Nobody here has been talking about that, including the governor.”
“This is something the governor supports. He thinks it should be part of the legislation.”
I was told that the proposal is “not ‘essential’ to the savings” in the governor’s original plan. The cost shift savings weren’t included “because they haven’t yet been worked out.”
Universities, the two said, “have also expressed an open mind to the shift.”
* I cannot count the number of public employees I know who have been seriously contemplating an exit scheme for the past several months…
Gov. Pat Quinn said his proposal to change the retirement age for all state workers to age 67 would be phased in to avoid massive retirements of state workers, university employees and teachers.
“We don’t want a rush to the door of current employees,” Quinn told The State Journal-Register editorial board.
But the governor did not offer details on how the plan would be phased in. The retirement age for public employees varies widely. Teachers, state employees, lawmakers and judges can retire as early as age 55, depending on how many years of service credit they have. University employees can retire at age 60. Some state employees, including state police officers, are on an alternative pension calculation formula and can retire at age 50 with 25 years of service.
Quinn’s budget director, Jerry Stermer, who has led talks on how to deal with the state’s $83 billion in pension debt, acknowledged that when the new retirement age would go into effect is vital to state workers, many of whom who have planned their financial lives around the current pension system.
Nobody really knows how big this exodus will be, but I’m sure it will be quite big.
…Adding… The SJ-R has posted video from its Quinn interview on its YouTube page.
* Like them or not, campaign contribution caps will be with us a long time, so the state’s aggregation rule really needs to be changed. Check out how state Senate candidate Tom Pliura avoided reporting tens of thousands of dollars in campaign loans until after the March primary…
State disclosure laws now require that any donation over $1,000 has to be reported to the State Board of Elections within five days.
But Pliura avoided the requirement by accepting 79 separate loans of between $550 and $999 between Jan. 30 and March 19, the day before the primary. Among the transactions were 29 separate $900 loans from his wife, Pam, made between Jan. 30 and March 15. […]
Under Illinois’ old campaign-disclosure rules, if a candidate got multiple checks where each was under the disclosure threshold but the aggregate was over the threshold, then the candidate had to disclose all of the checks, Morrison said.
After the Legislature approved so-called campaign-disclosure reforms that went into effect Jan. 1, 2011, the State Board of Elections tried to enforce the aggregation rule.
But the Joint Commission on Administrative Rules, made up of legislators, “shot them down and said, ‘You can’t do that,’” Morrison said. […]
In a report the Campaign for Political Reform wrote last year, it argued that the change to the aggregation rule allowed candidates in municipal elections to hide nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions until after the elections.
Enough, already. The aggregation rule should be changed back to the way it used to be.
To see Pliura’s long list of small loans which avoided the $1,000 reporting requirement and, therefore, detection during the campaign, click here.
* Ironically enough, pretty much Pliura’s whole campaign was based on a pledge to never be a “typical politician.” Check out this Internet ad where he pats himself on the back for being so fed up with the status quo…
It could be Pliura feels like he got one over on the powers that be by using their own rules against them. All’s fair in love and war, I suppose. But it didn’t do him much good. Pliura lost the GOP primary to Rep. Chapin Rose by 20 points.
Whatever the case, this has been yet another edition of “Always, Always, Always Beware Anyone Claiming to be a Purist Reformer.”
One Illinois legislator wants to ban animals behind the wheel.
“You see an animal in the windshield or running all over the car,” said state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Cicero. “This will protect the animal and the driver.”
Sandoval filed an amendment to a distracted driving bill that prohibits people from driving while an animal sits in their lap.
“This is more to protect the safety of animals, like dogs, in the car,” Sandoval said.
Sandoval said he got the idea for the amendment after talking to animal rights groups who are concerned about the safety of animals on the road.
The amendment didn’t survive a Senate committee.
* The Question: Should Illinois forbid automobile drivers from having animals in their laps while operating a vehicle? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
Peterson, a professor of government at Harvard, and Nadler, a doctoral candidate also at Harvard, say collective-bargaining rights for government employees pose “a dramatically new challenge to the viability” of American federalism.
They cite studies demonstrating that investors’ perceptions of risk of default are correlated with the rate of unionization among government employees. [Emphasis added.]
So, some Wall Street “perceptions” mean that states ought to get rid of collective bargaining rights? There never would’ve been unions in the first place (not to mention a whole lot of other stuff that we take for granted) if governments had always followed Wall Street perceptions.
Then again, the bond market has pretty much dictated almost every big piece of fiscal legislation passed in this state for the past two years.
*** UPDATE *** Along these same lines, this is pretty crazy…
California, the world’s ninth- biggest economy by output, pays more to borrow from investors than John Deere Capital Corp., Idaho Power Co. and Caterpillar Inc., which have the same or lower credit ratings.
Two years after Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings changed standards to put municipal credits on the same footing as corporates, California and Illinois are among states that still pay more for debt than similarly or lower-rated corporations, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Yet Moody’s says companies default at 86 times the municipal rate. […]
Defaults by governments remain fewer than those by corporate borrowers. Only 0.13 percent of municipal bonds rated by Moody’s fell into that category from 1970 to 2011, compared with more than 11 percent of corporate bonds. […]
Illinois, which like all states has the ability to impose taxes to raise revenue and whose bondholders have a first claim on the money, also hasn’t received lower yields.
The A2 rated state sold taxable bonds Jan. 11 with a yield about 132 basis points more than debt issued by Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. two months later, relative to 30-year Treasuries. The Poughkeepsie, New York-based company serves about 300,000 electric customers between New York’s northern suburbs and Albany, the state capital. It is rated lower, at A3, and its securities mature five years later.
* This probably couldn’t have passed anyway, and it could’ve just been a ruse to get more money for Chicago’s teacher pension fund, but the governor has apparently stepped away…
Gov. Pat Quinn said Tuesday that while he wants to make local schools and community colleges responsible for the cost of teachers’ retirements, it isn’t an “essential” part of his immediate plans to cut spending for the state’s troubled pensions systems.
In a meeting with the Daily Herald editorial board, the Democratic governor said he’d like the General Assembly to take up the controversial proposal to shift the state’s share of pension costs to local schools before lawmakers are scheduled to leave Springfield May 31.
But, Quinn said, he’ll focus more in the coming weeks on getting legislators to approve his proposal, announced last week, to have teachers pay more toward their pensions and to raise the retirement age to 67. […]
“We want to deal with that accountability principle, but we’ll do it on a separate track,” Quinn said.
“No one says they deserve one, but they get one because they make the laws,” said Andy Shaw, president and chief executive of the Better Government Association.
Shaw noted that no area of government has been as abused as the pension systems because “no one sees the result until there’s a crisis.”
Pensions and health care historically have been perks that lawmakers award themselves and unions without the public focusing on the cost, Shaw said.
He acknowledged that legislative pension costs are insignificant given the size of the state’s budget hole but agreed that “symbolically” it might be a nice gesture if lawmakers at least agreed to suspend the pension benefit until the current crisis was resolved.
But I see the state cutting programs that help the poor, preschool children, the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled and the elderly and believe that every dime saved on legislators’ pensions could be better spent elsewhere.
Gov. Pat Quinn’splan to scale back the state’s ailing Medicaid program is running into Republican resistance, primarily because Quinn’s mix includes a $1-a-pack cigarette tax hike.
“We’re looking for money rather than looking at the spending side, and it’s that default position that has gotten us exactly into the mess we’re in,” Republican Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno told a City Club of Chicago audience Monday.
Fair enough. We’ve pushed as hard as anyone for Illinois to curb its vicious spending habit, which has left the state billions of dollars in debt and incapable of paying its bills.
But we strongly encourage Republicans to be flexible here, lest we lose the momentum for Medicaid reform (as well as pension reform). If these changes are going to happen, they’re going to be done in a bipartisan fashion. They’re going to need Republican votes. Quinn has proposed substantial cuts in spending on Medicaid, and he’s going to run into some Democratic resistance on that. […]
Illinois has a crisis: an expected $1.9 billion in unpaid Medicaid bills on hand by June 30, the end of fiscal 2012. Without a fix, that backlog will surge to $21 billion in five years. Providers wait about four months now to get paid; that delay could stretch to a full year. That puts a huge financial burden on the providers. Longer delays and steeper reimbursement rates could push more of them to stop treating Medicaid patients.
We credit Quinn for stepping up here, taking the political risk of proposing Medicaid and pension reform. His plan isn’t the last word, but it does set a solid framework.
This reform can’t wait. If Republicans have better ideas, bring ‘em on soon. And negotiate in good faith.
Quinn said gambling expansion, including slot machines at horse racing tracks, should not become a political distraction in the remaining six weeks of session for the General Assembly, because Medicaid and pension stabilization are “the highest priorities we can possibly focus on.”
The Chicago Democrat criticized lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pushing gambling expansion as “some … who frankly don’t want to deal with the hard things. They say the solution would be expanded gambling and we don’t have to make hard choices.”
Using revenues from the cigarette tax hike to avoid “hard choices” on Medicaid is pretty much exactly what the SGOPs are saying.
More than 60 percent of Illinois residents support a gaming solution that includes more casinos and the addition of slot machines at racetracks as a solution to create more than 20,000 jobs and generate nearly $200 million annually for the state, a newly released poll reveals.
Most Illinoisans support the gambling expansion bill Gov. Pat Quinn vetoed this year — at least according to a poll taken on behalf of the people who would most benefit from more gambling in Illinois.
The poll was conducted for the Illinois Revenue & Jobs Alliance, which describes itself as “a growing statewide consortium of labor organizations, business groups, farming and agribusiness interests, racetracks and horsemen associations, and local municipalities committed to the passage of SB 1849 which calls for the expansion of gaming in Illinois, including slot machines at racetracks.”
* And then there’s the whole idea of not allowing a few decades-old gambling establishments (racetracks) to offer more gambling…
“This is the same governor who has approved buying lottery tickets at home on your computer. So 10-13 million Illinoisians apparently can gamble on their computer at home, but a few people can’t go to a race track and gamble where they’re already gambling? I think that’s a very difficult stretch,” Lang said.
Gov. Pat Quinn laid out his plan to cover a $2.7 billion Medicaid hole last week, proposing a cigarette tax hike, cuts in rates paid to Medicaid providers and reductions in services to Medicaid recipients.
However, administration officials acknowledged that components could change as lawmakers debate the plan in the coming weeks.
That comes as a working group of state lawmakers still wants to develop its own plan for closing the gap, a plan Republicans hope will avoid the tax increase and the rate reductions.
Quinn’s vision for closing the $2.7 billion gap is not etched in stone, according to his top aides.
The Quinn administration’s proposal to force health insurance companies to shoulder a greater share of the cost for treating severely sick children might save the state $250 million a year, but it likely will drive up premiums on policyholders.
Reducing Medicaid spending on children with “special health care needs” — ranging from cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease to chronic pain and depression — is a key part of Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to cut spending by $2 billion a year for the federal-state health insurance program for the poor… The idea of shifting Medicaid costs onto private insurers is novel
Under a quirk in Illinois eligibility requirements, children and their families whose income is low enough to qualify for Medicaid can participate in the program, even if they have private insurance. […]
Those nearly 35,000 children cost the state on average about $12,700 in 2009, according to an analysis by [Children’s Memorial Hospital] that Ms. Hamos provided to Crain’s.
The department projects it can save about $250 million a year if private carriers cover the first $36,000 in costs for only an estimated 7,000 children, with Medicaid picking up the rest of the tab. That’s the starting point for the state.
So, couldn’t that $250 million a year also be looked at as a state government subsidy of the health insurance industry?
A national liberal advocacy group is criticizing Illinois’ Democratic governor’s proposed solution to the state’s Medicaid crisis.
Families USA is issuing a new report Wednesday that estimates job losses of more than 25,000 if Illinois cuts Medicaid spending by $2.7 billion.
So far, Quinn hasn’t really proposed cutting Medicaid spending by $2.7 billion because about $700 million of that amount would be from a cigarette tax hike combined with a federal match. The full report is here.
* And the Belleville News-Democrat has demanded deep state budget cuts in the past, but it doesn’t much care for a proposed local facility closure…
State officials say Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close the Murray Center in Centralia is a policy decision, but come on. Everybody knows the center is on the chopping block now because the state is billions of dollars in debt.
Understandably, people who have family and friends who live or work there don’t want the facility to close. But that can’t be the governor’s basis for the decision. As someone at a recent hearing on the proposed closure correctly pointed out, if that were the criteria, no state facility would ever be closed.
The state has to cut from somewhere, but is this a good place? There are many more straightforward savings to be had than Murray Center.
For example, the state could save about $13.5 million annually by eliminating the legislative scholarship program — about what would be saved annually by closing the Murray Center.
They had other budget ideas as well, but that $13.5 million is fantasy cash. The scholarships aren’t actually funded with any state money. They’re really just tuition waivers.
* Related and a roundup…
* Quinn defends proposal to raise cigarette taxes for health care
* More on hospitals’ Medicaid ideas: A commenter on the Capitol Fax blog noted, correctly, that if the state kicks a lot more people off the Medicaid rolls, it ultimately would cost the hospitals, which provide 40 percent of Medicaid-reimbursed services. This is a point the Illinois Hospital Association made to the SJ-R editorial board last week. Space limits prevented me from more fully explaining this in the editorial itself, so I thought a little explanation here is in order.
* When did Jerry Clarke know that Congressman Tim Johnson was dropping out of his primary on April 5th? That’s been a question on many minds in the 13th Congressional District since Clarke, a former Johnson chief of staff, announced his intentions to run for the seat. State Sen. Kyle McCarter has suggested that the timing of Johnson’s retirement was all a setup to get Clarke installed in the seat and called the situation “politics as usual.”
* Well, WJBC reporter Ryan Denham did some basic journalism and checked the WHOIS results for Clarke’s campaign website and found this…
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: CLARKEFORCONGRESS.COM Created on: 10-Feb-12
Expires on: 10-Feb-14
Last Updated on: 10-Apr-12 [Emphasis added]
In case you are mathematically challenged, that website creation date is about two months before Johnson’s retirement announcement.
But Clarke spokesman Mike Cys downplayed that early registration. He said Clarke has known for years that Johnson intended to retire soon, and “he’s made no secret” that he intended to run for the seat whenever that happened.
“We just kind got a sense, you know, let’s start getting ready for 2013, make sure we get those domain names … because we figured this was going to be Tim’s last run, 2012,” Cys said. “So we were just kind of gearing up and starting to get things ready, looking down the road.”
* Gov. Pat Quinn will talk to the State Journal-Register’s editorial board this morning at 9:30. The paper is doing a live video stream of the sit-down…
* They’re also live-Tweeting the meeting. BlackBerry users click here…
Wednesday, Apr 25, 2012 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
On Wednesday, April 25, hospital leaders from across Illinois will converge at the Capitol for health care Advocacy Day to talk to legislators about the devastating impact an 8 percent Medicaid rate cut ($350 million) to hospitals will have on patients, the health care system, jobs and the economy. Such a drastic cut would result in the loss of more than 3,600 jobs and nearly $470 million in economic activity.
The Governor’s proposed 8 percent rate cut won’t fix Medicaid or heal people. It just creates another economic burden for hospitals.
One in three Illinois hospitals already operates in the red and many others are barely breaking even. Medicaid cuts could force hospitals to lay off employees and severely reduce or eliminate vital services, or even close.
An 8 percent cut goes too far, especially when you consider Illinois ranks 44th in the U.S. for Medicaid spending per beneficiary.
Yes, the Medicaid system must change. The Illinois Hospital Association has provided the General Assembly with thoughtful, workable Medicaid savings alternatives that protect patients’ access to care and improve outcomes.
It’s time to protect Illinois health care for both today and tomorrow.
* Gov. Pat Quinn to the Daily Herald editorial board about his chances in the 2014 campaign…
“I think I’ll win the election,” he said matter of factly. “Don’t count me out. …Just watch the last 10 days (in an election cycle). In 2010, the primary, the general, the other guys were looking for their gym shoes. I know how to win elections no matter what. You may not like the way I do it, but I win the election.”
