Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » 2012

Monday, Jun 25, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* It’s boring around here today. Let’s do a caption contest instead of a question. Madigan usually spices things up, so have at it…

66 Comments

Dems go with Enyart, but did they do themselves any favors?

Monday, Jun 25, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* As expected, retired National Guard General Bill Enyart got the nod for the 12th District Democratic slot…

Democratic leaders on Saturday chose Belleville attorney and retired Illinois National Guard Commander Bill Enyart as the party’s nominee in the race for the 12th Congressional District seat in southern Illinois. […]

Democrats had to find a new nominee after Brad Harriman dropped out last month for medical reasons. Incumbent Rep. Jerry Costello, who is retiring after 24 years in office, was a member of the selection committee.

Enyart, who will face Republican Jason Plummer this fall, said he’s ready to hit the campaign trail.

“We can’t buy this election, but we can outwork them,” said Enyart, who has never held elected public office.

* Enyart immediately hit Plummer on a sore spot…

During the interview with the panel, Enyart said he would be willing to release his tax records — something Plummer has taken political heat for failing to do.

Enyart said that he had copies of tax records from 1983 and would contact the IRS to get records that date back even further.

“I challenge Jason Plummer to do the same,” he said.

* But Plummer isn’t going to a be a pushover, no matter how infamous that WTTW interview made him. He has a statewide campaign and a congressional primary under his belt. Enyart has never run for anything. Plummer has raised a bunch of money, the US Chamber is pumping cash into his effort, and he has a ground game. Enyart has nothing. Plummer will win more votes than a usual Republican would in Madison County because he’s from there and his father is very bigtime. And the Democrats really needed somebody who could appeal to the more “southern” counties outside the Metro East. I don’t think they did that here. Enyart is an unknown, untested candidate up against a battle-tested, well-funded opponent.

Enyart is still better than Harriman, but the Democrats, so far, appear to have only marginally increased their chances against Plummer. I’d say, right now, it still leans in the Republican’s favor there.

30 Comments

Poll: No cost shift, but reform pensions

Monday, Jun 25, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Crain’s has a new poll. Here’s one of the results for the hot-button issue that’s supposedly holding up pension reform talks…

Asked whether teacher pensions should be paid for through state taxes, equalizing the pension bill everywhere, or through raising local taxes so that each school district pays only for its own teachers, 45 percent back the current state system, with 28 percent preferring a switch to local funding. A relatively high 28 percent say they don’t know what to do or have no opinion.

Crain’s didn’t publish its exact questions, but a phrase like “equalizing the pension bill everywhere” could easily lead respondents into being for the status quo. It’s also not true. “Everywhere” in Illinois would necessarily include Chicago. And the state doesn’t currently pick up Chicago’s share of the employer pension contribution.

It also appears that lots of people just don’t understand this situation. It hasn’t been debated nearly as much as most other pension issues, mainly because nobody ever talked about the fact that Chicago pays its employer share into its pension fund, while the state picks up the employer share for suburban and Downstate schools.

* Overall, though, Illinoisans want to reform the current pension program, according to the poll…

* They do disagree somewhat on the details…

* From Crain’s…

Presented with four options that lawmakers have discussed to offset the pension plans’ collective $83 billion in unfunded liabilities, survey respondents give majority support to only one, with 57 percent saying that workers should have to contribute 3 percent more from their paychecks to keep their current pension benefits; 26 percent say no.

But pushing back the retirement age to 67 draws only 47 percent support (with 20 percent strongly backing that option) and 37 percent opposed. And asked whether workers should be forced to choose between paying 3 percent more or losing their state-provided retirement health care, Illinois residents are split 42 percent against and 40 percent in favor. The difference is well within the poll’s credibility interval of plus or minus 4.9 percent.

Similarly, those surveyed reject a measure now pending in pension talks in Springfield that would require local school districts and taxpayers to pick up teacher retirement costs that now are funded by the state.

Discuss.

40 Comments

Grants for budget votes

Monday, Jun 25, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* When the House Republicans pulled their support for the budget over a disagreement on pension reform, the House Democrats had to find votes to pass a very lean budget without GOP help. That meant freeing up a bit of money for pet projects. The AP has a story today on some of those line items…

A close look at the state budget shows a handful of grants that take money away from general services and divert it to specific groups: $400,000 for a neighborhood development group on Chicago’s south side, $1.1 million to bus children to religious schools, $750,000 for a commission on Latino families. The list goes on. […]

The Chicagoland Regional College Program is supposed to get $2 million. The program provides financial aid to students who attend one of six Chicago-area colleges and who also work at a UPS shipping facility in Hodgkins, southwest of Chicago.

How will the money be used? Which legislator asked for it to be put in the budget? An administrator with the program said they would not discuss the issue until Gov. Pat Quinn signs the budget into law.

The budget includes $400,000 for the Brainerd Community Development Corp. on Chicago’s south side. The group shares a building with Democratic Rep. Monique Davis, who has a track record of arranging state aid for the organization. The Chicago Sun-Times has reported that Brainerd employees have collected signatures for her nominating petitions, examined opponents’ petitions and donated to her campaign.

Davis said through an aide that the grant will help Brainerd Community Development provide job training, GED classes, computer courses and other services for the neighborhood. But she would not answer questions about how the grant came to be included in the budget.

* Meanwhile, some people still say they haven’t seen any budget cuts. They do exist. For instance…

Jeff Squibb, spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture, said agriculture’s budget has been reduced by 40 percent since 2008

* Related…

* State’s fiscal woes impact ag department

* SJ-R: Approve fees to help DNR

* Up in smoke: Tobacco taxes

* Activists applaud Quinn for closing Tamms

11 Comments

Unlimited corporate spending still legal after Supremes weigh in

Monday, Jun 25, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Montana strikes out…

The Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed its 2-year-old decision allowing corporations to spend freely to influence elections. The justices struck down a Montana law limiting corporate campaign spending.

By a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservative justices said the decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 applies to state campaign finance laws and guarantees corporate and labor union interests the right to spend freely to advocate for or against candidates for state and local offices. […]

The same five justices said in 2010 that corporations have a constitutional right to be heard in election campaigns. The decision paved the way for unlimited spending by corporations and labor unions in elections for Congress and the president, as long as the dollars are independent of the campaigns they are intended to help. The decision, grounded in the freedom of speech, appeared to apply equally to state contests.

But Montana aggressively defended its 1912 law against a challenge from corporations seeking to be free of spending limits, and the state Supreme Court sided with the state. The state court said a history of corruption showed the need for the limits, even as Justice Anthony Kennedy declared in his Citizens United opinion that independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

* From Justice Breyer’s dissent, which was joined by Ginsburg, Sotomaor and Kagan…

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court concluded that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” 558 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 42). I disagree with the Court’s holding for the reasons expressed in Justice Stevens’ dissent in that case. As Justice Stevens explained, “technically in dependent expenditures can be corrupting in much the same way as direct contributions.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 67–68). Indeed, Justice Stevens recounted a “substantial body of evidence” suggesting that “[m]any corporate independent expenditures . . . had become essentially interchangeable with direct contributions in their capacity to generate quid pro quo arrangements.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 64–65).

Moreover, even if I were to accept Citizens United, this Court’s legal conclusion should not bar the Montana Supreme Court’s finding, made on the record before it, that independent expenditures by corporations did in fact lead to corruption or the appearance of corruption in Montana. Given the history and political landscape in Montana, that court concluded that the State had a compelling interest in limiting independent expenditures by corporations.

59 Comments

No trade, but a lack of good will

Monday, Jun 25, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller

* I saw some news reports last week and decided to follow up. Here’s my statewide syndicated newspaper column…

Several downstate Illinois legislators were furious last week that Gov. Pat Quinn decided to go ahead and close some state facilities, including prisons, in their districts.

They weren’t just upset about the lost jobs, however. Some also claim Quinn broke an agreement regarding the closings.

“If the governor proceeds with this, he has gone back on his word,” Rep. Mike Bost (R-Murphysboro) told a crowd gathered to protest the planned closures last week.

Bost and others indicated that the deal was made over revenue issues but didn’t get more specific. Bost did not return a phone call, but he was almost surely referring to the cigarette tax increase.

“We believe the governor’s office was working members for votes on certain legislative initiatives in exchange for keeping facilities open,” said Sara Wojcicki Jimenez, spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego).

She said there was no deal discussed among the four legislative leaders and the governor, but she did say when pressed that the cigarette tax hike was among those “legislative initiatives.”

Bost and several other House Republicans voted for the $1-per-pack tax hike, which received the bare minimum majority of 60 votes in that chamber. The roll call was carefully structured in a bipartisan manner so the bill could pass without forcing politically endangered members to vote in favor of it.

No Senate Republicans voted for the cigarette tax increase, but the Senate Democrats have repeatedly passed cigarette tax hikes on their own in the past. The House Democrats couldn’t (or wouldn’t) muster enough votes to do so.

“False,” replied Kelly Kraft, a top official with the governor’s budget office, when told of the supposed dealings between Quinn and some GOP House members.

There were a ton of rumors floating around during the last few days of the spring session on what exactly was going on with the facility closures. One downstate Democrat, who represents a district where a prison was slated for closing, insisted that a Quinn administration official had testified in a House committee meeting toward the end of the session that if the General Assembly put money back in the budget to keep the targeted facilities open the governor would probably do so.

But Rep. Luis Arroyo (D-Chicago), who chairs the House Appropriations Public Safety Committee, and the committee’s minority spokesman, Rep. David Reis (R-Ste. Marie), both said no such claim was ever made by the governor’s office at any of their hearings.

Instead, the Quinn official merely said when pressed on the budget question that maybe the administration would consider keeping the facilities open but made clear that she could not speak for the governor, according to Arroyo and Reis.

And it turns out the cigarette tax trade rumors could be false as well.

“To my knowledge there never was a deal,” said Rep. Jim Watson (R-Jacksonville).

Watson was one of the House Republicans who voted for the cigarette tax hike and has a facility in his district that’s slated for closure in August.

Apparently, members on both sides of the aisle attempted to push their leaders to force some sort of a quid pro quo with Quinn on the cigarette tax hike and the facility closings. But that never happened.

Quinn was obviously making deals near the end of the session, so an eagerness to cut a deal on the cigarette tax increase was understandable at the time.

What appears to have happened on the cigarette tax issue was that legislators voted for the higher tax with the hope that it would persuade Quinn to reconsider closing the detention and mental health centers.

Quinn apparently ignored the wishes of the House members who stuck out their necks for him. At the Statehouse, that’s almost as bad as breaking a deal with them.

They probably won’t be helping out the governor any time soon.

* Related…

* Erickson: Springfield insiders speculate Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close prisons merely ploy to garner support

11 Comments

« NEWER POSTS