Monday, Oct 31, 2016 - Posted by Advertising Department
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A diabolical ploy. Outlandish drivel that’s aimed at taking care of the insiders. A waiter asking how your salmon tastes while the Titanic sinks.
These outraged cries of a few opinion writers aren’t about politicians, but an important ballot question: Should lawmakers be required to spend money where they say they’re going to? Our group, Citizens to Protect Transportation Funding, believes it’s important enough to ask voters to change the Constitution after seeing Springfield use road funds to prop up the state budget year after year, totaling more than $6.8 billion.
Today, we’re seeing the costs of those diversions:
The amendment language is complex, but its impact is simple: when you pay gas taxes and vehicles registrations, your money will go to their intended transportation needs.
Isn’t changing the Constitution too extreme? Not when the budget doomsday is already here. The Road Fund was tapped for half a BILLION DOLLARS just last year, ahead of a full year without a budget at all. Without this Amendment, why would we think it won’t happen again?
Vote Yes for the Safe Roads Amendment. It’s good for our economy, for our safety, and for some political sanity for a change at the state Capitol. Learn more at http://www.saferoadsamendment.com/
Illinois Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, already facing an uphill battle for re-election, is entering the crucial final week before Election Day weakened by comments about his opponent that critics attacked as racist and “beyond reprehensible.”
Two organizations whose endorsements Kirk touted as indicators of his independence withdrew their backing over the weekend, issuing blistering rebukes. Both said they’re now supporting Democratic U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth.
Democrats are relying on winning Illinois as they look to regain control of the U.S. Senate. The party must pick up four or five seats to do so, depending on whether they retain control of the White House.
Kirk spent the weekend away from the public eye - a highly unusual move for any candidate in the waning days of a campaign, but one that allowed him to avoid rehashing the incident in the media. Duckworth had a full campaign schedule, including get-out-the-vote events with civil rights icon and U.S. Rep. John Lewis.
* Actually, Kirk was at the Coleman-Oliver Foundation’s Black Coffee Agenda on the city’s South Side on Saturday morning. According to Kirk’s campaign, he then held a “town hall” meeting at Silk N Classy Barbershop in Dolton later in the day, and used the opportunity to get a haircut.
* How do I know this? Simple. First, I looked at Kirk’s Twitter account and then asked his campaign for more details. The Sun-Times also previewed the Sinai event. According to the Kirk campaign, the AP never bothered to call and check.
Look, it’s not like the incumbent had an action-packed weekend, but he did do some things. We don’t need to make this worse than it already is.
This past weekend saw the most fatal shootings all year in Chicago, but CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson said deploying extra officers to control crowds around Wrigley Field during the World Series did not mean other neighborhoods were neglected.
Between Friday evening and Monday morning — as the Cubs were playing three straight games at Wrigley Field — 17 people were shot and killed in Chicago, nearly all on the South and West sides. […]
The extra officers at Wrigley didn’t impact police staffing in the rest of the city, Johnson said Monday morning after a department graduation ceremony at Navy Pier.
Those neighborhoods hit by the spike in fatal shootings “didn’t get shortchanged at all this weekend,” he said.
For five years, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials hewed to the same script, maintaining to the public that Chicago has enough cops.
And the mayor and police brass proclaimed that they were working with the community to fight problems that lead to crime.
But out of the spotlight, the Emanuel administration told federal officials that the Chicago Police Department needed hundreds of additional officers and that community-based policing has been withering in Chicago for years — and that’s been a factor in the rise in violent crime battering the city.
In applications for grants from the Justice Department the past two years, city officials portrayed the Chicago Police Department as dangerously understaffed — even as Emanuel and police brass publicly dismissed calls to hire more cops until just a few weeks ago.
* David Giuliani is doing his best to keep up with the constant falsehoods landing in 76th House District mailboxes…
In the GOP’s mind, Rep. Andy Skoog should join his fellow Democrat, Hillary Clinton, behind bars.
The party’s latest mailer depicts a smiling Skoog in a police lineup in white shirt and loosened tie. The beefy arms of fellow “bad guys” appear on either side of Skoog, with one guy’s arm heavily tattooed.
Skoog is holding a sign that reads, “$6,000/year property tax scam.” The flier implores voters to retire “crooked politician” Skoog on Election Day, calling him a tax dodger.
Over the top? Of course, it is.
Just like plenty of other political fliers in mailboxes these days.
* And everything is portrayed as the end of the world as we know it…
This is Dems' latest over-the-top anti-Long mailer. When sex offenders are released, they're allowed to change from their orange uniforms. pic.twitter.com/oBDK2E8gaS
* Giuliani should keep up the good work. Few reporters ever bother confronting the blatant lies that are constantly churned out in legislative races because they either fall below the local media’s radar or they’re just so many of them that nobody wants to bother with the Herculean task of fact checking the avalanche.
In the end, however, it’s all just too much. Both sides have created alternate reality universes. Almost nothing they say has more than a tiny grain of truth, but their messaging has a much longer and deeper reach than any newspaper or Twitter account. Hence, the title of this post.
The only way these sorts of attacks will end is if they stop working. But since both sides do it, how could we ever tell?
If this amendment passes, the road funds will go into a “lockbox” and will be untouchable, even in a dire emergency.
It’s like taking a family’s household budget and saying that an important priority — say, saving for your kids’ college funds — would be locked up. Sounds good, until a financial crisis happens and you have no money to put food on the table, right?
Other states that have passed similar measures have provisions to declare a fiscal emergency and access those funds. Illinois’ measure doesn’t. That’s why voters should see big red flags.
Past history shows that once Illinois’ constitution is amended, it’s a highly difficult process to get it changed back. Exhibit A, the state’s efforts to find a way to deal with its skyrocketing pension obligations.
Transportation is an important investment for the state to make. But so is education, both K-12 and higher education. So are social services. So are public safety issues. Will they get their own dedicated funds?
If it wasn’t for all the Republican votes on this thing and the governor’s total silence, I’d be easily convinced this was a clever ploy by Speaker Madigan to lock up state money so that Gov. Rauner can’t use it to fund another patchwork, stopgap budget.
But, the Republicans found themselves in boiling hot water with the road builders last year when the GA and Rauner swept the Road Fund to pass the FY 16 budget “fix.” So, they had some making up to do.
Same thing happened on the Democratic side with the trade unions.
However, I cannot imagine Madigan supporting this hastily crafted proposal (with a ton of unintended consequences) under any other governor.
The proposed constitutional amendment, the Illinois Transportation Taxes and Fees Lockbox Amendment, is highly problematic for several reasons.
• First, its wording is vague, and as a result its actual impact is unclear. The proposed amendment’s lack of clarity may result in more revenue streams, at both state and local levels of government, than intended being restricted to a limited number of transportation related expenses.
• Second, the proposed amendment is likely to divert revenue away from other areas of state and local budgets. The Lockbox Amendment would not increase total revenue—rather, it would change how existing revenue is spent.
• Third, because it is being proposed as a constitutional amendment and not a regular statute, any negative consequences would be extremely difficult to modify or reverse.
The last weekend of October was the deadliest so far this year in Chicago, including among its victims an eighth-grade honors student and twin 17-year-old boys, according to police and data compiled by the Tribune.
Seventeen people were fatally shot in the city between Friday afternoon and early Monday, an extraordinary toll even in a year that is far outpacing last year in shootings and homicides.
Up until now, Father’s Day weekend had been the most violent with 59 people shot, 13 fatally. The same number of people were shot this past weekend but more of the shootings were fatal, according to Tribune data.
The weekend toll also was deadlier than the three long summer holiday weekends when violence typically spikes because of the warm weather. Six people were fatally shot over the Memorial Day weekend, five over the Fourth of July weekend and 13 people over Labor Day weekend, according to Tribune data.
Chicago police are shooting fewer residents and drawing fewer civilian complaints than they were before protests over the fatal 2014 shooting of a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, by a white police officer. […]
The Chicago police have continued to be less active in recent months. Narcotics arrests for the period from Jan. 1 through Oct. 3 were down 47 percent this year, compared with the same time frame in 2015. Meanwhile, crime — especially gun violence — has remained high. The total number of murders, which began increasing after the release of the video, is up by 44 percent so far this year after a 16 percent jump in 2015. Chicago is currently on pace for its highest murder total since the late 1990s and will likely experience its biggest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping track in the early 1930s.9
Relatively few of the city’s murders are solved: As of Oct. 3, the Chicago Police Department had cleared10 only 21.0 percent of murders and other homicides and 2.6 percent of nonfatal shooting incidents in 2016. That’s down considerably from 2015, when 31.8 percent of homicides and 6.1 percent of nonfatal shootings were cleared.
The Chicago Police Department has made significant strides in reducing negative interactions between police and civilians, as measured by complaints and shooting incidents. But those strides may have come at the cost of a severe drop in arrests and a worsening wave of violent crime.
Eric Adelstein, the Chicago based Democratic political consultant, is doing the most anti-Trump-related work in Illinois, with his firm representing LIFT, Mendoza and Schneider. “While Trump allows for a nationalization of message across races, there are different strategic imperatives,” Adelstein said. […]
Adelstein said LIFT is determined not to let Rauner have it both ways. “If your opponent doesn’t want to talk about something, it’s usually a good strategy to force them to talk about it and Trump is that thing they don’t want to talk about.”
A Democrat familiar with Trump-related Illinois polling described the Trump factor as potentially depressing “turnout among good GOP constituencies in Illinois, like affluent, white college-educated voters.
“It means that GOP winners must over perform the top of the ticket by 15 points rather than 10. It means the suburbs are in play for statewide candidates and it means that GOP candidates must alienate their base or risk losing the middle, and even then it might not work,” the source said.
I’m still not completely sure after reading this piece what the actual aim of the Biss spots may be - at least as far as this cycle is concerned. Mendoza is using both Rauner and Trump in her ads, but most legislative races aren’t.
By analyzing data from state legislative races across the country in 2013 and 2014, the Montana-based National Institute on Money in State Politics determined that voters re-elected 91 percent of incumbents running in general elections. Current officeholders who raised more campaign cash than their opponents were even more likely to retain their seats, winning 94 percent of their races.
“Incumbency was the most powerful single factor determining a state legislative candidate’s success in the 2013 and 2014 elections, followed closely by the power of money,” Linda Casey, the institute’s lead researcher, wrote in a March report. The trend has held relatively steady since the 2001 and 2002 state election cycles, according to the institute.
The power of incumbency was even stronger in Illinois in 2014, with only one incumbent out of 124 — former state Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline — losing in the general election. Three other incumbents, two Democrats and one Republican, withdrew after the primaries. […]
Jacobs’ defeat at the hands of now-Sen. Neil Anderson, R-Rock Island, was a rare loss for an incumbent who raised more money than his challenger. Jacobs spent $2.1 million to Anderson’s $1.9 million in the most expensive legislative race in Illinois history, according to an analysis from Kent Redfield, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield.
Those dollar amounts almost seem quaint these days.
The Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois announced Friday it had given preliminary approval to a contribution request for $4.56 billion to its pension fund.
The changes in state law made last year for determining actuaries’ estimates for adequately funding pensions have greatly increased the amount of contributions statewide.
The Teacher’s Retirement System said of the projected $4.56 billion contribution, just $974 million is needed to pay the cost of pensions for that year. The remaining $3.5 billion is to go toward the amount owed from previous years.
“Most of the fiscal year 2018 contribution is a self-inflicted wound,” TRS Executive Director Dick Ingram said. “That money could be spent on other priorities today if the state of Illinois had fully met its obligations in the past.”
While next year’s contribution to the teachers’ pensions is an eye-popping figure, it is far short of the actuaries’ ceiling. Using the new accounting standards, the state’s annual contribution should be $6.88 billion to catch up with its unfunded liability.
(Tongue FIRMLY planted in cheek) Speaker Madigan is so powerful that at the age of 1 year, while still in diapers, he got the General Assembly to pass and GOP Governor Dwight Green to sign that legislation. WOW! That’s power!
The 1980 cutback amendment passed overwhelmingly, eliminating a few dozen lawmakers from the House of Representatives and helping Madigan consolidate power as speaker when his peers first elected him to that office in 1983.
Yep. Madigan ordered gadfly reformer Pat Quinn to put the Cutback Amendment on the ballot to consolidate his nefarious grip on power. It’s all rigged!
* Related…
* Zorn: Anti-Madigan documentary shows why he’ll be hard to beat
This fiscal year, our state’s general funds are spending $22 billion as a result of court-ordered outlays. Then, there is $12 billion in “hard expenditures” we must pay for debt service, pensions and transfers to local governments and Medicaid accounts.
We can add to those totals another $6 billion in unpaid bills. For example, the state is as much as 673 days late in reimbursing medical providers for employee health care services. […]
These expenditures total $40 billion for the year, but we have only $30 billion in revenue coming into the general funds to pay all these bills.
Of course, we say we must tighten our belts. And, of course, we always can do some of that, but less than you might imagine.
Annual state pension payments of $7.2 billion are mostly debt service for underfunding pensions and sweetening them in years past, and the state high court has said we must pay them.
During the past decade or so, the state also has cut expenditures for schools, universities and social services significantly. State employee numbers are down, from 89,000 in 2001 to 64,500 last year. […]
All I am saying here is cutting “waste and corruption,” the default budget-cutting option of the public, sure won’t alone erase a $10 billion budget shortfall.
More than one-third of social media users are worn out by the amount of political content they encounter, and more than half describe their online interactions with those they disagree with politically as stressful and frustrating
The roughly two-thirds of American adults who use social media sites express a relatively wide range of opinions on the political interactions they witness and take part in on these platforms. Many feel overloaded by political content and view their social media interactions with those they disagree with as a source of frustration and annoyance. At the same time, a substantial minority of users enjoy the ability to consume political content and engage in discussions with people on the other side of issues:
* Nearly twice as many social media users say they are “worn out” by the amount of political content they see in their feeds (37%) as say they like seeing lots of political information (20%). Still, about four-in-ten (41%) indicate that they don’t feel particularly strongly one way or the other about the amount of political content they encounter on social media.
* 59% say their social media interactions with those with opposing political views are stressful and frustrating – although 35% find them interesting and informative.
* 64% say their online encounters with people on the opposite side of the political spectrum leave them feeling as if they have even less in common than they thought – although 29% say they end these discussions feeling that they have more in common than they might have anticipated. […]
Some 40% of users agree strongly with the notion that social media are places where people say things while discussing politics that they would never say in person (an additional 44% feel that this statement describes social media somewhat well).
Meanwhile, roughly half of users feel the political conversations they see on social media are angrier (49%), less respectful (53%) and less civil (49%) than those in other areas of life. At the same time, a notable minority feels that the political discussions they see on social media are largely reflective of the political discussions they witness in other areas of their lives: For instance, 39% of users feel that these interactions are no more less respectful than other political interactions they encounter. And a small share finds political debates on social media to be more civil (7%), more informative (14%) and more focused on important policy issues (10%) than those they see elsewhere. […]
When ignoring problematic content fails, social media users tend to utilize technological tools to remove troublesome users from their feeds entirely. Nearly one-third of social media users (31%) say they have changed their settings in order to see fewer posts from someone in their feed because of something related to politics, while 27% have blocked or unfriended someone for that reason. Taken together, this amounts to 39% of social media users – and 60% of them indicate that they took this step because someone was posting political content that they found offensive. […]
Even as their overall political attitudes differ dramatically, Democrats and Republicans (including independents and other nonpartisans who “lean” toward either party) tend to view and utilize social media in largely comparable ways. For instance, they are equally likely to say that they comment, post about or engage in political discussions on social media (10% of Republican users and 8% of Democrats do so often). And a nearly identical share from each party feels worn out by the amount of political material they encounter on social media (38% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans who use social media report this) or feel that the conversations they see on social media are angrier and less civil than in other venues where these conversations occur. However, Democrats who use social media are somewhat more likely to view these sites as useful vehicles for bringing new voices into the political arena.
During any given campaign season, one or maybe two state legislative campaigns wind up running ads on Chicago broadcast television stations. But in the age of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s gigantic campaign contributions, it may be easier to count the number of Chicago-area candidates who aren’t running any city broadcast ads.
State Rep. Michael McAuliffe (R-Chicago) started the trend by airing Chicago broadcast TV ads at the beginning of August—an act completely without precedent in the General Assembly. Chicago broadcast ads are so expensive that campaigns usually don’t start airing them until mid to late October.
The ads are also incredibly inefficient. The Chicago media market has about 7.9 million people aged 12 or over, as measured by the ratings companies.
Four years ago, during the last presidential cycle, a total of 38,748 votes were cast in McAuliffe’s race. So, when McAuliffe and other House candidates air these ads, they’re aiming them at only about half a percentage point of the entire media market. It’s actually much lower than that because most people have already made up their minds by now. So, it’s like using a hydrogen bomb to kill a tiny gnat.
Just last week, the cash-rich Republicans went up on Chicago broadcast TV in five legislative races: Rod Drobinski vs. Rep. Sam Yingling (D-Grayslake), who also made a broadcast buy late last week; Rep. Chris Winger (R-Wood Dale) vs. Cynthia Borbas, who has been up on Chicago broadcast for a little while with an ad blasting Winger for her social conservatism; Rep. David Olsen (R-Downers Grove), who is fending off a late cable TV buy from Greg Hose; Steve Reick, who’s up against John Bartman, who just launched cable ads in retiring McHenry County Democratic Rep. Jack Franks’ district; and Michelle Smith vs. Sen. Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant (D-Shorewood), who is also on Chicago broadcast.
Keep in mind, those are just the latest to air the ads. Plenty of others were already on Chicago broadcast.
Both candidates in the Rep. Kate Cloonen (D-Kankakee) race have been airing broadcast TV, as have both in Democratic Rep. Andy Skoog’s LaSalle County-area race and both in Democratic Sen. Tom Cullerton’s DuPage County contest, as well as Rep. McAuliffe’s opponent Merry Marwig, among others.
And it’s not just the two parties airing the spots. Dan Proft says his Liberty Principles PAC is currently airing Chicago broadcast ads on behalf of six Republicans.
And it’s not just happening in Chicago. St. Louis broadcast TV has also been a relative rarity for legislative campaign ads. Heck, many statewide candidates forgo advertising in St. Louis because of its high cost-to-benefit ratio.
Rep. Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon) has been running ads on St. Louis TV for several weeks, and the Democrats just started airing ads there for Rep. Dan Beiser (D-Alton) to match his Republican opponent Mike Babcock’s buy. The Democrats also started running St. Louis ads for Mike Mathis against Rep. Avery Bourne (R-Raymond).
“It’s crazy,” said one Metro East pal about the flood of St. Louis ads. “I want to throw something at the TV.”
Head up the Mississippi River and you’ll see broadcast TV ads in the Quad Cities for and against Rep. Mike Smiddy (D-Hillsdale). Like in St. Louis, most people who watch Quad Cities television stations don’t live in Illinois.
Then head as far south in Illinois as you can go and Rep. John Bradley (D-Marion) is reportedly pushing a completely unheard of 3,900 gross ratings points on TV stations in and near his district. Generally, if you want half your targeted audience to see an ad three times, you’ll “push” 150 ratings points. Do the math. Bradley must be advertising 24 hours a day on every program.
The Republicans, by the way, estimated last week that they’ve pushed 5,000 points statewide on their anti-House Speaker Michael Madigan message.
But are any of these ads working this late in the game?
Last week, a friend of mine who doesn’t watch much broadcast television said he was watching “Chicago’s Very Own” WGN and texted me the ads as they popped up on his TV: “Anti-Yingling, pro-Duckworth, anti-Mendoza, anti-Skoog, anti-Yingling (again), anti-Cloonen. All back-to-back in a single commercial break.”
A few minutes later, he texted: “Hey back to commercials! Anti-Bartman, anti-Cullerton. Anti-Trump/Rauner (new from LIFT). What is this! An ad for Target. Like, a real ad for buying cheap [stuff]. Refreshing.”
“Seriously,” he texted, “it was just one big jumble. Nothing could break through this. And if you were getting 20 pieces of mail? Shoot me now.”
After careful consideration, HRC’s Public Policy Committee of the Board of Directors has taken the unprecedented step — a first in our 36-year history — of revoking an endorsement. We are a bipartisan organization and our staff and board make endorsement decisions based on a proven record of LGBTQ equality and a candidate’s ability to drive legislative change. We will not continue to make progress and pass the Equality Act without Republican support. It’s vitally important that we continue to build bipartisan coalitions so that we may continue to move equality forward. We endorsed the sitting Senator, Mark Kirk, because he has been a strong supporter of our cause time and again, scoring a 100 percent on HRC’s most recent Congressional Scorecard. But events this week have gone beyond the pale for our standards of leadership.
Leadership is about more than the legislation one sponsors and the votes one casts. On Thursday night, Senator Kirk’s comments about his opponent’s heritage were deeply offensive and racist. His attempt to use Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth’s race as a means to undermine her family’s American heritage and patriotism is beyond reprehensible. Yesterday, Senator Kirk tweeted an apology that failed to adequately address the real harm and magnitude of his words. So today, following a vote by our board’s committee, the Human Rights Campaign withdrew our support of Senator Kirk.
Attacking someone because of her race and ethnicity is inexcusable for anyone, but especially for a sitting U.S. Senator. The diversity of our movement is our greatest strength, and Senator Kirk’s remarks were an affront to our most fundamental values. We have therefore voted to endorse Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, who has been a strong LGBTQ ally in the House of Representatives, and HRC will contribute the maximum amount to her campaign. We look forward to working with her in the Senate to secure full federal equality for all LGBTQ Americans.
Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC (ARS PAC) – the gun violence prevention organization founded by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Navy combat veteran and retired NASA astronaut Captain Mark Kelly – announced today it has revoked its endorsement of United States Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois in the wake of his racist attack on U.S. Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth.
STATEMENT BY ARS PAC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR PETER AMBLER
“In public office, your values matter as much as your votes. That’s the example Gabby set in Congress and in her campaigns, and that’s the example we must follow in the movement to reduce gun violence. Senator Kirk’s racist attack on Congresswoman Duckworth is unacceptable and represents a low point, even in this election season. For that reason, Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC is revoking its endorsement of Senator Kirk. While we believe the path to responsible change and communities safer from gun violence must include Republican champions, we cannot continue to support Senator Kirk. A man who is not worthy of your vote cannot be worthy of our endorsement. As Gabby and Mark wrote in August, Congresswoman Duckworth is an American hero and a powerful voice for stronger gun laws. She will be an exceptional United States Senator.”
*** UPDATE *** From the Kirk campaign…
Hey Rich — here are two on the record statements below from the Kirk campaign and from Divided Families USA to be included in your coverage of the HRC action.
On the record:
”Senator Kirk is incredibly proud of his leadership to fight discrimination at every level, including speaking on the steps of the Supreme Court to urge them to support marriage equality. The HRC decision today is unfortunate because it was based on politics instead of reality and further exemplified just how uncomfortable HRC was in supporting a Republican who was a leader for their efforts, including eradicating discrimination. ” -Kirk campaign spokesperson Eleni Demertzis
“We believe the accusations of racism being leveled against Sen. Kirk are totally unfounded and unfair. For over a decade, Sen. Kirk has championed the Korean-American war-torn divided families issue when few legislators, Asian or otherwise, would. Without Sen. Kirk’s advocacy, we believe our divided families issue may fail to get the legislative support needed to fulfill their lifelong dreams of reunion—a humanitarian tragedy in the making. Sen. Kirk has, and continues to be, a vigorous champion for the Korean-American community and commands the respect of Asian Americans at large.” – Dr. Jason Ahn, Board Chair, Divided Families USA
Friday, Oct 28, 2016 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
The same utility company that is pressuring Illinois legislators for more than eight billion dollars in ratepayer subsidies illegally avoided paying more than $1.4 billion in federal taxes and penalties.
Meanwhile, Exelon just announced higher than expected 3rd quarter profits of $841 million and bragged to their investors about how successful they’ve been this year. In fact, they’ve made more than $2 BILLION IN PROFITS in the last twelve months.
Why on Earth should Illinois ratepayers be forced to pay billions more for nuclear plants we don’t need while EXELON CAN’T EVEN BE TRUSTED TO PAY ITS TAXES?
JUST SAY NO TO THE EXELON BAILOUT
BEST Coalition is a 501C4 nonprofit group of dozens of business, consumer and government groups, as well as large and small businesses. Visit www.noexelonbailout.com.
In Moody’s calculation, the net pension liability grew from $503 million in 2015 to $707 million in 2016. The agency knocked down the city’s general fund two notches from A1 to A3 and its water fund from Aa2 to A1.
“We’ve been aware of and discussing this liability for years, which is why we’ve worked diligently to eliminate pension spiking, tie wage growth to the (consumer pricing index), and change our city’s health insurance benefit matrix in order to mitigate growth and future liability,” said budget director Bill McCarty in a release Friday.
The city noted the agency recognized Springfield’s “satisfactory financial operations,” which it says is because of the city’s efforts to control costs.
Suburban Cook County’s minimum wage is set to increase to $13 an hour under legislation approved Wednesday by the board of commissioners.
The hourly minimum wage will gradually increase from $8.25 to $13 by 2020. The city of Chicago has already approved an increase in the minimum wage, which will grow to $13 by 2019.
The People’s Lobby was among the groups pushing for a Cook County minimum wage hike.
“Today’s vote is a tremendous victory for working people,” said Pascal Brixel with The People’s Lobby. “It will give 200,000 people a desperately needed raise, and, when fully implemented, it will put almost $10,000 more dollars a year in the pockets of full-time, minimum wage workers.
Leaders of several Northwest suburbs said they’ll consider opting out of a measure gradually increasing the minimum wage in Cook County to $13 an hour by 2020. […]
Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson said that as the local government overseeing the nation’s largest industrial park, his village board intends to thoroughly consider both the minimum-wage law and another recently passed measure requiring most private employers throughout the county offer at least five days of paid sick leave a year to all employees.
Municipalities have until next July to decide whether to opt out.
How to solve a problem if you really care about the outcome:
Talk to the main players, build consensus, and go with an approach that’s effective and that most can live with.
How to approach a problem if you only care about how you look, not whether anyone’s actually helped:
Ignore the other players, push through a plan most of them oppose, claim credit for taking action, and make the others use time and money to undo what you’ve forced upon them.
The Cook County Board led by Toni Preckwinkle followed the second route in passing its policy requiring sick leave for all workers, with the likely result that few workers will get helped, more lawyers will make more money, and the Cook County Democrats who control the board will make political hay at the expense of the suburbs.
The county board followed the same pattern again on Wednesday when it voted to raise the minimum wage for the county. Once again, suburbs can opt out, potentially creating a wage patchwork across the county and possibly resulting in no actual minimum wage increase, except in scattered unincorporated areas.
* The Question: Do you agree or disagree with the Cook County Board’s decision to raise the minimum wage? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
A new draft version of the bill, obtained by Crain’s, sets forth a different way to calculate subsidies for Exelon’s two at-risk nukes than previous versions, incorporating a social cost of carbon pollution as the baseline for rewarding the nukes for their lack of emissions and then making adjustments based on market conditions. But, like a version from last spring, the subsidy would be capped at $265 million per year. […]
More additional ratepayer charges would support wind and solar energy development in Illinois, made possible by state-negotiated power purchase contracts. The measure calls for more than 4,000 megawatts of new wind and solar over the next 14 years, funded by a charge on the delivery portion of customers’ electric bills. That charge would supplant the current system of requiring power suppliers to pay to meet required renewable energy usage and then passing those costs along to customers.
In addition, steeper charges on electric bills would support much more ambitious utility efforts to reduce power consumption. But, for the first time, utilities like ComEd would be allowed to earn a profit from their administration of these energy efficiency programs. Currently, utilities recoup their administrative costs from ratepayers, but aren’t permitted to charge extra to earn a return.
Missing so far from the bill are provisions Dynegy is seeking to funnel more revenue to its struggling coal fleet in Southern Illinois. Exelon and Dynegy have talked about having the state take over from the regional grid manager for downstate Illinois the responsibility of buying “capacity,” or the obligation to deliver when power demand is highest, from power generators. That would boost the revenue Dynegy’s coal plants receive from downstate ratepayers and allow the company to keep open facilities it’s announced it will close. […]
Ratepayer-funded help for Dynegy is likely to be added to win downstate votes for the package. But that will put environmentalists who’ve lobbied for the bill’s clean energy and efficiency programs in the difficult position of endorsing actions to keep open polluting power plants that otherwise would close.
And, of course, ComEd’s plan to charge people based on their highest usage time is still in there.
Thanks, Sen. Kirk. Let’s honor my family’s service - and your own - by sticking to the issues for the final week. See you Friday in Chicago. https://t.co/INdBtm5K3G
The State of Illinois has found a way to make back payments to a Wisconsin agency serving Illinois residents with developmental disabilities.
Chrishaven, a small agency in the La Crosse area, has confirmed that they have now been paid for all 12 months of Fiscal Year 2016 for the five individuals they were serving. The payments add up to approximately $200,000.
Chrishaven took over care of the individuals—four men and a woman—more than two decades ago because no agencies could be identified in Illinois to take them. The Chicago Sun-Times disclosed in February that no payments had been made for their care since Illinois’ budget impasse began in July 2015. Chrishaven had been scraping by, nearly depleting their reserves. Lynn Kay, who runs the agency, said Illinois finally recommended that she notify the individuals and their families that she could no longer serve them. In an interview for a newsletter published by McManus Consulting, a Wilmette-based practice serving disability providers, she said: “That day was one of the worst days of my life. It was horrible that we had to put everyone through such pain.”
The Sun-Times said at the time that there were 44 Illinois residents altogether who fell into this category and had been sent to various agencies in other states; it is not known whether any of those agencies have been paid.
Consultant Ed McManus praised the Rauner administration for coming through with the money. “The governor and the legislature both are responsible for allowing the impasse to drag on for so long,” he said. “But the administration deserves big credit for doing the right thing for the sake of these individuals, and it’s great that Chrishaven is staying afloat. But what a shame that these families had to go through this nightmare. It’s a disgrace that we have no budget, and that our most vulnerable citizens have been treated so shabbily!”
The individuals were given until March 31 to move out, but none of them was ready, and the Department of Human Services persuaded Chrishaven to delay the discharges. The families were offered funding if the individuals returned to Illinois, but that meant identifying Illinois agencies able and willing to serve them, not an easy task—not to mention the issue of uprooting them after all these years.
And then, finally, the funding came through. It is not known where the money is coming from. Comptroller Leslie Munger said previously she could not make the payments without authorization from DHS. DHS cannot issue a voucher unless there is an appropriation passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. In-state developmental disability providers are being paid under a court order, but that doesn’t cover individuals out of state.
Before the funding came through, the parents of one of the individuals, Keith Drazner, 39, of Highland Park, were able to find an Illinois agency to serve him—Clearbrook in Arlington Heights—and he has now moved back, but it has been difficult for him to adjust.
“This whole thing should not have happened,” said his mother, Sharon Drazner. “Keith was happy. The people who took care of him were excellent. The state had no cohesive plan to bring him back. He was like a movable chess piece—‘here’s a spot, let’s put him there.’ No one really cared. What a strange journey this has been. I hope it works out.”
Colleges and universities have been starved for state funding through the ongoing budget impasse. The interim provost at the flagship campus of the University of Illinois recently presented faculty and staff with a blunt accounting of the school’s financial situation.
As one of the top administrators at the U of I, Edward Feser’s academic specialty is in regional economics. In short, he’s a numbers guy. So when he decided to give the campus community an update on the school’s response to the budget problems, his talk included a big dose of digits. But that’s not all there is to it.
“We wanted to explain how we were dealing with the state funding shortfall. So from fiscal ‘16, from the stop-gap allocation that was provided, if we account for the amount of money that was directed to the university, and we also account for the permanent spending reductions that we implemented of $49 million annually — after you account for those two things, in fiscal ‘16, we remain $140 million short. If we look at fiscal ‘17, we applied additional spending reductions of about $18 million. And then if we take account of the second round of stop-gap funding that was provided, we’re in the hole for fiscal ‘17 by $50 million.
“So if you look at the last two fiscal years in which we’ve had no budget, and instead stop-gap allocations, we are short $190 million from those two years. And that’s after we reduced spending by about $68 or $69 million. And to give you a sense of the magnitude of that reduction — $69 million — it’s important to realize that in fiscal ‘15, we received about $236 million in general revenue funding. So in two years, we’ve made a substantial revenue reduction in our spending, and we’re still $190 million short from those two years. We wanted to explain that to the campus, to help faculty understand it, and to explain how we were addressing that near-term shortfall.”
While several other Democratic House candidates did not return calls seeking comment, a Madigan spokesman said the GOP is simply looking for a message to distract from controversial presidential nominee Donald Trump leading the ticket. Spokesman Steve Brown contended Republicans “will say anything” to shift the conversation.
“This has been done before, and it’s unclear what effect more spending will have,” Brown said. “They figured out, probably too late, that Rauner and Trump are two anchors around their candidates’ necks, and they are trying to unwrap those anchors.” […]
The Republican operative suggested the anti-Madigan strategy has negated any damage Trump has done. The GOP has labeled Madigan “the great equalizer,” saying he’s helped the GOP remain competitive during a presidential election year, which usually favors Democrats. […]
“When we started this, it was less about building unfavorables and more about letting people know who he is and how Springfield actually works,” said Pat Brady, former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party who launched a “Fire Madigan” campaign four years ago. “Now they are trying to take that and win seats with it, and I think they are going to have success.”
“It’s ‘Fire Madigan’ on steroids because they have the resources and the funding and a lot of very smart people running these campaigns. It’s a lot more well thought out and a stronger strategy than we’ve ever had,” Brady said. “We are in a state that has been dysfunctional for so long that they are looking for someone to blame, and the speaker is an easy target. If we can get across the point that a vote for an individual Democrat is a vote for Madigan, I think that’s very effective.”
The federal super political action committee running TV ads attempting to link controversial Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner has raised $5.7 million this month, federal campaign finance records show.
The super PAC is known as LIFT, an acronym for Leading Illinois For Tomorrow, and is headed by state Sen. Daniel Biss, an Evanston Democrat. It’s an attempt to counter Republican legislative ads backed by Rauner that try to link Democratic candidates to veteran Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan.
The disclosure of money from Oct. 1-20 shows the group’s largest donors include $2.5 million from Michael Sacks, a wealthy asset management CEO and confidant of Mayor Rahm Emanuel; $1 million from veteran Democratic megadonor Fred Eychaner; and $950,000 from longtime Democratic contributor J.B. Pritzker and the Jabodon PT Co. he co-founded.
In addition, unions have given more than $1 million. That includes $400,000 from the Construction & General Laborers District Council of Chicago, $250,000 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, $200,000 from the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers and $100,000 from the American Federation of Teachers Solidarity independent expenditure fund. The AFT is the umbrella organization for the Illinois Federation of Teachers, which includes the Chicago Teachers Union.
* More from the release, but this time without the hyperlinks because I want to move on to other stuff…
Meanwhile, on Twitter…
Kellyanne Conway @KellyannePolls: The same Mark Kirk that unendorsed his party’s presidential nominee and called him out in paid ads? Gotcha. Good luck.
Deadspin @Deadspin: Senator Mark Kirk mocks disabled Iraq war vet Tammy Duckworth in debate for her mixed-race heritage: deadsp.in/Pz454FH”
Jake Tapper @jaketapper: Kirk was already almost certainly going to lose. This is the opposite of a graceful exit.
Soledad O’Brien @soledadobrien: Sigh. For shame Mr. Kirk.
Steve Kornacki @SteveKornacki: His attack on Duckworth tonight is not the first bizarre/offensive thing Kirk has blurted out in the past few years chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/z…
Taegan Goddard @politicalwire: Wow, Sen. Mark Kirk really flubbed his debate tonight with Tammy Duckworth politicalwire.com/2016/10/27/dum…
Matt Viser @mviser: The definition of a bad debate moment youtu.be/icc0NXOdJQg
Mike DeBonis @mikedebonis: Here’s video of that Duckworth/Kirk exchange. It’s as bad as it sounds.
Manu Raju @mkraju: Mark Kirk always had an uphill climb for reelection but his comment about Duckworth’s ethnic heritage probably sealed his fate. #ilsen
Larry Handlin @archpundit: That was awkward and inappropriate.
Kim Janssen @kimjnews: The strange things people believe rarely surprise me but holy mackerel why would Mark Kirk say that out loud?
Chris Cillizza @TheFix: This really is stunning “@washingtonpost Sen. Mark Kirk questions opponent’s American heritage in Illinois debate wapo.st/2e2D3dO”
Rich Miller @capitolfax: That remark by @markkirkhq about @TammyforIL’s ancestry is about the lowest thing I’ve seen in a debate
Shane Goldmacher @ShaneGoldmacher: This Kirk-Duckworth exchange is going viral in 3…2…1… m.youtube.com/watch?v=icc0NX…
Daniel Nichanian @Taniel: Senator Mark Kirk may have said the most racist thing in a year headlined by Donald Trump. via @BFriedmanDC: pic.twitter.com/gHOkJwMosO
Harry Enten @ForecasterEnten: You can see why the Chicago Tribune endorsed Duckworth…
Eric Garcia @EricMGarcia: What. The. Hell? “@BFriedmanDC Wow. In debate, @MarkKirk says to Tammy Duckworth: “I had forgotten your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.””
Eric Bradner @ericbradner: Just seeing this and WOW is it racist. If #ILSen wasn’t in the bag for Democrats by now… “@mikedebonis Here’s video of that Duckworth/Kirk exchange. It’s as bad as it sounds. youtu.be/icc0NXOdJQg”
David Catanese @davecatanese: This clip is unreal. Wtf was he thinking.
Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias: See, she was born in Thailand so it’s not possible her dad’s a Marine from a longstanding military family.
Greg Pollowitz @GPollowitz: The thing is Sen. Kirk has held himself out as morally superior to Trump for months, and then he says this? Goodbye Sen. majority
Andrew Kaczynski @KFILE: Oof, the Kirk comment did fall as flat as people said.
Kellyanne Conway, by the way, is Donald Trump’s campaign manager. No lifeline there.
