* I don’t know if I’ll be back Thursday. Maybe Friday, though. But before I go…
Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White’ sister has died — nearly three decades after her life-saving kidney transplant helped turn White into a champion of organ donation.
White’s office says Doris Ivy died of natural causes on Friday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She was 85.
White’s interest in organ and tissue donation is a family story that begins in the early 1980s when doctors asked his family to harvest the organs of his brother, who was on life support after suffering a brain aneurism. White’s family knew little about organ donation and declined the request.
Ivy’s 1991 kidney transplant helped spark White and Ivy’s devotion to organ donation and White has dramatically expanded the state’s organ and tissue donation program as secretary of state.
I’d like to express my sincere condolences to Secretary White and his family.
* Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Los Lobos will play us out…
* Scott Fornek began working for the Chicago Sun-Times forty years ago this week, on July 5, 1978. In an era of newspaper downsizing and job-hopping, Fornek has been an every-day, one-paper workhorse. Here he is during earlier times…
I have… no words.
* Anyway, his co-workers threw a surprise party this afternoon for their paper’s invaluable political editor…
It was inevitable — at some point, the shameless gluttony of public employee unions couldn’t last forever.
That reality manifested Wednesday as a devastating — if unsurprising — U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could finally force Big Labor to ditch the fantasy within which it has existed for too long. It was a reckoning that had been building for decades, as private sector wages stagnated and pensions went the way of the dodo. […]
Unions exist for their own promulgation. And public unions, without any semblance of shame, demand private-sector workers — trapped in incessant wage stagnation — to foot the bill for annual wage hikes and gold-plated benefits packages that haven’t been available to most Americans for decades.
Welcome to the 21st century, union bosses. No, things aren’t great. And they haven’t been for most American workers for a long time.
Public-sector unions in Illinois have been right to argue that their members have kept their end of the bargain, paying into their pension funds on a sustained basis even as the state shirked its responsibility to do the same. But as the deficit ballooned to the point where the state’s unfunded pension liability now is north of $130 billion, unions have done little to convince Illinois taxpayers and voters that they’re serious about helping to tackle the problem.
Yes, there’s a clause in the Illinois Constitution that declares pensions to be a contractual obligation that must be paid no matter what. But unions here have relied on that clause to push back against nearly every pension reform proposal that might fix a fiscal problem that threatens to swamp the state. Not so in Arizona, which has similar legal language and yet saw labor come to the table to amend the state constitution and allow a negotiated package of benefit cuts and tax sweeteners, a consensus-building approach that helped Arizona avert financial disaster and safeguarded pensions for those who worked a lifetime to earn them.
Janus may cause severe pain for public-sector unions for decades to come, but it didn’t have to come to this. If unions here had been more willing to discuss trimming the cost-of-living increases that inflate pension costs every year—just to give one example—then perhaps labor could have gotten out front of this issue and deprived pols like Rauner of the political oxygen that has turned anti-union sentiment from a spark to a bonfire.
In a country where workers’ wages have remained largely flat for more than three decades, even as company shareholder dividends and executive paychecks have soared, collective bargaining by organized labor remains one of the few checks on dangerously growing income inequality.
Unionized workers earn more. The typical union worker in 2014 was paid $970 a week, compared with $763 for non-union workers, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Unionized workers typically enjoy better benefits, including health insurance and retirement accounts. They are treated with more dignity and respect by employers, and they’ve got an advocate in their corner when they are not being treated justly.
The Supreme Court’s decision poses a huge challenge to AFSCME and other public employee unions, but it also presents them with an opportunity. The challenge for union leaders is to dig down deep, engaging in one-on-one conversations with every union member and making clear the advantages of unionization — and why union dues are a relative bargain. The opportunity is to build a better informed, more socially aware and committed union membership.
In anticipation of the July 7th, 2018 planned protest organized by Father Michael Pfleger through various social media outlets, Illinois State Police (ISP) officials are warning pedestrians not to enter any expressways in Illinois, or they will face arrest and prosecution.
“Our first priority is to protect public safety and that is what we will do,” said ISP Director Leo Schmitz. “This call to protest on the Dan Ryan, however well-intentioned, is reckless. It puts the lives of protestors and people in the community in grave danger. We will work with our partners at the Chicago Police Department to keep our communities safe and we strongly discourage this protest from going forward at this location.”
Both State Police and the Chicago Police personnel have met with Father Pfleger on several occasions to discuss the dangers of holding a march on the Dan Ryan Expressway.
“Shutting down and marching on the expressway recklessly places lives in danger by cutting off emergency services to those around the city who need it most,” said ISP (Chicago) Region I Commander Major David Byrd. “I have family and friends that live in this community, and while I appreciate and support this worthwhile cause, we cannot risk endangering the lives of those who march, of the many motorists traveling on the interstate, or the lives of our officers who are working to keep everyone safe. This planned protest endangers all communities by backing up traffic onto other arterial routes, creating extremely hazardous conditions for motorists, which are likely to cause crashes resulting in serious injury and fatalities. Additionally, the lives of the people marching on the expressway in the lanes of traffic, would also be placed at risk.”
In the interest of protecting lives while accomplishing the goal of peace, the ISP and CPD requests Father Pfleger reconsider the options to peacefully protest at alternate locations where the lives of the public and protestors will not be in jeopardy.
The ISP supports the First Amendment right to peacefully assemble, so long as it does not put the safety of the public in peril. Pedestrians are prohibited by law from entering the expressway including all on and off-ramps. Pedestrians who choose to violate the law and attempt to enter the expressway could be placed under arrest and charged with Criminal Trespassing to State Supported Property, as well as other potential violations.
Protests have shut down parts of the Ryan in the past, but I haven’t yet found any that caused the absolute mayhem the ISP is warning about.
“If the president of the united states was to come to Chicago today, law enforcement would immediately be pulled, and the entire expressway would absolutely be shut down, without negotiation, without conversation, and without fail, to protect one man, who ironically has not done anything currently to save the lives of the thousands of people who have been murdered, shot or wounded in this great city of Chicago,” said Bright Star Community Outreach CEO Pastor Chris Harris at the press conference.
Chicago police warn they have to pull 200 officers out of the high crime neighborhoods on the South and West sides to protect the protesters, leaving those areas unprotected.
“I don’t work for the police department, but let me offer them some advice,” Pfleger said. “If they say doing this will be pulling officers from the most needed neighborhoods in the city of Chicago, then pull them from the north side.”
Illinois’ flat income tax, currently set at a rate of 4.95 percent for all individual taxpayers, is an outlier. The federal government, as well as most states that have an income tax, feature what is commonly referred to as a progressive tax system in which higher earners pay higher rates.
Democrat J.B. Pritzker, the challenger to Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in the November election, says he wants to switch Illinois to a progressive tax, though he has been vague about details.
Rauner’s running mate, Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti, recently ripped into Pritzker’s tax plan during an interview on a Fox News-affiliated talk radio station that serves the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis.
Pritzker will “stick you with that progressive income tax which is surely to be an increase — not to mention the fact that it is wholly regressive,” Sanguinetti told Marc Cox of KFTK.
That is quite the oxymoron. Can a progressive income tax actually be regressive? We decided to check.
* Usually when DC reporters go on one of their patented Trump voter safari hunts, ridiculousness ensues. But Katie Glueck with McClatchy DC has authored a well-written story about the two major party candidates in the 12th Congressional District…
He is a top Democratic recruit, a man party officials have eyed for years and who is now running in one of the most competitive districts in the country. And on a Thursday night in late May, he stood before a room of irate Democrats, defending Donald Trump.
“Let me say this in response a little bit: I think there’s a lot of anger in the country,” Brendan Kelly told the gaggle of grizzled attendees here in southern Illinois’ 12th congressional district, as anti-Trump barbs began to fly.
The town hall gathering, held in a fluorescent-lit, wood-paneled meeting room where a Bud Light-emblazoned clock kept the time, was supposed to be about Social Security, pensions and Medicare. And for awhile, it was. But then the Trump-bashing began from the audience: “No one is a bigger liar in the country than the President or Sarah Sanders.” Trump is “an immoral, draft-dodging punk.”
At first, Kelly, a burly Navy veteran and current state’s attorney, tried to engage, aware that the insults represented a minority viewpoint in this district that backed Trump by 15 percentage points: “I’m running in a district that voted for President Trump, and also for [Democratic Sen.] Tammy Duckworth overwhelmingly. The same people. Why do you think that is?”
The piece doesn’t delve into the split between the urban/suburban Metro East portion of the district and the far more rural areas, but it’s still pretty darned good.
When school districts outside of Chicago negotiate contracts, they do so with the assurance that the state will pick up the tab on pensions. To control growing pension costs, lawmakers capped salary bumps at 6 percent in 2005. This year, the cap tightened to 3 percent.
Illinois’ teachers unions have collected more than 15,000 signatures on petitions urging state lawmakers to reverse that measure.
State Rep. Will Davis (D-Homewood) chairs the House K-12 appropriations committee, and was involved in budget negotiations.
“I mean, things like this are tough conversations. But you know there’s also a manner in which we also have to look at the long-term viability of our state,” he says. “Not everybody’s in favor of raising taxes for the things we want to pay for. Sometimes we do have to make relatively tough decisions, and this fits into that category.”
Senator Elgie Sims (D-Chicago) says districts are free to offer bigger raises, but will have to kick in pension costs for any amount that exceeds the cap.
Nearly 80% of Illinois districts report problems with teacher shortages. In Moline, the applicant pool for Special Education positions is sliced in half. Knoxville can’t get any applicants for its openings.
“You may have classrooms that are manned by a substitute teacher because you have no applicants,” [Regional Superintendent Angie Zarvell] continued.
With fewer applicants, experience and quality also decline. Some districts won’t fill openings. That could mean larger class sizes or not offering the class.
This is all part of a downward spiral that hurts teacher morale and security.
Gov. Bruce Rauner last week signed one new law, HB5627, that is supposed to ease Illinois’ teacher shortage by making it easier for out-of-state and retired teachers to get into Illinois classrooms.
Jontry said Illinois schools are still facing a teacher shortage. He said he expects fewer school districts across the state to have a school bus driver in the fall.
As we’ve seen over the past few years as the economy has strengthened it’s become much more difficult to find part-time bus drivers for the low pay most districts and private providers offer.
Restrictive certification requirements and a lack of candidates has made it difficult to fill some positions, said Todd DeTaeye, Moline-Coal Valley School District Assistant Superintendent of Administration and Human Resources.
“It is becoming more of a challenge to find qualified bilingual teachers, special education teachers, foreign language teachers, and school psychologists,” Mr. DeTaeye said. “When we do find qualified teachers in these areas, the pool of candidates is not nearly as deep as it has been in the past.”
Senate Bill 863 will make it easier for out-of-state teachers to work in Illinois. The legislation allows teachers to become licensed in Illinois if they have completed a comparable state-approved educator program, or hold a comparable and valid license with similar grade and subject credentials from another state.
Last year, we raised the alarm (again) about the unfair TRS Federal Funds Rate. It proved a tough issue for school districts to plan around. Should they hire certified teachers to improve student outcomes, but pay a nearly 40% pension surcharge on those federally funded dollars? Or, should they purchase educational materials that might not have the biggest impact on students but would avoid the pension surcharge, giving them more bang for their buck? Creative accounting is not supposed to be in the job description for school leaders, but the federal funds rate put them in that position.
Last summer, after years of difficult decisions and budgetary jiu-jitsu for school district leaders, education advocates’ hard work paid off when Springfield passed and enacted a law that returned an additional $80 million annually to the classrooms of underserved students. By removing the pension surcharge, districts are now empowered to make decisions in the best interests of their students, not their bottom line.
“You know people spin this [Janus] ruling or me as being anti-union, I am not anti-union. I want more union jobs, I want more all jobs in the state of Illinois, union, non-union I want more pay for everybody,” Rauner said. “What I’m against is conflicts of interest.”
“Crystal clear, I am not anti-union,” Gov. Bruce Rauner told WBEZ in 2015 when asked about his stance on public employee unions.
The governor repeated the “I am not anti-union” phrase June 27 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled public employees don’t have to pay unions a dime to receive the benefits from their union-negotiated contracts.
But Rauner’s word is no good on this claim. He has said over and over for years that public employee unions are inherently “corrupt” because they negotiate contracts with politicians and then support or oppose those same politicians during campaigns with contributions he calls “bribes.”
How can he say that and not want to eliminate them?
Rauner decided to run for governor after watching his friend and onetime ally Mayor Rahm Emanuel cave to the Chicago Teachers Union during a 2013 strike. He has repeatedly called AFSCME, the union that represents most state employees, “Afscammy.” One of his first acts as governor was to try to kill off “fair share” fee payments to AFSCME, which were at the heart of the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME case.
Fair share fees, which are lower than full union membership dues, can only be used to implement a union contract and cannot be used for political campaign purposes. But, Rauner said in February when the Supreme Court was hearing arguments on Janus: “One hundred percent of what a government union does is political by nature.”
“I’m very pro trade union and I want to grow more trade union jobs,” Rauner said.
Trade union leaders were the first to jump aboard JB Pritzker’s campaign last year, so I’m certain they would strongly disagree. Rauner wants to undo prevailing wage laws, is opposed to project labor agreements and backs the creation of local “right to work” zones.
…Adding… Good analysis, but we’ll see if it works or not in November…
To be clear, Rauner's attempt to claim he is "pro-union" should put to bed any question over whether Janus is good for him politically.
Unions are popular in IL, Rauner attacked them via Janus, and he is trying to avoid paying the political price.
Republican candidates running for the state assembly are fretting about campaign coffers that seem bare. They wonder if/when Gov. Bruce Rauner will give another infusion. He donated $50,000 to the state Republican Party last month. […]
Another lawmaker says Republicans are bracing for a possible Blue Wave and know the only thing that can save them is cash.
A source above the fray, however, tells me Rauner has every intention of donating to the legislators’ campaign fund.
“It’s only the beginning of July (for crying out loud). The governor is 100 percent committed.” Rauner apparently is working to get others to donate, too. […]
Lawmakers hope to see a cash infusion in the next 30 days or so. That’s a few weeks before campaign season really kicks in.
As far as cash to others is concerned, Gov. Rauner is known for two things: 1) He doesn’t relish writing big checks; and 2) He often waits to pump money into others’ campaigns (note the late cash to Comptroller Munger two years ago).
The House Republicans are, I’m told, running on fumes right now. I’m also hearing a half million is expected soonish.
Conservative Party candidate Sam McCann and running mate Aaron Merreighn formally joined the race for Illinois Governor today after the deadline for objections to his nominating petitions passed with no objections filed. McCann submitted more than 60,000 signatures, far surpassing the requirement of 25,000. He immediately called for debates to be scheduled.
McCann issued the following statement:
Conservative and Republican voters clearly showed their dissatisfaction with Bruce Rauner during the primary and those same voters put their hope in our campaign during the petition process. After a brief internal review of my petitions, Bruce Rauner’s paid staffers surely saw that attempting to put these petitions’ validity into question would be fruitless.
I am proud to be on the ballot in the General Election. Voters will now have an option to protect them from the Rauner-Madigan liberal agenda that brought us publicly-funded abortions and a sanctuary state. I am ready to lead the charge to rebuild Illinois together.
With Illinois’ future at stake, I call on Bruce Rauner, J.B. Pritzker and Kash Jackson to join me to schedule debates on these and other issues of critical importance to voters across the state.
*** UPDATE *** I’ve asked the Pritzker and Rauner campaigns for a response.
Galia Slayen from the Pritzker campaign…
After Bruce Rauner’s failed leadership, JB will highlight his plans to get Illinois back on track and our campaign welcomes other voices to the stage that know we need change in Illinois.
* Part of Gov. Rauner’s official schedule for today…
What: Gov. Rauner joined by local legislators, educational and business leaders visits three Champaign-Urbana businesses
Where: Wolfram Research, 100 Trade Center Drive, Champaign
Time: 1:30 p.m.
Granular, 1904 S. First St., Suite 301, Champaign
Time: 2:00 p.m.
A&R Mechanical Contractors, 711 E. Kettering Park Drive, Urbana
Time: 2:30 p.m
Date: Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Note: Media availability follows final tour stop at A&R Mechanical Contractors
* Pritzker campaign…
Rauner Kicks Off Champaign-Urbana Clean Up Tour
After disparaging the entire Champaign-Urbana area, Bruce Rauner is attempting to clean up his trash talk with a tour through the two cities.
The C-U community was not pleased when Rauner said, “it’s very hard to keep a company of more than six people there. There’s no convenient transportation, not much of a workforce. It’s very hard.” It spurred Republicans, Democrats, and nonpartisan community members to clap back in unison against Rauner’s disrespectful badmouthing of the region.
“Bruce Rauner’s clean up tour through Champaign-Urbana only comes after widespread, bipartisan backlash taught this failed governor a lesson,” said Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh. “While trashing a community may come natural to Illinois’ bad-mouther-in-chief, our families are tired of a failed leader who would rather tear communities down than move this state forward.”
*** UPDATE 1 *** His tour has begun. “It’s very hard to keep a company of more than six people there… not much of a workforce”…
A representative from Wolfram Research tells @GovRauner in a presentation “we do have a global workforce” and “we never have a problem recruiting or hiring people to move here.” pic.twitter.com/azwUzZa285
On transportation, @GovRauner vows to start serious talks about privately funded high speed rail projects to and from Champaign-Urbana. pic.twitter.com/8rs7ONy0ST
Governor Bruce Rauner’s campaign for re-election is expected to get a boost this week from a Super PAC formerly headed by wealthy Chicago businessman and Illinois campaign finance chair of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential run, Ron Gidwitz.
On Tuesday, Economic Freedom Alliance is set to begin running television ads attacking Rauner’s opponent, Democratic nominee J.B. Pritzker. Sources tell WGN the advertising campaign will total more than half a million dollars.
* And this 15-second spot appears to also be running on social media because it has 1,639 YouTube views as of 9 o’clock this morning…
Good spots.
*** UPDATE *** The Illinois Manufacturers Association just moved $900,000 into the Economic Freedom Alliance’s PAC and the PAC just filed a B-1 showing it was spending $895,000 on TV and digital ads.
