I also saw One eskimO on Randolph Street in Chicago. They did their first CD top to bottom and each song was well crafted. They know how to write a hook. This song was originally recorded by Patsy Cline just before she died, but One eskimO’s version is more along the lines of the Candi Staton take in the 70s.
Yep. They’re good. Here’s One eskimO doing “Kandi”…
* It’s Friday and I have errands to run, so let’s go with something light. What new musical artist or band are you most impressed with these days? Make sure to explain yourself and maybe even give us a YouTube or other link so we know what you’re talking about.
Many Illinoisans who filed their 2011 tax returns on paper rather than electronically are still waiting for their refund checks.
Although the Illinois Department of Revenue had no estimates Thursday on how many returns remain in limbo, agency spokeswoman Sue Hofer said there are two key factors at work in the delay.
First, the department had hoped more people would file electronically and have their checks deposited directly into their bank accounts, which can result in a refund being issued within a week. About 70 percent of the returns were filed online, down from a goal of 80 percent.
In addition, because of the state’s budget squeeze, the department had about 25 to 30 fewer workers sorting and processing paper refunds.
The result?
“Paper returns are moving more slowly than they did last year,” Hofer said.
I had the opposite thing happen to me. I filed a paper return and owed money to the state. It took the Department of Revenue about two weeks to cash my check.
* Roundup…
* Governor’s office defends closing Dwight: “While it’s true the General Assembly put money in the budget to keep facilities open, they put the money back at the expense of others,” Kraft said. “For example, group insurance was only funded for six months, state aid for education was cut. The governor’s office has to look at every single area of state government, not just one single area.”
* Judge allows closure of mental hospital to proceed: “We think this governor doesn’t care about people with mental illnesses,” Heyrman said. “We are very worried this case will set a precedent for other facilities and they will close them all and take away all the money.”
* Kadner: Tinley Park center to close despite funds to keep it open
* A good friend of mine has a farm on the northern border of Madison County. He’s been complaining for weeks that his land is dry as a bone. And it turns out, he’s not alone…
About 70 percent of Illinois is in a drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a collaborative effort between federal and state authorities. Northern Illinois, described in the weekly report as “extremely-dry,” is one category away from the entire state being classified as in a drought. […]
There’s no relief in sight long-term, either. The National Weather Service issued predictions Thursday for the remainder of summer, calling for above average temperatures and below average precipitation in the region into September — a forecast State Climatologist Jim Angel called ‘ominous.’”
“We’re used to certain seasons in Illinois, but it’s as if our weather is three to four weeks ahead of schedule,” Angel said. “It’d be like if we moved Chicago to Nashville, Tennessee — we’re experiencing unusually hot and dry conditions we’re not used to.” […]
Last June, O’Hare Airport reported an average 3.39 inches of rain, while this month it has only seen 0.44 inches. The last time the task force was called to action, seven years ago, June measured 0.76 inches of rainfall.
* Comparing CEO pay increases at not-for-profits to average worker pay increases in the private sector might be a fun exercise, but perhaps the Tribune should’ve compared not-for-profit CEO pay hikes to private sector CEO raises. Either way, though, the Tribune found this when it looked at not-for-profit groups which get most of their money from state taxpayers…
A Tribune analysis of financial filings of 18 such nonprofits found that their executives received an average of 4.3 percent in pay raises in 2009 and 2010, when the economy was sputtering. That’s double the average compensation boost for private-industry workers, according to federal wage data.
Many of these nonprofit executives already earn far more than the top state officials who dole out tens of millions of dollars to these agencies every year. At one nonprofit that aims to help the working poor, the director had her pay nearly double in eight years, to about $340,000.
* Illinois pays a lot of money to these not-for-profits because it’s cheaper than doing the job itself. But doing so has created a large lobby that works to perpetuate itself…
•James Hogan, with Cornerstone Services Inc. The nonprofit serves the physically and mentally disabled in Will and Kankakee counties. He received a 1 percent raise in 2009 and a 25 percent raise in 2010, taking his total pay to in excess of $244,000. Those raises came during a time when Cornerstone publicly lamented the difficult fiscal climate of nonprofits, particularly those receiving government grants. […]
•Mary Hollie, with Lawrence Hall Youth Services. The organization provides residential care and other services to at-risk youths in the Chicago area. Hollie received a 7 percent raise in 2009 and a 9 percent raise in 2010, ending the year with nearly $284,000 in total pay.
But only New York has set caps, after Gov. Andrew Cuomo this spring ordered state agencies to limit pay at nonprofit vendors to $199,000, although nonprofits can raise private money to boost the pay or seek special permission from the state.
This discussion definitely ought to be part of the “budgeting for results” law that Illinois passed.
Illinois House members who engineered cuts in next year’s budget for the Department of Children and Family Services said they were upset DCFS spent money on raises rather than hire more caseworkers to comply with a federal decree.
Consequently, the budget awaiting Gov. Pat Quinn’s signature cuts money for DCFS salaries, which the agency said will lead to eliminating 375 positions.
The cuts will fall most heavily on child-abuse prevention programs and efforts that focus on children still in their family homes, said DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe.
“The General Assembly’s budget gives us no choice but to cut entire functions from this agency,” he said.
Members of the House Human Services Appropriations Committee - which put together the budget approved by lawmakers - said DCFS doesn’t need to cut programs for children.
Agencies often threaten to kill off popular programs when faced with budget cuts, but this cut was pretty large.
Quinn aides released an internal report suggesting that almost all school districts are capable of assuming their own retirement costs.
Specifically, the report says that 95 percent of districts have reserves exceeding minimum recommended standards and that phasing out state payments over several years would affect their budgets only about 0.4 percent a year.
In my world, 0.4 percent is a budgetary rounding figure.
* Earlier this week, the governor’s office released a report showing that lots of school districts were sitting onbig cash reserves…
Of local school districts, Limestone-Walters Community Consolidated School District 316 could fund the most days with its FY2011 cash reserves - $2.1 million for 484 days. The rural Peoria school district is one of eight feeder districts into Limestone High School and has an enrollment slightly over 200 students.
Dunlap Community Unit School District 323, which is considerably larger, has $34.6 million cash on hand, according to the state data. That’s enough to keep the district going for 441 days.
The data showed that Peoria District 150 had $48.1 million on hand at the end of fiscal year 2011, or almost 70 days worth of funding.
Dave Kinney, comptroller at the city’s public school district, said his figures show the district with about $41 million in total reserves, though he believes that number is misleading. He said of that amount, about $38 million comes from borrowed funds used to infuse money into depleted cash accounts from previous years’ expenditures.
The figures don’t take into account further school funding cuts passed this year by the General Assembly, the fact that many districts are using their reserves to deal with previous state budget reductions, delayed payments and rising costs — points echoed by the school districts themselves.
The data showed that the Springfield School District had $16.9 million on hand at the end of fiscal year 2011, about 82 days’ worth of funding.
District spokesman Pete Sherman said officials estimate the Springfield school system will have only $1.9 million in its main education fund by the end of fiscal year 2013. The state board is even less optimistic, guessing that the district will have $667,308 on hand by the end of FY13.
* During overtime session, the media almost always uses dollars per day calculations to shame legislators into wrapping things up. So, I think that Gov. Pat Quinn’s number may have a fairly big impact, at least with the press…
New figures demonstrate how Illinois is getting deeper and deeper into the unfunded pension liability hole.
Gov. Pat Quinn says what’s now an $83 billion dollar debt is increasing by $12.6 million a day.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports the state could be another $1 billion or so in the hole before the Illinois General Assembly does anything. […]
According to Quinn’s accounting, at $12.6 million a day, the delay would cost $441 million; by the veto session just after Election Day — the soonest most believe a bill could be introduced — it would be $1.7 billion. If they took a full year, the state would be another $4.6 billion in the hole.
“It’s time to go and put the taxpayers first, not politics first,” Quinn said.
Negotiations between Gov. Pat Quinn and legislative leaders about public employee pension reform hit another roadblock Thursday, with talks morphing from a discussion about retirement benefits to education funding equality in Illinois.
The issues became entwined as Democrats continue to push a proposal that would shift some pension costs from the state now pays on to suburban and Downstate school districts. Republicans oppose the plan, saying it would force property taxes to rise as schools try to recoup the extra costs.
GOP leaders say the cost-shift idea shouldn’t be connected to pension reform because it’s a school funding issue, and on Thursday asked for more time to study how money is distributed to schools across the state. […]
By asking for more time to study education funding, Republicans are attempting to force Democrats to back away from the cost-shift idea. Either Democrats peel that portion off and move forward with broader pension reforms this summer, or Republicans can put the blame on Democrats for inaction during the fall election.
“When you don’t want to talk about the free lunches for local school districts, you talk about school funding,” said House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.
But Madigan said he was confident an agreement could eventually be reached, saying it can be difficult to move plans forward in Springfield “but if you stay with it, there will be accomplishments.”
With negotiations now pushed almost to August, it’s looking more and more like this is an issue that is destined for dormancy until the post-election veto session in November. How convenient. Now lawmakers from both parties can campaign on the fact that they really, really want pension reform and they are certain it won’t cost anyone anything.
We can only hope that the bond ratings agencies have more faith in and patience with our elected officials than we do.
Off and on for the past few years, I’ve tried to defend Illinois’ honor against the crazier attacks by outsiders while still candidly acknowledging that this state has some real problems which absolutely must be solved.
That ain’t easy, to say the least.
Ever since Barack Obama was elected president, his enemies have been trying to highlight Illinois’ truly awful problems to somehow taint his administration. A big target was put on our backs, and far too many of our neighboring Republican governors have been way too eager to play along with this stupid game.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, in particular, have delighted in overstating our problems to make themselves look better back home. Walker constantly painted Illinois as the bogeyman during his recall attempt. Daniels compared us to “The Simpsons” TV show. Both have repeatedly vowed to poach businesses and jobs from us, which didn’t really work, but the two got a whole lot of media attention, and that was the point.
I now know what it must have been like for family members to constantly feel the need to defend the beer-swilling, trouble-making Billy Carter or the beer-swilling, trouble-making Roger Clinton after their far more responsible brothers were elected president. He’s blood, so you gotta step up. But, man, you just wish he’d check himself into rehab, buy some presentable clothes and get a real job for once.
Believe it or not, there really are signs that the people running this state finally understand that we can’t keep operating the way we have been. But it took so long for that message to sink in that we’re way behind almost every other state. And I’m still not convinced that we won’t somehow relapse.
Almost all the money from last year’s huge income tax increase has been sucked up by pension payments, which got so high because the state has never put enough cash into the systems.
Doing the responsible thing and making the full pension payments meant that the state hasn’t been able to pay down billions of dollars of overdue bills and this year was forced to slash money for health care and education and close prisons even though the corrections system is already overcrowded.
While a good chunk of those past-due bills will be paid off this year, and while a severe Medicaid-funding crisis appears to have been resolved by making painful cuts and raising the cigarette tax, pension payments are projected to grow so much that our precarious, horrible credit rating is under serious threat.
Gov. Pat Quinn met with the four legislative leaders Thursday to try once again to hammer out a deal on public employee pension reform.
Quinn claimed that each day of delay meant $12.6 million was added to the pension funds’ unfunded liability.
No agreement was reached.
Instead, the two Republican legislative leaders insisted that the always intractable school-funding issue be put on the table with the seemingly intractable pension issue. No further meetings are scheduled until August.
Also on Thursday, Illinois’ auditor general reported that the state government has a deficit of almost $44 billion — worst in the nation.
After I read the auditor general’s report, I started researching quiet, peaceful, inexpensive getaways. Enough, already.
As much as I hate to admit it, I have to get out of this state. I don’t know yet when I can go, and my plans certainly won’t include Wisconsin or Indiana, but I really need to leave Illinois and all its troubles behind for a little while.
The state’s overall deficit climbed to nearly $44 billion last year, easily the worst in the nation, the Illinois auditor general reported Thursday.
The red ink grew by 16.8 percent in a single year, Auditor General William Holland said.
The new report includes all of Illinois’ assets and liabilities and gives a broader picture of the state’s financial condition than simply reviewing the annual budget.
With no cash available, more state payments were late and for larger amounts, the audit found. Illinois ended the fiscal year with $4.7 billion in unpaid bills. The state fell further behind in paying tax refunds. Bookkeeping was slow and disorganized.
Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka on Thursday released the following statement regarding her office’s State of Illinois Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. The report details the financial condition of the State at the end of the last fiscal year on June 30, 2011:
“Our latest financial report shows that Illinois’ deficit has doubled in the last five years to more than $43 billion. It provides yet another cautionary note that we need to rein in spending and address the growing costs that are devouring the state budget. Positive steps were taken this year toward getting our financial house in order, but we clearly still have a long way to go to fully clean up this colossal mess.”
