Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » 2014

Tuesday, Jul 1, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller

* AP…

Illinois residents will be able to register to vote on Election Day, have more time to vote early and not be required to bring photo identification to vote early under a plan signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Pat Quinn.

Supporters wanted a trial run with the new rules, so the law only applies to the elections in November, with the goal of expanding it later.

Quinn called the plan critical to a democracy and said he wanted to make voting “as easy as possible.”

“It’s very, very important that we uphold those fundamental opportunities for people to participate in our democracy,” he said.

Backers said the measure will improve access for voters and help boost turnout at a time when other states are adding restrictions to voting.

* The Question: Do you agree that registering to vote and voting itself should be made easier, or do you think we need more restrictions than we had before this bill was signed? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.

surveys & polls

200 Comments

A modest reform with enormous potential

Tuesday, Jul 1, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Jon Markel…

After reading the Sun-Times piece on Navy Pier that was the subject of last Monday’s Papers column, I was curious to see who in our esteemed General Assembly voted for this massive change in how the largest tourist attraction in Illinois and our massive convention center is managed. It took a while to find it because I was looking for something with a title referencing Navy Pier, Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, McCormick Place or similar. Turns out the title I should have been looking for is “SB0028 QUICK-TAKE-COUNTRY CLUB HILLS.”

What the what?!

In the end I found out much more than just who voted for the bill. I’m willing to put this forward as Exhibit 1 in how the Illinois General Assembly is subverting democracy and failing the citizens of Illinois.

The original bill when introduced was a run-of-the-mill eminent domain tax district change for Country Club Hills. You can read the entire text in less than two minutes as it was about half a page long when introduced in the Senate in January 2009.

It bounced around there for a while in committee with a few revisions and then, in April 2009, passed overwhelming in the Senate. Once in the House nothing really happened for over a year, and then this lowly one-page bill passed out of committee and went to the full House on May 5, 2010. The very next day Mike Madigan introduced a floor amendment to the bill.

What possibly could need to be changed on the floor by Mike Madigan after being held for over a year in a committee that Mike Madigan sits on?

Before you answer, remember that floor amendments are supposed to be for hashing out minor things like adding a comma or fixing typos. Committees are where the meat of a bill is chewed through and public comment is given.

So what was his “amendment?” Just the wholesale deletion of every single word in the bill and the insertion of 187 pages of dense legalese changing how McCormick Place and Navy Pier are managed, hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds are issued, and oversight implemented. The good folks of Country Club Hills would have to wait for another day.

At this point I’m sure you are thinking that after such a drastic change to a Senate bill by the House speaker there would be more committee hearings, time for public comment, a chance for members to read 187 pages of dense legalese, and journalists to journal on these changes. Right? Seriously, I know you are thinking that.

WRONG! The House voted on and overwhelmingly passed SB87 on May 6, 2010 (the same day as Madigan’s 187-page floor amendment). The Senate reconciled the changes with their vote on May 7, 2010, one day later. My what an efficient legislature we have.

* Um, OK. Floor amendments are not just for “adding a comma or fixing typos.” I don’t know where he got that. And bills are routinely amended to attach unrelated stuff to them. Happens almost every day.

Also, the writer implies otherwise, but there was a House Executive Committee hearing and the large floor amendment (HFA2) passed unanimously.

* The key to understanding what happened is what transpired right after Madigan filed his big amendment…

This thing was completely wired by leadership. Why? Because it was a hugely important bill and had been negotiated behind the scenes for months and it was almost ready to go. What finally made it a true “go” was this language, which is in both the withdrawn Amendment 3 (which had a hearing) and the almost identical Amendment 4 (which didn’t have a committee hearing)…

Provides that the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity shall make an annual incentive grant of $5,000,000 to the Village of Rosemont, to be used by the Village for the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center to retain and attract conventions, meetings, or trade shows with registered attendance in excess of 5,000 individuals that otherwise would not have used the facilities.

I covered this McPier bill closely and I was let in on some of the behind the scenes maneuvering. It was not an easy bill to pass until Rosemont came aboard. Once Rosemont was placated, supporters could hold a House vote. And check out the House roll call. All HDem targets voted against the bill.

Aside from the usual “Don’t let targets be seen as helping Chicago” political crud, the powers that be likely knew there were some other issues here.

* The GA can sometimes seem like it’s moving fast, but the reality is different. Big stuff like this only moves forward after long, often contentious negotiations. And once the final draft is approved, they move quickly to prevent the possibility of interests chickening out. You run your bill when you have the votes, not before, not long after. Too soon, it dies. Wait too long, it can die.

In an ideal world, none of this would happen. But we don’t live in an ideal world. The history of every state and every democratized nation shows that far more gets done during private legislative negotiations than public hearings. The US Constitution itself was written behind closed doors.

* What this McPier bill history shows about Illinois is the power of legislative leadership. When all four leaders get behind something (Leader Cross ended up voting for it) after having been involved in long negotiations that convinced enough interests to have been placated to make it palatable to membership, bills appear to zip through without effort.

For the most part, members trust that their leaders have done the best they could. So they climb aboard without much of any thought. And therein lies the real Statehouse problem.

Despite their reputations, leaders are not all-knowing. And private negotiations take place in such an enclosed bubble that some important questions just never get asked. The original US Constitution had no protections for the press or religion or any of that other stuff until lots of people outside the Philadelphia bubble demanded them.

Assigning the McPier bill to House Exec was another problem because the committee is totally wired. If both chamber leaders are on board, that bill is gonna fly without problems, or any contrarian questioning. Running it immediately on the floor prevents any potential opponents from getting their acts together, and so important questions often don’t get asked there, either.

* The Illinois Constitution requires that bills be read three days in each chamber. The same does not apply to amendments. That ought to be changed to match the bill requirement.

Maybe it would make legislation like the McPier reforms more difficult to pass, but it would probably make the bills better.

36 Comments

Schneider out at IDOT

Tuesday, Jul 1, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Sun-Times…

The head of the Illinois Department of Transportation resigned Monday following questions about patronage hiring at the agency.

Ann Schneider’s resignation comes after longtime anti-patronage crusader Michael Shakman called for a federal judge to order an investigation into government hiring following a Better Government Association investigation that revealed Schneider’s stepdaughter had been put on the payroll and promoted at the agency.

Schneider was appointed by Quinn in 2011 to head up IDOT. The resignation could lessen a political headache for Gov. Pat Quinn during an election year.

In a news release touting her replacement with Veterans Affairs Director Erica Borggren, Quinn devoted one line to the outgoing department head: “I also thank Ann Schneider for her years of hard work and dedication and wish her well.”

* SJ-R…

A story in mid-June by a BGA staff member raised questions about the hiring and promotion of Schneider’s stepdaughter, Ashley Carpenter. Carpenter was hired as a staff assistant and is now a data analyst with IDOT’s division of aeronautics, making just under $53,000 annually, the BGA reported. She is now covered by anti-patronage rules, meaning she cannot be fired for political reasons, the report said.

“I’m good at what I do,” Carpenter was quoted as saying.

The BGA said that in April, Schneider said she did not know about issues of political hiring involving staff assistants.

“I was under the assumption that the job descriptions accurately reflected the work that those people would be doing when they came on,” Schneider said at the time.

* Tribune…

The BGA contends Quinn continued a scheme started by impeached ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich that improperly classified nonpolitical positions as one that could be filled by political appointees. Shakman alleges that many of these hires later were promoted or transferred to unionized positions in order to make it more difficult to fire them. The attorney argues that the questionable hiring stopped in late 2011 or early 2012 when the state’s Office of Executive Inspector General began an investigation.

Quinn has said he learned of accusations of political hiring at IDOT last summer and “immediately ordered” the agency to conduct an audit, saying he has “zero tolerance for anything on hiring that isn’t exactly according to the rules.”

Despite his political outsider persona, Quinn is no stranger to patronage. After serving as an organizer for Democrat Dan Walker’s successful 1972 campaign for governor, Quinn joined Walker’s staff, where his duties included dishing out patronage as a liaison to state lawmakers.

Later, Quinn left the Illinois Industrial Commission after lawmakers launched an investigation into whether Walker had been hiding the payroll costs of governor’s office workers on state boards and commissions to make it look like the governor’s payroll had dropped.

Her replacement has no transportation experience.

52 Comments

React and insight from both sides

Tuesday, Jul 1, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Harold Myerson looks at yesterdays Harris v. Quinn decision from the liberal perspective…

The case concerned some 28,000 home care aides in Illinois whose paychecks come from Medicaid. Before the state agreed in 2003 that they could form a union, they made the minimum wage. (It’s the state that sets their wage rate, since their pay comes entirely from Medicaid.) Currently, as a result of their union contract, they make $11.85 an hour rather than the minimum of $7.25. [Today], by the terms of their contract, their hourly rate is raised to $12.25, and on December 1st to $13.

The right to hire and fire these workers remains solely, of course, that of their home-bound patients and their families. The workers, then, are joint employees of both their patients and the state. And since the state allowed them to vote on whether to join a union, and since they voted to join the Service Employees International Union, these 28,000 workers have seen their pay doubled and have received, for the first time, health care coverage. Like all unionized public employees, they don’t have to pay that portion of their union dues that goes to their union’s political activities, but they do have to pay that portion of dues that goes to the union’s bargaining with the state that has produced their contract. The extent of and limits on their dues obligations were established in the 1977 Abood decision of the Supreme Court, which has structured the dues obligations of unionized public employees ever since.

Pamela Harris, who works at home caring for her disabled son, didn’t like those dues obligations, however, and sued to get them overturned. Those dues, however, aren’t all that onerous—for members who decide not to pay for the union’s political activities, they come to 2.5 percent of their pay. That means that if a full-time home-care worker is covered under the SEIU contract, she has seen her yearly pay (assuming 50 weeks of work) rise from $14,500 to (as of December 1) $26,000—a raise of $11,500. She has also seen her yearly union dues go from zero to $650. Not, to any modestly sentient being, a bad deal.

So, Ms. Harris had to pay $650 for her raise? Actually, no. She belongs to a different category of home-care workers, and unlike the workers who voted to join SEIU, her group voted against joining a union. She pays no dues to anybody. Her complaint is that the law would compel such payments if her colleagues had voted to go union—though the law also compels unions to win majority support from workers to represent them at all, which, in her case, the union failed to do. Harris’s apparent concern was that granting home-care workers more pay—something, apparently, that, unlike most home-care workers, she doesn’t need—would raise the state’s Medicaid expenses. The state, and numerous patient advocacy groups, countered that by raising the pay and giving health coverage to those workers, it improves the home-care workforce, reduces turnover, and saves the state money by, first, ensuring more Medicaid patients are able to stay at home rather than go to more costly nursing homes, and, second, by keeping the workers themselves from having to rely on Medicaid for their own medical expenses.

The state’s case was undermined by the fact that the state had little control over those workers. Plus, they didn’t qualify for pensions and didn’t receive other benefits that “regular” state workers receive.

* And from the right, we have the Illinois Policy Institute’s Director of Labor Policy, Paul Kersey…

“Today’s decision delivers a major blow to the public employee unions in Illinois and nationally, and is good news to people like suburban Chicago mom Pam Harris.

“For more than a decade, government unions have been forcing people who are not state workers – moms and dads caring for children with developmental disabilities, home day-care providers for low-income children and others – to pay dues to a union as a condition of receiving help from their state governments. In Illinois, both Gov. Pat Quinn and now-disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued executive orders allowing the unionization of people who were not state workers. This resulted in government unions making $20 million a year from these workers, many of whom never wanted to join or pay dues to a union in the first place.

“But fortunately, today’s ruling strikes down those executive orders. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that plaintiff Pam Harris – a suburban Chicago mother trying to care for her disabled son – will not have to jeopardize and limit his care by being forced to join a union she does not want, agree with or support.

“The attempts by Quinn and Blagojevich to unionize Medicaid recipients were motivated by greed and politics, not by an interest in helping Illinois families. Luckily, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the families in Illinois and nationwide who are fighting to take care of their loved ones.”

* Also, Scott Reeder, who works for the Institute…

At issue was whether she should be forced to join a union. Rather than place her son, Josh, in an institution, she entered a program where she receives state assistance to care for him at home.

But one Sunday morning, an organizer for Service Employees International Union knocked on her door and asked her to vote to join a union. At first she was perplexed. She’s not a state worker. She’s just a mom, doing what moms do: caring for her child. And SEIU is one of the largest, politically powerful labor organizations in the nation. But if a majority of home care workers voted to join the union, she would have to give money to the union – whether she wanted to belong or not.

Harris stood up to the union and helped defeat it in a vote. But she knew that wasn’t the end of the story. The union could just keep coming back and calling for more votes. And Pam Harris didn’t think she should have to give money to some union boss in order to care for her son.

So Harris sued the state, which had helped facilitate the union’s organizing attempts. The case ended up being called Harris vs. Quinn. But it might be more aptly labeled David vs. Goliath.

35 Comments

“Wishing away” the revenue collapse

Tuesday, Jul 1, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller

* We saw a whole lot of political back and forth yesterday after Gov. Quinn signed most of the budget. But here’s the most honest takedown I saw, from David Lloyd, the director of Voices for Illinois Children’s Fiscal Policy Center….

The new budget stops Illinois’ progress improving its finances in its tracks. For the next year, Illinoisans will live under an irresponsible budget because of the failure of the General Assembly to take the common-sense path of extending income tax rates beyond their scheduled expiration.

Rather than confront reality and continue to pay down billions in unpaid bills, lawmakers took Illinois in the opposite direction by using various budget maneuvers that try to wish away the $2 billion revenue collapse.

A year from now, Illinois’ financial dam will truly break. Revenue losses will reach nearly $5 billion in the fiscal year that starts July 1, 2015. That will mean deep reductions in investments in schools, safe communities, and other areas crucial to economic growth and our state’s future. Unless income tax rates are extended, Illinois’ already worst-in-the-nation credit rating will likely go even lower. The way out is for lawmakers to extend the current tax rates beyond December 31.

Keep in mind,that the “nearly $5 billion” figure used above is revenue alone. The borrowing needs to be paid back, some expenses were kicked down the road, etc. The real budgetary hole is far higher.

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