The Rauner Administration filed a brief in the Fifth Judicial District Appellate Court this afternoon addressing the duplicity of the Attorney General’s appeal in the state employee pay lawsuit. For over a year, AG Madigan benefitted from the very court order she is now attacking by paying her own staff over $23 million dollars in FY 2017 alone, bringing into question her motives.
In addition, the Rauner Administration’s brief highlights that the Attorney General does not know the consequences of what will happen if her attempt to stop state employee pay is successful, and is asking the court system to move forward in pulling the rug out from under tens of thousands of state employees. The Rauner Administration strongly opposes the Attorney General’s reckless attempts to precipitate a crisis.
General Counsel Dennis Murashko released the following statement about this filing:
“In the last year, Attorney General Madigan’s employees have been paid more than $23 million using the same court order she now is attacking. If the Attorney General were truly concerned about the General Assembly passing a balanced budget, she would not be using state employees as political pawns in her attempts to create a crisis and force a government shutdown.”
I don’t get it. She obeyed a court order to pay state employees and that’s somehow… what?
…Adding… If you take a look at the filing, you’ll notice a lot of stuff like this…
Her entire argument in this Court hinges on a Supreme Court decision she chose to ignore from March of last year until late January 2017, even though her office…
Um, the attorney general represents the people of Illinois. So, it’s the people’s filing, not “her” filing. There are, by my count 26 mentions of the word “she” and 57 mentions of the word “her.”
…Adding More… So, I just talked to someone in the administration who tried to answer my questions. The reasoning is this: The existing court order forces the comptroller to pay any employee salary vouchers that come to her office. It doesn’t force people like AG Madigan to actually submit the vouchers.
The attorney general’s office on Friday said the brief is a show of “snark” with “literally no law” behind it. The issue of whether or not to pay the office’s 750 employees has never been raised and there is no law in place to say Madigan shouldn’t pay her employees – many of whom are representing Rauner’s administration in cases, officials said.
“We have a legal and ethical obligation to follow the court’s order otherwise we would be in contempt of the court,” attorney general’s office spokeswoman Maura Possley said in a statement.
Gov. Bruce Rauner has been in office for about two years, but he suggested Thursday that the time has felt much longer given the protracted battle with Democrats that has left Illinois without a budget.
“I have been a politician for two years now, but it’s really dog years. It’s really 14 years,” Rauner told a community group in Decatur on Thursday. “This is a really hard thing.”
* The Question: How long does it feel to you? Explain.
MPC recently took a deep dive into the wonky world of administrative districts that oversee individual schools, and their findings—based on 2014 data, the most recent available—confirms our worst fears about the insidious impact of bureaucratic bloat:
* Illinois’ 850 school districts—only two states have more—collectively spend more than $1 billion a year, most in the country by far.
* That’s $518 per student—two-and-a-half times the national average of $210.
* By comparison, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin spend less than $400 per pupil, California and Florida less than $100. […]
The Illinois School Funding Reform Commission recently estimated the state would have to spend $3.5 billion over the next decade to achieve fair per-pupil funding for schools in every district.
Incredibly, Illinois could easily meet the commission’s goal without scrounging for another penny if district administrative spending was even close to the national average because that would free up at least $400 million a year for classrooms instead of offices. […]
* 220 of the state’s 850 districts, or 26 percent, have just one school, and those districts cost 67 percent more to operate than multiple-school districts.
* Also, districts comprised of only elementary or high schools spend about a third more on administration than unit districts that include both.
* The state’s largest unit district, Chicago, is barely afloat but full of bloat, according to the MPC study, spending $350 per student on general administration in 2014.
Illinois representatives approved a bill Thursday to prevent further privatization of health care jobs in state prisons.
The House voted 68-42 for the bill that was previously OK’d by the Senate. It will now be sent to Gov. Bruce Rauner.
The legislation was sparked by a decision last month by the Department of Corrections to privatize the jobs of 124 union nurses working in state prisons. They are due to be laid off June 15. Corrections said the move will save the state $8 million a year. […]
This isn’t the first time the General Assembly has gotten involved in the prison nurse issue. The Legislature passed a similar bill last year that was vetoed by Rauner. The bill died when the House failed to override the veto.
The Senate immediately sent the bill to the governor yesterday. He has 60 days to act, which would be before the June 15th layoff date.
It’s possible that a compromise could be found. One of the GOP complaints during debate was that minimum nurse staffing levels were set without regard to prison population. If that population declines, the prisons might have too many nurses. So, something may happen after the break. But the governor could then simply sit on that bill for 60 days, which would be after the layoff deadline, meaning his office will have to be part of any discussions.
* I missed this Ameya Pawar video when it was released earlier this month, but have a look…
* Script…
I live for family. For my daughter, my wife.
My father grew up in India with no running water, doing homework by candlelight.
I grew up in Illinois.
We’re not wealthy or famous. My student loans and child care cost more than my mortgage.
But our family helps each other. We’re for each other.
Illinois is like a family when we’re at our best.
Some politicians try to divide us by where we live, where we’re from, and what we look like.
They leave us fighting for our fair share.
But we’re in this together.
When jobs leave a small town, that hurts Chicago.
When city schools are denied the funding to create tomorrow’s workforce, that hurts the suburbs.
When roads and bridges are crumbling, that hurts all of us.
We can’t disconnect, and we don’t want to.
We’re one state. One family. And we deserve a New Deal
My name is Ameya Pawar. I’m running for governor.
Maybe a little long for online, but still pretty good.
* Meanwhile, from the caption to a 2011 Youtube video…
Published on Jun 30, 2011
June 30 (Bloomberg) — Bruce Rauner, chairman and principal at GTCR Golder Rauner LLC, and J.B. Pritzker, founder of New World Ventures, talk about the outlook for venture capital investments and initial public offerings by Internet companies. They speak with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.”
As the House debate dragged into a second hour, some of the statements got pointed. Rep. Christian Mitchell, D-Chicago, referred to Gov. Bruce Rauner as the “sugar daddy” of the Republican Party who is demanding lawmakers approve his campaign promises in exchange for a budget. Rep. Scott Drury, D-Highland, said none of the Republicans “has had the spine to stand up to your leader.”
Rep. Peter Breen, R-Lombard, countered that “Republicans want to turn Illinois around. Democrats want to burn Illinois down.”
As we’ve already discussed, Republicans have in the past voted for stopgap funding bills.
* With that in mind Rep. Drury’s comments are worth expanding on here. Drury was one of the lone voices against the stopgap budget bill last year. And so the only Democrat not to vote for Speaker Madigan’s reelection rose to hammer the Republicans for being too afraid to stand up to Gov. Bruce Rauner…
I try to be the one in the chamber that calls it like it is. And I have to say, listening to the debate from the Republican side today is just grotesque. It is just absolutely grotesque.
And let me tell you why. First of all, there is no Republican plan… So to say the Democrats have a plan to burn it down and you have a path to prosperity? Well, last year, there was one person in this chamber who was talking about pressure cookers and letting things boil over and I’ll tell you what, it wasn’t on that side of the aisle. It was me. And the votes were 115-1, 116-1. But your leader, who none of you are willing to stand up to, said, “Today, you should vote this way.” And now your leader has changed his position and he says “Hey, that pressure cooker thing sounds good, let’s try it.”
So, it’s wonderful that you want to come here and pretend that you have some plan, and pretend that you have a backbone. But there is no one on that side of the aisle, no one on that side of the aisle in the last two years who has shown the spine to stand up to your leader. Allright?
There is one person on this side who has. And I can commiserate with you, I can tell you what it’s like, if you want to know what’s going to happen. But in a lot of ways it’s like the shackles being off.
So I encourage at least one of you, instead of talking about all the nonsense that you’re talking about, to grow a spine, do what you think is the right thing. But to stop sitting here and pretend that you have some sort of plan and that the Democrats don’t. Do you what you think is right. Just do you what you think is right. And maybe it’ll come back and shine on you. But as long as you have these lame excuses, I just don’t know how you sleep at night. I really don’t.
That transcription was sent to me by somebody who was greatly impressed with Drury’s speech. And Rep. Drury did make some good points.
State legislators in Springfield are moving to address gun violence in Chicago. The Illinois Senate [yesterday] passed stricter gun laws long sought by the Chicago Police. The legislation is meant to get judges to impose longer sentences on repeat gun offenders.
An earlier version of the plan to raise minimum sentences for some repeat gun crime felons stalled last month despite the high-profile backing of Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson. It’s almost always difficult to pass gun legislation in Springfield, where widely varying regional attitudes toward firearms complicate the politics. The broad nature of this proposal also drew complaints from different directions, which maintained it was too soft on drug criminals or too hard on minorities.
Over the last several weeks, Democratic Sen. Kwame Raoul of Chicago worked to ease some of those concerns among opponents, including Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s office. Key to that effort was stripping provisions that would have softened penalties on certain drug crimes. Police contended drug sales fuel gun crimes, and Republicans said decreasing prison time for convicted dealers would send the wrong message as a heroin epidemic grips the suburbs.
“The governor is pleased to have reached an agreement on this important legislation,” Rauner spokesman Lance Trover said. […]
The legislation would increase the sentencing guidelines for judges deciding punishment for some repeat gun felons. Instead of a range of three to 14 years, judges would hand out sentences in the range of seven to 14 years. If they wanted to depart from that guideline, they would have to explain why.
The provisions that were taken out of the bill include those that would have lowered sentencing for those charged with more serious drug offenses. The initial language would have lowered the minimums depending on the charge. Provisions that would have lowered the offense classifications for drug offenses were also removed, the governor’s office and one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Raoul, said.
“What we were trying to do was take more of a judicious approach on those cases, not to let drug dealers off the hook,” Raoul said, while noting the negotiations with the governor’s office were productive.
“In my conversations with the governor’s office, historically, they have been clear that they want to work progressively, incrementally, on the criminal justice reforms so they had to proceed cautiously to do so,” Raoul said. “My preference would be to attempt to take a more aggressive bite out of the prison population. … I understand and appreciate that we’re doing this work on criminal justice reform. It’s not easy politically.”
An example of the change included a sentencing guideline that would have provided a range of six to 30 years for someone charged with manufacturing and delivering heroin amounts from 15-100 grams. It would have kept the same guidelines for those charged with between 15 and 400 grams of heroin — allowing for more drugs under the same sentencing guideline range.
The state’s attorneys deserve a lot of credit here. They didn’t argue for removing the penalty reductions, the governor did. In the past, they were always a stubborn obstacle to criminal justice reforms, but they’ve worked hard for the past couple of years to find ways to compromise.
As Illinois nursing home owners come under heightened scrutiny for improper patient discharges and inadequate staffing care, nursing home workers will picket at 10 nursing homes in the Chicago area on Friday, including Alden Wentworth on the South Side and Legacy Chalet on the North to stand up for fair wages, quality jobs, and patient care.
Over 10,000 nursing home workers at 103 facilities have, as members of SEIU Healthcare Illinois, been fighting to negotiate a new contract for over a year to improve the quality of nursing home jobs and address concerns over low wages and patient care. Yet, despite receiving about $1 billion in revenue each year and an increasing number of residents, for-profit nursing home owners have refused to significantly raise staffing levels and have actively worked to keep wages low.
The owners want the right to pay workers less than the minimum wage – despite the demanding nature of their work, the level of skill and training required and the crucial role workers play in safeguarding the well-being of seniors and people with disabilities in their care.
* From the JB Pritzker campaign…
TODAY at 3:30 PM: JB Pritzker to Join SEIU Healthcare Illinois Picket
* From yesterday’s statement reacting to Pritzker’s campaign announcement by United Working Families, of which SEIU Healthcare Illinois is by far the largest member…
BREAKING: Battle of the Billionaires […]
A real estate mogul in the White House. An investment banker in Chicago’s City Hall. And now the billionaires are battling it out for the Illinois Governor’s mansion, while more and more working people are left behind.
It’s time to build something different: politics for the people, not the plutocrats.
* So, I asked SEIU Healthcare what the heck was going on. I mean, your coalition calls the guy a “plutocrat” on Thursday and you picket with him on Friday? The union’s response…
Today, we’re focused on nursing home workers and their fight for living wages and safe staffing for their residents—not on an election that is a year away. At least four candidates who have declared for governor are supporting these workers, along with many others—and we appreciate that support.
UWF is an independent political organization made up of individuals and organizations—HCII is one of those organizations. None that we are aware of have made any endorsements—but most are here in the picket line supporting nursing home workers fighting for living wages and safe staffing.
* According to the union, Ameya Pawar, Chris Kennedy and Kurt Summers are also joining the workers on the picket line today and Daniel Biss has expressed his support but is out of town.
Having just about all the candidates for governor joining together on a work action is a pretty major event.
* I’m still not convinced that there’s a real fire here, but the story completely plays right into the public’s notions about how state government has always worked. WCIA TV’s Mark Maxwell continues to pursue the story about the old Barney’s Furniture store lease…
Business owner and Republican Procurement Board Chairman Frank Vala knew when he allowed a $2.4 million lease agreement to be approved that it would benefit the daughter and son-in-law of his longtime friend [and neighbor] Bill Cellini.
“I’ve known Mr. Cellini all of my life,” Vala said. […]
State documents filed in February 2017 list Claudia as the sole President of New Frontier Developments, even though she has lived in Dubai for several years. It remains unclear whether she plays an active role in directing the business. William Jr. is no longer listed as an executive.
WCIA has learned Claudia Cellini’s husband, Raffi Vartanian, is separately listed as a one-third owner of Climate Controlled Holdings, LLC. The company just opened for business in February of 2016. In 14 months, the infant corporation has managed to purchase a 62,000 square foot warehouse and immediately lease it to the state of Illinois at a remarkable premium. State documents reveal the privately held company began with a mere $15,000 cash on hand.
Climate Controlled Holdings bought the old Barney’s Furniture Warehouse for $575,000 on January 3rd, 2017. State documents were already being prepared to obtain a government lease five months prior — in September of 2016 — before the warehouse sale was even completed. Less than one month later, the state of Illinois had entered into a binding agreement to pay a minimum of $2.42 million to the upstart company in exchange for a 5-year lease of the facility. […]
Asked how long he’s known Claudia Cellini, Vala answered, “Since she was a little kid.” Vala confirmed he also knows about Cellini’s husband, Raffi, and says he’s even met him in person.
There was no formal vote to approve or disapprove, but the procurement board could’ve voted if it wanted to. According to the story, the board has never stopped a request during Rauner’s term.
* To be super clear here, none of this is illegal on its face. Bill Cellini did his time and he’s no longer involved with the company and there’s zero hard evidence that his kid or his son-in-law did anything at all improper here. The lease was put out for bids and the state chose the lower bid. Yeah, the lease price is high, but lease prices are rising for the state because it isn’t paying its bills. It couldn’t buy the property because it has no appropriation authority to do so. Everything can be logically and reasonably explained.
But, man, this story has almost everything to make it appear to be a perfect “Illinois way” saga.
Thumbs down to 646 days without a state budget. Each week, it gets increasingly difficult to grasp the fact that our legislators and governor are allowing our state to disintegrate financially. We are seeing our education system fall apart — as evidenced by Southern Illinois University being forced to trim $30 million from its budget and school districts suing the state for aid payments. Yet, there doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency emanating from Springfield. Remember the days when legislators would lock themselves in chambers until they hammered out an agreement?
No, I don’t remember those days because they never happened because doing so would be a felony.
The Illinois House wants to tap incoming but unallocated revenue to relieve struggling universities and human services.
The House voted 64-45 Thursday to authorize spending $817 million that is sitting in special funds during a two-yearlong budget holdup.
The stopgap funding deal approved by the House includes about $26 million for the Southern Illinois University System, plus additional Monetary Award Program, or MAP, grant funds that would benefit the campuses. That amount represents about 13 percent of the state appropriations SIU received in fiscal year 2015, the last year a full year’s budget was approved by lawmakers in Springfield.
“It is very encouraging,” John Charles, SIU’s director of government and public affairs, said after the vote. “We’re appreciative for everything that we get.”
Rep. David Harris, R-Arlington Heights, echoed the belief of many Republicans that passing another stopgap budget will take pressure off of lawmakers to pass a full, permanent state budget. He likened the lack of a budget to pressure building up in a tea kettle.
“(This) gives crumbs to those institutions and organizations that rely on us,” Harris said. “These stopgaps are relief valves. They are relief valves for the steam that is building up.”
More on that topic…
Rep. @Andersson4Rep By voting for this, the pressure is off us to get to a full budget. A full budget, not a stop gap budget is what we need
Yep. On the one hand, the Republicans want to take the pressure off the negotiations by paying state workers through infinity, but on the other hand they argue that some of the most vulnerable Illinoisans should be refused help in order to spur a budget deal.
Money for the lifeline budget comes from two special state funds intended to help education and human services. The two funds get a small part of income tax receipts as they are received by the state and are constantly replenished. The funds will have more than $800 million in them by the end of the fiscal year in June that cannot be spent unless the General Assembly authorizes it.
The money is just sitting there gathering dust while universities crumble and the social service network frays. If the Senate was making real progress on a grand bargain, I could understand holding off. But it obviously isn’t.
Though Republicans have previously supported some stopgap spending plans, they said the difference this time is that they were not involved in negotiations. They questioned some of the spending, saying money was being set aside for things that were not urgent, including a program designed to produce teachers to work in distressed schools.
The House Republicans weren’t involved in negotiations by choice. Their leader was invited to participate and he didn’t respond.
Rep. Steven Andersson, R-Geneva, said the bill also provides money to some programs that are no longer in existence, as well as a teacher-training program that Republicans contend has little to show for the money invested in it. Rep. Tom Demmer, R-Dixon, said the plan includes $10 million for those programs.
No doubt that part of this vote yesterday was about politics. House members can go home today saying they voted to help people. The Senate won’t return for two weeks, however. And the governor is indicating he’ll veto the bill…
Rauner has said he would not support another stopgap plan unless it included a permanent property tax freeze, a key portion of his political agenda.
Democrats have opposed such a freeze, saying it would starve local school districts that rely on those dollars. But they did approve a measure Thursday to expand some property-tax exemption programs, a move that could provide them some political cover to fight back against GOP claims they aren’t trying to give homeowners some relief.
That’s the political “tell” right there.
Besides that, all these property tax exemptions do is transfer the burden to other taxpayers. The money has to be paid one way or another, but Illinois politicians just love to narrow the taxing base whenever and wherever they can. It’s a big reason we’re in this mess today. Retirement income, food and medicine, services etc., etc., etc. are all exempted from taxation and that means others have to pick up the slack.
Gov. Bruce Rauner opposes turning over the money, saying he prefers passing a full budget, tied to non-budget measures he favors. Rauner said the House bill would keep public universities and social services “on the verge of collapse.”
But ask anyone teetering on the verge of a cliff: It’s better to be there than going over altogether.
Even if the Senate finally agrees on a grand bargain that includes new revenue, it is less and less likely the bargain will cover what remains of the 2017 fiscal year, which ends June 30. In earlier discussions, any income tax increase was to have been retroactive to Jan. 1, which would have provided some revenue for the current fiscal year. But doing that in April — or later — would require withholding a bite out of workers’ paychecks that’s just too big.
Without a budget in place, pain stretches across the state. Seniors with disabilities are losing services. Cutbacks on mental health services, substance abuse treatment and after-school programs will drive violence higher. Once-proud university campuses are reeling.
The state has the money to help. The Legislature and governor should speed it along.
* If this guy committed wrongdoing in New Orleans, then it’s a real problem. But no such allegation is made in the story, so I’m not sure what the dealio is because plenty of other people were fine with bringing Synesi here…
When former Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas was recruited to revive the schools in hurricane-battered New Orleans, he asked for help from back home, newly obtained records show.
In a series of letters to Louisiana officials who oversaw the New Orleans district, Vallas vouched for Synesi Associates, an education consulting firm that recently had been started in Chicago by a former high school teacher named Gary Solomon.
“This out-of-state provider has a record of demonstrated effectiveness,” Vallas wrote in 2007, citing the “unique experience” of the firm’s staff.
Synesi landed two no-bid contracts worth nearly $893,000 in New Orleans during Vallas’ time running the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.
Now, nearly a decade later, Vallas appears set to be named to a top leadership post at financially troubled Chicago State University.
And Solomon is scheduled to report to federal prison July 11 to begin an 84-month sentence. Solomon was convicted of bribing Barbara Byrd-Bennett, one of Vallas’ successors heading CPS, who arranged for Synesi and another of his companies to land $23 million in business with the Chicago school system.
Former Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas has resigned from the Chicago State University board of trustees to apply for a top leadership position in the university’s administration, the Tribune has learned.
Vallas’ resignation comes ahead of an emergency board meeting Friday where university trustees are expected to fill two top administrative posts with the hope that sweeping change will help turn around the troubled school. The board has said it plans to name a new interim president and interim chief administrative officer, a newly created position.
Chicago State University Friday named Paul Vallas as temporary chief administrative officer and voted for its longtime dean of the Arts and Sciences as interim president.
Except for Nikki Zollar, the board vice chair and head of the presidential search committee,, the entire board voted for Rachel Lindsey as interim president.
Zollar also abstained from the Vallas’ vote.
Vallas was Gov. Bruce Rauner’s top pick to run the financially troubled Chicago State University.
