Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » 2012

Monday, May 14, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* I’m not really sure that anyone cares all that much about this except a handful of Springfield residents, but this is from the Illinois Republican Party…

Hopefully Quinn lied about keeping his underwear in Springfield

Today, Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady issued the following statement:

“In 2010, Governor Pat Quinn said: ‘My clothes are at the governor’s mansion in Springfield - even my underwear is there. I think that establishes residency, doesn’t it?’

“In 2011, Quinn stayed only 40 nights in Springfield.

“For the sake of everyone working in his Chicago office, I really hope the Governor was lying about where he kept his underwear.”

Funny stuff.

* This is based on a WCIA report…

Gov. Pat Quinn spent 68 days in Springfield between March 2011 and March 2012, according to an analysis of his personal schedule by WCIA 3.

Of that time, Quinn only spent 40 nights in the capitol city, according to the schedule, and it’s assumed all of those nights were spent in the Illinois Executive Mansion,.

When Quinn took office in 2009, he told he reporters he was moving in to the mansion. His predecessor, Rod Blagojevich, was criticized for not spending enough time in the executive mansion, which costs Illinois taxpayers about $500,000 to operate each year.

* More…

Former governor Jim Edgar, who lived full time in the mansion, told WCIA that he thinks Quinn spends more time in Springfield than Blagojevich did, but that it’s important the governor spend time in the mansion.

“It might be not the same level as the White House,” Edgar said, “but it’s our equivalent here in Illinois.”

Two things about Edgar’s comments.

1) Yes, Edgar lived in the mansion for a while, but then he moved out to a log home in the country.

2) The mansion is nowhere near the equivalent of the White House. It’s been over 30 years since a governor lived there full time for an entire term.

* That being said, the governor has, indeed, repeatedly claimed that he lives in the mansion. It’s not true now and it never has been true.

I’ve never fully understood why Quinn would make that claim when the evidence obviously shows he’s not telling the truth. Yeah, it probably had some political benefit during the 2010 campaign, but that benefit is wiped out when the data shows his statements to be utterly false.

Discuss.

39 Comments

Question of the day

Monday, May 14, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The setup…

Just three months after teetering on the issue, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has come out in favor of marriage equality.

“Governor Quinn joins with President Obama in supporting marriage equality and looks forward to working on this issue in the future with the General Assembly,” said Brooke Anderson, a spokesperson for the governor, in an email to Windy City Times.

The Chicago Tribune first reported Quinn’s announcement, which comes on the heels of President Obama’s proclamation to ABC News that he supports marriage equality.

* The Question: Should Illinois legalize gay marriage? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please. Thanks.

Online Surveys & Market Research

83 Comments

Today’s quote

Monday, May 14, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Heh…

Gov. Pat Quinn is enlisting the support of Chicago’s business community to sell his Medicaid and pension reform plans to state lawmakers before the Legislature adjourns at the end of this month.

WBBM Newsradio’s Regine Schlesinger reports spoke to civic leaders at the City Club of Chicago on Monday, urging them to pressure the Illinois General Assembly to approve his proposals.

“Our state is really at a crossroads,” Quinn said, telling business leaders he can’t wait until next year to tackle the state’s Medicaid and pension problems, which are strangling the state’s budget.

“We’re not the Chicago Cubs. We’re not going to wait till another century,” Quinn said. “We’re going to do things and do them now, and we’re going to be like the White Sox were in 2005. Nobody expected them to win, and they won.” [Emphasis added.]

Spoken like a true Sox fan.

* The governor’s full City Club address…

* Q&A…

Monday, May 14, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The Illinois Times has a very good article about Illinois Statehouse News in its latest edition. “Write wingers” takes a pretty even-handed look at the outfit, which offers free state politics stories to newspapers and radio stations throughout Illinois…

Even papers that pay for Associated Press coverage of state government are turning to Illinois Statehouse News.

“I think they move some pretty good stuff,” says Jim Shrader, publisher of the Alton Telegraph. “We trust the content, and that’s why we choose to use it. … It’s one more news service that doesn’t increase my expenses.”

Shrader says that Illinois Statehouse News produces stories that the best-known wire service doesn’t provide.

“I understand that AP is short of manpower – they’re (the wire service is) going to get what they’re fed,” Shrader says. “I don’t want to say it (Illinois Statehouse News product) has more of a downstate focus, but it’s not quite as necessarily Chicago-centric.”

* Their funding is opaque, to say the least…

The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, based in Alexandria, Va., is paying the bills for Illinois Statehouse News and similar bureaus set up in several other states. The center also gives grants for journalism projects to conservative think tanks and online publications that typically say they want to hold government accountable and spotlight fiscal foolishness.

Jason Stverak, Franklin Center’s president, is former head of the North Dakota Republican Party. According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Franklin Center was launched in 2009 with help from the Sam Adams Alliance, a Chicago-based nonprofit which has also given grants to such organizations as the Tea Party Patriots Foundation.

Neither the Franklin Center nor the Sam Adams Alliance will reveal where they get their money, saying that donors have a right to privacy. That’s problematic for critics who find irony in the Franklin Center and its news bureaus railing for transparency in government. The source of money to pay for reporters while mainstream media outlets are cutting back is irrelevant, according to the Franklin Center. What gets reported is what counts, the center says.

* Myself and others have given ISN a chance…

Charlie Wheeler, director of the public affairs reporting program at University of Illinois Springfield that provides interns to help newspapers and broadcasters cover the legislature, also took a wait-and-see approach when Illinois Statehouse News asked for students.

“There had been serious reservations raised,” Wheeler recalls. “In general, it was concern that this would be some kind of shadow right-wing operation, because of who the funders were purported to be, and they would be churning out propaganda in the guise of news.”

After reading the product for the better part of a year, Wheeler agreed to provide interns. The stories, he says, showed no slant, and they were getting picked up by media outlets throughout the state.

“It looks like pretty straightforward news to me,” Wheeler says. “I think they have a pretty decent following.” […]

“I think they’re always going to be suspect because of who funds them,” says Rich Miller, publisher of Capitol Fax and capitolfax.com. “Overall, they have a conservative slant on some things. So what? Are they unfair or ridiculous? No. Are they a decent addition to the Statehouse? Sure.”

* But if this ISN story had been published before I was interviewed for that article, I might have had a slightly different take. It’s called “Priorities for IL women voters: Jobs and economy, not abortion,” yet it has precious little evidence to support the headline or the lede…

As the country’s two main political parties continue to duke it out in the so-called “war on women,” women voters in Illinois say they believe the hubbub is merely a tool to distract from the bread-and-butter issues they care about.

There’s one poll referenced in the article, but it was a national poll, not an Illinois poll. The premise is almost solely based on “woman in the street” interviews.

There’s no mention of how abortion-related issues played an outsized role in the 2010 statewide election, when the economic future was pretty darned bleak here. Just stuff like this…

Indeed. Women are worried about finding a job, putting food on the table, paying for their children’s college tuition and trying to secure their family’s financial future. The “bedroom issues” of gay marriage, birth control and abortion are on women’s radar but aren’t priorities.

Women may not say that the issues are priorities, but those issues can be extremely effective campaign tools. Just ask Gov. Pat Quinn or state Sen. Bill Brady.

* But while this story overtly appears to be “Women don’t care about social issues,” it’s actually much more nuanced…

“I really think, especially in Illinois, people have taken that and run with it as a diversion,” said Laurel Bault, a 54-year-old suburban Chicago married mother of two grown children. “So while we’re standing on the corner with signs saying, ‘I’m not livestock,’ they’re selling our state out. It’s kind of a divide-and-conquer tactic to distract from things that are really going on.”

It’s just too bad that nuance got lost in all the hype.

* Illinois Review, however, is not so worried about the nuance thing. Check this one out…

Earlier in the week, we noted Kimberly Strassel’s excellent reporting on the Obama campaign’s strong arm, Chicago Way of dealing with anyone who dares to exercise his right to oppose B. Hussein’s re-election. The Community Organizer in Chief hasn’t forgotten his Alinskyite training, a key feature of which is demonizing those who disagree with him. Nor has his key apparatchik David Axelrod, forgotten how he vaulted this narcissistic, unaccomplished, petulant, affirmative-action assisted C-player from obscurity into the Oval Office.

Yikes.

20 Comments

Press release of the day

Monday, May 14, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* From an Exelon/ComEd press release…

Exelon and ComEd, along with the State Chamber, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Civic Federation and others support Governor Pat Quinn’s call to action to reform Illinois’ pension laws and review Medicaid policy this session.

Chicago - Exelon and ComEd, along with the Illinois State Chamber, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Civic Federation and others support Governor Pat Quinn’s call to action to reform Illinois’ pension laws and review Medicaid policy this legislative session. These steps are required to improve the financial health of the State of Illinois, rebuild a sustainable platform for economic recovery and growth, and improve the business climate necessary for job growth.

We recognize that pensions are important to everyone and provide a level of security and quality of life that people work their entire lives to achieve. However, the current structure is in dire need of change that, without it, threatens the entire financial integrity of the state and the future of many public employees.

The Governor and the leaders of the General Assembly are taking bold, courageous steps to improve the financial integrity of Illinois, and thereby enhancing us as an economic powerhouse in the country.

These guys are always at the Statehouse either asking for special treatment or trying to stop somebody else from getting a leg up on them, so backing the leaders certainly helps them because it shows they’re “on the team.”

But it sure rubs me the wrong way. “Zap the workers and retirees, zap health care for the poor, but keep those special favors coming for the giant utility company!”

Such a great slogan.

* Related…

* New Tenaska plan faces same opponents

* Tenaska Compromise Doesn’t Win Over Skeptics

* State, teachers far from deal on pension reform: For the first time, the Illinois Federation of Teachers is hinting they might be willing to give a little. “Our members are willing to sacrifice more to help solve the pension crisis, but they are definitely not willing to bear the whole burden by themselves,” federation spokesman David Comerford said. “Although we have made our pension payments through every paycheck, we’ve offered reasonable changes that will result in billions of dollars of state savings over the coming years.”

* Quinn, business form unlikely alliance on budget cuts

* Finke: Jumping to action to cut off retirees

* Our Opinion: Legislators take step in right direction

* Time almost gone for input on Illinois school plan

* Chicago teachers polled in “dry run” strike vote

* Week in Review: Pensions, health care take center stage in IL

25 Comments

Cullerton wants to avoid overtime

Monday, May 14, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…

Illinois Senate President John Cullerton has been telling some of his members for weeks that he was resigned to an overtime session.

The General Assembly likely wouldn’t be able to adjourn by the scheduled May 31 deadline, there was just no getting around it, so people should just accept it and move forward, he said.

But then Cullerton (D-Chicago) reportedly came to the conclusion that if the spring session did go into overtime, the Republicans would likely keep everyone bottled up in Springfield all summer long. So, now his focus is on getting everybody out of town by the end of May.

May 31 is an important deadline because all bills voted on after that date will require a three-fifths majority to pass rather than a simple majority. That means no budget can be approved, no Medicaid solution can be found, no pension systems can be reformed without a three-fifths supermajority.

The Democrats control both legislative chambers, but they don’t have three-fifths of the votes in each. They’re seven votes shy in the House and one vote short in the Senate. One vote may not seem like a lot, but partisanship can sometimes get so intense in the General Assembly that one vote might as well be 100.

Cullerton has been hoping for bipartisan agreement on the three major and gut-wrenching issues facing the Legislature — Medicaid, pensions and the budget. And even though the Republicans deny it, Cullerton has come to the conclusion that the GOP is stalling everything to push the session into overtime to try to create as much political chaos as possible.

The majority party always takes the blame for overtime sessions, so tying up vulnerable Democratic incumbents in an unpopular and chaotic overtime session would further damage the Dems’ image and prevent members from walking precincts and going to events back home.

When I asked Cullerton about a Senate Republican demand that the state budget be cut far more than it was in a bipartisan agreement in the House, he shot back that “it’s just an excuse to vote ‘no.’ ”

The House approved that agreement, which limits state operational spending to $800 million below the revenue forecast, by a lopsided 91-16 vote in late March. But Senate Republicans want that spending limit lowered by another $1.4 billion.

State Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), a GOP budgeteer, picked up sponsorship of the House spending cap resolution March 30, the day it passed the House. But Murphy has refused to call the measure for a vote in committee.

Committee chairman Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) asked Murphy whether he was prepared to move the resolution. Murphy’s umpteenth refusal prompted Democrats to demand that the Republicans “move their other budget recommendations in a bill.”

The fight over the House spending resolution is an important piece of evidence that Cullerton sees as proving the Republicans want to force an overtime session.

The Democrats don’t have enough votes to pass legislation on those big issues on their own right now, when bills only require a simple majority.

Steep budget cuts, slashing Medicaid and whacking union members’ pensions are not appealing to most Democrats. So they need the Republicans on everything.

Murphy admitted last week that his caucus knows the Democrats can’t pass a budget by themselves, so the Republicans are using their leverage to maximum advantage to force more spending cuts. Murphy also refused to make any significant budget proposals of his own, saying they should be negotiated.

Murphy said the proposed $2.2 billion in cuts would put the state on track to balance the budget by the time the temporary increase in the state income tax expires.

But Cullerton and the Democrats maintain that the Republicans just want to create chaos with a long and nasty overtime session that they can exploit for partisan advantage this fall.

Both sides are probably right. That gives me no comfort at all.