29 Comments - Roadiepig - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 2:47 pm: Whole lot of spending going down. Guess this somehow proves Madigan’s need for using ” police powers” to gut employees pensions? - Roadiepig - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 2:47 pm: Guess I should say “could be going down” to be factual - LincolnLounger - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:10 pm: I wonder how much will be devoted to the billions of dollars in unpaid bills? New heights of fiscal irresponsibility may yet be achieved. - WizzardOfOzzie - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:11 pm: Who’s district is the fertilizer plant in? - Rich Miller - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:11 pm: This ain’t direct spending. - hisgirlfriday - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:15 pm: No money for honoring state contracts with workers or vendors, but corporate welfare? There’s always taxpayer money for corporate welfare at the Illinois general assembly. - Living in Machiaville - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:28 pm: Really? Really? This demonstrates once again how the hopelessly misaligned group in the statehouse cannot govern correctly. On one hand they create a “commission” to oversee a strategic state economic development plan for the state. Then on the other hand they pass a bill which disregards the strategic plan concept and instead picks winners and losers all over the state in the name economic development. Somehow in their infinite wisdom, they already know the formula for economic development success (since we can all bear witness to the unbridled business/jobs growth we are experiencing!) What a bunch of schizo’s running the joint. - Small Town Taxpayer - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:30 pm: At over 370 pages, will the members of the GA have time to read this bill? Will they be able to understand what it all means? I think the answer is no considering that they have other major issues are on their minds. I think the GA needs to focus its efforts on two issues: next years budget and the unfunded pension liability. With the end of the session almost at hand they have much better things to think about than this bill. - mid-level - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:33 pm: Off topic and I know there is a lot going on but …. I’d like to bring up the point that if the Sox were embarrassing the Cubs that there would be something mentioned on this blog. - Langhorne - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:44 pm: Wow. Two days to go, and a cullerton/currie bill becomes a vehicle becomes this big multi-faceted monster. Unless these proposals have been routinely considered elsewhere in this GA, it is a fantastic testimonial to excellent lobbying, sunshine, transparency, adherence to constitutional process , and the power of the majority. We cant do pensions, gambling, bill backlog, etc. , but we can do this? Classic. - RNUG - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:47 pm: Rich, It ain’t direct spending but it is still part of the State’s total debt structure and it still requires payments from State funds of one kind or another. Debt is debt, regardless of the form. As I noted late the other night, depending on who’s numbers you use, the State’s pension indebtedness “today” is about $100B and all other borrowing / debt “today” appears to be about $165B. Between the pensions and other debt, about 1/3 of the State budget is pre-committed right off the top. - CircularFiringSquad - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:49 pm: If ILCA still gave out the pickle the IL Senate led by ChopperJim has just won - Living in Machiaville - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:49 pm: ‘mid-level’ brings up a VERY good point, even if off topic. Nicely played. - Hyperbolic Chamber - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 3:58 pm: Ozzie - it’s Rose/Brown - Chicago Cynic - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 4:07 pm: Yes, fertilizer plant in an R district. Many of the other projects in D districts. - Precinct Captain - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 4:07 pm: ==they have much better things to think about than this bill.== What about the jobs, jobs, jobs? - RNUG - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 4:14 pm: Another “we have to pass it to see what is in it” bill. I could be mis-reading things but from a really quick scan … Brownfield / intermodal = railroads = I’m guessing it primarily benefits Chicago suburbs and Union Pacific Redefing LUST fund operations as public works, transfers of up to $18M annually into the LUST fund from various State revenues like sales and use taxes … bingo, back door transfer of a small amount of funding into “reclaimation / green” projects. There are some qualifiers and take-backs on the funds buried at the end of the bill, but I’m not going to try to analyze all of them. Anybody else notice the transfer schedule from Build Illinois to McCormick Place Met. Authority? It’s not new but it’s interesting. Seems like those bonds are also back-end loaded and on a ramp of sorts … the only difference is, years ago, they specificed a specific dollar amount of increase every year, so from a budgeting standpoint it’s able to be projected and managed. - hisgirlfriday - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 4:53 pm: Is the Mccormick place stuff rahms depaul arena boondoggle (which of course requires rosemont giveaways to make up for losing depaul)? Have we ever heard who owns the land being bought for the mccormick expansion btw? - wordslinger - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 5:05 pm: Is there a real-life private developer to be part of the public-private development of a Peotone Airport? Is there anyone who really wants that white elephant now that Trips is gone? Farmland is going pretty high right now, the state should cash out and be done with it. The airlines sure don’t want it or think they need it. You can’t get people to fly out of Gary, who’s going to schlep down to Peotone? - 47th Ward - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 5:13 pm: Lots of Will County reps just added as sponsors. Somebody there likes the airport idea, whatever it is that this bill actually does. - truthteller - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 5:20 pm: I was at a meeting of “stakeholders” on the McCormick Event center that included 15 plus city and McCormick officials plus the DePaul Treasurer where the premise was to engage with the community before an architect was hired and the plan formalized. The community raised a number of better, available and workable sites for the event center and consideration of same was said to follow. Now the bill is filed and the block is identified. “Rahming” it through I guess. So much for participatory Democracy. - Six Degrees of Separation - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 5:36 pm: @word…I’m a little closer to the action at SSA than I care to be, but glad I’m not directly involved. Two or three things to remember. One, JJJr was not and is not the only person of stature interested in the airport. Two, if a P3 agreement is made, the private sector will look at this 20 ways from Sunday and spend millions in due diligence until jumping in. Third, I always regard airline’s (or railroads or public utilities) public “interest” or lack thereof in a project as a negotiating stance until proven otherwise. - Don't get too attached to the dog - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 5:38 pm: Sponsored by Bradley. I guess the McCormick Place expansion will give Bradley more to do when he’s staying at luxury Chicago hotels on his campaign fund. http://www.thereisaway.us/2013/05/illinois-fracking-rules-sponsor-buys.html - hisgirlfriday - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 7:06 pm: So does this bill fund the air traffic controllers for the South Suburban Airport? Since USDOT isn’t really into that stuff any more. - Skirmisher - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 7:25 pm: Direct spending, indirect spending; What is the difference?? Until Illinois gets out of debt and on solid financial ground, pork should not be a part of any budget. “Development” spending is pork by another name. Misgovernance dies hard in Illinois. In fact, it rarely gets so much as a sniffle. - Judy, Judy, Judy - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 8:08 pm: Saw that lots of Will County representatives got added as sponsors to SB0020 which give IDOT authority over the proposed Peotone Airport. What a waste of tax dollars for an airport not support by the airlines of the residents. But, I guess the political pay backs to support this legislation outweigh right from wrong. SB0020 is sheer madness and Springfield is full of elected officials who are blind to constituents, because of the expected campaign contributions. Hope more then most have sense to vote NO for SB0020. - Judy, Judy, Judy - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 8:27 pm: Sorry for the typos in my swiftly typed message above - but I think you get the point. IDOT behaves like the IRS - OUT OF CONTROL! - Judy, Judy, Judy - Thursday, May 30, 13 @ 9:28 pm: Well looks like the YES votes have it……IDOT controls the proposed airport. - Anonymous - Friday, May 31, 13 @ 9:07 am: Word- Imagine a future with high-speed rail connections between all the Chicagoland airports … and that makes a Will County hub a bit less of a schlep. It would capitalize on assets and talents that Chicago already has while pushing the smart transportation concepts to the leading edge. The future is in designing smarter and more attractive cities and effecient transportation hubs around Chicagoland still sounds like a good gamble to me. I say keep the land and keep fighting for the concept. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.