In 2012, the union membership rate–the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union–was 11.3 percent, down from 11.8 percent in 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.4 million, also declined over the year. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers….
Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.9 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers…
About half of the 14.4 million union members in the U.S. lived in just seven states (California, 2.5 million; New York, 1.8 million; Illinois, 0.8 million; Pennsylvania, 0.7 million; and Michigan, New Jersey, and Ohio, 0.6 million each), though these states accounted for only about one-third of wage and salary employment nationally.
Other members of the school safety summit said getting students to speak-up about potential threats is, perhaps the best idea from the Springfield meeting.
It would also be the cheapest.
Roger Eddy, a former state lawmakers and current head of the Illinois Association of School Boards, said Illinois cannot afford to do much more than talk about school safety.
“Certainly most things are going to cost money and resources,” Eddy said. “And some communities are going to have to make tough choices about that.”
Cinda Klickna, who spoke at the safety summit for the Illinois Education Association, said the price tag could be huge.
“If you are going to have resources for students, programs for students, and personnel to help students, you are going to have to pay for it somehow,” Klickna said.
Quinn angrily denied that if Illinois were to pay the nearly $1 billion it owes local schools and local government that there would be ample money for school safety.
“I’ve gone out and gotten resources for our schools, and for a lot of other things in Illinois, two years ago. Check it out,” Quinn retorted.
* Speaking of schools, Greg Hinz follows up on my earlier stories about how $35 million for an UNO school construction project was inserted into the supplemental approp budget and helped kill it…
But, in checking around, I hear that the guy who really pushed the proposed $35 million grant was House Speaker Michael Madigan, whose district has turned overwhelmingly Latino in recent years and who probably could use one of those new UNO schools in his district. Mr. Madigan — his spokesman failed to return calls — was so hot for the grant that he actually tried to add it to some other bills, multiple reliable Springfield sources say.
Mr. Rangel confirms that the money “quite possibly” would have gone for work in Mr. Madigan’s district, where schools are “severely overcrowded.” And guess where that new soccer high school is? At the north end of Mr. Madigan’s legislative district, at 5050 S. St. Louis Ave.
So it goes in our fair capital city. Education money is short, and CPS is talking about shutting schools. But those with friends have their ways.
* Do you ascribe more to the theory that a Gov. Lisa Madigan would concentrate too much power in one family’s hands, or do you lean more to the belief that a Gov. Lisa Madigan would mean that the Democrats would finally elect somebody who could work with House Speaker Michael Madigan?
Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
Nine months ago, our organization, For the Good of Illinois, filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking Republican Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar-Topinka to send us one year of the state’s checkbook. We were simply seeking to share state expenditures with Illinois citizens through our online database. Our request for this information was rejected.
The comptroller asserted “review, redaction, and arrangement of all 2011 vendor payments would take multiple staff members, dedicated solely to this request, more than three days to complete.” Topinka’s office concluded that fulfilling the request was an “undue burden.”
This conclusion is not credible, and her refusal is against both the spirit and the letter of the law. Is the comptroller really going to argue that in this electronic age state government can’t produce a timely and organized checkbook? Is the comptroller’s office really that much of a mess? The fact our FOIA request is being denied by the state’s top financial officer because it’s inconvenient is inexcusable. Or is Topinka trying to hide something?
Here in Illinois, income tax rates rise as fast as 67 percent overnight and property taxes double every ten years. You would think citizens should at least have access to detailed information showing how their tax dollars are being spent. The state’s checkbook should be public information.
(T)he state database tracking revenues and expenditures includes confidential information that the law prohibits from being given out — things like Social Security numbers and information about tax refunds, public aid and foster care payments, worker’s comp and unemployment checks. A “complete data dump” would be illegal.
Topinka is absolutely correct. She can’t just hand over things like everybody’s individual tax refund checks. No way. And Andrzejewski ought to know better than to ask for stuff like that.
* But in corresponding with Topinka’s office, it became clear that they could take some time to write a program which would weed out all the protected classes of information. In other words, they could give him all the individual checks for everything except what is protected by state law. There would be no individual check copies of tax refunds or such stuff, just aggregate amounts. It would be an effort, but they could do it. It would certainly be a lot easier than redacting each, individual record.
* So, I told Andrzejewski that I’d noticed that the two sides seemed to be talking past each other. Would he accept the raw data used by the comptroller’s website that didn’t include the info that couldn’t by law be disclosed? His e-mailed response…
This appears to be welcome news…
However, as you know, the information we requested goes beyond the information available on the Comptroller’s website. While it is our preference to reach an amicable resolution, doing so requires the Comptroller to produce all of the information responsive to our FOIA request.
The Comptroller apparently told you that it could provide the data showing individual payments. This information must certainly exist, and there should not be any “probability” involved. The Comptroller must possess a record of each payment the State of Illinois made, to whom it was made, when it was made, and the amount of each payment. This is all information which the public has a right to know, and it is all subject to FOIA.
You mention that providing this information could “take some time.” However, we sent the Comptroller our FOIA request nine months ago. We are willing to be reasonable on timing, but we expect the information to be provided over a reasonable amount of days, not multiple weeks or months. The Comptroller does not have to format the data in any way. We can work with the raw data as it is kept by the Comptroller. Chicago provided 10 years and nearly 7 million individual transactions in approximately 10 days.
The FOIA statute provides for the recovery of attorney’s fees and costs. The Comptroller has already caused us to incur substantial fees and expenses. These must be reimbursed in order to resolve our case.
“Substantial fees and expenses”? C’mon. Andrzejewski the conservative “cut the budget” millionaire now wants to ding the taxpayers for legal fees? Just settle this thing, for crying out loud.
* Illinois’ top atheist “activist” Rob Sherman lost another and likely final round yesterday in his attempt to overturn a $20,000 state grant to renovate a huge cross in southern Illinois, known as the “Bald Knob Cross of Peace.” Lower courts had already ruled against Sherman, and the US Supreme Court rejected his appeal this week…
Sherman sued in August 2010, arguing that efforts to repair the cross using state money have “the primary effect of advancing a particular religious sect, namely Christianity.” He noted that the grant came from a $5 million pot of money that the state Legislature channeled to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
Sherman insisted that the grant was a legislative earmark - not a discretionary allocation from the executive branch - and therefore violated the First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of religion.
“This action by the Supreme Court affirms that our nation’s court system is a joke,” Sherman said in a statement. The high court’s “refusal to take my case means that any legislative (body), whether it be Congress, a state legislature or a municipal board, can make blatantly unconstitutional grants to advance religion simply by naming an executive branch agency as a middleman in the transaction.
“What a joke! What a fraud against the taxpayers of this country.”
Well, if the nation’s court system is such a “joke” then maybe Sherman will stop suing at the drop of a hat.
No person shall be required to attend or support any ministry or place of worship against his consent, nor shall any preference be given by law to any religious denomination or mode of worship. […]
Neither the General Assembly nor any county, city, town, township, school district, or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation or pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money, or other personal property ever be made by the State, or any such public corporation, to any church, or for any sectarian purpose.
But since the cross is a tourist destination and doesn’t necessarily serve as a “place of worship” or a “sectarian purpose,” then it’s OK, I suppose.
* Late last week, the governor considered halting a big gun show/sale at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. He didn’t end up doing anything.
I went to the show on Saturday. The place was packed. Some booths were so crowded that I couldn’t even see the guns that vendors had for sale. I ran into a Chicago state legislator at the show, his first such event. He marveled at the crowd. It’s quite possible that all Quinn did last week was drive turnout even higher. Who knew that Pat Quinn could be such a friend to gun dealers?
Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday said he is looking into a possible ban on gun shows held on publicly owned property
“We are talking to the lawyers about that,” Quinn said in response to a reporter’s question after a four-hour summit on school safety at the Springfield office of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.
Last week, Quinn and other Illinois Democrats called for a statewide ban on assault weapons. Yet, some of these very guns were on sale Saturday at a gun show at the state-owned Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield.
There were some mean looking weapons at that show, but most of the stuff looked pretty ordinary to my relatively untrained eye. The most sought-after weapons appeared to be pistols, perhaps in anticipation of the federal order requiring Illinois to come up with a concealed carry permit system.
The governor doesn’t like guns. So, it would not be surprising if he went through with this sales ban idea. But maybe he ought to go see one of these shows for himself and talk to some of the average folks who attend them before making up his mind.
Among the many speakers Saturday was state Sen. Sam McCann, R-Carlinville.
McCann said owning a gun was a right and not a privilege that could be revoked. McCann told the crowd he planned to propose a constitutional amendment to appear on the ballot that would make Illinois the strongest gun rights state in the nation.
McCann was just posing for the crowd and his proposal is going nowhere. And he really wouldn’t want gang members convicted of violent crimes to lose the right to own a gun? Really?
* The SJ-R posted some video from the event. One quote from a speaker…
“I am a gun-toting, God-fearing, Bible-reading Christian, let’s make that clear.”
A review of candidate campaign pledges and data from the General Assembly Retirement System shows at least two dozen of the 177 members of the House and Senate have opted out of the General Assembly pension system.
One of the things that the unions rely on is legislators voting to protect their own pensions and benefits. But the more opt-outs we get, the fewer legislators who will care.
* Even so, some legislators who’ve opted out are still eligible for other pensions. For instance…
State Sen. Dave Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, decided not to take a legislative pension when he first took office in the mid-1990s.
“What motivated me to do it was I didn’t want people to think I was doing this for the money,” Luechtefeld said.
Luechtefeld, a former teacher and basketball coach, is a member of the Teachers Retirement System. He said his TRS pension is not large.
“It may not have been the best financial decision, but I’m certainly going to get by. I’m happy. I’m satisfied,” Luechtefeld said.
People have been predicting a Luechtefeld retirement for years. We may now know at least one reason why he’s decided to stick around. Luechtefeld is 72.
* For some members, no pensions might mean even less turnover if they simply can’t retire. Simple “solutions” never produce simple results.
State legislators can take jobs as lobbyists immediately after their time as lawmaker is done.
That means a lame-duck legislator can support a particular bill that sends money into one business or sector and then leave the General Assembly and begin working for that company or in that sector the next day. It stinks, but it’s still legal.
Thirty-five states have laws that force lawmakers to wait between six months and two years before taking a job as a lobbyist.
It’s time for Illinois to pass a law making lawmakers wait at least a year before becoming lobbyists.
Congress has a similar rule, but members get around it by being “of counsel” to lobbying firms until the revolving door ban expires. Reforms ain’t always what they’re cracked up to be.
Still, what bothers me is not so much that members take those jobs, it’s that they apply for them and negotiate their contracts while they are still legislators. Several members, for instance, applied for the bigtime Illinois Hospital Association gig which then-Sen. AJ Wilhelmi got. That process went on for a while, and some pretty prominent members served for weeks while the decision was being made.
And I don’t mean to single out Wilhelmi or the IHA here as a particularly noxious example. AJ is a decent guy and the IHA does good work. He was eminently qualified for that job. I don’t blame them at all for hiring him and he’s proved to be top notch.
He introduced a federal voter photo ID bill in June and again in September called the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2012, which – if passed into law – would have required voters to present a government-issued photo ID to vote in federal elections. The bill died in committee both times.
“[Democrats] believe everybody should vote; it should be so easy for people to vote,” Walsh said. “I shouldn’t say this, and this will cost me votes – if and when I run next time. It should be tough to vote. I don’t like this whole early-voting stuff. I think you should have to swim a mile, walk five miles, find a bus – I’m exaggerating for everyone who is filming me – and it should take you three hours to get to the ballot box.
“It should be that important. It shouldn’t be easy to vote. This is probably one of the most sacred privileges you’ve earned, you have to earn to live in this country.”
Sen. Dick Durbin told me Tuesday that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is “seriously thinking” about running for governor.
I talked to Madigan about a gubernatorial bid on Saturday night — she was here for President Barack Obama’s Inauguration festivities — and my takeaway from the conversation is she wants to run whether or not Bill Daley also gets in a Democratic primary to challenge Gov. Pat Quinn.
The main consequence of Madigan, 46, inching toward a bid is this: We now know the politically vulnerable Quinn is heading toward a colossal primary fight because he is going to be facing strong opponents, either Madigan, Daley or both in the March 18, 2014, balloting.
“She had made special outreach to labor and they know it, they’ve noticed in terms of her showing up at events and the like,” Durbin told me. “I don’t think she has made a final decision. I know she is in the process of making a decision.”
When Madigan mulled a Senate run in 2009, she mustered little enthusiasm when we talked about the prospect of what would have been a Democratic primary contest and taking a job where she would have to commute between Chicago and Washington.
That was not the case when we chatted about a 2014 Democratic primary for governor at the Illinois Inaugural Gala. This time, she’s hungry.
As we talked, with her husband, Pat Byrnes by her side, Madigan, was the one who reminded me that her kids were older now and more independent: Rebecca is 8 and Lucy turns 5 next month.
Durbin told me he assumes Quinn is running for re-election. As for getting involved in a primary, Durbin, who is up for re-election in 2014, said, “My plan is to stay out.”
Gov. Pat Quinn sidestepped whether he is concerned about possibly the strongest indicator yet that four-term Attorney General Lisa Madigan is considering running against him for governor in 2014.
“I’m not really doing politics right now,” Quinn said Tuesday following a school safety summit in Springfield. “I think it’s better to do policy…there will be plenty of time to focus on politics later on.”
