* First, Gov. Pat Quinn refused to allow reporters into even minimum security prisons to examine conditions. Now, the governor won’t even tell reporters who’s been allowed in for tours…
Carefully controlled prison walk-throughs were commonplace for lawmakers, journalists and others in years past as a way to illustrate conditions for prisoners and the state employees who keep them in line. But after barring the gate to reporters last month, Quinn’s administration has deemed it too burdensome to reveal who has been allowed to enter in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Associated Press.
Despite the governor’s declaration that allowing reporters inside is a “security risk,” prison officials said only individual wardens have information about tours by outside groups, and that top Department of Corrections brass don’t keep track of who’s coming and going, although some evidence contradicts that. […]
But other evidence suggests top Corrections officials do know about separate tour groups, and are involved in approving them. When a reporter called Illinois River Correctional Center in Canton, a staff member in the warden’s office said a tour request must be submitted in writing to the warden, but a deputy director of the department has final say.
In addition, prison wardens submit weekly activity reports to one of the three deputy directors who supervise them, routinely listing approved tours.
What the heck is Quinn hiding here? What is he so afraid of?
Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) this week mocked Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran and double amputee, for speaking at the Democratic National Convention, charging that the only issue Duckworth cares about is her outfit.
“Ms. Duckworth has continued to show more interest in rubbing elbows with big name party insiders, then [SIC] staying home and tackling the tough issues facing voters in the district,” he said in a statement on his website. “It has become abundantly clear that at this point the only debate Ms. Duckworth is actually interested in having is which outfit she’ll be wearing for her big speech.”
Duckworth told The Huffington Post that she has already debated Walsh twice and has three more debates scheduled with him, but she is not surprised by his degrading insult.
“It’s not the first time Mr. Walsh has been sexist, but frankly I have more important things to do than listen to a man whose whole purpose in Congress is to shout from the mountaintops and not to serve his constituents,” she said. “My whole point of being here was to bring the perspective of my constituents to leadership and to make sure we do talk about jobs, the economy, and our country’s military policies, and I think I’ve done a great job of that.”
Three years later, video gambling terminals have produced not one miserable dime for Illinois, although that’s about to change. The Illinois Gaming Board is set to begin testing its computer system for monitoring the terminals, and could authorize the start of legalized video gambling within a month. Why the delay? Lawmakers vastly underestimated the complexity of background checks on individuals and businesses who have applied for licenses to work in video gambling. The list of applicants runs to 173 pages on the Gaming Board’s website.
Actually, the big delay came when the Gaming Board massively screwed up the contract bid. From the Tribune’s new page…
Gaming officials signed a contract in June 2010 for a central computer system capable of monitoring up to 60,000 video poker games in the state, but had to void that deal because of errors in the bidding process.
After rebidding the work, officials signed a contract [in February of 2012] with Alpharetta, Ga.-based Scientific Games International
So, almost a two-year delay and the Tribsters ignore it.
Electronic democracy is the way to go for Illinois to solve its pension crisis, according to Gov. Pat Quinn.
The governor shed some light on his so-called grassroots campaign to reform the state’s pension system at a Saturday morning stop in Decatur that was unrelated to his visit to unveil “The Portrait of a Soldier” exhibit at the Decatur Public Library.
While details remain vague, Quinn said he hopes to use the Internet and social media to inform people on the issue and to rally people to contact their lawmakers.
“Having the power of the Internet … is a good way to get the message across on what we have to do for the public,” he said.
He’s sure building this thing up. I hope for his sake that it’s more than a Facebook page, because if it isn’t, you know what I’ll say?
* US Sen. Dick Durbin talked to the Tribune about another term…
“In the Senate, it’s not a two-year decision like the House. It’s an eight-year decision. It’s a two-year campaign and six-year term,” Durbin said Thursday after addressing the Illinois delegation to Obama’s renominating convention. “Are you ready to engage and commit for eight years of your life? I love these six-year terms, but it also calls for a little more thought, patience, before you make the decision.”
As for now, Durbin says simply, “I’m planning to run for re-election but I’ll make my final decision next year.” He’s also quick to add, “I love this business and I love this state and I’ll match my schedule with any elected official in our state. I cover it from one end to the other every time I get home. I draw energy from it.” […]
If Durbin does stand for re-election, he would be just a few weeks shy of turning 70 on Election Day 2014. Saying he found out that “when you reach age 60, you don’t have to go to hell,” he recently dropped about 20 pounds. The weight loss came after reading a book aimed at staving off the effects of aging. He met one of its authors during a Bears game at Soldier Field.
Two years ago the senator suffered a health scare and underwent surgery for the removal of a small gastrointestinal stromal tumor from his stomach. A biopsy later determined that it had no cancer cells, his office said.
“I feel good. I’m healthy,” Durbin said. “The rumors just fly when you’ve reached my stage of life. ‘Oh, he went in for surgery two years ago.’ Everything turned out perfectly. I couldn’t ask for a better result.”
* The Question: Should Sen. Durbin run for another term? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
* The National Republican Congressional Committee has a new TV ad blasting Democratic congressional candidate David Gill for wanting to “end Medicare.” Rate it…
It kinda reminds me of the ads in “The Campaign” movie.
Just sayin…
* Script…
ANNOUNCER: Politician David Gill supports keeping the new healthcare law, gutting Medicare.
But Gill wanted to go further.
Forcing each American into government run healthcare.
And to pay for it, Gill supported a new income tax.
DAVID GILL: it would be a two percent tax. We could do away with your Medicare tax, because Medicare would no longer exist.
ANNOUNCER: David Gill. His plan would end Medicare.
Although union officials say more topics are still being debated, the mayor said the two remaining stumbling blocks involve re-hiring laid off teachers from schools that get shut down or shaken up and a new teacher evaluation process that the union says puts far too much weight on student test scores.
Progress had been made over the weekend regarding teacher pay, but not enough on teacher evaluations, job security or classroom conditions to entice union members to sign a contract, [Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis] said.
“We do not intend to sign an agreement until all matters of our contract are addressed,” Lewis said. “We are committed to staying at the table.”
The school board’s last offer included a three percent raise the first year and two percent raises the next three years — a slight increase from an earlier offer of two percent raises in each of the next four years.
The package, which would cost $400 million, keeps increases for experience and credentials with some modifications.
Vitale said the contract amounted to a 16 percent raise over four years for the average teacher when factoring other increases. And the raises could not be rescinded for lack of funds — which is what happened this past school year, angering teachers and helping to set the stage for Monday’s strike. […]
CTU officials contend that CPS’ offer of raises over the next four years does not fairly compensate them for the 4 percent raise they lost this past school year and the longer and “harder” school year they will face this school year, with the introduction of a tougher new curriculum.
The union also has pushed for improved working conditions, such as smaller class sizes, more libraries, air-conditioned schools, and more social workers and counselors to address the increasing needs of students surrounded by violence — all big-ticket items. CPS officials contend they are seeking a “fair” contract, with raises for teachers, but are limited by funding and the threat of a $1 billion deficit at the end of this school year.
[CTU delegate Darryl Reed] said he always knew there would be a strike. “If you go back to legislation last year making it harder for us to strike, they bragged that we’d never reach that threshold. The attitude they had this whole time gave us the attitude we have had this whole time.”
Sending Emanuel into negotiations to broker a last-minute deal wasn’t an option because there was so much bad blood between him and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, several sources said.
* I’ll be adjusting this ScribbleLive feed throughout the day and week as new hashtags and sites pop up. BlackBerry users click here. Everybody else can just watch..
On the eve of President Barack Obama’s acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention last week, a statewide poll showed the native son was leading his Republican opponent by 17 percentage points in Illinois.
The poll of 1,382 likely Illinois voters was taken Sept, 5 by We Ask America. It had Obama at 54 percent to Mitt Romney’s 37 percent. Another 3.3 percent said they would vote for a third-party candidate and 6 percent were undecided.
That’s way below where Obama was four years ago, when he won Illinois with 62 percent of the vote.
If you look at the 17-point spread between the two candidates, it’s a blowout, although not as big as Obama’s gigantic 25-point victory in 2008.
If you look at where Obama’s numbers are now, you might consider that this race could tighten up quite a bit, at least compared with 2008. The spread is generally how polls are judged in the end, so if you’re a Republican, you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up too much.
According to the poll, Obama leads among Illinois women 59 percent to 32 percent and even leads among men by a 48 to 43 margin. However, exit polling from 2008 showed that Obama won women by 29 points and men by 15 points, so he’s doing about the same with women but not as well with men.
The survey, which has a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points, has Obama with a huge 80 percent to 11 percent lead in Chicago. Some top Republicans have been saying they believed Romney could hit close to 20 percent in the city, which would give them a shot at being competitive statewide.
That’s highly doubtful, according to this poll. However, four years ago Obama won Chicago with 85 percent, so he’s not yet doing quite as well as he did then.
Obama leads Romney in suburban Cook County by a substantial 60 to 30 margin. But again, that’s not as wide as 2008 when he won the region by 34 points. Suburban Cook is the location of a ton of hotly contested congressional and state legislative races, so the Democrats will need all the help they can get from the president.
Obama’s 30-point lead is a whole lot better than Gov. Pat Quinn’s 14-point margin two years ago, when the Democrats lost seats at the congressional and state levels.
Obama did quite well in Chicago’s collar counties four years ago, winning many by large margins. But he now leads by just 2 percentage points in the region, 47 to 45, with 6 percent undecided. Most of those counties contain all or part of many targeted races this time around, and Romney could be a significant factor there.
The president slightly trails Romney in the sprawling downstate region, getting 45 percent to Romney’s 46 percent, with 5 percent undecided, the poll says. There are a lot of hotly contested state legislative races downstate, and Republicans are confident that they can pick up some seats there.
Congressional and state legislative polling has shown that southern Illinois is where the president is struggling the most compared to four years ago. The We Ask America poll shows Obama with a slight lead of 47 percent to 46 percent in the 618 area code, which includes all of southern Illinois. That’s far below where he was four years ago.
The poll does show a few ways that Romney can increase his standing in Illinois and impact more races farther down on the ballot. Just 80 percent of self-described Republicans are supporting him versus 88 percent of Democrats who say they’re backing Obama. If and when those Republican voters finally “come home,” Romney’s numbers will go up.
Romney also has a slight, one-point lead among those who say they’re independent voters, who tend to lean Republican. He can probably expect more support from that group.
None of those avenues point to an actual Illinois win for Romney, who probably won’t be spending much cash in the state, particularly in the expensive Chicago media market.
Romney could run ads in the St. Louis area, which could help some Metro East Republicans. But Romney will need to target most of his campaign money for the all-important swing states, so most GOP candidates in Illinois won’t see much of an impact.
* Natalie Hemby has written and co-written a ton of country music songs. She’s almost unknown outside of Nashville, though, because she’s not the one who records the material. So, for those of you who follow the genre, here’s a video of Hemby playing her smash summer hit…
You can climb the ladder
Just don’t rock the boat while I barbeque
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., has left the Mayo Clinic and is at home in the nation’s capital with his family, an aide said today.
“He’s home with his wife and children and he’s convalescing,” Rick Bryant, his chief of staff in suburban Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune.
Jackson, 47, was treated for bipolar depression at the clinic this summer. He began a medical leave of absence June 10.
Congress returns Monday after a five-week summer recess. Bryant, asked whether Jackson would be in attendance, said: “I am hopeful that he’ll be back on the job on Monday.”
-Illinois has prime seats on the Democratic convention floor, and for the Wednesday session labor leaders from the state were front row center. The group pictured above are Tom Balanoff, SEIU and a longtime Obama friend; Toby Trimmer, IFT; Dan Montgomery, IFT president; Tony Garcia, UAW and Ron McInroy, UAW president.
* Illinois has a little over 4 percent of the USA’s population, but it has almost 8 percent of the country’s local governments, according to a recent study by the US Census Bureau.
Illinois has 6,968 units of local government, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s preliminary 2012 Census of Governments, released last week. Considering the state’s population of 12.8 million, that means there’s one governmental body for about every 1,800 residents.
We have a whole lot of small municipalities and lots of counties. Just a handful of states have more counties than we do, and nobody has more municipalities. We also have a lot of townships here. Several states have no townships, and the Census folks combine “towns” with “townships” in their numbers. We have 1,431 in that category. Minnesota has 1,785.
* By far the biggest difference between Illinois and the rest of the country is in the “special districts” category. From the Census…
Special districts are organized local entities other than county, municipal, township or school district governments that are authorized by state law to provide only one or a limited number of designated functions. Fire districts, water districts, library districts and transit authorities are examples of special districts.
We also have TIF districts, mosquito abatement districts and other such things, giving us a grand total of 3,232 special districts - almost half our total number of local government units. The closest competitor is California, with 2,786 special districts, then Texas, with 2,309 special districts. Michigan has just 445, Ohio has 700, New York has 1,172.
* Legislation aimed at reducing the number of local governments died in the Senate not long ago. All that could pass was a non-binding study commission, and its commissioners now want more time to finish…
The Local Government Consolidation Commission likely will ask during the fall veto session that its Dec. 31 deadline be pushed back. The reasons, chairman Jack Franks said, are the long delay in appointments to the commission and the wealth of information it is taking in now that it is meeting. […]
The commission was created by a Franks bill signed into law in August 2011 by Gov. Pat Quinn. But it did not hold its first meeting until February, because legislative leaders took their time filling the commission’s 17 seats. […]
Franks said the commission is not only exploring consolidation of governments, but also ways that governments that stay independent can merge services. The commission also plans to identify roadblocks in state statute to promoting such efforts.
The House today voted 109-0 to put into law a bill that could affect a potential prosecution against former Bolingbrook Police Sgt. Drew Peterson in the cases of either one of his last two wives.
The bill, which is backed by the Will County state’s attorney’s office, would allow a judge to admit hearsay evidence into court for first-degree murder cases if the prosecution could prove that the defendant killed a witness to prevent testimony.
The House vote followed Senate approval a week before. Their votes meant lawmakers accepted changes proposed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich that allowed the law to become effective as soon as the House approved the measure.
* But by July of the next year, Peterson’s prosecutor was asking an appellate court to dump the new law…
Saddled with a botched police investigation, Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow pushed for a state law that would allow prosecutors to use hearsay statements against Drew Peterson at trial.
Dubbed Drew’s Law by legal experts and legislators, Glasgow hailed the bill’s passage as a way of letting Peterson’s third and fourth wives speak from the grave.
But now in an ironic move to convict Peterson, Glasgow finds himself fighting the law he helped create.
On the eve of Peterson’s much-anticipated murder trial, Glasgow delayed the case Thursday by appealing a ruling on the admissibility of some hearsay evidence. He argues that the judge’s decision — made under the guidelines established by Drew’s Law — should have adhered instead to less-restrictive common law.
But in winning his appeal, Glasgow had to ask the court to disregard the law he helped create in favor of the state’s common law, which doesn’t include the reliability requirement, a fact not lost on the appellate judges.
“This change in the State’s position is puzzling,” Judge William Holdridge wrote in the appellate court’s decision.
“If the legislature intended to facilitate the successful prosecution of criminal defendants who intentionally prevent witnesses from testifying (as the statute’s legislative history suggests), it is unclear why it passed a statute that imposed restrictions on prosecutors that are not found in the common law,” Holdridge wrote. “Regardless, after passing a more restrictive statute, one would expect the State either to enforce the statute as written or act to repeal the statute, not urge the courts to ignore it.”
And Holdridge wasn’t the only one to find Glasgow’s change in course puzzling.
“There’s irony, foremost,” said Harold J. Krent, the dean of IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, who noted that Glasgow was “actually potentially undercutting the power of prosecutors” when he passed his new law.
“The common law’s power was broader,” Krent said.
* The appellate ruling was based on an Illinois Supreme Court opinion issued after “Drew’s Law” was passed by the General Assembly…
Glasgow’s spokesman, Charles B. Pelkie, pointed out that the new law was put together and passed before the state supreme court rejected an appeal by Naperville murderer Eric Hanson, who shot his mother and father in the head and bludgeoned to death his sister and brother-in-law.
Hanson appealed his conviction on the grounds that hearsay cannot be used as evidence under the common law. The state supreme court denied this, upholding Hanson’s conviction and giving Glasgow the grounds for his appeal of Judge White’s ruling.
In the end, it was Stacy Peterson who helped convict Drew Peterson of murder.
Stacy Peterson, Drew Peterson’s fourth wife, is missing. Her family believes she’s dead and blames her husband.
But statements she made to two men before she disappeared were cited by a juror Thursday as being crucial in bringing down the brash, silver-haired former Bolingbrook cop.
It was the hearsay evidence against Peterson, the juror said, that convinced him and other jurors to convict Peterson of murder on Thursday in the 2004 death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
“Without hearsay evidence would I have found him not guilty? Yes. A lot of the jurors said that, too,” said Ron Supalo, a juror from Bolingbrook. “They were either on the fence or they thought he was innocent. And then with those two hearsay witnesses, bam.”
“Kathy told me that her husband … had told her that he could kill her and make her disappear.”
— Mary Parks testifying about what Savio said Drew Peterson told her.
“She wanted to know if the fact that he killed Kathy (Savio) could be used against him.”
— Divorce attorney Harry Smith testifying about a conversation with Stacy Peterson days before she disappeared in 2007. She told him she was convinced Drew Peterson killed Savio three years earlier.
* The Question: Do you believe that the House and Senate Democratic leaders are committed to passing real, comprehensive pension reform in a bi-partisan way? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
