* WGN…
Intense rhetoric between Chicago democrats and Illinois’ republican governor is nothing new, but some parents are upset it is now being played out in a letter sent home with their kids. Chicago Public Schools officials sent home a letter with all 381,000 students blasting Gov. Bruce Rauner and ignoring any role democrats may have played in the state’s budget woes.
The “Dear Parents” letter begins by stating “Governor Bruce Rauner, just like President Trump, has decided to attack those who need the most help.” Twice the letter accuses Gov. Rauner of “cheating” children. Once it says the governor “stole” from kids. The letter goes on to cite Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool’s often repeated claim that the governor broke a promise by blocking Chicago from receiving $215 million for city schools.
One CPS parent who contacted WGN wrote: “This is so inappropriate. How can he send political propaganda home?” The letter, paid for by taxpayers, does not mention democrats who have been in control of the city and state legislature for decades.
Government watchdog groups questioned the district’s decision to use such strong partisan language in a letter sent home with kids. “Invoking partisan politics – especially at the national level – is not the most effective way to build trust with parents and students,” said Sarah Brune of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.
We’re arrived at a whole new level of weirdness, campers.
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More finger-pointing
Tuesday, Feb 7, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sun-Times…
A day after Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool heightened his war with Gov. Bruce Rauner by blaming him for the school district’s latest financial woes — and likening him to President Donald Trump — Rauner’s education secretary on Tuesday fired back — essentially telling Claypool to look in the mirror.
Education Secretary Beth Purvis released an open letter to CPS parents, placing the blame for the financial mess squarely on CPS’ “continued mismanagement” and calling the latest cuts “curiously timed.”
The letter to parents comes after CPS officials encouraged parents to bombard the governor with phone calls in support of “fair funding.” It also comes during a high pressure week in Springfield, as Illinois Senate leaders try to pass a package of bills meant to end the state’s budget crisis.
In the letter to CPS parents, Purvis called the freezing of as much as $69 million in spending “a shock to all of us.” And she noted that CPS doesn’t have to make its full pension payment until June 30. […]
“Why would CPS arbitrarily create a crisis and hurt its students and teachers rather than work to pass the Senate’s balanced budget reform package?” Purvis wrote.
The full letter is here.
* You’ll get no argument from just about anybody that CPS finances are a mess and have been for a very long time.
And yesterday’s timing may very well be suspicious. CPS’ numbers are so opaque (and I’m being kind) that it’s impossible to determine if all these cuts are necessary or if they’re cutting items for maximum media impact and are using the Rauner bogeyman to mask their own incompetence and/or failure…
“He’s clearly adopting Donald Trump’s tactics of attacking vulnerable citizens in order to score political points,” Claypool told reporters. “Just like Trump, [Rauner is] attacking children of immigrants, he’s attacking racial minorities, attacking the poor here in Chicago. In this case it’s children which is particularly shameful.”
Yeah, that’s gonna invite a retaliatory response, which is what Purvis did today.
But, look, if CPS didn’t make cuts and no budget deal is reached by June 30th, then the district may not be able to make its pension payment in four and a half months and that would be a very, very bad thing. These cuts are, ostensibly, at least, meant to avert a potential catastrophe in just a few months. I mean, would you bet on Springfield averting your own personal bankruptcy before June 30th? Of course not. So, on that level, the cuts can be seen as prudent.
* I agree with Purvis that Emanuel and Claypool ought to be far more supportive of the Senate’s work. Don’t just sit up there in Chicago and scream. Activate the troops before Rauner’s allies at the Illinois Chamber, the Illinois Policy Institute, Americans for Prosperity and Liberty Principles PAC kill the Senate plan. Do something positive. If you’re too afraid of Madigan, then push hard for a plan in his chamber. The Rauner veto is a dead horse. It can’t be undone. The only choice anyone has now is to move forward.
And while we’re at it, maybe the governor could say something about his allies’ trashing of the Senate plan? A public brush-back pitch, perhaps? Or maybe pick up the phone to call off the junkyard dogs? Or maybe (gasp!) start working on behalf of the Senate plan like his education secretary wants CPS to do? Unlike Claypool or Emanuel, after all, he actually plays a direct constitutional role in this here crisis.
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* You will recall that yesterday Attorney General Lisa Madigan urged Gov. Bruce Rauner to do three things “to protect all Illinois residents from the harm caused by the executive actions” of President Trump…
* Refuse to enter into any agreement that would use Illinois law enforcement authorities as federal immigration officers. Deputizing Illinois law enforcement as immigration officers would not only divert already scarce resources away from public safety efforts and raise serious legal questions, but also undermine the values on which the country was built.
* Strengthen the work performed by the Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Services within the Illinois Department of Human Services, which assists immigrants and refugees settling in Illinois through training, health screening, citizenship classes and other services. From October 1, 2016 through January, 31, 2017, 1,001 refugees arrived in Illinois.
* Commit to strong enforcement of Illinois’ anti-discrimination laws and bolster efforts to fight hate crimes against all residents across the state, including immigrants and refugees. Illinois’ hate crime statute provides both criminal and civil protections to those who have experienced hate-based harassment, injury and property damage.
* The governor’s office responded after I’d left the office…
The attorney general’s press release is detached from reality and is clearly an attempt to distract from her efforts to stop the pay of state employees and force a crisis in Illinois. The governor has no intention of deputizing the Illinois State Police as immigration officers, has signed legislation to strengthen Illinois’ hate crime statute, and supported the resettlement of thousands of refugees over the last two years.
Well, that’s good to know. State cops have better things to do with their time, particularly in the Chicago area.
* But Sen. Toi Hutchinson (D-Olympia Fields) sent me an e-mail not long ago saying she’d asked staff about the impact that the impasse has had on services for immigrants and refugees. She forwarded me their reply…
Due to the budget impasse and the Administration’s decision to not issue certain contracts, the following programs did not receive funding in FY 16: Welcoming Centers, Immigrant Integration Services, and Refugee Social Services. This equates to $7.7 million that was issued in FY 15, but not in FY 16. These programs were funded in FY 17 due to the Stop Gap Budget, but providers endured a whole year without funding, and services were cut that help immigrants and refugees successfully integrate into the State and become legal citizens.
The stop gap, of course, has now expired.
“So,” Hutchinson wrote, “for all the folks who want to make sure that we cut, here’s one more example of things that got cut. This needs to end.”
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Lawsuit filed over alleged lottery scam
Tuesday, Feb 7, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Belleville News-Democrat…
A class-action lawsuit filed Monday in St. Clair County alleges the company that managed Illinois’ lottery defrauded businesses that sold scratch-off lottery tickets and individuals that purchased the same tickets.
The suit accuses Northstar Lottery Group of manipulating the number of tickets available for purchase.
The complaint alleges that Northstar designed and operated games so that when it calculated that a particular game was financially beneficial to its profit interests, it would stop sales of tickets for that game and actively collect tickets that had been sent to its vendors for sale. Northstar would then simply start a new game and the process would repeat with the new game.
“We allege that when Northstar realized that it was ahead of the consumer in a particular game, meaning it had sold a number of tickets that did not include the winner, it would stop the game and lock in its profits. The winning ticket never got sold,” said Derek Brandt, one of the attorneys on the case, with Brandt Law of Edwardsville. […]
Gov. Bruce Rauner fired Northstar as the state’s private lottery manager in 2015.
The complaint is here.
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* Our old buddy Steve Schnorf read my Crain’s Chicago Business column about him yesterday and sent this…
I appreciate Rich’s column. Governor Rauner believes there are things that need to be done to set Illinois on the right path. I think most of us would agree with him on many of them.
At the same time, most of us find some of them unnecessary and beyond the pale. AFSCME needed to be taken to task and their unreasonable expectations rebuffed. But they neither needed nor deserve to be crushed.
In spite of what some posters on this site believe, Mike Madigan is not just an effective leader but also a decent and compassionate man and has been so the entire time I have known him. He does his job well and he will not be pushed around any more than any other leader. In the past, however, he was willing to step up and do deals with the other side because of the pragmatic need to get those deals done.
I digress by reminding us of Rich’s point that “lead” is the root of the word “leadership.”
I’ve known President Cullerton, Leader Durkin and Leader Radogno for years. In my opinion it’s been 30 years or more since we’ve had such a strong leadership group in the General Assembly.
These people can solve this problem, but it won’t be easy. There will have to be significant cuts in spending, there will have to be significant revenue increases and there will have to be significant concessions in areas such as workers’ compensation.
Let me digress briefly once more by saying that I know the labor leaders will have to make all this happen within their ranks and I know they are both capable and willing to do their part.
I hope this is not too offensive to too many people, but it’s the message I believe I have to deliver. Once again, thanks Rich.
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More like this, please
Tuesday, Feb 7, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Doug Wilson at the Herald-Whig took at look at some of what the Illinois Policy Institute’s budget proposal would do to the Quincy area. First up, doing away with municipal government revenue sharing…
Quincy Mayor Kyle Moore said that would cost the city an estimated $3.8 million a year.
“This would obviously be devastating to city services, especially since our share (of) the corporate personal property replacement tax was reduced by $400,000 last fiscal year,” Moore said.
* Now, the property tax freeze…
“We’ve worked hard to be conservative stewards of tax dollars … and decreased operating costs by $1.5 million in the last few years. This practice has allowed us to only minimally increase the tax rate when absolutely necessary,” [Mike Elbe, president of John Wood Community College] said.
“If you completely freeze property taxes and combine that with existing lack of state support, it will significantly limit the college’s ability to fund the array of workforce and college transfer programs that currently serve our students and district. The remaining source of funding is student tuition, which is capped at certain levels to maintain accessibility to high-quality education.”
* On to the almost billion dollar cut to higher education…
Matt Bierman, interim vice president of administrative services at Western Illinois University in Macomb, said the school already has faced a huge funding shortfall because of the budget battle. An audit of WIU released last week shows that the school has been forced to cut employment and find other ways to eliminate costs.
“We were shorted by about $30 million in 2016 over what we got in 2015. So last year we spent about that much from our reserves,” Bierman said.
I get why university and college presidents are so reticent to talk about this stuff. They don’t want to scare off current or prospective students. But that was a bit on the weak side.
All in all, though, a pretty solid piece. And there’s more, including local legislative react, so click here.
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Yet another failure
Tuesday, Feb 7, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* This Tribune story about a stalled project at Olive-Harvey College on the city’s South Side of a “Transportation, Distribution and Logistics Center” to train folks for “careers in automotive technology, applied engineering, the repair and maintenance of heavy equipment and supply chain management” is an interesting read.
The story is kinda all over the place, however, so here’s a straighter timeline.
* The project was a partnership between the state and City Colleges announced way back in March of 2012 - almost five years ago - by Gov. Quinn and Mayor Emanuel. The groundbreaking ceremony was held in 2013. The state share was $31.6 million with City Colleges putting in $13.2 million.
When the budget passed by the General Assembly was vetoed by Gov. Rauner in 2015, the state halted construction on the 60 percent-completed center because it claimed it didn’t have appropriation authority.
In March of 2016, City Colleges and the mayor announced they were taking over the project. By that time, the project needed an additional $23 million to finish, which included $4 million in new costs because the facility was damaged during the eight-month delay.
But the same day of the takeover announcement last year, the Capital Development Board sent the city a letter saying state law required it to supervise construction that involve state funds…
“One possible solution is for you or the city to repay the state’s taxpayers for any expenditures to date,” [Jodi Golden, executive director of the state’s Capital Development Board] wrote. “We welcome additional solutions, but must insist on a formal resolution prior to the resumption of any construction in order to comply with state law.”
The City Colleges takeover was no more.
Then, this past August, CDB informed City Colleges that it had funding for the project and also told contractors to get back to work. But that turned out to be a “premature” statement, Golden admitted to the Tribune. Construction didn’t commence.
Last month, CDB formally shelved the project again.
To date, the state has spent $24 million and City Colleges has spent about $2 million, according to the Tribune.
* The finger-pointing from the mayor’s office…
“We wouldn’t even be having this conversation had the state managed to live up to the commitment they made, not once but twice, to finish the project that they negotiated in the first place,” Emanuel spokeswoman Lauren Huffman said Monday in a statement. “This is how the state of Illinois treats higher education, and students around the state - at City Colleges, at Eastern, Western, Southern and throughout the University of Illinois system, and at Chicago State - are bearing the brunt as a result.”
The response from the governor’s office…
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration said in a statement Monday that the city has said it plans to work with City Colleges to allocate resources to help the Capital Development Board finish the project.
“We are hopeful that City Colleges will partner with the state and we can get this project moving again,” his office said.
* Look, if there are no appropriations, how is the thing supposed to be built? Speaking of which, why did CDB say it had the money last August when it didn’t? Or did it have the money? And color me a tad skeptical of the city’s 2016 announcement that it would complete the project on its own. With what cash?
This is the sort of wholesale failure caused by the impasse and the inability of leaders to work with each other.
But what’s done is done. Instead of pointing fingers, the mayor needs to get involved and help pass a budget. You know, those bills that contain appropriations for things like construction projects.
For instance, where is Mayor Emanuel on the Senate’s grand bargain? Or is he more allied with the House Democrats?
* What we’ve come to in this state is the constant use of bogeymen to mask and/or excuse failure. Gov. Rauner does it with Speaker Madigan on an almost hourly basis. Mayor Emanuel has taken to doing the same with Gov. Rauner.
I prefer leaders who get things done.
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* From Dan Proft, in his capacity with Liberty Principles PAC…
Governor Rauner’s posture on current Senate budget negotiations notwithstanding, I have heard from many significant donors on the broad outlines of the deal Sens. Cullerton and Radogno are attempting to forge and push through the Senate. Those donors have made it clear to me that Republican senators who want to negotiate the terms of surrender to Sen. Cullerton and Speaker Madigan–and that is precisely what Sen. Radogno is doing at present–should be removed from the battlefield in favor of those who are willing to fight for the most overtaxed families and overregulated businesses in the country.
Gov. Rauner contributed $2.5 million to Proft’s PAC last year. His PAC has raised $11.3 million since January of 2015, and $14.3 million since 2012.
Gov. Rauner gave the largest single contribution along with Richard Uihlein, who has contributed a grand total of $7 million to the PAC.
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* Local 150 of the Operating Engineers International Union commissioned a poll of 600 likely Illinois Republican Party primary voters by Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, which is a Democratic pollster. The poll was taken January 4-8 and has a margin of error of +/-4.0 percent. 45 percent of respondents were reached on their mobile phones.
From the pollster…
• Primary voters are net favorable towards labor unions. A plurality of voters are favorable towards labor unions (46% favorable / 40% unfavorable), driven by stronger support Downstate (49% favorable / 35% unfavorable). This includes many self- described conservatives (41% favorable / 47% unfavorable) who are 61% of GOP primary voters as well as moderates (54% favorable / 31% unfavorable) who make up almost all of the rest (34% of GOP primary voters).
• Support for labor unions is correlated with GOP dislike of Bruce Rauner. Bruce Rauner receives almost unanimous support from the roughly half of GOP primary voters who dislike labor unions (83% favorable / 12% unfavorable), but the half who is favorable towards unions is less positive towards the Governor (68% favorable / 26% unfavorable).
• GOP primary voters hold many pro-labor positions in opposition to the Governor. As with support for unions generally, support for the pro-labor position correlates with personal unfavorability towards Bruce Rauner. […]
• GOP primary voters also support increased spending on infrastructure and anti- outsourcing laws. We have seen similar levels of support for both policies statewide and among Democrats, though these numbers seem to have increased among Republicans since Donald Trump’s nomination and election.
* Questions and answers…
Now, I’d like to ask you your impressions of some people active in politics. As I read each one, just tell me whether you have a very favorable opinion, a somewhat favorable opinion, a somewhat unfavorable opinion, or a very unfavorable opinion of each. If you don’t recognize them, just say so. Here is the first one…
Bruce Rauner
Favorable 75% (Very 37%)
Unfavorable 18% (Very 10%)
Can’t rate 7%
Labor unions
Favorable 46% (Very 13%)
Unfavorable 40% (Very 20%)
Can’t rate 14%
Now I’m going to ask you about some policies. Please tell me, for each one, whether you favor or oppose them.
Ending all labor union membership in Illinois
Favor 28% (Strongly 15%)
Oppose 62% (Strongly 36%)
Don’t know 10%
Prevailing wage laws, which mean anyone getting a taxpayer funded contract has to pay their workers at least the average local wage for their job
Favor 76% (Strongly 49%)
Oppose 18% (Strongly 8%)
Don’t know 6%
Ending the right of unions to collectively bargain for pay, benefits, and safety requirements
Favor 36% (Strongly 20%)
Oppose 53% (Strongly 29%)
Don’t know 11%
Increasing spending on roads, bridges, and bridge safety in Illinois
Favor 80% (Strongly 46%)
Oppose 14% (Strongly 5%)
Don’t know 6%
An anti-outsourcing law that would prohibit companies who ship jobs out of Illinois from getting taxpayer funded contracts
Favor 69% (Strongly 49%)
Oppose 23% (Strongly 13%)
Don’t know
That prevailing wage question is a bit on the biased side, but it’s not a bad poll overall.
* Methodology…
The following findings are based on a poll of n=600 likely Illinois primary-election voters, defined as having voted in at least one of the past four statewide Republican primaries (2010, 2012, 2014, 2016) and saying they are likely to vote in a 2018 Republican primary election. Respondents were contacted via landline and cellphone. The expected margin of sampling error at the 95% confidence level is +4.0% and higher for subgroups.
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ILGOP lashes out at Emanuel
Tuesday, Feb 7, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* From the Illinois Republican Party…
Madigan’s Mayor Strikes Again
Rahm lectures West Coast Elite while his political fixer foments a crisis at CPS
While his handpicked political fixer was ordering $46 million in avoidable new cuts to Chicago schools, Mayor Rahm Emanuel was hanging out in California spouting political advice and inadvertently revealing the sad truth that his cuts are all about trying to gain a political advantage.
“Rahm Emanuel could have spent the last two months working to pass the agreed-to comprehensive pension reform deal that would have benefited Chicago Public Schools, but rather than do what is right, Rahm focused on how to cut services and blame someone else,” said Illinois GOP spokesman Aaron DeGroot. “Madigan and the Mayor are playing from the same divisive playbook, trying to create a crisis and hurt people instead of working to find common ground. It’s time for Mayor Emanuel to stop playing the part of Madigan’s junior partner and actually work to get results for his city.”
From his perch at Stanford University yesterday, Mayor Emanuel espoused a political world view of trying to foster disagreement and division. During Emanuel’s political lecturing, his hatchet man was busy slashing school budgets and trying to create a crisis for his boss who infamously advised to never let a serious crisis go to waste.
In case you don’t have your decoder ring handy, the unnamed “handpicked political fixer” and “hatchet man” is Forrest Claypool, to whose campaign committee Bruce Rauner gave $250,000 back in the aughts.
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* Reuters…
Failure to embrace pending legislation in the Illinois Senate to address the state’s longstanding budget problems would represent a “significant missed opportunity” and risk a credit rating downgrade and hurt economic growth prospects, S&P Global Ratings said on Monday.
S&P, which rates Illinois BBB with a negative outlook, said legislation boosting revenue and ending the state’s budget impasse could improve the near-term fiscal outlook, although a rating upgrade would be at least two years away. […]
S&P chastised Illinois for a fiscal crisis it called “a man-made byproduct of policy ultimatums placed upon the state’s budget process.
“We believe Illinois’ distressed fiscal condition and dysfunctional budget politics now threaten to erode the state’s long-term economic growth prospects,” S&P Managing Director Gabriel Petek said in a statement. [Emphasis added.]
That’s pretty darned direct, scary and spot freaking on.
* Related…
* Why a Leading Illinois Lawmaker Fears Downgrade to Junk: Illinois faces junk ratings without a solution to the state’s 19-month-old budget stalemate, Senate President John Cullerton warned Monday
* Cullerton’s ‘grand bargain’ push: ‘If not this plan, then what?’: Cullerton has always admitted the plan is in flux. A school funding formula bill is still being drafted, after having incorporated suggestions from Gov. Bruce Rauner’s school funding commission. Cullerton said it has the “principles” needed to get support. And a minimum wage hike bill has been eliminated from the plan — due to pressure from national unions to bump the hike to $15 an hour. The sale of the James R. Thompson Center — a plan being pushed by Rauner’s administration and Republican leaders — has also been added to the plan’s revenue bill. An analysis by the state’s Department of Central Management Services found the sale could bring in $220 million — if the building is demolished and rebuilt. It also could bring in $45 million a year in Chicago property taxes, since it will no longer be a state-owned building. And Cullerton told reporters on Monday that the leaders will likely have a “structured roll call” — which would spare some legislators from taking unpopular votes. It would allow senators in safe districts who are likely to be re-elected to take some of the toughest votes.
* Cullerton: ‘If not this plan, then what?’: But though Cullerton got some help from a big New York bond rating agency, the comprehensive package of $6.5 billion in tax hikes, pension changes and spending cuts continues to catch heavy fire. As Cullerton conceded, “We’ll find out in the next few days” whether the plan will fly politically as a solution.
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Education funding reform plan to be unveiled
Tuesday, Feb 7, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Geiger and Garcia…
Illinois Senate leaders are poised to add a contentious issue to their already complicated attempt to break the budget stalemate in Springfield as they turn their attention this week to changing the formula used to funnel state tax money to schools.
Senate President John Cullerton said Monday that his Democratic lawmakers would be briefed Tuesday on the schools plan as part of the broader, 12-bill package that Cullerton and Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno have been pushing as a way out of the state’s 19-month budget impasse. […]
Sen. Andy Manar, a Democrat from Bunker Hill who has long pushed for an education funding overhaul, said that while the schools portion of the package is still in flux, it is likely to mirror the commission’s suggestion that each school district should have its own specialized funding goal. That target would be set using criteria such as the number of children living in poverty and how much money is available from local property taxes, an acknowledgment that it often takes more resources to bring many children in those areas of the state up to speed than in wealthier areas.
But the legislation also would include a so-called hold harmless provision, which means districts wouldn’t receive less state money in the future than they do now, at least at the start. Just how much more money lawmakers would pump into the education system is still up for debate, but any increase likely would have to be phased in over time given the state’s deep budget problems.
* Finke…
Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, a major proponent of school funding reform, would only say Monday that, “I’ve been working on it every day since the commission finished its work and that continues. I believe the direction coming from both leaders is clear. They want to try to get a bill passed.”
Rauner said he’s still digesting the report from the commission. He also said it wasn’t the commission’s job to draft a bill that could be considered by lawmakers.
“What they did was lay out the parameters for a bill to get drafted,” he said. “I’ll talk to the General Assembly about who should draft. My sense is, I think the senators, I don’t know, I think they’re working on something. If they’d like our administration to draft something, we can do that.”
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Emanuel on deal-making and dealing with Trump
Tuesday, Feb 7, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Mayor Rahm Emanuel talking about deal-making…
“The hotel industry wanted to throttle Airbnb. [But] nobody signs on to a loss. Nobody willingly. . . . I always before we negotiate draw out on a piece of paper, their wins, my wins. Can I give ’em what I think are their wins. Can they give me my wins? And then, how close are we to that kind of ideal paper at the beginning when we get to the end,” the mayor said.
“We did it recently with the teachers. There are things in there the teachers can claim to their members they won fair and square. Not a problem,” he said. “There’s things we won fair and square. Otherwise, it’s not a very good negotiation or a contract. If you try to make the other side lose, it’s not usually a good way to get a deal done and they won’t sign onto it. And if they do sign onto it, it’s because you crushed ’em. And trust me, they’re gonna come back and get you. What goes around comes around.”
Agreed.
* And here’s some of his advice for Democrats in the age of Donald Trump…
Stop the blame game. “Democrats love doing a firing squad in the circle. Stop it: ‘They’re too moderate.’ Forget about it. This guy [Trump] and these people are about to do something on the tax code, the regulatory environment and things that are more threatening than what a fellow Democrat might slightly disagree with you on,” Emanuel said.
Pick your battles. “Not every pitch has to be swung at. … We don’t have the power to swing at everything, so you have to pick what is essential,” the mayor said.
Go slow. “Time is not the incumbent party’s friend. Time is the opposition’s friend. Slow. Go slow. They want to rush. We want to go slow. Real slow.”
Drive a wedge every chance you get. “Whenever there’s a disagreement among Republicans, I’m for one of those disagreements. I’m all for it,” the mayor said. “The President wants Russia? I’m with John McCain and Lindsey Graham. I’m for NATO. Why? Wedge. Schisms have to be wedges. Wedges have to be divides and divisions. …We’ve got to lower the President? Why? Because they are strong enough to get him than us. We’re not strong enough.”
* He also said this…
“Democrats are at the lowest level since 1928 in the House of Representatives and the lowest level since 1925 in the state houses. … It is hard to imagine it getting lower,” the mayor said.
“It took us a long time to get this low. It ain’t gonna happen in 2018. Take a chill pill, man. You’ve got to be in this for the long haul. And if you think it’s gonna be a quick turnaround like that, it’s not. You have to be part of this for the long haul. … You’re gonna have a success here and a success here, and then you’ll build a critical mass. But it’s worth fighting for. And I think this country is worth fighting for.”
Thoughts?
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* Gov. Rauner visited the SJ-R editorial board yesterday…
Rauner said it is “fundamentally wrong” that some people are arguing that state employees not get paid even though they are on the job every day. Attorney General Lisa Madigan is seeking to dissolve a court order that said workers would get paid even without a state budget in place. The state Supreme Court ruled last year in another case that workers cannot get paid without an appropriation approved by the legislature. […]
Still, Rauner said, “[State legislators] get paid no matter what. And they work part time And many would argue they’re not really doing their jobs, but they made sure they get paid no matter what.”
Rauner said that even if the order is dissolved, Comptroller Susana Mendoza should continue to pay workers.
“It is not right to cut off state employee pay when they are working,” he said.
OK, first of all, state employees won’t be working if they aren’t being paid. You can’t force someone to work without paying them. Google: “1865.”
And if Comptroller Mendoza paid state bills without an appropriation or a court order, she could be impeached. But what does the governor think? Should she pay the social service groups that have contracts but no line items? He apparently hasn’t yet been asked that question. But he was asked this…
Asked if human services programs and higher education should also be put under a continuing appropriation to ensure they will be paid without a budget, Rauner said only, “There are many things that get continuing appropriations.”
Great answer. /s
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* I told subscribers about this yesterday…
Gov. Rauner’s administration is raising concerns about a plan the House Democrats are pushing to free up money for employee paychecks after Democratic Attorney General Lisa Madigan asked a court to block salaries unless lawmakers approved a spending plan.
The Democratic legislation has “a lack of clarity,” according to a review by the governor’s budget office that was included in an analysis of the bill prepared for Republican lawmakers. Among the issues raised is uncertainty about whether the bill earmarks enough money to cover all employee salaries and a lack of funding for contractual workers.
The analysis also noted that some paychecks would be covered by dollars taken from the state’s road fund, which can no longer be tapped to pay for services that aren’t related to transportation under a constitutional amendment voters approved in the November election. However, the analysis notes that restriction could be addressed if the road fund money was used to pay salaries of police and workers in the transportation department.
The evaluation comes as the GOP pushes an alternative plan to keep paychecks flowing by changing state law to ensure salaries are paid regardless of whether or not lawmakers have agreed on a budget plan.
The bill is here. As an example, the Department of Corrections is appropriated just $258,200 for payroll.
* From the analysis…
* It is unclear if the amounts in the bill are meant to be an amount needed for the remainder of the fiscal year, and are in addition to amounts that have already been allocated under court order, or if the amounts represent spending including sums allocated under the court order.
* The amounts for some agencies, including the Department of Corrections and the Attorney General, represent a small portion of actual funds needed.
* Some agencies lack appropriations entirely, including DCFS, DJJ and the State Board of Elections. This appears to be because such expenditures would be covered by separate consent decrees.
* Narrative language does not allow payments for contractual personnel services, which are utilized by some agencies.
* Narrative language leaves ambiguity regarding if payments are limited to payroll or could include payments for group insurance claims.
The HGOP proposal, which is basically a continuing approp through the end of the fiscal year, is here. The analysis is here.
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* Some Capitol Fax subscribers received an e-mail today from Dianna Donaker entitled “Documents” with a pdf attachment. This is a personal G-Mail account of someone who works for a company I use for bookkeeping.
I am told the account was hacked. Do NOT open the e-mail or the attachment.
We’re working right now to figure out if the attachment contained a virus or is benign. I’m sorry for any problems this might create. I’ll let you know more when I know more.
*** UPDATE *** From the company that handles bookkeeping…
The attachment does not contain a virus. This is a phishing scam trying to get Google login info. It asks you to login to view the doc.
So, don’t open it.
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