* I had planned to shut down the blog yesterday for the holiday because I have a lot of errands and other stuff to do this afternoon and figured traffic would be light here, but changed my mind. I’m not sure why.
Anyway, you’re on your own for the rest of the day. Please try to be nice to each other and keep the conversation Illinois-centric. As always, you can monitor any breaking news with our live coverage post below.
* I will leave you with an excerpt from an email I received Monday from a person who worked for a former governor…
Hi Rich—someone just forwarded me your post on Karl. I did not realize he was Wordslinger! Karl was a friend of ours. … He was a great guy. We were able to stop by the memorial at Doc Ryan’s a few weeks ago and I know his family will be happy to see all the support from the Capitol Fax Blog community.
It’s like the man had two identities, along the lines of a Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne. To his family and friends, he was Karl Oxnevad, a great dude with a fine family living the good life in Oak Park. Unbeknownst to most of those folks, he was also one of the most influential voices in the state.
You cannot imagine how many political types have told me they were crushed by the news of his death. Whether they agreed with him or not, they listened to what he said.
* From a very reliable person who lives in Chicago…
I was walking to work and see this guy standing on the curb yelling into his phone. Look over. It’s Bruce and Diana. He has crutches and a scraggly beard. He looks disheveled. And he keeps correcting someone on the other line and yelling his address into the phone.
The former governor was standing outside his apartment building when he was spotted yesterday. I had heard he’d injured his ankle.
* Meanwhile, Mrs. Rauner was spotted at the governor’s office in the Thompson Center yesterday…
A hearing officer has recommended Gail Simpson should be declared the winner of the race for the Ward 2 seat on the Springfield City Council that was initially too close to call.
Retired Judge John Mehlick, who is overseeing a vote recount process on behalf of the city, said in a report made public Tuesday that after taking into account the recounted ballots and his rulings on which disputed ballots should be awarded to a candidate or thrown out, Simpson defeated Shawn Gregory by 0.361 of a vote.
The fraction-of-a-vote advantage happened because of 13 ballots where voters were assisted in filling out their ballots, but the required affidavits that must be filed by in such cases were incomplete. Most of the voters who got assistance live at the Mary Bryant Home for the Blind and Visually Impaired, according to documents filed during the challenge process.
In his report, Mehlick said that due to the error, all 13 ballots should be thrown out and all candidates’ vote totals should be reduced proportionally based on what percentage of the vote they received in the precincts where the 13 ballots were cast.
Yields on Illinois bonds spiked higher on Tuesday in the U.S. municipal market after a constitutional challenge to $16 billion of the state’s general obligation bonds was launched on Monday.
Illinois already pays the biggest yield penalty among states in the $3.8 trillion market due to its low credit ratings, which are a notch or two above junk.
Greg Saulnier, an analyst at Municipal Market Data (MMD), said the spread for Illinois GO bonds over MMD’s benchmark triple-A yield scale had tightened over the past two months as investors gobbled up higher-yielding debt, leaving the state’s bond prices at a greater risk of falling.
“The lawsuit headline was like adding a spark to a powder keg so to speak and trading swiftly indicated spreads wider by 20-25 basis points,” he added.
Pritzker and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza dismissed the lawsuit as a political tactic by John Tillman, the chief executive officer of the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, that will be tossed out of court. The case, also filed by New York hedge fund Warlander Asset Management claims the state’s record pension bond sale in 2003 and debt issued in 2017 to pay a backlog of unpaid bills were deficit financings prohibited by the constitution.
Warlander owns $25 million Illinois general-obligation bonds issued in 2001, 2014, 2017 and 2018. Those bonds would be more secure if the firm succeeded in having the other securities invalidated, since there would be more money available to service the debt.
Analysts are skeptical. Citigroup Inc.’s Vikram Rai and Jack Muller published a note on the case after the bank was inundated with calls. They said the lawsuit is unjustified because the Illinois Constitution allows debt to be incurred as long as the law details the specific purpose of the debt and how it will be repaid. Even if it did succeed, they said, the government would likely find a way to repay the debt to avoid being penalized in the bond market. […]
Jason Appleson, a portfolio manager at PT Asset Management LLC, said he believed market consensus is that the lawsuit was frivolous. […]
Appleson attributed the initial widening to “a couple of scared buyers” affecting a light trading day in a slow market. “If this moves forward in court, I think we could see some more widening but if it’s shut down we could see a snap-back in spreads given the market conditions.”
* More person on the street interviews about the 19 cents per gallon Motor Fuel Tax increase on gasoline…
John Taylor – a retired state worker – said he doesn’t mind paying the extra few dollars that are set to go to infrastructure repairs.
“The drivers ultimately have to pay for the roads,” he said while filling up at a gas station off Interstate 55 in Springfield Monday. “I mean who else do we think would pay for them? They’ve been neglected for years. I think it seems fair.”
Still, not everyone is happy with the increase. Jo Flowers, from Springfield, was getting gas at the same station. She said higher prices may affect how much she drives.
“I have to make sure I have enough gas to get back and forth to work,” said the single mom who works at a mail sorting company across town from where she lives.
There is zero doubt that this tax hike will cause some pain. But we cannot continue to allow our infrastructure to deteriorate like it has been. The problems created over the past couple of decades through neglect or outright malice need to be addressed, and this is just one of them.
Waste haulers, who maintain large fleets of gas-guzzling garbage trucks, plan to pass the added cost along to consumers as soon as possible.
Most garbage trucks burn diesel fuel, which saw an even higher 21.5 cent-per-gallon tax increase kick in Monday, bringing the total state tax to 44.5 cents per gallon.
Lakeshore Recycling, which has 225 residential and commercial garbage trucks working in Chicago and the suburbs each day, will see its costs rise by at least $1 million annually, said CEO Alan Handley.
The Morton Grove company services 350,000 residences and 30,000 businesses, including all Chicago Public Schools, and empties the garbage cans in communities such as Highland Park, Wheaton, Skokie, Evanston and Deerfield. Both residential and business customers will likely pay the tab for the state’s fuel tax increase, Handley said.
“The cost has to be passed along,” Handley said. “We can’t absorb all that.”
Big trucks do far more damage to roads and bridges than cars. And somebody has to pay to fix those roads and bridges, including the customers of those waste hauling services.
About 15 protesters backed up traffic on Monday along a busy intersection in Collinsville as a statement against the doubling of the state gas to 38 cents as part of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s new $40 billion state budget.
Demonstrators intimated they thought they were speaking for all state residents in making their voices heard.
Pritzker said all the road repairs will actually help families save money in the long run, despite the taxes.
“Families that are enduring $500 per year of damage to their cars because of the potholes because of the problems on our highways and our roads,” Pritzker said.
He also says the bill provides money for towns to do their own work. Sesser mayor Jason Ashmore said he’s hoping for help with the town’s sewer and water systems.
“We’ve made tremendous strides in our water and sewer infrastructure, but a lot of it is still from the 1930s so we’re still trying to get that updated,” Ashmore said.
No one is happy about the taxes, including [Rep. Dave Severin, R-Benton], but he said they need to happen.
“People in southern Illinois are going to see changes, and they’re going to be good changes, we just got to get people to hang with us,” Severin said.
But the gas tax is certainly the most painful. With this new hike, Gov. Pritzker and progressive tax proponents just broke their promise to give tax relief to Illinois’ middle and lower class.
Remember that when the progressive tax amendment comes on the ballot next year. Proponents are going to promise the middle class a tax cut, but it won’t be true.
So… don’t vote yourself a modest income tax cut because of the gas tax hike?
Cassidy’s courage in taking on the state’s most powerful Democrat prompted another Madigan staffer, Sherri Garrett, to seek her out to share her own allegations of “bullying and repeated harassment” by Mapes, who ultimately resigned from his positions as chief of staff to the speaker and executive director of the Illinois Democratic Party [last year]. […]
“My relationship with the speaker this year has been quite positive. We started the session off with a really good conversation about what had happened between us and what we wanted to do differently moving forward,” Cassidy said. “And I think we both stuck to the plan through this session in terms of a more communicative direct discussion.”
But has the #MeToo movement, which has led to the resignations of several in the Madigan world, changed the speaker?
“I don’t know what to place that on, the changes in the way the House was run this year. Could it be his direct reaction to that? Could it be just the difference between Mapes’ leadership style and Jessica’s [Basham, his current chief of staff] leadership style? Is it a combination of the two? I don’t know because I try really hard to not spend time in anyone’s head but my own.”
“I can’t really say which I think it is, certainly some combination of those things probably had an impact on it. But things were different. Things were definitely different in the House this year,” Cassidy said.
* This is one of Wordslinger’s first comments on the blog. It’s from an August 2007 post about some Rod Blagojevich shenanigans…
Is there anyone who can get through to this guy and tell him to move on? Durbin, Rahm Emanuel, Obama? Maybe a Jim Thompson or a Jim Edgar? Anyone inside his admininistration? If there’s another CTA fire, or a bridge collapses, and there’s no capital budget, he, as the face of Illinois government will pay a dear price.
* Here’s his reply to a 2007 Question of the Day about our strongest memories of Harold Washington…
Political:
His alliance with and resurrection of George Dunne after he had been cast out by Byrne.
To benefit Mondale, running as a favorite son in the 1984 Illinois Presidential Primary to keep Jesse from winning.
The final defeat of the Vrodlyak 29 with the special election of Luis Guiterrez. First order of business: Firing Ed Kelly and the Park District Board.
Quote: Asked if his fight with the Two Eddies was racial: “It’s not racial. They’d support a purple ape if they could control him.”
And in addition to “Hocus Pocus Dominocus,” I’ll add “Willie Lump Lump,” a handy description of any self-important non-entity.
* And here’s one from March 2008 about a poll showing broad support for medical cannabis…
Hard to believe that we’re still so rigid when it comes to this issue.
Throwing marijuana, medical or otherwise, into the same boat as crack, meth and heroin in a “war on drugs” is just silly.
I’ve been around the block a few times and have sampled my share of mind-altering substances. Based on that, I’d be more concerned about catching my kid with a bottle of Jack Daniels than a joint. I hope he does neither. But if you want to hear yourself sound stupid, try explaining to a kid why pot is illegal and whiskey is advertised on Sunday tv sport contests.
It’s 2008, not 1958. The Woodstock generation is pushing 70. Next issue, please.
* From 2010, when the Ricketts family wanted to finance Wrigley Field upgrades with a $200 million state bond…
The Ricketts rollout was about the biggest bellyflop for a first-time dive into the Illinois political pool in a long while. Confusing for all, painful for some.
Kass has four or five columns — Cellini, Daley runs the country through Obama, Quarters Boyle, Obama/Rezko — that he just recycles over and over, rewriting a couple of paragraphs here or there.
Maybe now that Fast Eddie is out of the can he can get some new material.
I’m really gonna miss that guy.
Click here and help put Word’s daughter Emma through college.
…Adding… We want to keep the grand total of contributions under $20,000 for tax reasons, so keep that in mind, please.
