* Jayette Bolinski at Illinois Statehouse News takes a look at the last person expelled from the Illinois House. His offense was ratting out his fellows…
History probably would have overlooked Illinois Rep. Frank Comerford’s speech to law students in Chicago, except for one thing — he named names.
“To say that the Illinois Legislature is a great public auction, where special privileges are sold to the highest corporation bidders, is to put the statement mildly,” Comerford, a Cook County Democrat, told a gathering of Illinois College of Law students and faculty on Jan. 27, 1905.
A 30-year-old lawyer and just months into his first term as a legislator, Comerford then detailed the names of lawmakers rumored to be on the take, how much cash changed hands and where the conversations took place.
Days later, facing fellow lawmakers poised to kick him out of the House, Comerford said he believed the students had a right to know how laws were made here, and that bribery was rampant.
“I was lecturing to the student body of a college — not making charges upon the floor of this House or in the newspapers. I reserve the right to my opinion; I believe now, as I did then, that the stories told me are true,” he said.
Word of Comerford’s speech hit newspapers Jan. 31, and that is how the representative from the 2nd District came to be the first and only lawmaker expelled from the state’s House for “besmirching its good name and reputation” — and it took only nine days for them to do so. Notably, nothing happened to the legislators who allegedly accepted the bribes. Lawmakers said Comerford failed to back up his claims.
So, the next time somebody says that Rep. Derrick Smith (D-Chicago) should be given all due consideration by the House after his indictment for allegedly accepting a $7,000 cash bribe, point that person to Jayette’s article.
* Rep. Dennis Reboletti thinks the rules ought to be tightened…
Reboletti said he anticipates the House rules will be changed in the future to identify the level of misconduct that can trigger an investigation. Theoretically, the way the rules are written, a speeding ticket, a cross word or political ax-grinding could trigger an investigation if at least three representatives request an investigation.
“Just because a representative says something on the House floor or in his or her district, like Comerford did, you don’t want to just base an investigation off of that,” he said. “There has to be a more substantive reason for bringing that course of action.”
I’m not so sure about that. Putting hard and fast rules in place means that if they forget to include a crime the accused legislator could use that loophole to escape expulsion. Kent Redfield thinks differently, however…
Kent Redfield, a political science professor at University of Illinois Springfield and an expert on Illinois government, said the General Assembly historically has dealt with situations like Smith’s on case-by-case basis, which is reflective of the political culture in Illinois.
“We generally tend to treat things as kind of ad hoc — deal with this particular situation, make it go away, as opposed to saying are there systemic issues here that we ought to deal with,” he said.
“My guess is that we are going to deal with this particular situation — that at some point Rep. Smith will be expelled before the end of his term — and then we’ll wait for the next incident to occur and then deal with that.”
By the way, according to Jayette’s piece, Rep. Comerford had the last laugh when he ran as an independent in a special election a few months after he was expelled and won his House seat back. He went on to become a judge.
* The Question: Should the House and Senate adopt rules which specifically define the minimum allegations to trigger an expulsion, or should expulsion continue to be done on a case by case basis? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
* A rally yesterday to protest Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close some Downstate prison facilities provoked some pretty harsh legislative responses. Democratic Sen. Gary Forby…
“This governor does not care about Southern Illinois. That’s the bottom line,” Forby said, stating if the governor believes the prisoners housed in Tamms don’t need the kind of maximum security treatment they get in the Alexander County prison, then they should be released into Chicago.
Um. Wow. Forby wants Tamms prisoners released into the streets of Chicago? Seems kinda harsh. Then again, Forby has yet another expensive reelection race coming up, and Quinn ain’t all that popular down yonder, so I see what he’s doing here. Just playing to the home folks. But, man, that’s a bit much.
From the crowd, a shout suggesting voters recall the governor was heard.
“If we had the power, we would recall him (Quinn),” Bost answered.
Well, you do have the power, Representative. Recall is quite difficult to do, but the General Assembly has the power to get it moving. Perhaps instead of throwing documents into the air, you might want to read the Constitution.
* Meanwhile, here’s former Chicago Police Supt. Phil Cline, who has worked hard against medical marijuana legislation, on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposal to issue tickets for minor pot possession…
Calling marijuana “a gateway drug to other drugs,” the former superintendent said he’s concerned that, “The easier we make it for people to use it, the worse it’s gonna be for society … . Marijuana is still a harmful thing. At ages where they can be influenced by things like that, do you want your kids to be smoking marijuana before school?”
No, Mr. Cline, I don’t want kids smoking marijuana before school. I don’t want them drinking whiskey before school, either, but whiskey is a legal product and incredibly dangerous. Frankly, I’d rather that kids not eat sugar-filled Twinkies before school, but children can legally buy those edible atrocities over the counter.
But what I really don’t want, Mr. Cline, is people being arrested and sent to jail because they smoked a joint. Let’s be honest here. You want to lock people in steel cages for putting a substance that you disapprove of into their own bodies.
And this debate shouldn’t be about children anyway. Kids should not smoke pot. Stipulated. Adults probably shouldn’t smoke it, either. Agreed. But putting people in prison is simply not the answer. It’s a horrifically failed policy and it must end.
* Bad things happen when the feds start nosing around your business. The chances that they’ll find something are pretty good, and if the feds want you, they’ll get you. Just ask Raghuveer Nayak…
Raghuveer Nayak, a figure in the U.S. Senate seat scandal that helped bring down Rod Blagojevich, was arrested at his Oak Brook home this morning and charged with paying bribes and kickbacks to doctors for sending patients to his string of surgery centers.
Nayak was charged with mail fraud, interstate travel in aid of racketeering and filing false income tax returns in a 19-count indictment, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Prosecutors are seeking $1.8 million in “alleged fraud proceeds,” including forfeiture of Nayak’s Oak Brook home, his Rogers Park One Day Surgery Center and his Lakeshore Surgery Center.
Between 2000 and 2010, Nayak allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to physicians who would refer patients to Nayak’s medical centers, the indictment alleges. “The physicians deceived their patients by not disclosing that they were being paid for making referrals to Nayak’s facilities,” the indictment charges.
In one kickback scheme, Nayak paid one person, identified only as “Individual A,” more than $2 million in checks drawn on his surgery centers’ accounts. In return, “Individual A” gave Nayak cash equaling about 70 percent of the value of the checks, according to the indictment.
The Sun-Times had reported in 2010 that Nayak, who was a close Jackson family friend and campaign contributor, told federal authorities Jackson directed him to approach the Blagojevich camp with a $6 million offer.
He also told authorities he secretly paid to fly a female friend of Jackson to Chicago from Washington, D.C., at Jackson’s request.
Jackson subsequently apologized for his relationship with the woman, whom he described as a “social acquaintance,” but the congressman remained steadfast in his denial that he never directed anyone to offer Blagojevich money in exchange for the Senate seat. […]
Nayak and Jackson Jr. also were longtime friends, though Nayak has been a thorn in the side of the congressman since Blagojevich’s arrest in 2008.
Nayak was the unidentified emissary of Jackson cited in the criminal complaint against the then-governor, which said Blagojevich believed Nayak was offering $1.5 million in exchange for appointing Jackson to Obama’s former Senate seat.
Jackson has denied the allegation.
In 2010, the Sun-Times reported that Nayak had cooperated with investigators and told them that it was Jackson who directed him to talk to Blagojevich and offer him not $1.5 million but $6 million in exchange for the Senate seat. Nayak said the conversation was between himself and Jackson, with no one else present, and took place while Nayak was in Washington, D.C., during an October 2008 trip.
So, if he was cooperating with the feds on Congressman Jackson and now the feds have scooped him up, should we then infer that the Jackson thing is over and the feds have decided to just bust Nayak for other stuff?
* The New Yorker has an article up about how Republicans, who once supported an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, are now against it. It’s a really good piece and you should definitely read the whole thing.
The article includes a section about a study done at Stanford on “motivated reasoning,” which is defined as “when a person is conforming their assessments of information to some interest or goal that is independent of accuracy.” Standford psychology professor Geoffrey Cohen tested students who had described themselves as either very liberal or very conservative…
The students were shown two articles: one was a generic news story; the other described a proposed welfare policy. The first article was a decoy; it was the students’ reactions to the second that interested Cohen. He was actually testing whether party identifications influence voters when they evaluate new policies. To find out, he produced multiple versions of the welfare article. Some students read about a program that was extremely generous—more generous, in fact, than any welfare policy that has ever existed in the United States—while others were presented with a very stingy proposal.
But there was a twist: some versions of the article about the generous proposal portrayed it as being endorsed by Republican Party leaders; and some versions of the article about the meagre program described it as having Democratic support. The results showed that, “for both liberal and conservative participants, the effect of reference group information overrode that of policy content. If their party endorsed it, liberals supported even a harsh welfare program, and conservatives supported even a lavish one.”
In a 2006 paper, “It Feels Like We’re Thinking,” the political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels looked at a National Election Study, a poll supported by the National Science Foundation, from 1996. One of the questions asked whether “the size of the yearly budget deficit increased, decreased, or stayed about the same during Clinton’s time as President.” The correct answer is that it decreased, dramatically. Achen and Bartels categorize the respondents according to how politically informed they were. Among the least-informed respondents, Democrats and Republicans picked the wrong answer in roughly equal numbers. But among better-informed voters the story was different. Republicans who were in the fiftieth percentile gave the right answer more often than those in the ninety-fifth percentile. Bartels found a similar effect in a previous survey, in which well-informed Democrats were asked whether inflation had gone down during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency. It had, but many of those Democrats said that it hadn’t. The more information people had, it seemed, the better they were at arranging it to fit what they wanted to believe. As Bartels told me, “If I’m a Republican and an enthusiastic supporter of lower tax rates, it is uncomfortable to recognize that President Obama has reduced most Americans’ taxes—and I can find plenty of conservative information sources that deny or ignore the fact that he has.”
Recently, Bartels noticed a similar polarization in attitudes toward the health-care law and the Supreme Court. Using YouGov polling data, he found that less-informed voters who supported the law and less-informed voters who opposed it were equally likely to say that “the Supreme Court should be able to throw out any law it finds unconstitutional.” But, among better-informed voters, those who opposed the law were thirty per cent more likely than those who supported it to cede that power to the Court. In other words, well-informed opponents realized that they needed an activist Supreme Court that was willing to aggressively overturn laws if they were to have any hope of invalidating the Affordable Care Act.
Orin Kerr says that, in the two years since he gave the individual mandate only a one-per-cent chance of being overturned, three key things have happened. First, congressional Republicans made the argument against the mandate a Republican position. Then it became a standard conservative-media position. “That legitimized the argument in a way we haven’t really seen before,” Kerr said. “We haven’t seen the media pick up a legal argument and make the argument mainstream by virtue of media coverage.” Finally, he says, “there were two conservative district judges who agreed with the argument, largely echoing the Republican position and the media coverage. And, once you had all that, it really became a ballgame.”
* I think we’ve seen a similar situation here. Compare the reactions to what Gov. Pat Quinn has done to unions to what Gov. Scott Walker has done up in Wisconsin.
Quinn unilaterally tossed out the collective bargaining process when he said he wouldn’t honor contractual pay raises. He’s also gone hard after retiree health care and pensions. Yet, there were no giant demonstrations at the Statehouse like there were in Wisconsin when a Republican governor attacked the unions.
* Also, look at the budget. Some very liberal Democratic legislators backed some very deep budget cuts this year after their party had decided to become more fiscally conservative. We’ve talked about the DCFS cuts and how it could lead to massive layoffs. Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, one of the most liberal members of the entire General Assembly, oversaw those cuts and she defended them to WUIS reporter Amanda Vinicky…
But legislators on the House committee in charge of funding for human services stand by the reductions. Democratic Representative Sara Feigenholtz of Chicago, who chairs the panel, says legislators protected services directly affecting children. But she says they cut personnel funding after learning the agency gave its employees what she called “significant” raises.
“It was a little disappointing to some of our committee members who vocalized that the department needs to restructure its priorities. There were a lot of very unhappy committee members,” Feigenholtz said.
No offense meant to Feigenholtz, who is a decent person, but I can’t help but wonder what her reaction would be if she was in the minority party and these very same cuts were being made.
* After word got out that Gov. Pat Quinn was going ahead with his planned prison closures, Treasurer Dan Rutherford sent out a press release…
“I do not agree with Governor Quinn’s apparent final decision to close seven state correctional facilities and youth centers in the near future. Closing prisons will only exacerbate the overcrowding we face in Illinois with our prison population. Overcrowded prisons pose a real danger to employees and local communities. I took a similar stand back in 2008 when the previous governor abruptly suggested closing multiple state facilities without a comprehensive plan. As a state senator, I proposed legislation that would have put into place long-range strategic planning on certain facility closures. I am again calling on the state to implement business principles by having strategic long-range plans for its major state facility assets.”
* But the governor’s budget office pointed out all the spending pressures caused by pensions and Medicaid and claimed it had a good rationale for closing the facilities…
The Department of Juvenile Justice has a declining population of youth which means the state no longer needs eight state detention facilities. We have chosen which facilities to close based on the needs of our youth. In the case of Murphysboro, there is another IYC facility nearby in Harrisburg. Also, the facility has the capacity for 256 youth and currently houses less than 20.
In the case of Joliet, the physical plant does not provide the rehabilitative environment that our youth need. A more rehabilitative model of juvenile justice where youth are served and supported in the community instead of being incarcerated has been shown to result both in safer communities and better outcomes for our youth.
Tamms is only half full and very costly to operate with an average inmate cost of more than three times any other prison in the state. Approximately $64,800 compared to $21,405. The security level at Tamms for high level offenders can be safely replicated at other existing facilities. Closed Maximum security inmates will be transferred to Pontiac Correctional Center and Menard Correctional Center. These facilities will be able to supply the level of security needed for these inmates without compromising safety for staff or inmates. Tamms minimum security inmates will be relocated appropriately throughout other facilities around the state.
Dwight is located within 22 miles of Pontiac Correctional Center, 45 miles from Stateville Correctional Center, and 45 miles from Sheridan Correctional Center. Dwight houses women, and the female prison population is trending down. Between 2005 and 2011 IDOC female prison admissions decreased 41%.
Overall, these closures will allow the state to better live within our means and address the state’s most pressing needs.
Rutherford, who is widely expected to run for governor, is planning to hold two media availabilities today to criticize the closures, including an event in Chicago this afternoon.
State Rep. John Bradley (D-Marion) has entered his name for consideration in the 12th Congressional District race.
Applications from candidates interested in replacing Brad Harriman on the Democratic side of the ballot were due Friday. Harriman withdrew from the race after winning the spring primary due to medical reasons.
In a statement released Friday, Bradley said he had submitted an application “in order to continue the deliberations over what’s best for my children and our area.” […]
If Bradley is chosen by the Democrats – and if he chooses to then run – he would have his name removed from the race for the 117th District of the Illinois House of Representatives. Bradley is currently unopposed in seeking re-election to that seat. The Democratic Central Committee would then have to find a candidate to fill Bradley’s spot on that ballot.
A caucus effort from his supporters has landed Kell school district Superintendent Christopher McCann on the Republican ballot for the 117th District state representative in November’s general election.
Illinois State Board of Elections filings show Christopher McCann’s candidacy effective and active beginning June 4.
He will oppose state Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion, if the incumbent Bradley is not selected for the Democratic nominee in the 12th Congressional District race. Bradley is among at least five candidates who have submitted applications to a selection committee, with retiring U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Belleville, and Randolph County Circuit Clerk Barb Brown acting as co-chairs.
If Bradley is chosen, his name would be taken off the ballot and the state Democratic Central Committee in the 117th District would have until Aug. 23 to find a replacement.
* And the Illinois Republican Party has complaints about the way the 12th CD selection process is going…
Any of the 10 contenders can take part in the public interviews Saturday at the city hall in Chester, about 60 miles southeast of St. Louis, Brown said.
“Unless something happens, I think that vote would happen (Saturday) after the interviews are complete,” she told The Associated Press.
Brown again declined to disclose names of those seeking to succeed Costello, saying the candidates deserved to retain their privacy until making themselves public during the interviews.
“Clearly, it’s their option if they want to be public,” she said. “It’s the chairmen’s feeling that if the people haven’t put themselves out there, we wouldn’t. It really isn’t anything other than that.”
Brown said the process of finding Harriman’s replacement would be open and transparent. But the state’s GOP chief argued that’s been anything but the case.
“The selection committee has done a disservice to the voters of the 12th District by not releasing the number of applicants and their names,” Illinois Republican Party chairman Pat Brady said in a statement Tuesday. “Members of the committee have spoken about potentially having a candidate by the end of the month and how `quickly’ they think they will be able to select a nominee. When choosing a nominee for Congress, is quickly and secretly really in the best interest of the voters?”
Brown waved off such criticism, touting the openness of Saturday’s interviews and the belief “we’re being very respectful of the people putting themselves forward in this process.”
“We would never consider a vote for anyone unwilling to step forward before the public and the press,” she said. “None of us have been in this situation before. We’re trying to be careful and do it right.”
* Word is going around that Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration has sent out a letter announcing that all prison closures will move forward. The Tamms super max facility in deep southern Illinois, is scheduled for closure on August 31st. Dwight’s prison and the Murphysboro juvenile boot camp will also close on August 31st. The Joliet facility will close in October.
This is a press release just sent out by Rep. Brandon Phelps about the announcement…
State Rep. Brandon Phelps (D-Harrisburg) released the following statement regarding Governor Pat Quinn’s planned August 31, 2012 closure of the Tamms Correctional Center and other Southern Illinois facilities:
“I am disappointed and shocked by the governor’s out-of-touch efforts to close the Tamms Correctional Center, one of the few facilities in the state that deals with the most disruptive, violent and problematic offenders. This decision will put 300 Southern Illinoisans in the unemployment line.
We all know that Illinois is facing a huge financial crisis that will require government to cut back and reduce spending. But if the governor wants to show he is serious about getting the state to live within its means, he should focus on all of the waste and mismanagement that occurs in Springfield and Chicago on a daily basis before handing out pink slips to all the employees at Tamms, and again unfairly targeting Southern Illinois facilities which he has now done.
The governor’s plan is not a responsible way to address the state’s financial problems, which is why I proposed a plan where the prison could be retooled to become more of a standard prison. This would save much needed jobs and help to address the overcrowding within our state’s prisons. I believe that Governor Quinn does not know the huge mistake he is making. His bad decision will damage the local economy and make life even more difficult for many families who are already struggling to make ends meet. We need to collectively come together as Southern Illinois residents and pray for those families who will be affected by this closure. The Illinois Department of Corrections and Department of Juvenile Justice has informed me that affected employees will receive a new layoff packet with a revised list of available vacancies and an amended seniority roster.”
* We talked about Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady’s attacks on House Speaker Madigan and Attorney General Lisa Madigan last week. Chairman Brady talked about his “Leprechaun” dig at Speaker Madigan and his “press release” mocking AG Madigan in advance of Father’s Day with the Associated Press…
Brady said his goal is to make a statewide issue out of Madigan’s decades in power. “The message we’re going to drive home is that a vote for any Democrat is a vote for Michael Madigan,” he said.
Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said the “petty” strategy won’t affect pension negotiations and won’t succeed at the ballot box. He predicted it will eat up Republican resources without helping them win any legislative races.
“Attacking people’s families seldom does anybody any good,” Brown said.
* The Question: Will attacking the Madigan family help the Republicans win campaigns this November? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
TOPINKA: DEVELOPMENTALLY
DISABLED WILL BE PRIORITIZED
Comptroller orders immediate payment for programs
SPRINGFIELD – Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka on Tuesday announced that she has directed her staff to prioritize payments for day programs, child group homes, community living facilities, and other programs serving the developmentally disabled.
The direction from the state Fiscal Officer comes after the Department of Human Services notified service providers of payment delays caused by an insufficient appropriation in the Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The Department noted that payments would not be processed until after July 1, and then be subject to ongoing state payment delays.
Topinka said her office will immediately begin making payments when the new fiscal year begins July 1.
“Those serving the Developmentally Disabled should know that we will make their payments as soon as the information reaches our door,” said Topinka, noting her policy of prioritizing payment for the state’s most vulnerable residents. “People literally rely on these programs for survival, and they will take priority.”
Topinka noted that while services for the Developmentally Disabled will be prioritized, her office today has more than 164,000 unpaid bills totaling $4.4 billion to businesses, schools, hospitals and service agencies throughout the state. When additional bills at state agencies are added in, including $1.5 billion in past due Medicaid payments, the state bill backlog reaches an estimated $8.5 billion.
[ *** End Of Update *** ]
* As you already know, the Quinn administration is defending itself against charges that it is needlessly and perhaps even dangerously rushing transfers of developmentally disabled state facility residents to private group homes. And now, the Quinn administration is admitting that providers of services for the developmentally disabled won’t be paid this month…
The state of Illinois has informed developmental-disability providers that it can’t pay them for a month of services this fiscal year.
Service providers, such as Developmental Services Center in Champaign, were notified by letter from the Department of Human Services on Monday. Here is a link to the letter.
Department officials could not be reached for comment this morning, but Kevin Casey, director of the division of developmental disabilities, states in the letter that pediatric intermediate care facilities will experience about four-and-a-half months delay in funding.
Among those services that won’t be fully paid for the current fiscal year ending June 30 are child group homes, community living facilities, therapies, equipment, training and individual support services.
The deferred payments will not be processed until after July 1, 2012, and after the State Fiscal Year 2013 budget is finalized. When the payments are submitted in FY13, they will still be subject to the ongoing delays at the Comptroller’s Office based on the receipt of State revenues.
Please be aware that this deferral of payments will delay all DD payments, including those to Providers with an Expedited Payment status. Expedited payment status serves to expedite the release of payment requests submitted to the Comptroller’s Office. Because DHS will be unable to submit the deferrals to the Comptroller until FY13, all deferred payments will be delayed
Illinois has the worst funded public pension system among the 50 states, according to a Pew Center on the States study released Monday.
The Land of Lincoln joined Connecticut, Kentucky and Rhode Island for having among the poorest funded public pension systems in the nation.
In 2010, the most recent year data for all 50 states is available for the study, each of those four states had an unfunded pension liability of at least 55 percent, according to the report.
“For states that do face really severe funding challenges … it’s a competition between raising taxes, cutting services or finding ways to reduce the costs for both current employees and retirees,” David Draine, senior researcher for the Pew Center on the States, a nonprofit that studies issues facing state governments.
It’s a sentiment that Gov. Pat Quinn and others have been reinforcing. Quinn often says that as public pension costs in Illinois rise, they squeeze out other areas of state government.
“How much more information do we need from independent, outside entities to tell us we must make this giant step?” Quinn said during a news conference Monday.
* One of the ways of reducing the state’s costs is by shifting some of them down the food chain to local school districts, universities and community colleges. The latter two have already agreed to paying the employer portion of the pension costs. The school districts have not, and they’re being back-stopped by the House and Senate Republicans.
As subscribers already know, the governor’s office generated a list that purports to show that most school districts can handle the cost-shift. The Sun-Times also had a story today…
More than half of Illinois’ 800-plus school districts have more than one year’s worth of operating cash on hand, suggesting some downstate and suburban school systems might be able to shoulder part of the funding burden for educators’ pensions.
Those numbers from the State Board of Education were released Monday as Gov. Pat Quinn and the four legislative leaders prepare for a round of late-week negotiations on a package to help solve Illinois’ $83 billion pension crisis.
A Quinn aide Monday night said the results demonstrate that shifting some pension costs away from the state to school systems won’t pose a catastrophic financial hit to them.
“The bottom line is school districts can certainly afford to have a stake in the contracts they negotiate, and overall the numbers make it clear there is no excuse not to do pension reform and do it quickly,” Quinn spokeswoman Brooke Anderson said. […]
In its analysis, the State Board of Education cautioned that its figures are dated and don’t account for continued delays in state payments, a cut in the state education budget of $258 million and a possible diversion in corporate personal property replacement tax revenues to fund pension obligations, as some in the Legislature have advocated.
Taking those all into account would leave 128 of the state’s school systems in the red with no cash reserves by next June, the agency reported.
“A point-in-time measure from one year ago can’t be used as a measure of any district’s wherewithal or ability to sustain an ongoing liability,” said Mary Fergus, a spokeswoman for the State Board of Education. “These figures do not account for rising expenses, declining local revenue or a district’s long-term plans for these funds.”
* But a subscriber who works at a school district sent me this e-mail today…
Payroll and benefits for most districts is paid on a 12 month basis due to tax law. And, the 180 days is days in ession, not counting weekends. In reality, costs do not go down when not in session. The summer is when a great deal of maintenance work is performed, as well as purchasing for the upcoming year. We really are a year-round operation.
Also, keep in mind that many districts received 40+% of their revenue just days before the fund balances are reported to the state due to property tax receipts. Only a small portion of our revenue is received throughout the year. You really need to look at cash flow, which is an entirely different thing. I’m not disputing 313 days is still likely significantly more than needed, but it’s not entirely what it seems.
* Publicly, at least, the Republicans are still opposing the cost-shift idea…
Democrats say the proposal would force schools to be more accountable when they dole out pensions to employees. Republicans agree but say it also would drive property taxes up as schools look for money to cover the pension costs. Quinn argues that the shift would have an “imperceptible impact” on schools if it is phased in over 10 years or longer.
Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno, of Lemont, said it’s a policy conversation worth having but that the plan should not be tied to larger pension reforms that lawmakers agree on. Radogno contended that Democrats are purposely trying to delay broader pension changes until after the November election so they can avoid angering unions that typically support them at the polls.
“This is a stall tactic,” Radogno said.
Quinn said politics should not factor into the equation.
“I really don’t see the Election Day as really the key date. I think the date is really right away for pension reform,” Quinn said. “It’s beyond me how you can let this one issue hold up a fundamental overhaul of our public pension system that has been in the waiting for three decades.”
* Even so, at least one local school district decided not to wait for the cost-shift to take effect…
Democrats’ chief argument in trying to shift pension costs to local schools after decades of the state paying the bill is that school boards, by raising teachers’ salaries, hike pension costs without having to pay for it.
[Warrenville Unit District 200 Superintendent Brian Harris] said the District 200 school board has heard that argument loud and clear.
He helped finalize a contract just last week that takes away automatic 6 percent raises for teachers at the end of their careers that help raise their retirement benefits. Many school districts still have such provisions.
* So, I’ve been hearing for several years that I’m somehow related to the late, great Johnny Cash on my father’s side of the family. I’m also related to Thomas Jefferson on my mother’s side. Johnny Cash and Thomas Jefferson - that’s pretty darned cool if you ask me (and you didn’t).
My Aunt Janet traced the lineage back to Jefferson years ago, but for whatever reason I never really asked about the Cash thing until this past weekend, when I pressed my dad for details during Father’s Day brunch at a Gilman truck stop. (And, no, I’m not kidding about the truck stop. That’s where he wanted to meet. Yes, i have a blue collar background. And, yes, the food was mighty tasty.)
According to Dad, my great-great uncle was Johnny Cash’s great-grandfather. Apparently, the man left Kentucky one step ahead of the law. Family lore has it that he shot somebody (although probably not in Reno).
Anyway, I have no proof of this, just family oral history. But let’s celebrate with a video. I love this tune…
Then you took me to St. Louis later on down the river
* Do you have any famous ancestors? Let’s hear about them.
* The Pantagraph looked at grocery purchases from the beginning of the fiscal year through April…
According to the comptroller’s office, the General Assembly paid $20,015 for coffee supplies. Along with coffee, the money paid for tea, sugar, creamer, artificial sweeteners and drink-related supplies.
That amounted to about $113 in coffee-related spending for each of the 177 members of the House and Senate. Broken down further, that’s about $9.42 per month, per member, for java.
Except that the General Assembly has lots of employees. So the cost shouldn’t really be broken down “per member.”
* Illinois Review completely misread the story and filed this rewrite…
Since April of this year, Illinois taxpayers have spent $20,000 for coffee supplies for 177 members of the Illinois House and Senate. That’s about $113 per politician in the last 60 days.
And this is just coffee supplies. One can only imagine what our cost is for the actual coffee they drink for free.
1) It’s through April of this year, not since.
2) The coffee supplies category includes the cost of actual coffee, according to the article.
*** UPDATE *** It appears that the Illinois Review has retaliated, but of course they bungled it badly…
In his Southtown Star column, left-wing blogger Rich Miller delights in reviewing AFSCME’s mystical endorsement sessions last weekend
Actually, it was the Illinois AFL-CIO’s endorsement that I wrote about, not AFSCME. And it happened last week, not last weekend. Also, I suppose I’m left-wing when compared to IR. But then, pretty much everybody is. And the column appears statewide, not just in the Southtown Star.
