* Tom Robb at the Journal & Topics…
The 10th annual Northwest Suburban Lincoln Day Dinner, an event which provides a who’s who of area Republican leaders, takes place next week in Palatine.
Three speakers are set to address the major area GOP fundraiser: U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Gov. Bruce Rauner and Tim Schneider, Illinois GOP chairman and 15th District Cook County commissioner.
The event’s master of ceremonies is Dan Proft, a conservative radio host and Liberty Principles Political Action Committee founder. […]
It is scheduled to begin with a private “Trump Wine & Wisconsin Cheese” gathering at 5:30 p.m. for those willing to pay a little extra for the exclusive reception, followed by a general reception at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. chicken dinner. [Schaumburg Township Republican Committeeman Ryan Higgins] said Trump Wine would be served at the event.
Higgins told the Journal that Rauner is expected to unofficially kick off his run for reelection at the event.
…Adding… From a top Team Rauner dude…
Saw your post - sorry Higgins but no campaign kickoff at that event
* Let’s hope the governor gets a better reception than he apparently did yesterday in Quincy…
Many in the crowd nodded as Rauner went through his talking points, but there was not much applause. Some of Rauner’s staff members clapped at key points in his speech, but the audience generally didn’t take up the applause as they sat or stood quietly.
The applause was fairly loud and often at his Marion stop, however.
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* Press release…
– Governor Rauner today discussed the administration’s efforts to cut the red tape in state government and make Illinois more competitive with surrounding states at the Illinois Competiveness Council Forum.
“Excessive red tape has been a barrier blocking small business and entrepreneurs from wanting to grow and expand in Illinois,” said Governor Rauner. “That’s why we created the Illinois Competiveness Council nearly six months go to see where we can streamline and improve the restrictions in government.”
Governor Rauner signed an executive order last year to form the Illinois Competiveness Council and undertake a comprehensive review of the Illinois Administrative Code. The governor has directed the agencies working with the Illinois Competitiveness Council to reduce regulations by 20 percent. The Council led by U-Jung Choe will work with agencies from those areas to reduce regulatory burdens and cut the red tape.
“We are deeply committed to this mission. We will listen to all suggestions, make immediate changes when possible, and do all we can to advance Illinois’ economic climate,” said U-Jung Choe, chairwoman of the Illinois Competiveness Council.
The Council solicited assistance from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to analyze the Illinois Administrative Code to best understand where red tape existed, where to cut it, and how to improve Illinois’ business climate. Illinois’ current administrative code is significantly larger than a majority of states, according to the analysis by the Mercatus Center. Illinois has more than 259,000 restrictions that make up more than 15 million words.
Additionally, the Mercatus Center found that most regulatory restrictions were in five areas: public health, environmental protection, social services, professional occupations and transportation.
* From SourceWatch…
The Mercatus Center was founded and is funded by the Koch Family Foundations. According to financial records, the Koch family has contributed more than thirty million dollars to George Mason University, much of which has gone to the Mercatus Center, a nonprofit organization. […]
The Mercatus Center is an “associate” member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the country.
* Anyway, if you click here and go to about the 10-minute mark, you’ll see Gov. Rauner talking about how state spending has increased while state employment has remained flat. And then he says…
And they say, well, we need more regulations to force companies to pay people more.
No. It’s not gonna happen. Companies will just leave. That’s what they’re doing, they’re voting with their feet.
And they say, we don’t want to compete with Texas, they don’t have regulations there, their workers, you know, they need more protections down, they don’t have enough protections in Texas.
Well, you know what? Texas workers, factory workers make way more than factory workers in Illinois. Why? It ain’t because regulations are forcing their pay up, it’s because it’s a booming, healthy competitive economy with companies competing to hire workers. That’s why. And that’s the answer to long-term prosperity for the people of Illinois. And that’s the key to a better future for our children and our grandchildren, which is the reason I decided to be governor.
Setting aside the obvious minimum wage argument for now, click here for the BLS definition of production workers. Now, click here for the BLS Illinois page and you’ll see the median wage for production workers is $15.95 per hour. Click here and you’ll see that same median wage in Texas is $15.62 per hour.
Illinois has a higher cost of living in general than Texas, so those TX workers are putting more in their pockets. But do they make “way more” in Texas?
*** UPDATE *** Press release…
Following is the response of SEIU Healthcare Illinois Communications Director James Muhammad to news that Gov. Bruce Rauner today voiced opposition to raising the Illinois wage floor, even as momentum grows to raise it to $15, via House Bill 198:
“When he opposes raising the wage for Illinois workers, Bruce Rauner continues to describe his belief that labor should be cheap and that workers are not central to the health of our economy. He paid for his many mansions via the profits from cheap labor and yet he wants to deny any economic security to the working families of Illinois? This is wrong and hypocritical.
“The Rauner budget impasse has slowed growth in Illinois and the quickest way to put money back into the economy is to give a raise to the 2.3 million Illinois workers, more than 40 percent of the workforce, who make less than $15 per hour and who would benefit from passage of House Bill 198.
“As Gov. Rauner dismantles education, healthcare, social services and all the tools that helped grow the Illinois middle class from the bottom up in the first place, we hope he abandons his trickle-down opposition to raising the wage floor for the women and men who work hard while others, like him, reap the profits of the sweat of their brow.”
* Related…
* Democrats push for minimum wage increase: Rep. Litesa Wallace, D-Rockford, said the state has to “pick up where employers leave off” through government programs and subsidies. “I am really tired of working poor people being the bogeyman in the way that we talk about this,” Wallace said. “Let’s change the narrative, because you’re receiving welfare too.”
* Editorial: Find a way, lawmakers, to give Illinois residents a pay raise: Illinois residents who make the minimum wage are overdue for a raise. The same is true for Americans across the nation. Workers are more productive than ever, but you wouldn’t know it based on their wages. In the last four decades, their pay has lagged far behind their contributions in the work force. The disparity helped make “income inequality” a catchphrase of the decade.
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Unofficial GOP site calls itself “official”
Thursday, Apr 13, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Bernie reported the other day on a “mystery website” called RealGOPIllinois.com, which bills itself as “the official news site for real Republicans.” But it’s not an official Republican Party website and nobody knows who’s really behind it…
The site is professional-looking, with items presented as news stories and a solicitation for tips. […]
Its creators aren’t making it easy to find out, either. A computer expert at my newspaper tells me there’s no easy way to track the origin of the site because its domain was registered anonymously. An address listed at the bottom of the group’s email is in Champaign, but turned out to be a UPS store. An employee there said they do rent mailboxes.
The group name doesn’t turn up in the Illinois State Board of Elections, but it appears to have started a Facebook page recently. […]
“We are just a group of everyday citizens who are upset with the Democrat Party and how they’ve ruined this state,” the response stated. “We are also upset with the Illinois GOP and Gov. (BRUCE) RAUNER. We all voted for Bruce Rauner in 2014 even though some of us were very unsure about him because of his history. Two years in, we’re disappointed in Gov. Rauner and the Illinois GOP. … With the debt mounting, taxpayers will probably be on the hook for even more and the politicians won’t care. … Gov. Rauner spends millions making sure his own people win GOP primaries and destroying other Republican candidates just because he can. Isn’t that what (House Speaker MICHAEL) MADIGAN does?”
The response also called the website a “free speech zone” and said “Republicans are afraid to criticize (Rauner) because of the money he can spend attacking people. Illinois won’t survive Mike Madigan or Bruce Rauner if we don’t stand up and speak out (about) what both political parties and their henchmen are doing now.”
The folks behind the site have posted a new video ham-handedly attempting to directly link Gov. Rauner to Bill Cellini. Needs better music.
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* Sun-Times…
The alleged getaway driver in the fatal shooting of Cook County Associate Judge Raymond Myles said the killer surveilled the judge’s house for a few weeks before the deadly incident, Cook County prosecutors said Thursday.
Joshua Smith said in a videotaped statement to authorities that Myles was being watched for at least two or three weeks, an Assistant State’s Attorney Guy Lisuzzo said.
The motive for the shootings was robbery, and 66-year-old Myles was targeted — but the shooting had nothing to do with his position as a judge, police had said on Wednesday.
Smith’s accomplice, who shot Myles and his girlfriend at 4:50 a.m. Monday in the 9400 block of South Forest, took the woman’s gym bag, expecting to find cash inside, Lisuzzo said. But there was no cash inside, and the killer threw the bag away. […]
Smith drove himself to the Area South Detectives division later that day “to speak with detectives” and has been in custody ever since, Chief of Detectives Melissa Staples said at a news conference Wednesday evening.
* But DNAInfo says it was Judge Myles’ female friend who was actually targeted…
Assistant State’s Attorney Guy Lisuzzo said at the hearing Thursday that Smith and an unnamed accomplice attempted to rob the woman, who left the judge’s home for the gym shortly before 5 a.m., the same time every day. The accomplice allegedly watched the woman for 2-3 weeks to learn her habits.
He stole her gym bag, but became enraged when no cash was inside, prosecutors said.
Myles saw the two arguing and came outside, where he was killed, police have said. The woman was also shot.
Smith drove the getaway car, an orange Pontiac Sunfire registered to his ex-girlfriend, Lisuzzo said. He allegedly told the girlfriend and her daughter to lie and say the car had been stolen.
* Background…
An early riser, Myles was up before dawn Monday, getting ready to go to the gym with his girlfriend before reporting to his courtroom. But as the 52-year-old woman left the two-story brick residence shortly before 5 a.m., she was confronted near the garage by a gunman who shot her in the leg, according to police. Hearing the commotion, Myles, 66, ran outside and exchanged words with the assailant before he was shot and killed.
A neighbor and friend of the judge told the Tribune he was awakened by the shouts of the woman and the crack of about six gunshots. “She was screaming, ‘Don’t kill him, don’t kill him!’ ” the neighbor said.
An autopsy found Myles had been shot multiple times, the Cook County medical examiner’s office said Tuesday. […]
Sheriff Tom Dart’s office investigates about 10 death threats against Cook County judges a year but had no record of any threats against Myles in recent years.
*** UPDATE *** They were targeting the girlfriend. Tribune…
Assistant State’s Attorney Guy Lisuzzo said Smith told police that he and the other man planned to rob the judge’s girlfriend and that the other man had conducted surveillance on her movements for two to three weeks.
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* OK, let’s revisit that WDWS interview of Gov. Rauner. The governor was asked whether the Senate’s grand bargain was off the table and we’re back to square one…
I hope not. You know, I know the deal has struggled. It’s had problems.
Sigh.
He says this in a passive mode as if he’s watching from afar with zero involvement.
* More…
But you know these things take time. They go up and down, and they make some progress and then they take a step back. This is the nature of the legislative process. It’s the nature of change in our system. Our system is so broken and the politicians who broke it are still in power and they don’t want to change. But we’ve got to change.
The good news is the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, they’re negotiating over the right things that can really move the needle to grow our economy…
And then he went off on a long soliloquy about his usual TA talking points.
* A few minutes later, the interviewer asked him what the turning point will be, what will turn this around to get a budget in the next few weeks…
Well, I believe if the Senate stays strong and keeps their negotiations going, they’re on the right issues, if they get the changes to a place where they actually move the needle, not just a headline, but they’re actually moving the needle - and they’re close, they are very close.
If we can help them get across the goal line, I think that would break the logjam and put a lot of pressure on Speaker Madigan’s Democrats in the House who so far do not want to negotiate any changes whatsoever, just want to force a big tax hike with no reforms at all.
And if the Senate will come through, and we’ll try to help them do it, that’ll put pressure, break the logjam and I think we’ll get there.
OK, all well and good. I wish he’d put a whole lot more effort into that in January and February, before he knocked the Senate’s grand bargain off the tracks.
* I asked Senate President John Cullerton’s spokesman to listen to the governor’s remarks and then provide some comment…
You may recall, Governor Rauner pulled the plug on budget meetings with lawmakers. There wasn’t any progress until the Senate stepped up and started its own negotiations.
That’s very true, but it has been tossed down the memory hole. Rauner announced in December that he wouldn’t call any more leaders meetings. Radogno and Cullerton started meeting soon after to start crafting their own plan.
* Back to John Patterson’s react…
The Senate President continues to work with Republican Leader Radogno in the hope that we can get Republicans back to the table. The Republican Senators helped put the deal together and we need more than one vote from that side in order to pass it.
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Big data outfits demanding state subsidies
Thursday, Apr 13, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* From the Illinois Policy Institute’s news service…
During a more-than three hour House Revenue and Finance Committee hearing Wednesday in Chicago, the data center industry asked for breaks on sales taxes and job creation. Industry leaders said it would make Illinois more competitive with neighboring states that do offer the incentives.
House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, wasn’t a fan of the idea.
“I feel very uncomfortable that we are in a situation where if we want to compete, we may have to offer special deals to this group but not to that group, and at the end of the day I think we’re looking at something I think is hard for me to define as other than a little bit of corporate welfare and a little bit of corporate blackmail,” Currie said.
State Rep. David Harris, R-Arlington Heights, also questioned why one industry should get special preference over another.
But Phil Horstmann from data center company Ascent said without incentives, he doesn’t expect the industry to grow in Illinois.
“The simple fact is that it’s not economically viable to come here anymore,” Horstmann said.
Lance Alvarez, who helps select data center sites for Microsoft, said the company does “a tax analysis for all states and Illinois ranks in the bottom 3rd. Currently, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri and Minnesota offer incentives to attract data centers.”
He said Illinois doesn’t provide a level playing field to attract multi-billion-dollar data center investments.
For those who don’t know, a data center is “a facility composed of networked computers and storage that businesses or other organizations use to organize, process, store and disseminate large amounts of data.”
And, seriously, Microsoft needs a tax subsidy to open up data centers in Illinois? Microsoft, which is spending $2 billion a quarter on data centers wants help from Illinois government to compete with all the existing data centers in the Chicago area, like this one? They need a subsidy when as of last year, new and planned construction was pretty darned robust? At a time when Chicago was experiencing “double the national average growth in revenue”?
Or did the industry overbuild?
Either way, we need a whole lot more research on this. If there’s demand, you’d think somebody would build. But if a subsidy is needed, how much would it cost taxpayers?
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* WDWS reporter Michael Kiser’s interview of Gov. Bruce Rauner is somewhat of a gold mine for people who follow Illinois politics. You should listen to the whole thing, and I plan to do one more post about something else the governor said before the day is done, but here is the governor talking about term limits and the budget…
Some people say, well, term limits, that has nothing to do with the budget.
Boy, oh boy. Term limits, huge impact on the budget.
If we get folks in office who are there for the right reasons, not for a career to make money, but just as public servants, we’ll have more likely to have balanced budgets, we’ll have a democracy with less corruption, and businesses and job creators and investors and working families will have more confidence in the state and will expand our tax base.
Term limits can help balance our budgets for the long term in a very strong way.
Thoughts?
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* WDWS reporter Michael Kiser interviewed Gov. Rauner this week. Kiser asked him to comment on the field of Democratic candidates who want his job…
What I care about is making Illinois strong and healthy for the next generation, with balanced budgets, good-paying jobs, high quality of life, rising family incomes and the best schools in America. And that’s what I’m fighting to do every day.
The Democrats, the Democratic Party has been in control of Illinois for years and years before I came into office. And they’ve taken us down the drain. And having more Democrat control in the governorship next year, boy oh boy, disaster for the people of Illinois.
The Democrats have had the ability to fix the problems in the past, they’ve controlled everything, they’ve done nothing. And all they’ve done is create the problems that we’re fighting to change right now.
So, I don’t spend any time worrying about who’s going to run. They’re all part of the system of supporting the policies and the politicians that created this mess.
We have to stand strong. I’m fighting for working families. I’m fighting for teachers in Illinois. I’m fighting for small business owners, I’m fighting for taxpayers. The people who’ve been ignored and abused and not taken care of in Illinois is who I’m standing up and working for.
We have got to change our direction. More Democrat control will fail us. They’ve already had control and they’ve broken our system. They’re the cause of the break, the broken system we’re dealing with. They just want to tape it over with tax hikes and more spending and more deficits. We need changes and that’s what we’re fighting to do.
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* WBBM…
Some suburban state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they share the fear that the budget impasse in Springfield won’t be resolved before the 2018 election for Governor. But, they are also using the “C” word: Compromise.
Naperville Republican State Representative Grant Wehrli feels lawmakers aren’t doing their jobs by allowing the budget standoff to continue, but he hopes both sides see the light. WBBM’s Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports.
“Well we all have a responsibility in this, but we also have divided government and that’s going to take compromise and that’s going to require all of us sitting down at a table and understanding that we all have a job to do,” Wehrli said. “And not point fingers at each other.”
I love me some Wehrli and I totally agree with his comments to Craig, but, man, is that ever some industrial strength chutzpah.
* The legislator is well-known for being one of the most active trolls on Twitter. A tiny sampling…
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Unclear on the history
Thursday, Apr 13, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* News-Gazette editorial…
Quinn tried to solve the problem by persuading the Legislature to pass a 67 percent income tax hike (from 3 percent to 5 percent) in January 2011. The billions of dollars generated eased the state’s cash crunch and was used to make skyrocketing pension contributions. But the state still owed billions in unpaid bills, an obligation that tax increase was meant to eliminate.
At the end of calendar year 2014, just before that tax hike expired, the comptroller’s office had $4.36 billion in vouchers on hand. The office estimated there was another $2 billion which hadn’t yet been processed by the Quinn administration, but the comptroller was paying the state’s bills in under 30 days back then. In other words, we had a “normal” backlog - the sort you’d have in your own checking account as you were waiting to pay your bills before their deadlines.
The tax hike legislation created a special revenue stream in case the state sold bonds to pay off its pile of over-due bills, but the GA couldn’t muster the three-fifths majorities to borrow the money (mainly because Republicans refused to cooperate), so it had to pay those bills off bit by bit, and it was clearly succeeding.
Today’s backlog is $12.8 billion. Vendors are waiting up to six months to be paid.
What happened? The tax hike partially expired and no “real” budget has been passed since then to pare back spending and/or increase revenues.
The refusal to accept these basic facts never ceases to amaze me.
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* Tribune…
It’s not every day that Broadway comes to state government.
But Wednesday, a group of Broadway in Chicago performers brought the old razzle dazzle to a House committee hearing on state tax credits that are set to expire soon.
The Bilandic Building performance was part of a pitch from the theater industry asking lawmakers to extend the life of the theater tax credit. It’s set to expire June 1. Backers say it helps lure more shows to Chicago, create jobs and boost the city’s reputation.
Performers serenaded a legislative panel with a variation on the song “On Broadway,” changing the lyrics to highlight hotel and restaurant business that the live shows attract.
“We want to thank you for all you’ve done on Randolph and Monroe Street,” they sang. “You make the neon lights so bright in Chicago.”
Click here to watch the video clip supplied by our good friends at BlueRoomStream.com.
Some of the performers had been sitting in the hearing room and then rose one by one to join in the song. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.
Yesterday’s hearing was subject matter only, by the way. There were no votes on the credits.
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