The governor was not asked to confirm an otherwise quite odd story about how he reportedly said he was voting for Donald Trump. Instead, Rauner was asked today if he was now supporting Trump…
However, on Tuesday, Rauner responded to questions about the report, denying that he’s endorsing anyone in the presidential race.
“I’m not endorsing in the presidential race, I’m staying out of it,” Rauner said during a press conference in Wheeling. “I’m 100 percent focused on Illinois.”
* Raw audio, with the governor’s response near the end…
* It’s taken most of the mainstream media until only recently to report on Gov. Rauner’s huge contributions to the Illinois Republican Party, so maybe we’ll see some stuff on these developments by October…
Liberty Principles gets $1 million from Ken Griffin, now with an estimated $5 million on hand. https://t.co/qdNO8PlWzw
* The race between appointed Rep. Andy Skoog (D-LaSalle) and Republican Jerry Long ain’t getting any less ugly. After sending a mailer blasting Long for renting a house to a registered sex offender, the Democrats have hit him with a new piece…
Dems continue to attack Long over sex offenders. Its latest mailer features a mat reading, "Welcome predators."
* Fitch Ratings lowered DuPage County’s rating to AA+, down from AAA, the first time in anyone’s memory that this has happened…
In a statement Sept. 2, released as the holiday weekend was beginning, Fitch said roughly $150 million in DuPage debt was a victim of revisions in its criteria for state and local governments.
“The downgrade reflects Fitch’s concern (about) the county’s limited revenue flexibility and slow revenue growth prospects,” the New York firm wrote. “(Fitch’s) revised criteria placed increased focus on Fitch’s expectations for the natural pace of revenue growth without revenue-raising measures and the ability of an entity to independently increase revenue.”
That concern appears to be in part due to extreme reluctance by the county in recent years to raise property taxes. It also reflects that the county now has little undeveloped land, with its population apparently plateaued at a bit under 1 million.
In general, Fitch said it expects revenue from existing taxes to grow “slightly below historical trends” and generally only in line with national inflation. “While sales tax revenue has growth between 4 percent and 5 percent annually over the past several years, it has slowed to only 1 percent growth in fiscal 2016, leading the county to change its growth assumptions going forward to only 2 percent growth.”
In a statement back, DuPage Chief Financial Officer Paul Rafac emphasized that the county still is AAA in the view of Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s ratings.
* David Cooke wants some help with his State Board of Elections case against Auditor General Frank Mautino, who has, as we’ve discussed several times so far, filed some questionable campaign finance reports. Cooke’s not getting any assistance, though…
He said he sought legal help from Republicans, with no success.
Ken Menzel, the election board’s general counsel, said the agency hasn’t had an investigator on staff for more than a decade. He said the board takes on the investigative role with “clear-cut” issues, such as late campaign finance reports, but not larger ones like Mautino’s case.
Menzel said he was surprised the Republican Party hasn’t helped Cooke because party members seemed to be “up in arms” about Mautino’s campaign spending issues.
He said the delays in the case are normal.
“At each stage, there is another round of motions. They don’t get resolved necessarily fast,” he said. “That’s due process.”
* I’m not a huge fan of using the state Constitution to permanently lock up money for special uses, but, this Tribune editorial is a bit much, if you ask me…
No, little voter, you cannot term-limit the Illinois lawmakers who’ve ruined this state’s finances; the politicians don’t want that. Nor can you stop legislative leaders from gerrymandering their members’ district maps; the Illinois Supreme Court says that injustice is OK. But if the pols of both parties won’t let you do something good for you, they will let you do something good for them and their friends:
They want you to enshrine in the Illinois Constitution a perpetual payday for their loyal donors in road-building and organized labor. You could say they’ve all got this thing — this proposed amendment — and for them it’s … golden!
The stated aim of the amendment — it’ll be on your Nov. 8 ballot — is to prevent state and local governments from using transportation revenue for non-transportation purposes. Sounds fine, to a point. But the diabolical effect is that contractors, and the unions whose members they employ, would have constitutionally guaranteed dibs on future billions of state and local revenue dollars.
That is, they’d have dibs on tax collections so that some future Illinois — an Illinois where finances are even more disastrous than today’s — couldn’t circumvent this amendment even in a natural catastrophe or other crisis. This amendment would, for example, wall off road dollars from any emergency uses for basic human needs. You’ve seen how rigidly the constitution’s pension protection clause forbids public pension reforms? Well, the pavement protection clause would be just as rigid.
And it goes on and on like that forever.
Look, these aren’t regular ol’ general revenues. Their intended purpose is for transportation infrastructure. Last year, the stopgap agreement dipped heavily into the Road Fund. The move got us out of a crisis, but it’s like eating your seed corn - staves off starvation today, but creates huge problems down the, um, road.
* I think there is more than enough room for argument here. And I even think the Tribune’s warnings about the future have some merit. But, sheesh, man. The road builders and the unions have watched as billions were swept from funds intended for infrastructure. So, of course they’re gonna do their best to stop it. They’re acting rationally.
And this proposal, along with the Supreme Court’s pension decisions, can be seen as a way of finally forcing the General Assembly and the governor to face up to fiscal reality and raise some taxes and cut some programs rather than raiding the future.
Having watched some particularly tough fiscal emergencies (revenues dried up after the 9/11 attack, for instance) I would argue for more flexibility, but I also have to admit that the other side makes some decent points.
A federal lawsuit has raised questions about whether Illinois’ new Election Day voter registration rules are constitutional, a situation that could complicate how polling sites are run this November.
Illinois tested same-day registration in the 2014 governor’s race, with all election authorities required to offer it in at least one location. It was popular, with long lines on Election Night, particularly in Chicago. When lawmakers made same-day registration permanent the next year, they expanded it, ordering highly populated areas to make it available at all polls.
That change is at the heart of a federal lawsuit brought by Republicans, who argue it’s an unfair and unequal system because voters in less populated and GOP-leaning areas don’t have equal access. They’re asking a judge to end all precinct-level Election Day registration, which would impact voters in 21 of 102 counties and five cities: Chicago, Aurora, Rockford, Bloomington and East St. Louis.
“It seemed obviously unfair to skew election results in this way,” said Jacob Huebert, an attorney with an organization representing a north-central Illinois Republican congressional candidate and party committee. “The purpose is obviously to boost Democratic turnout relative to Republican turnout.” […]
Legal and political experts question the timing of the lawsuit, which is so close to the election, as well as its backers. The Illinois Policy Institute’s legal arm, the Liberty Justice Center, is arguing the lawsuit. First-term Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s foundation has donated to the group and some in his administration previously worked there. Rauner’s spokeswoman didn’t return a request for comment.
A pregnant woman and her boyfriend were shot Monday afternoon while on the porch of a home in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, relatives said.
Doctors at Stroger Hospital later operated on Crystal Myers, relatives said, and delivered the nearly full-term baby boy, but no details were available about his condition.
Her boyfriend, Albert Moore, 24, was shot in the neck and was in critical condition, police said.
Myers, 23, had been due Sept. 30, relatives said. She had been shot in the stomach and was listed in serious condition at Stroger, where family and friends were awaiting updates outside the hospital on the couple late Monday.
The pair were on the porch of Moore’s grandparent’s home in the 5200 block of Sangamon, where they lived, when a gunman sneaked up the gangway, fired about nine shots, and fled, said a female friend who hit the deck when shots rang out and didn’t want to be identified. […]
Police are looking into whether the shooting is connected to a fatal shooting that happened the previous day less than a block away.
The couple was planning to move to Iowa this month to get away from the crime.
* Three caveats. This is an online survey of registered (instead of likely) voters going all the way back to August 9th…
The new poll was conducted online as part of SurveyMonkey’s 2016 Election Tracking project, which recruits respondents from the large number people who take polls on the company’s do-it-yourself survey platform, roughly three million each day. A subsample of respondents to this range of surveys — which includes formal and informal polls of community groups, companies, churches and other organizations — were invited to participate in a second survey with the prompt, “Where do you stand on current events? Share your opinion.” The survey was not advertised on any website, so individuals could not “click-in” in an effort to influence results. A survey invitation could be used only once.
From Aug. 9 to Sept. 1, the survey asked the sample of 74,886 registered voters about their presidential support, including between 546 and 5,147 respondents in each state. The final sample was weighted to the latest Census Bureau benchmarks for the population of registered voters in each state.
* The Chicago Tribune editorial board published a long screed over the weekend which essentially declared that no remap reform proposal would ever get by the Illinois Supreme Court and called upon Bruce Rauner and the billionaires he controls to spend lots more money on Supreme Court elections.
When former Gov. Pat Quinn produced his own remap plan, it was nitpicked to death by the media. We didn’t see hardly any of that sort of analysis of the remap reformers’ two failed plans. Why? You’d have to ask them, but I’m not the only person who believes that the reformers presented a poorly drafted proposal. And some even believed the reformers’ plan appeared as if it was designed to fail. My weekly syndicated newspaper column looks at the political angle and concludes…
Again, the governor, his party apparatchiks and his legislative candidates are not wrong to blame Madigan or Senate President John Cullerton or rank and file Democrats for the lack of action on redistricting reform this year. Have at it. You use what works in campaigns, and this works.
Indeed, Republican legislative candidates have been doing their very best to kick up as much dust as possible since the redistricting opinion was handed down. The common thread, of course, is Speaker Madigan.
“Mike Madigan and the career politicians in Springfield have made a mess of our state, and it is going to take fair maps and term limits to clean it up,” said Tony McCombie, the GOP challenger to Rep. Mike Smiddy (D-Hillsdale). Hers was one of countless statements I’ve seen from Republican candidates throughout the state, and the governor was in her district’s main media market the same day to amplify his party’s case against the ruling.
But knocking down [Quinn’s] proposal before it even gets out of the gate because of the sponsor is wrong and implies that no idea proposed by any Democrat with the slightest bit of taint on this topic will ever be acceptable in the least. And that more than implies that the governor wants a campaign issue far more than he wants an actual solution — which is exactly what the Democrats have suspected from the very beginning.
* Rep. Mike Fortner (R-West Chicago) has his own remap reform plan, which he has filed as legislation, but believes could also pass constitutional muster if presented as a citizen initiative…
It has been said that the fundamental problem with the way Illinois draws its political districts is that it lets the politicians choose their voters, rather than let the voters choose their politicians. This year an attempt to solve that problem by Independent Maps was rejected as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. I’d like to offer another solution, one that I have filed as HJRCA 60.
The method for creating an independent commission proved to be one of the stumbling blocks for the Independent Map Amendment in court. I’d keep the formation of the commission the same as it currently is in the constitution, but I would change its function. Instead of drawing a map, the commission would provide data and software for drawing maps to the public. This provides a procedural change as required for a citizen initiative.
A citizen initiative must include both procedural and structural changes and it must stay confined to changes to the legislative article of the constitution. My proposal separates House and Senate districts as was recommended by the Illinois Reform Commission in 2009. This provides a structural change to the legislature as required for a citizen initiative.
Unlike the Independent Map Amendment, my proposal stays confined to changes in the legislative article of the Illinois Constitution. The Secretary of State currently acts to break a deadlock, and I keep the Secretary in substantially the same role. I also leave the roles of the Attorney General and Supreme Court as they are in the current redistricting process.
So how are the maps drawn? I’d let the public draw them. The legislature must first define in law the criteria that will be used and how maps are scored, before the Census data is released. Then by “crowdsourcing” the creation of the map the public can submit maps or improve on previous submissions. The commission acts as the referee, making sure maps meet the law and are scored and submitting the top three maps to each chamber. Each chamber may vote to approve one by a supermajority vote, but the legislature can’t amend any. If a chamber cannot agree on a map, then the Secretary of State certifies the map with the best score.
One state that is often praised for their redistricting process is our neighbor Iowa. Like this proposal Iowa separates the task of drawing the map from the task of approving the map, and the criteria for drawing the map are laws passed by the legislature. Like this proposal the Iowa legislature can only vote up or down on the map.
My proposal is not entirely new. It’s based on a proposal that I filed in 2009. That proposal had a hearing in the Senate and received mention in a few media outlets. The Daily Herald asked its readers to “urge your state representative and state senator to look at this proposal.” (Aug 8, 2009) Maybe it is time to do just that.
That looks a whole lot tighter than the reformers’ plan, which wandered all over the place.
And whether you agree with this idea or not, it puts the lie to the drama queens out there who claim with purist certainty that nothing can ever be done.
The bottom line is that the reformers screwed up badly - again - and almost nobody wants to admit it.
Even though union leaders have branded him the anti-organized labor governor, Bruce Rauner confidently stepped onto the streets of downtown Naperville Monday for the huge suburb’s Labor Day parade.
Jim Caffray, a home remodeler from Oswego, says he likes that the governor is fighting the Democratic machine, and appreciated the fact there weren’t any unions in the parade.
“I think that’s great, actually. Because I think the unions have been destroying this country for 50 years now,” he said. [Emphasis added.]
* And then he said this…
Rauner at Naperville parade; says effort to curb unions really intended to protect nation's hardest workers @WGNNewspic.twitter.com/3DHbAqKdm7
U.S. Rep. Mike Bost released the first television advertisement in his re-election campaign for Illinois’ 12th Congressional District, titled “Stand Up.” The ad will begin running with 500 points this week in the Metro East media market.
“I was proud to feature my grandchildren in our first ad because I believe this campaign is about the future,” said Bost. “We must cut wasteful spending, reduce the debt, and lower the tax burden for working families if we’re going to strengthen the world our kids and grandkids will inherit. I look forward to continuing to stand up for Southern Illinois’ future and ensure our young people inherit a better world than the generation before them.”
MIKE BOST: “These are the faces of Illinois’ future: eager and hopeful. It’s up to us to give them the best opportunities. That’s why we must reign-in out of- control Washington spending. Take on the country’s massive debt. And lower taxes on working families. The way I see it: it’s our responsibility to give them the strongest future possible…for kids like these…my grandchildren and yours. I’m Mike Bost and I approve this message because we just have to stand up and do the right thing.”
First, keep it simple—a lot simpler than former Gov. Pat Quinn’s recently proposed “solution,” which may not pass constitutional muster, either. Forget about endless unconstitutional details on how the map should be drawn. Just set a few simple rules:
• No legislator can ever have any role in the actual mapmaking process.
• Mapmakers cannot take into account any previous election results.
• Home addresses of state legislators and existing district boundaries cannot ever be factors.
All these requirements are in force in Iowa, which is a national redistricting model.
The results might not be perfect, but they’d surely be better than what we have now: a system where one political party draws district boundaries to protect its majority and its legislators. Yes, it’s true: Voters should be able to choose their legislators, not the other way around.
But hey, maybe the high court could twist legal logic enough to declare even this idea unconstitutional. That’s where Plan B comes in. It’s hardball and a little bit evil, but I think both are called for in this situation.
* You have to wade through quite a bit of stuff before you get to the point, but Jeff Berkowitz repeatedly tried and failed over the holiday weekend to convince Gov. Bruce Rauner to talk about the presidential race. Somebody else managed to get something out of him…
And, then a young man stepped up out of nowhere and said simply to the Governor, “Are you voting for Trump?” And, the Governor said yes, and apparently realizing the music noise level was high- nodded his head up and down, indicated yes, once again.
