* 3:09 pm - According to two sources, Illinois State Police officers are questioning guards at the Tamms “super max” prison today. The police officers are reportedly asking about leaked documents.
As you already know, the Department of Corrections and the governor have been upset that guards are apparently dishing internal DoC documents to the media.
I’ve asked the ISP and the governor’s office for a statement. I’ll let you know what they have to say. This is from AFSCME’s Anders Lindall…
“We’re very disturbed that Governor Quinn would use State Police resources to prevent rank-and-file employees from exercising their legal rights and stifle criticism of his dangerous rush to close state prisons. It fits a pattern of other recent attempts to frighten whistleblowers and intimidate journalists as well.
“Unlike Pat Quinn, we believe citizens should know what their government is doing behind the prison walls. He should renounce these heavy-handed tactics and put a stop to them at once.”
* 4:06 pm - I asked the governor’s press secretary if the governor or anyone in his office requested that the State Police investigate document leaks at Tamms. Here’s her response via text…
No- but if someone breaks the law it will be investigated. The Department of Corrections must enforce the law. Rules and regulations that are part of the law are in place to ensure the safety of guards, inmates and the public.
“We are encouraged by the Governor’s call for a special session on pension reform on August 17. As many people know, we have been and continue to be supportive of comprehensive pension reform that solves the major crisis facing us today. The time to act has been upon us. We are continuing to encourage Governor Quinn to take a leadership role to get a comprehensive pension bill passed in the General Assembly. We will continue to be available to discuss this very important matter in the coming weeks.”
* But now Leader Cross has changed his tone and made some additional demands above and beyond what was in the bill he sponsored back in May…
Cross, meanwhile, said ideas he’d like to see on the table include boosting employee contributions and keeping those under 67 from getting cost-of-living adjustments while leaving COLAs intact for younger retirees if their pensions are $30,000 or less. And perhaps new state hires should be offered only 401(k) types of plans, he said. […]
“I think it’s that important. I don’t run the place. I’m the minority leader. That’s all I am. I’m not daring anybody or challenging anybody, but I’m willing to hang around, to stay there ’til we get this done,” he said. “If I have to miss the Republican convention, then I miss the Republican convention. I haven’t missed one in a long time, but this is the issue of the day.”
* The Cross demand was partly in response to a study released by Gov. Quinn…
Cross said he remains opposed to requiring the state pension shift to suburban and downstate school systems, as Quinn and Democrats want, and that he wasn’t swayed by the governor’s latest offer to phase in those pension costs to school systems over 12 years.
On Sunday, Quinn showcased a report prepared by his budget office that asserted school districts, under the phase-in of that pension cost-shift, would wind up paying $49 million in new pension costs next year.
But without a reform package that would reduce the state’s outlay to pensions, those same downstate and suburban school districts could see their dollars from Springfield cut by $152 million — money that instead would have to be diverted to state pension costs, the administration contended.
* Cross was also responding to a decision by House Speaker Michael Madigan to hold a vote on the Senate-passed pension bill…
Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan has decided to allow a limited pension-reform bill to be considered when the General Assembly returns for a special session Aug. 17. […]
Whether HB1447 can muster the votes needed to pass is another question. As it passed the Senate, the bill takes effect immediately, which means the House would have to pass it with 71 votes instead of the usual 60. Cullerton suggested that if the House can’t meet the 71-vote threshold, the reforms could be tacked on to a different bill with a later effective date and passed with 60 votes. The Senate would then have to vote again on the bill.
Brown said the possibility of doing that is under discussion.
“The ideas in the bill are what we are talking about,” he said.
A spokesperson for Sen. Cullerton said in an email statement the Senate is being called back to deal with “unspecified pension legislation,” alluding to the fact that Quinn hasn’t pointed to any specific bill for legislators to vote on when they meet in Springfield.
* The governor just hasn’t handled this issue all that well yet. My statewide syndicated newspaper column is about his struggle…
Gov. Pat Quinn’s office flatly denies it, but it’s hard to see how his big announcement about calling a special legislative session on pension reform wasn’t at least partially related to a major Chicago TV station’s special report on the same subject a few hours after his proclamation.
WGN-TV broadcast a lengthy documentary, “Pension Games,” during its 9 p.m. news program, then hosted a live discussion afterward on its CLTV cable television station along with an interview with the governor.
The station hyped the program for days, and Quinn took clear advantage of the public relations opportunity to promote himself — even taking an opportunity to whack the General Assembly for cutting the schools budget after receiving a viewer call-in question about how pension reform would impact his property tax bill.
Many legislators, mostly Republicans but some Democrats, including Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago), have complained about Quinn calling a special session without having a plan in place or a bill to vote on. Cullerton has described the session as a waste of time and money because lawmakers are highly unlikely to vote on anything substantial until after the Nov. 6 election.
The governor’s office countered that the state can’t afford to wait that long and that Quinn would be happy with just about any plan currently on the table. His people pointed to his decision to push for a 12-year phase-in of the controversial “cost-shifting” plan, which would force suburban and downstate school districts to pick up their employees’ pension costs and is a major impediment to an agreement on pensions.
The Republicans have steadfastly opposed that proposal, saying it would greatly increase homeowners’ tax bills. The House Democrats months ago proposed a longer phase-in of the cost shift, and Quinn has now thrown his support behind that timetable.
“I did my mighty best to get it done by May 31,” Quinn claimed about comprehensive pension reform during the TV program after a caller complained about the cost of bringing legislators back to Springfield for a special session. He said the urgency in solving the state’s pension mess left him no choice but to call a special session for Aug. 17.
Cullerton asked Quinn to rescind his special session order, offering to call a session on his own, which would avoid the additional stipend pay to legislators (the session will cost about $40,000 per day). But the governor has refused to go along, possibly because doing so would mean he would look less like a champion of pension reform.
Quinn has an effective counter-argument to complaints about the cost of a special session. He claims that doing nothing on pensions inflates the five systems’ unfunded liability by $12.6 million every day. That number has been seized upon by the media, but it’s not exactly true.
No pension bill on the table would change benefit plans immediately, and the pension systems have asked that any new legislation not take effect until July 1, 2013. So that $12.6 million will continue to accrue no matter what happens during the special session.
But as long as the media buy fully into Quinn’s argument, then that cost of $40,000 per day will pale in comparison to his warning about pension debt rising $12.6 million every day.
Quinn obviously believes he has public opinion behind him on this one, although some Democrats have pointed to polls that show Quinn is very unpopular in many districts they’ve surveyed this summer. They also say pension reform proposals aren’t nearly as popular in politically targeted, Democratic-leaning districts as they may be statewide. There’s not much incentive for Democrats to go along with Quinn on this one, at least not yet.
But even if the public was totally with him, the public doesn’t vote in special sessions, legislators do. And members of his party aren’t exactly enamored with the guy. Quinn closed state facilities in Democratic districts and ignored pleas by the Black and Hispanic caucuses to keep the women’s prison at Dwight open so families in Cook County would remain relatively close to the inmates.
And in taking a page out of his predecessor’s playbook, Quinn has lately taken to bashing legislators for not toeing his line. On another TV program last week, he said legislators might have to cancel their golf games to attend his special session. Quinn was speaking, but I could clearly hear Rod Blagojevich talking.
Quinn issued the special-session proclamation less than three weeks before the session will be held. Apparently, in the interim, Quinn expects some resolution on a comprehensive pension reform package that has eluded lawmakers for seven months this year and a good amount of time before that.
Quinn’s critics immediately drew comparisons between him and ex-Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH. Blagojevich was big on special sessions. He’d call them and then largely disappear, expecting the legislature to do something just because he called them into session. It didn’t work.
It’s not at all clear that the General Assembly will do anything on pensions during the special session, let alone something comprehensive that includes a cost-shift. Hope Quinn’s thought about what he’s going to do next.
* Yeah, I know I said I’d be back today, but I’m going to extend my break by a day. I have lousy wifi where I am and there’s not a whole lot going on and I’m in a place that’s not exactly conducive to working anyway. So, here’s a video and I’ll post a pension story as soon as all the web pages load on this super-slow connection. Turn it up…
* I have some stuff to do, so I won’t be able to blog on Monday. Hey, it’s August. Hopefully, things won’t really ratchet up until the State Fair. Anyway, let’s rock…
* The Law Bulletin’s Josh Weinhold got a rare interview with Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Kilbride. Weinhold asked Kilbride about the ongoing pilot project to put video cameras in courtrooms…
LB: What will you be looking for and paying attention to in the pilot program?
Kilbride: What we’re looking for is basically two things. One, that we obviously don’t have problems that disturb an orderly trial process. That’s the basic one. The other one is related — that not only is it not disruptive, but that the rights of the defendant to due process and to a fair trial in a criminal court room, that that’s always protected.
Those are the two things that we’re monitoring and I’m pleased to say that, thus far, based on the five circuits we’ve got, of the reports we’ve received from chief judges, there have been no problems reported.
* The Question: Do you support the idea of putting video cameras in Illinois courtrooms? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
I am sick and tired of writing stories about kids caught in the crossfire — about a little boy having his brains blown out while watching cartoons, or little girls being shot while jumping rope, or being pushed by their mother in a stroller, or while selling candy. So sick and tired.
When will it stop?
And after all these years, I finally know the answer. It’s simple: When we muster the collective will — moral, ethical and political — to make it stop, by any means necessary.
* Former Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney James Gierach responded…
As a former Chicago prosecutor, I sat on the edge of my kitchen chair as I read Sun-Times columnist John Fountain’s July 5 piece, “Why can’t we stop the killing?”
But like many in positions of influence, Mr. Fountain cannot see or chooses to ignore the prohibition elephant in the room. His answer is that we need the “moral, ethical and political will” to make the killing stop. I don’t know which to do first: vote, pray, go to church or continue doing all three. […]
I support CeaseFire, but all mainstream violence solutions have a serious shortcoming: They start with prohibition as a given. Prohibition has been the bipartisan political consensus ever since President Richard Nixon declared the glorious war on drugs in 1971. I support calls like that of Mr. Fountain for more social, religious, economic and political initiatives.
But each of us should demand an end to the war on drugs—not because drugs are good but because the drug war is worse.
The war against drugs doesn’t work; it puts more uncontrolled and unregulated drugs everywhere. Both the good guys and the bad guys support it: the drug cartels and Chicago street gangs on one team, and the police, court and prison personnel, drug treaters and municipalities that share in forfeited plunder with the relish of Uncle Scrooge on the other.
Who is against the drug war? Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
LEAP is an international nonprofit of former drug warriors. Drugs are too dangerous not to control and regulate, and prohibition has surrendered that control to street gangs and cartels. It is time to create a system of control and taxation with different regulations for different drugs depending on the relative harm posed by different substances.
* Department of Human Services Director Michelle Saddler was dragged in front of the House Human Services Committee this week to explain why DHS decided to stop investigating client deaths for the insane reason that dead people were no longer eligible for state services. Her response…
She added that the department made a “very poor choice of words” when it declared the deceased “ineligible for services” in its paperwork. She said the decision “raised concerns about our commitment to adults with disabilities.”
The Quinn administration is closing several state facilities for the mentally and physically disabled and moving those folks into privately run operations. Saddler’s DHS runs those facilities and family members, who were already freaked out about the moves, have every right to be furious that the people in charge at DHS thought it was no big deal not to investigate clearly suspicious deaths of people they oversee.
“A very poor choice of words”? Really? That hearing should’ve been used as an opportunity to instill confidence in the state’s ability to handle these sorts of problems. Instead, we get stupidity like this? What are we, children?
Ugh.
Here’s a question: Why does Michelle Saddler still have a job?
The Illinois Department of Human Services has dropped its contract with the Community Mental Health Council on Chicago’s South Side, contending the agency is fiscally mismanaged.
DHS spokeswoman Januari Smith Trader says millions of dollars has been given the mental health center, but it “continues to experience serious fiscal mismanagement and eventual insolvency.”
Dr. Carl Bell, the center’s head and part-time professor of clinical psychology and public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, blames the center’s fiscal problems on the state’s woes. He notes Illinois began slowing payments two years ago. He says as a result, the center he founded in 1975 has lost seven psychiatrists, in addition to therapists and case managers.
“They kept telling us that they wanted us to stay open and that was as late as May,” said Bell. Told that sources claim there is an outside audit that may show some fiscal mismanagement with patient funds, Bell, who has already confirmed that the state audit “came back clean,” said, “I obviously don’t know. For the last two-years, they (the State of Illinois) have been paying us slowly. We’ve been paying staff slowly so we’ve been losing staff slowly but surely and some of those people were fiscal people. “If you don’t have people in place to have a good accounting, I have no idea what’s going on. I have no idea where the money is. I know we have some money in the bank but that’s on hold because we owe somebody and they put a stop to that. I know nobody is stealing any money. I know that. I know we spent every penny on patient care to keep the business going,” said Bell.
“I don’t know how there could have been an outside audit because we don’t have any numbers. We don’t know. I got a Department of Labor claim from one of the employees. I don’t know how much money the Council owes me. I do know it’s a lot of money, but I don’t know how many paychecks they (the staff) has been paid because nobody knows. […]
When contacted, Gov. Pat Quinn issued the following statement. “Over the past several years, the Department of Human Services (DHS) Division of Mental Health has advanced millions of dollars to Community Mental Health Council (CMHC) in an effort to ensure continuity of care for consumers and to give the company an opportunity to improve its fiscal situation. “In addition, DMH provided more than two years of educational assistance regarding financial and program reporting requirements. To date, CMHC has made no effort to repay the state and has consistently shown an inability to meet its contractual obligations. “CMHC continues to experience serious fiscal mismanagement and eventual insolvency - they have not made payroll in many months, cancelled health insurance for employees and their families, and have been the subject of mounting complaints to the Illinois Department of Labor. “Therefore, DMH was unable to renew CMHC’s contract for fiscal year 2013. We have a number of area providers already in place to support CMHC consumers with their mental health needs and are currently in discussions with others.”
However, Dr. Bell has repeatedly said the Council has not been paid by the state since March and that for the past two-years the state has been slow in paying causing him to lose valuable people including those in charge of the finances. Bell said as late as May state officials said they wanted to continue doing business with the Council, which is why he computerized the patient’s records. He has received one complaint from the Department of Labor, but without access to the records he does not know how much state owes anyone including himself. Bell has not been paid since March and continues to use his funds to take care of patients he now sees in front of the building entrance.
* Related…
* State lawmaker: DHS ‘failed’ in protecting disabled adults
* Guest column: Singer Mental Health Center must stay open
* The Southtown Star editorial board freely acknowledges that Gov. Pat Quinn’s decision to replace a bill’s language with an assault weapons and high capacity magazine ban was political posturing and likely unconstitutional. But the paper still supports the proposed law…
We could scold Quinn for grandstanding except that he is right on the merits. Citizens can judge his motive for themselves.
But we believe this nation eventually will overcome zealotry on both sides of the gun control issue and arrive at a compromise regarding the possession and sale of military-style assault weapons. We fear that some horrific event, or series of events in close succession, will occur as to make it inevitable.
If there is little middle ground now on the weapons, Quinn might have been wiser simply to regulate the magazines that supply their bullets — magazines that can enable a shooter to kill 100 people without taking a breath.
High-capacity magazines were used in virtually every mass shooting in the U.S. from Columbine in 1999 to last year’s attack in Arizona where six were killed and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was wounded to last month’s theater attack in Colorado.
California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C., ban or limit the use of such magazines, and more states, including Illinois, should.
Getting rid of assault rifles and their magazines is the right decision, even if the Legislature isn’t willing to take that step now. Sooner or later, it will.
* Steve Chapman didn’t write about the big massacres, but instead looked at crime statistics to prove his point that the assault weapons ban proposal is essentially meaningless…
Jesse Jackson claims that the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, reduced the number of these guns used in crimes. In Miami, he says, they were implicated in 4 percent of murders in 2004, but today, the figure is 21 percent.
What Jackson omits is that the number of murders in Miami is virtually unchanged — from 69 in 2004 to 68 in 2011. Maybe that’s because guns not covered by the ban are just as capable and lethal as those that were. If you ban red cars, fewer people will die in red cars. Just don’t expect overall highway fatalities to change.
If allowing these guns stimulated more killing, the national murder rate wouldn’t have declined by 13 percent after the ban expired. But that’s what happened.
Prohibiting “assault weapons” is a pointless gesture. Those who propose a ban are only proving they don’t understand basic facts about guns and violence or don’t care.
In my mind, at least, both pieces have some truth in them. Ignoring the use of the high-capacity magazines aspect of the proposal and focusing solely on the assault weapons ban is a convenient way to get around a real problem. But there’s also little doubt that the weapons ban itself can be seen as more hype than substance.
* Illinois Statehouse News has a pretty good piece of media criticism today. The service interviewed people who’ve been studying and working with prison issues for decades…
“There is increased tension, so there’s an increase in prisoner-on-prisoner fights, but that’s because it’s hot. And the prisons have been on lockdown and they’re overcrowded, and there are no programs left so everybody is sitting in their cells. So there’s a good story here, but it’s not the one being told,” said Alan Mills, legal director of the Chicago-based Uptown People’s Law Center, a nonprofit legal center that handles cases on behalf of inmates. […]
“I’ve been disturbed by the lack of any sort of skepticism on behalf of the press. I don’t see how you can report that anytime there’s an assault it must be related to closing a correctional institution without asking for somebody to prove it. Anytime there’s an incident in any prison … the union puts out a press release,” he said. “Things are terrible, but it has nothing to do with prison closures.”
* More…
Laurie Jo Reynolds, who has taught at Columbia College in Chicago and is the organizer of Tamms Year Ten, a grassroots campaign to educate people about the effects of long-term prison isolation, said the incidents are being used to bolster the argument that no prisons should close.
“I think it deceives the public about what the true issues are. It confuses the public, and it makes it harder for the governor, the (Department of Corrections) and anyone else to pursue evidence-based public policy,” Reynolds said.
“They are creating an environment of scare tactics and fear mongering,” she said. “We all need to work together to reduce overcrowding, and everybody needs to buy into true evidence-based policies to reduce prison populations. But they’re creating such a polarized political environment, it’s not good for the dialogue and it’s also not good for the policies.”
* The John Howard Association’s executive director John Maki also weighed in…
“What we’re seeing here is decades of asking the system to do more than it can possibly do with the amount of resources we’ve given it,” Maki said. “Everyone is feeling that — from the administration to the staff to the inmates. The answer isn’t to have more staff. The answer is to do what other states have done, which is to reduce the prison population.” […]
And the state’s complicated cultural and economic relationships are playing out in the prison debate right now, he said.
“The average citizen should keep in mind that it’s in everyone’s interest to have the most effective prison system possible, but also because we spend more than a billion dollars a year on this system,” he said. “As all these battles are getting played out, citizens should be asking how does this help what we all care about – safer communities and a safer state.”
