* Former state Sen. Chris Lauzen has created a Kane County Board Executive Committee, which is comprised of 14 of the board’s 24 members. Lauzen, who was elected chairman last year, has decreed that the other ten can’t speak at meetings unless they sign up in advance like the rest of the public and limit themselves to an on-topic three minutes of commentary.
Needless to say, that new policy isn’t going over well with the “out of the loop ten,” including board member Mark Davoust…
“It seems ridiculous to me that I have to come in here as a member of the public to speak,” Davoust said. “I was elected by the public to speak.”
He pointed out that all county board members are allowed to speak at lower-level committee meetings and the full board meeting. However, the Executive Committee is often the first time board members hear all the background on a pending vote.
That’s a big problem, said county board member Jesse Vazquez, because a majority of the county board, 14 members, sit on the Executive Committee. That makes the full county board meeting mostly a rubber stamp for the Executive Committee, Vazquez said.
“This is, as Shakespeare would say, much ado about nothing. For these guys who are complaining, you should ask what you’re producing of value in your service that matters to your constituents. We have bigger issues. Quit your bellyaching.”
*** UPDATE *** Robin Kelly’s campaign says this is a cable buy. Here’s the Comcast report…
Robin Kelly for Congress
Democratic Candidate for US Congress in D2 Special Election
Agency: Adelstein Liston, Chicago
$26,795 Total Buy for Comcast Spotlight
2/8 – 2/17/13
Networks bought: BET, CNN, DISC, ESPN, MNBC, TBS, TLC, TNT, USA
Dayparts: 4-7P, 7P-midnight
Syscodes / Zones / $ by zone
1734 / South Suburban / $7,400
1796 / Chicago Central / $6,175
1798 / Chicago South / $5,605
1820 / Orland Park / $7,615
Total Buy: $26,795
Not much.
[ *** End Of Update *** ]
* Robin Kelly has a new TV ad. I’ll tell you if I find out how much is behind this ad and where it’s playing. Rate it…
* Script…
Robin Kelly:
It’s heartbreaking.
There are kids dying everyday.
Every one of us has been touched in some way.
We all need to say enough is enough.
Announcer:
Robin Kelly has spent her career fighting to get deadly weapons off our streets.
In the legislature she worked with Barack Obama to crack down on illegal gun sales.
In Congress Kelly will keep taking on the NRA.
Fighting to ban assault weapons and outlaw high capacity ammunition clips.
Robin Kelly:
If we succeed in saving even one life, then it’s worth it.
* The Super PAC Progressive Kick claims this ad will be “disseminated via cable TV and web ads in the district as well as emailed to 90,000 Democratic primary voters.” The ad begins with a visually striking special effect. Rate it…
The group raised over $800K last year, and had only about $87K on hand at the end of December. They could’ve raised more since then, though.
Wrigley Field is turning 100, and the Chicago Cubs want fans to help commemorate the milestone.
The home of the Cubs will reach the century mark next year. On Wednesday, the Cubs announced the “Wrigley Field Turns 100 Logo Contest.”
Fans are invited to enter a design to be used as the official logo during a yearlong celebration in 2014. A Cubs spokeswoman says the winning logo may be featured at the ballpark, on merchandise and possibly on the team’s uniforms.
* The Question: Wrigley Field 100th anniversary logo suggestions?
Best response wins a $20 gift card at Springfield’s Grab-a-Java. Our last winner was VanillaMan, who has returned to fine form.
* Daily Kos’ founder is really out to get 2nd Congressional District candidate Sen. Toi Hutchinson. Markos Moulitsas has endorsed Robin Kelly and he’s been posting at least daily rants on the pro-gun positions of both Hutchinson and Debbie Halvorson. Kos’ latest is a now-deleted 2011 Facebook post…
The Illinois State Rifle Association is the state affiliate of the National Rifle Association, and she had no problem attending their fundraisers, scooping up their cash, and enabling their agenda in Springfield.
Yet now she wants to run from that record and claim that she’s pulled a Mitt Romney—180-degree overnight conversion when politically expedient. She claims Sandy Hook made her change her mind, but 500 gun-related deaths in Chicago last year didn’t?
Dart says he’s been impressed with Beale as the two have worked on a number of issues, both while Dart was a state lawmaker and as sheriff. Dart and Beale scheduled a news conference Thursday.
“There’s no way that I believe this poll is accurate,” said Beale campaign spokeswoman Delmarie Cobb.
The poll… puts Kelly in the lead of top candidates in raw numbers and a statistical tie with Debbie Halvorson when the margin of error is taken into account. Previously, Halvorson had led in every poll.
Cobb’s argument is voter turnout will be greatest in the city and Beale is the only city candidate in a field of 16 Democrats. The 2nd congressional district stretches into Will and Kankakee counties.
“Forty percent of the vote comes from the city. Sixty percent of the vote comes from the South Suburbs. You’ve got, Toi, Robin, Debbie and everybody else running for the 60 percent. Anthony has … - 98 percent of the 9th ward is in the 2nd congressional district.”
I dunno. Chicago has a lot of the district’s population, but most people expect city turnout to be abysmal.
Also, release your own poll if you don’t like Kelly’s. Give us some data.
Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan on Thursday announced the House Judiciary Committee will convene public hearings later this month on the issue of expanding gun safety laws and reviewing the recent federal court ruling concerning the unlawful use of weapons.
“In light of events in recent months in Illinois and in other parts of the country, it’s appropriate and necessary that we give a full vetting to proposed state legislation on this matter,” Madigan said. “These hearings will provide an opportunity for gun safety advocates, gun rights supporters and members of the law enforcement community to offer their views and argue their cases to legislators and the people of Illinois.”
Last December, a federal appeals court struck down Illinois’ law on the unlawful use of weapons, requiring the state to adopt a law allowing residents to carry firearms in some form. Just three days later, a gunman carrying a semi-automatic rifle and two pistols murdered 20 schoolchildren and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
The court ruling and the incident at Sandy Hook highlight the need to review Illinois law with an eye toward either making gun ownership and possession less cumbersome on law-abiding citizens or toughening firearm restrictions to better limit gun violence.
The first House Judiciary Committee hearing will be held Tuesday, Feb. 19 at 12 p.m. in Room 114 of the State Capitol in Springfield. A second hearing will take place Friday, Feb. 22 at 10 a.m. in the sixth floor committee room of the Michael A. Bilandic Building in Chicago. Advocates concerned with all aspects of the firearms issue will be invited to testify.
Available seating for the hearings will be limited, and those who wish to attend will be required to show official state identification and pass through strict security
Rep. Elaine Nekritz chairs the Judiciary Committee. It has a diverse membership, with some pretty strong progun guys like Rep. John Bradley and some gun control folks like vice-chair Rep. Ann Williams.
* Across the rotunda, Sen. Kwame Raoul will lead the majority party’s effort to find a compromise. From a press release…
State Senator Kwame Raoul (D-13th) filed legislation yesterday that will become a negotiated concealed carry proposal. Senate President John Cullerton designated Raoul to bring together all voices in the gun debate to develop a legislative response to Judge Richard Posner’s December ruling, which set a 180-day deadline for action. Language drafted in the course of negotiations will be added to Senate Bill 1337.
“The negotiations I lead will respect firearm owners’ constitutional protections as interpreted by the Supreme Court and lower courts, and it will acknowledge the fact that there are many law-abiding Illinois gun owners who legitimately wish to use guns for sport and self-protection,” Raoul said. “At the same time, we will also acknowledge the alarming prevalence of gun violence and the need to keep guns out of the hands of those most likely to use them for harm.”
Illinois is the last remaining state in the nation not to provide for some form of concealed carry. On Dec. 11, Judge Posner, writing for the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, declared unconstitutional the state’s restrictions on carrying a firearm in public. It gave the Illinois General Assembly until June 9, 2013, to change the law.
“While I respect and appreciate the attorney general’s request for review by a full panel of the appeals court, the legislature can’t ignore its responsibility,” Raoul said. “The 49 states that allow concealed carry do not have identical policies, and we need to find an approach that’s right for Illinois. But let me be clear – we must comply with the court’s mandate, and we will.”
* If you haven’t watched the new PBS documentary on Henry Ford, you should. When Ford raised wages to $5 a day, doubling the going rate, he was attacked by his fellow industrialists and called an anarchist and a class traitor and confidently predicted Ford’s bankruptcy.
But one of Ford’s big problems at his factories was high employee turnover. People just didn’t like working at such repetitive tasks. Pretty much anybody could do those tasks, by design, but people just didn’t like doing them. Raising wages meant he attracted the best of the best and retained them for much longer.
* That documentary came to mind while I was reading an interesting story in today’s Tribune about Gov. Quinn’s State of the State proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour over a period of four years…
Chris Ondrula, chief executive of Downers Grove-based Heartland Food, which has more than 3,500 minimum wage employees at 178 Burger King restaurants in Illinois, said a wage hike would be ill-timed because he’s already dealing with higher prices for commodities and bracing for higher costs as the federal health care overhaul takes effect.
“The ripple effects are exponential,” Ondrula said. A restaurant that is marginally profitable, he said, might become unprofitable and be forced to close.
[…]
Ondrula’s views on job losses that could stem from a higher minimum wage were once widely shared by economists. But a now-famous case study published in 1994 by labor economists David Card and Alan Krueger began to change conventional wisdom. They compared employment trends in fast-food restaurants in New Jersey, which had just hiked its minimum wage, with trends in neighboring Pennsylvania, and found little impact on low-wage workers.
Berkeley’s Reich, along with two economists from the universities of Massachusetts Amherst and North Carolina, expanded on the research by examining restaurant employment in neighboring counties in different states with different minimum wage levels. They studied 16 years’ worth of data and found no negative effects on low-wage employment.
Instead, they found that higher wages reduced employee turnover, which saves business money.
Other academic research has found that minimum wage hikes increase consumer spending. A study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported that immediately following a wage increase, incomes in households with minimum wage earners rose on average by about $1,000 a year and spending by roughly $2,800 a year. Much of new spending was on automobiles.
Although the state already has one of the highest rates in the nation, Quinn argued another boost would help increase the quality of life for residents.
“Nobody in Illinois should work 40 hours a week and live in poverty,” Quinn said during his speech. “That’s a principle as old as the Bible.”
Quinn is seeking to revive a proposal that was floated last year but didn’t make it out of committee. Still, lawmakers said that such a proposal would need cooperation from the business community to get any traction.
The Illinois Retail Merchants Association and the Illinois Chamber of Commerce came out against the measure, saying Quinn should focus on the state’s massive financial problems. Illinois has the worst pension problem of any state in the country and billions in unpaid bills.
“Another minimum wage hike will only hurt those who are looking for a job and those who employ them in this challenging economy,” David Vite, the president of the merchants association, said in a statement. “It’s rather disappointing that Governor Quinn is supporting another job-killing proposal instead of focusing on solving our budget crisis and our bankrupt pension system.” […]
The chamber characterized the increase as “an untimely, ill-advised and outrageous proposal.”
Kim Clarke Maisch, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said it is ironic that Quinn is telling small business owners how to run their businesses when the state budget is a mess.
Lightford also seeks the elimination of the “tip credit,” which currently allows employers to pay as low as $4.95 per hour to employees who work for tips. This essentially amounts to the customer subsidizing a worker’s legally guaranteed wages.
This makes it even more difficult for a tipped worker to earn a living wage, because without precise documentation of tip income — the burden for which falls on the employee — a worker will have a difficult time obtaining a car loan or a mortgage if their employer only has to pay them $4.95 per hour.
Congressional investigators have recommended a full House Ethics Committee probe of Rep. Aaron Schock for allegedly soliciting contributions of more than $5,000 for a political action committee to help an Illinois colleague engaged in a bitter primary battle last year, records released today showed.
Reps. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), Ethics chairman and ranking member, announced Thursday that they will continue to probe the allegations against Schock under their own authority but will not create a special investigative panel.
The decision by Conaway and Sanchez makes it unlikely that Schock will ever be sanctioned by the Ethics Committee.
Even without a sanction, this revelation is gonna make for some devastating TV ads if Schock decides to run for governor. Just devastating.
Schock has been under investigation for urging House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor to shift $25,000 from his leadership PAC to the Campaign for Primary Accountability to assist Rep. Adam Kinzinger in his March 2012 GOP primary victory over Rep. Donald Manzullo in the state’s new 16th District.
But investigators said that between March 14 and March 17 — three days before the primary contest, the Campaign for Primary Accountability received at least $115,000 in contributions “as a result of the efforts of Representative Schock and his campaign committee.”
In addition to Cantor’s leadership PAC, the 18th District GOP central committee donated $25,000. Other donors investigators cited were David Herro, a wealthy money manager from Chicago who gave $35,000, and Anne Dias Griffin, who gave $30,000. Dias Griffin is a Chicago hedge fund manager and founder of Reboot Illinois, a GOP-oriented social media operation.
Reboot Illinois has a story on its front page about possible jail time for former Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., but nothing about the Schock story.
A spokesman for the Peoria Republican dismissed the announcement as “just one more step in the long process of adjudicating ethics complaints that can be submitted by anyone for any reason.”
“The complaint in this case is entirely without merit,” said Steve Dutton, Schock’s communications director. “We remain firmly convinced that Congressman Schock will be exonerated when the Ethics Committee examines the complaint and in due course resolves this matter. We fully cooperated with the OCE review, and we will continue to cooperate as the Ethics Committee now conducts its own review.”
Freshman U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, did not cooperate with the Office of Congressional Ethics in its initial probe of alleged campaign finance violations by U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Peoria.
“The OCE infers that the information Mr. Davis refused to provide, taken together with the factual findings in this referral, supports the conclusion that there is substantial reason to believe that the alleged violation occurred,” the OCE said in a report made public Wednesday.
The report recommends that Davis and three other non-cooperating witnesses be subpoenaed. […]
Davis said the report does not suggest any improprieties on his part.
Wait. He mummed up and refused to talk to investigators? That requires some explaining from the freshman. And that sure looks like it was improper.
The investigatory panel said Davis, who was formerly a staffer for Republican U.S. Rep. John Shimkus of Collinsville until his election in November to Congress, was a “non-cooperating” witness. Davis, investigators said, helped steer money to the Campaign for Primary Accountability.
Also listed as “non-cooperating witnesses” by investigators were Michael Bigger, chairman of the 18th District Central GOP committee, and Rob Collins, a former chief of staff to Cantor, the report said.
Sneed has learned a plea deal is now on the table between former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and federal authorities probing allegations of campaign fund misuse.
Sneed is told the plea deal includes Jackson serving time in federal prison.
“Significant jail time is now definitely a part of the deal,” said a top Sneed source close to the probe.
“But I think [Jackson’s wife] Sandi, feels like she was thrown under the bus by her husband, ” now that a separate probe has begun on her, a second source added.
Sandi Jackson claims she was stunned by campaign finance abuse disclosures against her husband, who has been treated for mental disorders and allegedly spent $40,000 on a Rolex watch purchased with campaign funds.
For 38 minutes, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn spoke enthusiastically, even lovingly of “our Illinois” without answering any questions about how the state will deal with its $130 billion pension debt, $9 billion in unpaid bills, or hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts that are certain to come this spring.
Quinn hammered home the theme of “This is our Illinois” throughout his State of the State speech Wednesday.
Many lawmakers, state officials and policy makers were unimpressed.
Lawmakers from both parties said Wednesday they were disappointed that Gov. Pat Quinn didn’t go further in his State of the State speech to outline how he will accomplish the elusive goal of pension reform. […]
“What he said on pension reform is no different than what he has said a thousand times,” said Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, the third ranking Democrat in the House. “We need to do pension reform, but just saying it doesn’t get it done.”
Illinois has an unfunded pension liability approaching $100 billion. Its bond rating is ever-sinking, and it has billions in unpaid bills. But you’d hardly know we live in “Deadbeat Illinois” from listening to Gov. Pat Quinn’s State of The State speech.
Quinn made only scattered references to the state’s most pressing problem — a stifling public-employee pension deficit, but the squeeze it puts on other government spending was an undercurrent throughout the governor’s fifth State of the State address.
“I am disappointed because I don’t feel like what he talked about is going to change the direction of Illinois,” said Ted Dabrowski, vice president of policy for the Illinois Policy Institute. “He didn’t talk about what really mattered, which is in-depth pension reform, and how to increase prosperity in Illinois to make us a more competitive state.”
* I disagree that he didn’t “answer any questions” about the pension debt. Quinn came out forcefully for SB1, Senate President John Cullerton’s hybrid pension reform bill. You may not like it, others may not like it, either. But that’s definitely one solution. And, unlike his past vague pronouncements, this is an actual bill with real live language that can be debated, amended and reconstructed as necessary. That’s a specific, which has been lacking in the past.
And his support of SB1 was different than what he’s said “a thousand times” before. Plus, this is a speech, not action. So, yeah, saying it doesn’t get it done, but was he supposed to call for a vote right then and there while he was at the podium?
And as far as the budget goes, the budget address is in March.
Quinn spent most of his last State of the State address talking about pensions. It didn’t move the ball forward. Everybody knows that pension reform is a huge issue. He proposed a workable, specific legislative solution yesterday.
* State of the Union and State of the State addresses usually include references to what has been done. Mark Brown compiled a list…
Although often derided for his ability to get things done in Springfield, the fact is that a lot of important and difficult legislation has been approved by the General Assembly and signed into law under Quinn, much of it with mixed popularity. […]
◆ Created and funded a long-sought public works program, Illinois Jobs Now, for rebuilding the state’s infrastructure.
◆ Overhauled the state’s Medicaid program to keep it from going broke.
◆ Changed the workers compensation program to save businesses millions of dollars in insurance premiums.
◆ Legalized civil unions for gays and lesbians.
◆ Established temporary driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.
◆ Approved a bipartisan education-reform package with benchmarks for teacher evaluations.
◆ Ethics reforms including establishing voter recall for Illinois governors, limits on campaign contributions and elimination of the scandal-plagued legislative scholarship program.
◆ Reduced pension benefits for new state employees.
◆ Closed 54 state facilities to save money over opposition from unions and local politicians of both parties.
I’m not saying Quinn was the moving force behind each of these measures, but all of it would have been hard to do without him.
* These sorts of addresses also usually provide an outline for where the president or governor wants to go. And Quinn did that as well with a whole lot of proposals that we’ll get to today.
But, as far as I’m concerned, he said what he had to say on pensions. Now comes the hard part.
