Question of the day
Thursday, Aug 1, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* As we all know, Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon announced her campaign for comptroller yesterday. A photo from an event…
Let’s all have a little lighthearted fun and welcome her to the campaign. Yesterday’s post got a bit nasty (some of it for good reason, but you should’ve gotten it outta your systems by now), so try to keep it light today.
* The Question: Caption?
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Reform stuff
Thursday, Aug 1, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Ted McClelland shows us why much of the negative media hoopla and reformer complaints about the congressional district maps are off base…
However, Madigan may have cut it too close in a few districts. Congressional incumbents win re-election 90 percent of the time, due to fundraising advantages and gerrymandering. But according the Cook Political Report, Illinois has some of the most competitive congressional races in the nation.
The 10th District, where former Rep. Bob Dold will try to reclaim the seat Brad Schneider took from him 2012, is one of only seven of 435 congressional elections rated in the “Toss-Up” category.
In western Illinois, two districts are rated as “Lean Democratic,” meaning the incumbents have a slight advantage. In the 12th District, freshman Rep. Bill Enyart is running against state Rep. Mike Bost of Murphysboro, a well-known legislator who has served in the General Assembly since 1995. In the 17th District, Rep. Cheri Bustos will have a rematch with Bobby Schilling, whom she defeated in 2012. (Schilling’s website asks voters to “help re-elect Bobby Schilling.”)
If Schneider, Enyart and Bustos win, they may solidify the Democrats’ holds on those districts. But for now, Illinois will be one of the most exciting states to watch on Election Night 2014.
Not to mention the Rodney Davis race.
Yes, Democrats kicked Republican tail last year, but that had a lot to do with it being a presidential year and the home-state guy on the top of the ballot.
Bill Foster won by 17 points last year, but his district, as currently drawn, gave wins to both Bill Brady and Mark Kirk in 2010.
The editorial boards which constantly harp on this topic never actually look at the reality. Some are just lazily repeating talking points, others ought to know better.
Also, it was Senate President Cullerton, not Speaker Madigan, who drew most of the congressional district maps. Madigan was heavily involved in Jerry Costello’s district and Dan Lipinski’s district. Other than that, it was pretty much all Cullerton.
* In other news, many suburban Cook municipalities require candidate petitioners to gather 5 percent of votes cast in the last election, so I really don’t think this is such a huge deal. Also, petitions are only a tiny part of the campaign process. Doubling the number doesn’t mean doubling the entire campaign effort…
Do you know that a new law will make it twice as hard to run for alderman in 2015 as it was in the last election?
If you didn’t — and almost no one does — welcome to the world of sneaky Springfield politics, in which what some call the new “aldermanic protection plan” gets enacted without anyone really noticing.
The measure involved will double the number of petition signatures from qualified voters that will be needed to run from alderman from 2 percent of the votes cast in the last election to 4 percent. In other words, it’ll be twice as hard to dump turkey incumbents.
In most cases, that means a candidate will need something like 300 to 600 signatures, up from roughly 150 to 300 now, according to Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen. (The figures vary because voter turnout rates sharply vary from ward to ward.) But since election lawyers tend to pick apart petitions on all sorts of teeny technicalities — i.e. someone signed “Dick” rather than “Richard” — the wise candidate will secure at least twice the minimum number of signatures needed. That means that under the new law a candidate really will need 600 to 1,200 signatures, and getting them is no easy task.
There are some real reforms the General Assembly should make regarding the petition process. In most counties, you gotta staple your petitions together. If you use paperclips in those counties, you’re off the ballot. Other counties allow paperclips.
That’s just one example. There are many, many more.
* I’m not sure why this was needed, and nobody wants to admit to inserting it into the bill, so maybe they oughtta just repeal it during the veto session…
Calling the measure illegal and unconstitutional, Lake County officials are seeking an injunction to stop a new state law that strips away the county clerk’s election oversight.
Lake County Board Chairman Aaron Lawlor filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Waukegan to halt the change, which Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law as part of a wide-reaching piece of election-related legislation.
The law orders Lake County’s chief judge to create a five-member commission that will manage future elections, starting with the spring primary.
Lawlor is represented in the matter by Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Nerheim, and the duo held a news conference Tuesday to announce the move.
* Hilarious…
Rep. Andre Thapedi, D-Chicago, one of the co-sponsors of the bill in the House, said he didn’t know how the clause was added.
Republican lawmakers from Lake County have speculated that the provision was politically motivated by Democrats. The county clerk, Willard Helander, is a Republican.
State Sen. Terry Link, a Democrat from Lake County and a longtime Helander adversary, said Tuesday that he supported the idea but again denied he was behind the clause.
“And I have zero idea who it was,” he said.
* Gov. Pat Quinn was asked about it yesterday…
Online voter registration was a bigger priority to Gov. Pat Quinn than not expanding the size of government in a state that leads the nation in units of government.
That’s why Quinn didn’t use his amendatory veto power to pull the plug on the controversial creation of a Lake County election commission in a sweeping election bill he signed Saturday.
“I looked at the whole bill. It included the opportunity to have online voter registration. I thought that was a good thing,” Quinn said Wednesday. “The legislature, in its wisdom on this particular bill, voted for a board of election commissioners in Lake County. I thought it was appropriate to move forward as quickly as we can with the election bill itself, especially online voter registration. We’ve got to get that ready for next year, so I acted.”
If Quinn had cut the Lake County election board provision out of the bill, it would have been sent back to lawmakers to either accept or reject his changes. The move would have at least delayed the plan becoming law. And if lawmakers disagreed about how to proceed, Quinn and lawmakers who support online voter registration could have been left with nothing, he said.
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The day has finally arrived
Thursday, Aug 1, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sun-Times…
Gov. Pat Quinn will make Illinois the 20th state to legalize the use of marijuana to treat dozens of incapacitating and life-threatening illnesses by signing legislation authorizing the drug’s use, his office confirmed Wednesday evening.
Quinn has scheduled a Thursday bill-signing ceremony at the University of Chicago’s Center for Care and Discovery to enact a law his office said would “ease pain for those who suffer from debilitating medical conditions.”
The governor’s action comes on legislation that took repeated efforts over several years to pass the General Assembly amid worries that using marijuana as a legal drug might serve as a gateway for some to embark on more serious drug use.
The legislation Quinn will sign establishes a four-year pilot program in which those suffering from one of 42 named ailments or diseases, including cancer, HIV/AIDS and ALS, could obtain the drug with a doctor’s prescription.
This will be the most restrictive law in the nation. I don’t particularly like that, but the idea is to get something passed to show the citizenry that society won’t collapse. Once that happens, the General Assembly can move forward with other bills.
I have advocated for medical marijuana for years and I have watched as comments opposed to the idea have faded away. Yes, there is still opposition, quite a bit of it nursed and ginned up by people and companies with a vested interest in the completely failed “War on Drugs.”
But this law is simple common sense. We have plenty of legal drugs in this country that kill people, addict them, give them horrific side effects. Marijuana doesn’t do that.
So, I for one am a very happy man today.
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Oh, c’mon
Thursday, Aug 1, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sheila Simon went after Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka with a pretty bogus charge yesterday…
Simon contended Topinka, a veteran politician who is in her first term as comptroller, has failed to serve a watchdog role over local government accounting. Simon specifically cited the looting of Dixon’s coffers by city Comptroller Rita Crundwell of nearly $54 million over 22 years. Crundwell was sentenced earlier this year to almost 20 years in prison.
“Where was the (state) comptroller’s office?” Simon asked. “Their office said they didn’t review the information, they’re just a repository and that’s it. Well that’s not good enough.”
There are something like 8,000 units of local government in this state. They’re all required to conduct outside independent audits, which cost anywhere between $10,000 to $100,000, and then the state comptroller makes sure the firms are on the up and up.
But Dixon’s comptroller completely bamboozled its outside auditor. So what’s the state supposed to do then? Should the state actually pay to conduct its own outside audits on all of those local units after they conduct outside audits, too? That’d be a heckuva lot of money, Sheila.
One idea might be to have the Illinois Auditor General do some random audits of local governments just to gauge how things are going. Or maybe the state comptroller could do that. But I’m not sure what those audits would find that independent audits hadn’t already turned up.
Either way, JBT is definitely not to blame for Dixon. That’s all on Dixon. Simon was just trying to score a cheap political point.
You also gotta wonder what Dan Hynes thinks about this, since the Democrat Hynes was state comptroller during the vast majority of Dixon’s looting.
* This, on the other hand, is what the state comptroller is supposed to do. From late June…
Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka on Thursday announced that she has asked the state Attorney General to investigate the Village of Washington Park after it failed to submit required financial reports for seven years.
Local governments are required to file certain Annual Financial Reports, Audits and TIF reports with the Office of the Comptroller, which serves as a repository for the records. Washington Park is mandated to file AFRs, Audits and a financial report for its TIF District. The municipality, however, has not filed its AFR and Audit reports in seven years, and has never filed a report for its TIF, which was created in 2004.
After repeated attempts to bring the Village into compliance, the Comptroller retained an independent auditing firm to examine the municipality’s financial records. Washington Park, however, either did not or was not able to provide adequate documentation to complete the audit.
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The fix is in
Thursday, Aug 1, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Maybe Illinois should offer S&P some more business and they’d rate our state bonds higher, too. From the New York Times…
The Wall Street ratings game is back.
Five years after inflated credit ratings helped touch off the financial crisis, the nation’s largest ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, is winning business again by offering more favorable ratings.
S.& P. has been giving higher grades than its big rivals to certain mortgage-backed securities just as Wall Street is eagerly trying to revive the market for these investments, according to an analysis conducted for The New York Times by Commercial Mortgage Alert, which collects data on the industry. S.& P.’s chase for business is notable because it is fighting a government lawsuit accusing it of similar action before the financial crisis.
As the company battles those accusations, industry participants say it has once again been moving to capture business by offering Wall Street underwriters higher ratings than other agencies will offer. And it has apparently worked. Banks have shown a new willingness to hire S.& P. to rate their bonds, tripling its market share in the first half of 2013. Its biggest rivals have been much less likely to give higher ratings.
Sheesh.
* Meanwhile, I asked the governor’s budget office for comment the other day about something our commenter “Reality Check” noted on the site.
Check out this Illinois Procurement Bulletin for a 2011 Illinois bond sale. Then go check out the Civic Committee’s membership list.
As you know, Ty Fahner brought some heat on the Civic Committee when he revealed that he and some members of the prominent business group had met with bond rating agencies to complain that their Illinois ratings were too high, in order to create a climate for pension reform.
So far, the media has pretty much ignored the story.
Below, you’ll see the overlap between the state list of qualified firms for that 2011 bond sale and the Civic Committee membership list. The state’s list only has company names. I added Civic Committee members names to that list. Keep that in mind when reading this. The personal names listed below aren’t on the state’s site. Also, we don’t yet know if any of these folks were among the group that met with the rating agencies.
Crystal clear? OK…
Please find below a list of respondents qualified to provide senior banking/book running services to the State of Illinois through the July 12, 2011 Request for Qualifications:
ELLEN COSTELLO
CEO and US Countryhead - BMO Financial Corp.
JOHN R. ETTELSON
President and Chief Executive Officer - William Blair & Company
MATTHEW R. GIBSON
Partner, Head of Investment Banking, Midwest Region - Goldman, Sachs & Co.
JAMES T. GLERUM, JR.
Managing Director and Chairman, Regional Banking for North America - Citigroup, Corporate and Investment Banking
JOSEPH A. GREGOIRE
State Chairman for Illinois Banking - PNC Bank
TIMOTHY P. MALONEY
Illinois President - Bank of America
RICHARD S. PRICE
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer - Mesirow Financial
GLENN TILTON
Chairman of the Midwest Region - JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Please find below a list of respondents qualified to provide co-senior bank services to the State of Illinois through the July 12, 2011 Request for Qualifications:
Maybe Abdon Pallasch will finally return my messages so I can let you know what our government thinks about all this.
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* From a few days ago…
Local political leaders have signed an open letter urging Cardinal Francis George not to halt church funding for immigrant-rights groups that support same-sex marriage.
Last month, Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown reported the Catholic Church was upset over a statement the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights issued in May supporting “marriage equality” for same-sex partners. Cardinal George has opposed legislation in Springfield that would legalize gay marriage.
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the anti-poverty arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has provided grants to several members of the immigrant-rights coalition. Their funding agreements prohibit them from pursuing an agenda contrary to Roman Catholic teaching. The archdiocese has the final say on approving the grants.
When church officials learned of the immigrant-rights coalition’s position on gay marriage, they contacted the grant recipients and told them to forget about future funding unless they withdrew from the coalition and renounced its gay-marriage position.
* From their letter…
We note that the Church has insisted that these organizations disassociate from the ICIRR because of its support for civil marriage for gays and lesbians in Illinois.
In essence, Church leaders have decided to use immigrants and those who seek to help them as pawns in a political battle about an issue that is entirely unrelated to the care and welfare of those who seek refuge in our country.
There were several signatories, but here are the politicos…
James Cappleman, Alderman, 46th Ward
John Fritchey, Cook County Commissioner, 12th District
Susana Mendoza, Clerk, City of Chicago
Proco Joe Moreno, Alderman, 1st Ward
Patrick J. O’Connor, Alderman, 40th Ward
Danny Solís, Alderman, 25th Ward
Larry Suffredin, Cook County Commissioner, 13th District
* The Cardinal’s response indicated he was not amused…
It is intellectually and morally dishonest to use the witness of the Church’s concern for the poor as an excuse to attack the Church’s teaching on the nature of marriage. Four weeks ago, Pope Francis wrote: “…marriage should be a stable union of man and woman…this union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God’s own love, and of the acknowledgement and acceptance of the goodness of sexual differentiation, whereby spouses can become one flesh and are enabled to give birth to a new life.” In other words, when it comes to marriage and family life, men and women are not interchangeable. The whole civilized world knows that.
Those who signed the open letter in the Tribune proclaimed their adherence to the Catholic faith even as they cynically called upon others to reject the Church’s bishops. The Church is no one’s private club; she is the Body of Christ, who tells us he is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Because the signers of the letters are Catholic, they know that in a few years, like each of us, they will stand before this same Christ to give an account of their stewardship.
Jesus is merciful, but he is not stupid; he knows the difference between right and wrong. Manipulating both immigrants and the Church for political advantage is wrong.
* Mark Brown…
Cook County Commissioner Lawrence Suffredin said he thought the letter was “beneath the office of the cardinal.”
On the cardinal’s not so subtle suggestion that signers of the letter prepare to account for their actions in the afterlife, Suffredin said he’s ready.
“I think theologically a clear conscience is important for all of us. I have a clear conscience,” Suffredin said.
More…
Alie Kabba, the UAO’s executive director, told me his group was among those informed earlier this month that it could continue to receive a CCHD grant — if it agreed drop its association with the immigrant coalition.
Kabba said his board politely declined.
“We did not think it was for them to decide,” Kabba said. “We were not attacking the church. We cannot allow marginalization of any group in society.”
Kabba quoted an African proverb that seemed very appropriate: “The elephants are fighting, and the grass suffers.”
* And the Sun-Times reports today that Bill Daley has also weighed in…
Democratic gubernatorial hopeful William Daley called Wednesday on Cardinal Francis George to back off his threat to cut off funding to an immigrant-rights coalition because of its support for same-sex marriage legislation at the Statehouse.
“My view on marriage equality and those of immigrant-aid groups who have similar views really are irrelevant to our collective duty to help those who are less fortunate,” Daley wrote in a letter to George. […’
As a lifelong Roman Catholic, Daley said he was “proud our church has been such a leader on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.
“But for the church to turn its back on its long-standing work with groups that aid the poor over a completely unrelated issue is an injustice, plain and simple,” Daley wrote in his letter.
“The path of justice should lead the Archdiocese to leave these two issues separate and continue to seek justice through charitable works,” Daley said.
Daley’s full letter, which is actually dated July 11th, can be read by clicking here.
* While I support gay marriage, I also believe that groups have the right to only give money and support to others who are with them on an issue. If a member of a union-backed coalition suddenly signed on to a “right to work” legislative push, I don’t think anybody would say much if that group’s funding was pulled.
Then again, this appears to be a fight between people who believe that their church should be going in far different directions. So, while the Cardinal may agree with that “right to work” analogy, I seriously doubt people on the other side view themselves that way.
The bottom line here is that there doesn’t seem to be any reachable solution. The Cardinal’s position is obviously rock solid. He apparently believes he has church doctrine behind him, so that leaves little to actually debate.
* So, Maybe Daley and the other politicos could just go and help those groups raise some money. They all have plenty of rich friends.
I totally get the anger and the political angle, but how about solving the immediate problem at hand?
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