I am writing to update you on the effect of the budget impasse on providers of services through contracts with the Department on Aging. Part of our money is being paid out by court order when we make hardship requests for payment. But none of the FY 2017 money to reimburse us for services we’ve already provided, under contract, that isn’t court ordered is even being sent to the Comptroller, despite the stopgap budget. I’ve heard from several providers, today alone, that they cannot make ends meet. Two have told me TODAY alone, that their boards are threatening closure because they have exhausted their reserve funds and can’t see how to make payroll in January. I hear from agencies every day now, asking for help to make payroll. If you could see fit to shine a light on this very real problem, I’d appreciate it.
I’m forwarding a video from the Responsible Budget Coalition about the impasse’s effect on the Senior Services Plus Meals on Wheels program in Alton.
Cindy Cunningham
President, Illinois Adult Day Services Association
* Earlier today, GOP Rep. Mark Batinick gave his side of the story about Tuesday’s often tense working group meeting to discuss local government mandates and consolidations. A few minutes ago, Rep. Chris Welch (D-Hillside) sent me this…
Hi Rich,
I attended Tuesday’s meeting at the request of Speaker Madigan and I’m happy to share my perspective. Unlike my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I think it’s incumbent on any legislator to gather the proper information and data prior to passing important legislation. I and my other Democratic colleagues refuse to be a rubber stamp for the Executive Branch while important questions remain unanswered. The message I heard loud and clear was that in order for the State to get a budget, the General Assembly better cave to the Governor’s demands.
Prior to the meeting, I was told the group would discuss mandates, but the actual topic was destruction of collective bargaining rights. The Governor’s office did not provide us with legislative language prior to or during the meeting. Democratic members and staff asked many questions in an attempt to nail down specifics on each proposal discussed. There were some tense moments, usually when a Democratic legislator or staff had the audacity to ask for specific information, or an explanation about the negative impacts of the Governor’s proposals on middle-class families.
When the meeting ended, there was a willingness to continue discussions, despite the fact that the Governor’s Office was leaking blatantly false information about Democrats’ position to the media during what we thought were private discussions. We asked the Governor’s Office to provide language and additional information, and indicated we were ready to meet again. However, I was informed a few minutes ago that the Governor’s Office refuses to engage in further negotiations at this time.
Chris Welch
Man, if they’re still trying to push through significant collective bargaining limits at this stage of the game, we can probably forget about a deal.
*** UPDATE *** I’m told by the Rauner folks that they disagree with everything in Welch’s e-mail.
Democrats, they say, have been asked to provide some counter-offers, which they say the Democrats have refused to provide. So, until the Dems do provide those counter-offers, there’s apparently no sense in having further meetings.
However, Sen. Andy Manar told me that he agrees with everything Rep. Welch wrote. “I was fully expecting to have another meeting to continue where we left off,” he continued. “To prepare, I asked our staff to put together information to be ready for the next time we met.”
* The 2016 Golden Horseshoe Award for Best Nonpartisan Legislative/Agency Staffer goes to Andrea Creek…
LRB certainly doesn’t get enough credit, but is an easy scapegoat for problems with a bill, and I think Andrea Creek is probably the most looked-over asset to the Capital. She spots issues with legislation that the sponsor would never foresee and cleans up problems in the revisory bill that none of us ever understand, all while being patient and helpful.
* The 2016 Golden Horseshoe Award for Best Government Spokesperson goes to John Patterson…
Patterson does a great job framing Cullerton and Cullerton’s positions as the reasonable, responsible ones.
He is low key, and not flashy, but Dave is universally respected by the press and media corps and is always available to answer questions, dig up statistics, and fill in facts on the tightest of media deadlines.
* On to today’s categories…
* Best Illinois State Representative - Republican
* Best Illinois State Representative - Democrat
As always, make sure to explain your vote or it won’t count. Also, please do your very best to nominate in both categories. Thanks!
“The change in tone is due to the uninterrupted campaign rhetoric that we listened to for over two years,” Brown said. “That fills everybody with the expectation that if there were some kind of a budget agreement … once a vote was taken, there would be a never-ending series of attack ads. Robocalls, dark money, (and) character assassination sponsored by Governor (Bruce) Rauner.”
* There is ample justification for this viewpoint. After all, the governor, who is by far the largest single contributor to the Illinois Republican Party, regularly denies all knowledge of his party’s activities…
“That’s its own process. I have nothing to do with it. I don’t spend my time thinking about it or focusing on it.”
There’s also the Aaron Schock dark money precedent. All of a sudden in early 2013, the potential gubernatorial candidate started getting whacked by dark money attacks. The same sort of thing happened again in 2014 against all of Rauner’s opponents.
So, the Madigan types figure dark money will most definitely be used against Democrats after a budget agreement, whether through Dan Proft or some other group, and that Rauner will flatly deny any and all involvement, just like he’s doing now with the BossMadigan.com website.
…Adding… Wordslinger makes some great points in comments…
Yes, that will happen, but so what? You still have to do your jobs.
And please — getting whacked in campaign media for making tough votes? Madigan’s crew engineers tough votes all the time so they can whack GOP candidates with them later.
The Dems should consider making the great leap forward to the 1990s when it comes to message delivery and maybe they wouldn’t worry about Rauner so much. It’s not like his crew is dazzling with the message.
Right now, Dems are getting clobbered because they’re not in the ballgame.
…Adding More… From Juvenal in comments…
Have Democrats used rollcalls to put Republicans in tough positions? Sure.
But not ever that I can recall when it came to something that required bipartisan support to pass that Democrats actually wanted.
When you want something to pass, and it requires a structured, bipartisan rollcall, there is always another piece to the deal: both sides have to agree that the bill isn’t going to be the basis of attack ads.
In other words: every Democrat who voted for George Ryan’s license fee hike could rest assured that neither Ryan, Daniels, or Pate would come after them.
That trust is utterly lacking.
And it doesn’t make a bipartisan agreement impossible, but it does make it that much more difficult, because now those Democrats have to be much more careful about what level of funding they can defend, not just for targets either. You have to assume that dark money is going to flood the streets of Chicago again against black caucus members accused of raising taxes for Boss Madigan.
Heck, Rauner just spent money pillorying Forby for voting to confirm his own labor board appointments.
Democratic legislators should put taxpayers ahead of their personal interests & drop lawsuit to prioritize their paychecks #nobudgetnopaypic.twitter.com/EbJMN3xACK
The Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) announced today that the unemployment rate in November remained at 5.6 percent and nonfarm payrolls increased by +1,700 jobs over the month, based on preliminary data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and IDES. October job growth was revised up to show an increase of +3,400 jobs rather than the preliminary figure of +2,200 jobs. Despite the upward revision, job growth remains below the national average, with Illinois -29,600 jobs short of its peak employment level reached in September 2000.
“Through 11 months of 2016, the nation’s rate of growth continues to outpace our rate by 50 percent,” said IDES Director Jeff Mays. “The biggest sector gains have been in professional and business services with 37,200 jobs added, while the biggest losses have been in manufacturing, with 8,700 fewer jobs.”
“If Illinois had grown at the same rate as the nation since the beginning of the recovery in 2010, we would have an additional 222,700 jobs,” said Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity Acting Director Sean McCarthy. “With a balanced budget and structural reforms, our economy will be better able to grow jobs and provide opportunities for Illinois families.”
In November, the three industry sectors with the largest gains in employment were: Education and Health Services (+3,500); Leisure and Hospitality (+3,100); and Other Services (+1,800). The four industry sectors with the largest declines in employment were: Trade, Transportation and Utilities (-2,800); Construction (-2,300); Manufacturing (-700) and Information (-700).
Over the year, nonfarm payroll employment increased by +43,000 jobs with the largest gains in two industry sectors: Professional and Business Services (+35,400); and Leisure and Hospitality (+17,700). Industry sectors with the largest over-the-year declines in November include: Manufacturing (-10,100), Financial Activities (-5,600) and Information (-5,200). The +0.7 percent over-the-year gain in Illinois is less than the +1.6 percent gain posted by the nation in November.
The state’s unemployment rate is higher than the national unemployment rate reported for November 2016, which declined to 4.6 percent. The Illinois unemployment rate is down -0.4 percentage points from a year ago when it was 6.0 percent.
The number of unemployed workers increased +0.5 percent from the prior month to 368,500, down -6.4 percent over the same month for the prior year. The labor force was little changed over-the-month and grew by +0.5 percent in November over the prior year. The unemployment rate identifies those individuals who are out of work and are seeking employment. An individual who exhausts or is ineligible for benefits is still reflected in the unemployment rate if they actively seek work.
Exelon officials announced Wednesday that they plan to hire more than 400 people to fast track multiple capital projects at the Quad Cities Generating Station near Cordova and its Clinton, Ill. nuclear power plant.
The announcement comes one week after Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the Future Energy Jobs Bill into law at Riverdale High School near Port Byron and similar ceremonies in Clinton, Ill.
“Opponents of the Future Energy Jobs Bill called it a bailout, but that’s a ridiculous argument,” said Rory Washburn, executive director of the Quad Cities area’s Tri City Building Trades Council. “This legislation is already creating good paying jobs for Illinois families and leveling the playing field so our safe and well run nuclear facilities can compete fairly with other subsidized sources of clean energy.”
Elk Grove Village’s mayor and board of trustees will rescind their support for Gov. Bruce Rauner’s “Turnaround Agenda” amid the threat of a lawsuit from a suburban-based labor union.
Neither village officials nor a representative of International Union of Operating Engineers 150 on Wednesday would discuss the basis for a potential lawsuit stemming from the board’s April 2015 vote backing the Republican governor’s plan. […]
The village board unanimously approved a settlement Tuesday with Local 150. Under the deal, the village promises to formally rescind support of the Rauner agenda in a public vote by Jan. 31, 2017, and the union agreed to forgo any legal challenges.
Both sides said the settlement is unrelated to an investigation into whether the mayor and five board trustees qualify to collect pensions. After the village board passed the resolution backing the governor’s agenda last year, Countryside-based Local 150 accused board members of working too few hours for membership in the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund — prompting an investigation by the pension fund’s attorneys.
Tuesday, Mayor Craig Johnson said the village was facing possible litigation if it did not rescind the resolution. […]
Local 150 spokesman Ed Maher said the union brought actions in court against the McHenry County Board and the city of Rockford for violations of the Illinois Open Meetings Act related to those two governments’ passage of similar resolutions supporting Rauner’s “Turnaround Agenda.”
After the 2015 meeting, Maher and other union officials were critical of the fact that, although an agenda item was posted on the village website 48 hours in advance of the April 28 meeting, the village did not post a copy of the full resolution supporting parts of the “Turnaround Agenda” on the website in advance of the meeting.
The Illinois Open Meetings Act requires only that items which would be voted on by village trustees or members of other public boards or commissioners as “action items” be listed 48 hours in advance on agendas. The open meetings law does not require the full language of a proposed ordinance or resolution be posted in advance.
* Rauner had a real opportunity at the start of his term to woo the more conservative construction trade unions and use that alliance to yank the public unions’ chains. Several of those trade unions had already pushed for public employee pension reform - at Speaker Madigan’s behest, no less. Rauner made big promises of a major capital bill during the campaign, but he’s barely talked about it since then. The trade unionists would’ve swooned over him had he done that.
Instead of focusing all of his immediate attention on getting things done, the rookie governor went off on a bizarre, Randian speaking tour for the first four months of his first spring session, telling everyone who would listen the magical benefits of “right to work” and eliminating the prevailing wage - completely impossible dreams with the makeup of the Illinois General Assembly.
Gov. Rauner basically launched an existential war right out of the gate, which united all unions as never before and arc-welded the Democratic Party to them. They firmly believe that if one goes down, so does the other. That ain’t the greatest atmosphere for compromise.
And now, even some of the governor’s most pathetically symbolic early “victories” are being rolled back at the local level while the state burns to the ground.
It was Rauner who canceled the last scheduled meeting last week with House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and the other legislative leaders because he said the Democrats weren’t prepared to offer a spending plan. The five haven’t met since, even though Rauner has repeatedly said he wants to meet every day until a budget agreement is reached.
“I was flabbergasted,” Rauner said of the Democrats’ response. “They said, ‘Well, we’re not ready. We need some time.’ What was clear is they are not taking this process seriously.”
“We have asked to meet every day,” Rauner added. “When they indicate they are ready to have a good-faith negotiation, and so far they have not, we’ll meet every day.”
That’s not how the Democratic leaders see it. Senate President John Cullerton’s spokesman said they believe progress is being made by working groups who are negotiating workers’ compensation changes, government consolidation and other issues the governor has said he wants addressed. Those groups have been meeting even though the leaders have not.
“That’s why the Senate president was surprised and disappointed when the governor canceled the follow-up meetings when it seemed like we were finally on the verge of a budget framework,” the Chicago Democrat’s spokesman, John Patterson, said. “President Cullerton hopes the governor will reconsider and come back to the table and resume working toward a fair and balanced budget.”
Those are two completely and diametrically opposing viewpoints. And it sounds a lot to my ears like the rhetoric over the stalled AFSCME negotiations, which the governor also declared to be at impasse.
* But Rep. Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield) attended Tuesday’s working group meeting to discuss local government mandate relief and consolidation and saw the Democrats’ negotiating posture up close and personal. He sent this to me yesterday evening…
I’m in commercial real estate. In commercial real estate you negotiate. All day long you negotiate. Sometimes you negotiate big issues. Sometimes small ones. But you are always looking for as many win-win situations as possible. At least I am.
After two decades of negotiating on a nearly daily basis I can tell you it is easy to spot whether a party is negotiating in good faith or not. You can tell when someone is trying to tank a deal or work hard to get one done.
I attended my first working group meeting on Tuesday. I saw all the telltale signs of a party not wanting get a deal completed. Frankly, I wish the meeting was in public and video recorded. Some of the pettiness displayed was breathtaking. We should be digging in, in good faith, to get a real deal done. The people of Illinois deserve no less. That wasn’t the case Tuesday.
If any Democrat who attended Tuesday’s meeting is willing to send me a statement, I’d be happy to publish it.
One of the problems for many lawmakers is that they view their jobs as full time.
They certainly get paid full-time salaries – $67,836. Many receive stipends of $10,327 for extra duties. The total: $78,163.
But the Legislature is in session only from January until May, with a 2-week veto session in November.
Full-time employment? Not hardly.
By stretching their legislative jobs to full time, such lawmakers don’t have any “real” jobs to fall back on. And now, their personal finances are feeling the pinch.
How many “real jobs” allow workers to take off January through May (and beyond) every year? Some lawyers can do it, but do we really need more of them in the GA? Could school teachers take that much time off? Factory workers? Please. I suppose they could all become Uber drivers like Rep. Andrade. Or they could get government jobs at the local level, which can often accommodate politicians, but do we want more of that?
We could probably restructure the General Assembly so that it doesn’t meet as often, but that would require a pretty darned heavy lift.
* However, there’s no doubt that their pay rate makes them a big target when things don’t go well. And things haven’t gone well in Illinois for quite a long time.
“The question of salaries has haunted American legislatures since the 1640s,” said Peverill Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri and an expert on state legislatures. “It has been a chronic issue where lawmakers generally ask for more pay and the public is almost always resistant.” […]
Lawmaker salaries vary wildly across the country, from California, where legislators make nearly $100,000 a year, to New Hampshire, where they are compensated with $100 annually and no per diem. Overall, though, they tend to skew low. In 2014, according to research by Squire and Gary Moncrief, a political science professor at Boise State University, the median base pay was $20,833.
Low pay also puts limits on who can realistically serve in a legislature. In states like New Mexico that have short legislative sessions, lawmakers must leave their day jobs for one or two months every year and travel to the state capital — in addition to dealing with year-round demands from constituents. Many lawmakers must be independently wealthy or have flexible jobs that allow them to juggle politics and everyday work. Part-time legislators are also more likely than full-time legislators to be retirees, Moncrief said. It’s no surprise, then, that state lawmakers tend to be older than their constituents.
As Illinois enters a new period of heightened budget uncertainty, colleges and universities must again decide whether to front grant money to low-income students who are supposed to be receiving state aid.
A new survey from the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, which administers the grants through the Monetary Award Program, suggests some schools that covered the grants in the fall aren’t making guarantees for the spring.
Of the 96 colleges and universities that responded to the survey, 53 percent said they would guarantee the funding for the spring semester, down from 60 percent in the fall. Because the commission didn’t receive responses from 36 schools whose students are eligible to receive MAP grants, it cautioned against drawing overarching conclusions from the responses. […]
When lawmakers and Gov. Bruce Rauner approved a stopgap spending plan that’s funding higher education and most other state operations through Dec. 31, they included money to finish paying off last year’s MAP grants. No money was included for the current year, however, leaving public and private universities and community colleges to decide whether to credit students’ accounts for the grants as many had the previous year.
While nearly all public universities covered the grants this fall, only two-thirds are committed to covering them in the spring, according to the survey.
[Manar] said first-term Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner “has divided our state into pieces,” and has “used that division every day against Democrats.”
“I think Democrats have to become better at delivering a message that resonates with voters because we have the right policies,” Manar added. […]
“Personal wealth is a factor,” Manar said. “That’s something I don’t bring to the table. Never have; probably never will. But I think there’s other factors that have to be considered when coming up with a nominee.”
“If we’re going to straight up nominate someone who simply has money with no message and no way to deliver a message and no way to resonate with working-class voters, then we’re probably not going to fare as well as … we otherwise would,” he said.
I’ve known Andy for quite a long while. He’s about as sharp as they come.
* One problem, though, will be his school funding reform push. It’s a good idea and he’s visited just about every nook and cranny of Illinois touting it, building friendships and alliances as he goes.
But the wealthier suburbs won’t like it unless there’s lots more state money put into the mix to shield them from state funding cuts. And lots more state money means, of course, a tax hike.
* VanillaMan’s latest, based on “Must be Santa,” a tune I’ve loved since I was a kid. Click here if you need a refresher…
Who’s got a solution to business flight?
Rauner’s got a solution to business flight!
Who spends millions each election night?
Rauner spends millions each election night!
Business flight, Buys election night,
Must be Rauner, must be Rauner,
Must be Governor, Governor Bruce.
Who wants to give us Right To Work?
Rauner wants to give us Right To Work!
Who drives unions completely bezerk?
Rauner drives unions completely bezerk!
Right To Work, completely bezerk,
Buys election night, business flight
Must be Rauner, must be Rauner,
Must be Governor, Governor Bruce.
Who’s wants to save us 1.4?
Rauner wants to save us 1.4!
Who doing that by waging war?
Rauner’s doing that by waging war!
1.4, waging war,
Right To Work, completely bezerk,
Buys election night, business flight
Must be Rauner, must be Rauner,
Must be Governor, Governor Bruce.
Who says he wants to limit terms?
Rauner says he wants to limit terms!
Who says Madigan’s got cooties and germs?
Rauner says Madigan’s got cooties and germs!
Limit terms, cooties and germs,
1.4, wages war,
Right To Work, completely bezerk,
Buys election night, business flight
Must be Rauner, must be Rauner,
Must be Governor, Governor Bruce.
Ryan, Blago, Quinn and Rauner!
Governing Illinois is sure a downer!
Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Hooray!
Two in the Slammer, and two got away!
One fine day, will come our way,
Just not now, don’t have a cow,
Rauner’s in charge, our debts enlarge,
We’re in a hole, that’s his goal
Must be Rauner, must be Rauner,
Must be Governor BRUCE!
