Lightfoot still pressing for state bailout
Monday, Jul 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Background is here and here if you need it. Greg Hinz…
In a joint appearance [with Gov. Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot] at an event celebrating the state’s new capital program, Lightfoot didn’t directly confirm—but didn’t deny—that she’s pitching the idea of the state assuming responsibility for the city’s pension funds, including taking on their $28 billion in liabilities.
Gov. Pritzker turned a big thumbs down to that idea…
“The state is just above junk (bond) status,” he noted. Adding the city’s pension debts on top of that “would drive us to that point. So, we’re not going to do that. But there are other options.”
* More…
[Lightfoot] did mention a tax on legal, accounting and other professional services. But the levy, which would require state approval, would not apply to haircuts and other day-to-day things that would make it “regressive,” she said.
Lightfoot did declare that solving the city’s seemingly unending pension woes is a top priority, one she’s willing to risk her re-election on.
“The reason we haven’t solved the pension problem is (lack of) political will, pure and simple,” she said. “We have to get this problem solved. . . .If we don’t have some structural relief, we’re going to continue to have this (fiscal) problem time after time.”
So, the mayor is willing to “risk her re-election” by having the state assume her city’s $28 billion in pension debt? How remarkably brave she is.
Pritzker has not looked too favorably on service taxes in the past. And approving yet another round of taxes next year - which is in an election year - seems a bit of a stretch, particularly if those taxes are for a Chicago pension bailout. But, hey, maybe she can finally sit down with the legislative leaders and lay out her ideas. And if they could limit a new service tax to Chicago, she might possibly have a shot, but that may still be a reach.
By the way, this is just the sort of post that wouldn’t be complete without some cutting remarks from Wordslinger. Y’all have some slack to pick up here.
…Adding… Fran Spielman…
At first, Lightfoot said “a number of different options” were being considered, that she had “no definitive plan” for pension relief, and would make no specific “revenue ask” of the governor until she cuts more costs.
But asked about Pritzker’s apparent decision to slam the door on the idea of a state takeover of the city’s $28 billion pension liability, Lightfoot acknowledged a service tax was probably her next best hope.
“That is an option that we are looking at. And when we have a package of options finalized, we’ll present them to the governor and the senior leadership in the General Assembly,” the mayor said.
“Let me be clear: We’re not looking at a general expansion of the service tax,” Lightfoot said. “We’re not looking at expanding the service tax on mom and pop companies.”
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Wordslinger
Monday, Jul 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Quad-City Times…
A former reporter for the Quad-City Times died from injuries he suffered after he was struck June 10 by a car.
Karl Oxnevad, 55, of Oak Park, Illinois, died June 11 at Loyola Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois.
He was employed at the Quad-City Times from 1986-1989.
Oxnevad grew up in DeKalb, Illinois, and attended Northern Illinois University, where he wrote for the Northern Star. He later earned a master’s degree from the University of Illinois, Springfield. He worked for publications in Illinois and Iowa.
He was known here as Wordslinger.
Karl had disappeared from the blog and commenters were asking about him, but I just figured he went on vacation to his summer haunt in Michigan or somewhere. I e-mailed and texted him and never heard back, but I didn’t think to Google his name until a mutual friend called me with the bad news this afternoon.
Karl and I took a class together back at Sangamon State. He was in the Public Affairs Reporting program and I was a Political Studies major with no real direction in life. We communicated regularly by text and email, and we talked often about getting together, but life always somehow intervened.
* From Karl’s obit…
Oxnevad, Karl Kristian Age 55, of Oak Park, IL passed away on June 11, 2019 at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, IL. He was born on December 3, 1963 in Rockford, IL, the son of Henrik and Ester (Nese) Oxnevad.
Karl grew up in DeKalb, IL, the youngest of five children. Karl attended Northern Illinois University, where we wrote for the Northern Star. He later received a master’s degree from the University of Illinois Springfield. He had a long career of reporting and working for publications across Illinois and Iowa.
Karl was an avid reader and writer, and you could always find him with a book in his hand. Some of his favorite subjects included politics and history, and he was always up for a re-read of his favorite books. He loved to tell stories and always got a kick out of making people laugh.
He was a lifelong fan of Chicago sports teams, and took pride in watching his children perform both onstage and on the sports field. He loved to travel around the United States and he cherished vacations spent with his wife and children in Ludington, MI. Karl loved his family dearly, and nothing made him happier than spending quality time with the people he loved the most.
Karl is survived by his wife Susan of Oak Park, IL, children Bradley of Chicago, IL, Erik of Traverse City, MI, and Emma of Oak Park, IL; his siblings, Rasmus (Sharon) Oxnevad and Rolf (Maureen) Oxnevad of DeKalb, IL., Louise (Dave) Nelson of Barrington Hills, IL, and Emily (Bill) Logan of Morrison, CO; and many nieces and nephews. He is preceded in death by his parents, Henrik and Ester.
* Here he is…
I’m just too stunned to write anything more about Karl right now. He helped make this website what it is today and I will forever be indebted.
His obituary asks for donations to “members of the Oxnevad family, to be put towards continuing higher education,” so I’ll work on getting that info to you.
Right now, I think I’m just gonna take a little time away from the computer to think about someone who had a huge impact on this state without hardly anyone knowing who he really was.
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No huge gasoline price hike yet
Monday, Jul 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* According to the Gas Buddy website at about 1:15 this afternoon, the average Illinois gasoline price has only risen about 5 cents a gallon today, even though a 19 cents per gallon increase of the Motor Fuel Tax kicked in at midnight. Gas prices fluctuate all the time. Gas Buddy reports the price of a gallon of regular gas in Illinois is about 8 cents lower today than it was on June 2nd.
Meanwhile, here’s yet another uninformed person on the street story about today’s Motor Fuel Tax hike…
“I truly hope it does what it’s supposed to do,” [Steve Young, a Springfield retiree who was filling his tank at the Shell station on West Washington Street] said. “We’ve seen that happen. Infrastructure hasn’t been maintained.
“I just hope they don’t take other funding away from (the infrastructure plan), sort of like what the lottery did back in the 1970s. (All the money was) going to education. Well, then they just cut the whole line item for education.” […]
Dan Bergner of Springfield filled up both of his cars at two packed Circle Ks on the north end Saturday in anticipation of the tax hike.
Bergner previously lived in Georgia and he saw the state and its infrastructure benefit from things like the lottery.
“When we lived in Georgia, the lottery went for the roads and education and a lot of the schools (there) are like college campuses,” Bergner said. “They have some of the best teachers in the U.S. and the roads have been phenomenal. In Illinois, they can’t seem to keep the money where it’s supposed to go. It gets used elsewhere. […]
“Truckers coming through Illinois aren’t fueling up (here). They’re fueling up before they get to Illinois. They pay fees to use the roads, but they’re not getting the revenue from the fuel tax.”
1) The lottery education shell game was real. As money came in from lottery receipts, state general revenue funding for K-12 was pared back. But we’ve had the opposite problem with transportation money. Legislators and governors kept dipping into the Road Fund to pay for state operating costs and program expenses. Illinois voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2016 that prevents using state transportation money for anything other than transportation purposes.
2) All the profits from the state of Georgia’s lottery go to education, according to the Georgia Lottery itself. No lottery revenue is spent on transportation projects in that state.
3) There’s this thing called the IFTA that distributes truckers’ motor fuel taxes…
The International Fuel Tax Agreement — also known as IFTA — is a fuel tax collection and sharing agreement for the redistribution of fuel taxes paid by interstate commercial carriers. There are 58 member jurisdictions of IFTA, including 48 American states and 10 Canadian provinces.
By requiring commercial carriers to pay fuel taxes proportionally, according to the miles driven in each state or province, the agreement ensures that each jurisdiction has its fair share of revenue to put towards roads and transportation.
I get the anger. Who would want to give this state government another penny of their hard-earned dollars? So their anger is a legit news story. But while regular folks are generally unclear on concepts like these, news media outlets shouldn’t be.
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* There is so much wrong with this Bloomberg story…
A hedge fund run by a protege of Appaloosa Management’s David Tepper and the chief executive officer of a conservative think tank sued Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, saying $14.3 billion of bonds should be invalidated because their issuance violated the state constitution.
Warlander Asset Management, a New York-based hedge fund formed by Eric Cole, and John Tillman, the CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, said 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. The lawsuit was filed Monday in Sangamon County circuit court.
First of all, this filing isn’t actually a lawsuit. In this state, a petition to file a taxpayer lawsuit must first be approved by the court. And those approvals are exceedingly rare. From the filing…
This Court is not tasked at the petition stage with determining “whether the allegations of the proposed complaint can, on hearing, be sustained,” but only with determining if Petitioner has offered “reasonable grounds for filing suit.”
* Back to Bloomberg…
Article nine, section nine of the Illinois Constitution says the state may issue long-term debt only to finance “specific purposes” if approved by three-fifths of the legislature or by popular referendum.
Um, no. The Bloomberg reporter should’ve glanced at the Illinois Constitution.
From the Tillman filing…
The Illinois Constitution expressly limits the State’s power to incur State debt. Article IX, section 9 permits the State to incur new long-term debt only to finance “specific purposes.” Ill. Const. art IX, section 9(b). “Specific purposes” refers to specific projects in the nature of capital improvements, including roads, buildings, and bridges. Simply obtaining cash to finance the State’s structural deficits or to speculate in the market is not a “specific purpose.”
What?
* I’m not sure what Illinois Constitution they’re reading, but here’s what ours actually says…
SECTION 9. STATE DEBT
(a) No State debt shall be incurred except as provided in this Section. For the purpose of this Section, “State debt” means bonds or other evidences of indebtedness which are secured by the full faith and credit of the State or are required to be repaid, directly or indirectly, from tax revenue and which are incurred by the State, any department, authority, public corporation or quasi-public corporation of the State, any State college or university, or any other public agency created by the State, but not by units of local government, or school districts.
(b) State debt for specific purposes may be incurred or the payment of State or other debt guaranteed in such amounts as may be provided either in a law passed by the vote of three-fifths of the members elected to each house of the General Assembly or in a law approved by a majority of the electors voting on the question at the next general election following passage. Any law providing for the incurring or guaranteeing of debt shall set forth the specific purposes and the manner of repayment. […]
(f) The State, departments, authorities, public corporations and quasi-public corporations of the State, the State colleges and universities and other public agencies created by the State, may issue bonds or other evidences of indebtedness which are not secured by the full faith and credit or tax revenue of the State nor required to be repaid, directly or indirectly, from tax revenue, for such purposes and in such amounts as may be authorized by law.
By my reading, there is no “specific purposes” limitation in the Illinois Constitution. The language allows debt to be incurred as long as the law states what that specific purpose is and how it will be repaid. That’s it. And there is clearly no list of what is allowed and what isn’t (except for percentage limits on revenue anticipation bonds and bonds to cover fiscal emergencies). The provisions were a deliberate expansion of state authority to take on debt that were prohibited by the previous constitution. A well-written history of the 1870 vs. 1970 constitutions shows this conclusion by the Committee on Revenue and Finance of the 1970 Constitutional Convention…
As to its third contention, the committee found that: [T]he existence of constitutional debt limitations has increased interest costs and has caused the expenditure of large sums of money for additional administrative and insurance costs, resulting from the use of authorities and other techniques devised to avoid state debt limits.
Yet, somehow, the pension bond in 2003 and the 2017 bonding to pay off past-due bills are unconstitutional, according to this filing.
* Bloomberg’s story is just so irresponsible…
The lawsuit comes two months after the federal board overseeing Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy and a group of hedge funds sought to have more than $6 billion of the island’s bonds declared null and void and shows how the island’s effort to cut its debts is reverberating in the $3.8 trillion U.S. municipal-bond market. The Puerto Rico overseers have sought to have the debt tossed out on the grounds that it was sold after the territory breached its debt limits, a step that some analysts said could undermine confidence in a market that’s seen as a haven.
And now there’s a hedge fund and a right wing think tank coming after Illinois.
* From the governor’s office…
John Tillman and Bruce Rauner’s old buddies are back to playing dangerous games with our finances so they can keep up their quixotic quest to drive Illinois into bankruptcy.
*** UPDATE 1 *** Comptroller Susana Mendoza…
I prefer not to comment on pending litigation. But with a ridiculous-on-its-face filing like this, I’ll make an exception.
This is an extension of John Tillman’s and former Governor Bruce Rauner’s fantasy of pushing Illinois into bankruptcy so they could crush unions in Illinois. They succeeded in lowering the state’s bond ratings and forcing Illinois taxpayers to pay higher rates on bonds, but they failed in every other regard.
The media should waste no ink on a ridiculous lawsuit that misrepresents the Illinois Constitution and seeks to enjoin a state from spending money that was wisely spent years ago, approved by bond counsel. But this filing was never about the law. It was meant to generate headlines to scare investors in the bond market for political ends before the filing is laughed out of court.
With the $6 billion the state borrowed in 2017, we used federal matching funds to pay off $8.7 billion in high interest-accruing debt. Instead of paying 12 percent annual interest on that debt, the bond sale allowed us to convert that to 3.5 percent interest. Not only did that save Illinois taxpayers $4-$6 billion dollars over the life of the bonds, it saved small businesses, nursing homes, schools, medical clinics and other non-profits around the state from having to close their doors. Tillman now wants Illinois taxpayers to pay an extra $4-$6 billion for his adventures in absurdity.
Governor Pritzker and legislators of both parties are working hard and succeeding in cleaning up Governor Rauner’s and his key advisor John Tillman’s wreckage of the of the state economy. The markets should see this as nothing more than garbage that should be thrown out immediately by the courts.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Bond Buyer…
The Pritzker administration dismissed the allegations and highlighted the string of legal advisors that signed off on the deals.
“This is simply a new tactic from the extreme right to interfere in capital markets. We’re done with the far right’s dangerous financial games to pull Illinois underwater. We saw this repeatedly under Bruce Rauner, who funded and executed on John Tillman’s pathological focus to drive Illinois into bankruptcy,” Pritzker spokeswoman Emily Bittner said in an emailed statement, referring to the former governor.
“Several layers of bond counsel and Attorney General Madigan were required to sign off on bond offerings, and these met those standards. This lawsuit is not worth the paper it’s written on,” Bittner added.
Several market participants said while they needed to digest the lawsuit’s arguments, the Illinois constitution grants the General Assembly broad bonding powers and they voiced skepticism that the various legal reviews conducted on the bonds would have allowed such violations to occur. They also suggested the “specific purpose” language is broad and that the bonds were issued with a GO pledge that allows for the sweeping use of the general fund for repayment purposes.
That’s probably why they leaked the lawsuit to that Bloomberg reporter and not to Yvette Shields at the Bond Buyer.
*** UPDATE 3 *** Treasurer Michael Frerichs…
Today’s legal filing is another political stunt by Mr. Tillman and the extremists at the Illinois Policy Institute.
The 2019 legislative session showed what can happen when elected officials ignore the extremists and instead focus on working together in a bi-partisan fashion to improve Illinois’ finances.
Governor Pritzker and legislators from both parties passed a budget that begins to undo the financial harm done by four years of Bruce Rauner.
I intend to let Attorney General Kwame Raoul do his job and ask the court to reject this absurd request from Mr. Tillman and the Illinois Policy Institute to have the courts entertain the extremist agenda that the legislature and the voting public have already overwhelmingly rejected.
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Jerry Joyce
Monday, Jul 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Jerry Joyce was my state Senator growing up in Iroquois County. His defeat of Ed McBroom, who ran the Kankakee County Republican Party like the Democrats ran Chicago, was a stunning upset.
Those upsets were pretty common in the post-Watergate wave year of 1974, but that one had huge local and statewide consequences. Jerry’s win not only drove a big stake into the local GOP machine’s heart, but it also helped flip the Senate to the Democrats, which (aside from the time that Gov. Thompson wouldn’t let go of the gavel) the party did not relinquish for 18 years.
His win, along with several others, remade the Senate, not always to Mayor Richard J. Daley’s liking. Jerry was part of the “Crazy Eights,” a group of mainly Downstate Democrats who refused to vote lockstep with old man Daley (click here for a good backgrounder)
Jerry was mapped out of the Senate during the 1991 GOP remap. I ran into him in Key West at the end of a week’s vacation back in 2002 and enjoyed myself so much I extended my vacation for another week. He was a delight to hang out with and was full of great stories. I will cherish that time for the rest of my life, but I wish I had taken notes. I’ve known Jerry’s daughter Lori for decades. She was an indispensable high-level Senate Democratic staffer who left the business to raise a fine family with former Speaker Madigan Issues Staff Director Tom Cullen.
* The Kankakee Daily Journal’s obit is top notch…
Jerry Joyce, a 17-year Illinois state senator and a champion for agriculture and outdoor issues throughout the state, died June 19. He was 80.
In addition to his Springfield tenure, Joyce, from Essex in western Kankakee County, served on the Kankakee County Board.
A farmer and a Democrat, Joyce scored a major election upset in November 1974 when he defeated Sen. Ed McBroom, a Kankakee resident and Republican political heavyweight, to represent the Illinois 43rd Senate district, which included the counties of Kankakee, Iroquois, Grundy, Ford, as well as the southwestern portion of Will County. […]
Robert Themer, a retired longtime Daily Journal editor and reporter, called Joyce the greatest elected official he had ever covered.
“There is no one that I’ve covered that I’ve admired as much as Jerry Joyce. He was a tremendous advocate for this region,” he said.
Themer noted the advocacy Joyce had for the Kankakee River, the Kankakee River State Park and outdoor facilities in general.
Go read the whole thing.
* Bernie…
Illinois Auditor General FRANK MAUTINO, a Democrat from Spring Valley, fondly remembered Joyce as a “decent, kind human being.” Mautino came to the House in 1991, when he was appointed to replace his father, Rep. DICK MAUTINO, who died of a heart attack at age 53.
“He took his time with a young, downstate member coming in — I was 28 at the time — to help me,” Mautino told me. “He was always very, very willing to help, and to show, not only me, but other young members, how to get bills passed and get things done.”
The fact that Joyce, like Mautino, represented an agricultural area, plus Joyce’s friendship with Mautino’s father, helped them bond, the auditor general said.
“He was gregarious, kind of bigger than life,” Mautino said. “You knew when Jerry was in the room.”
Yep.
* Arrangements…
A memorial visitation will be at the R.W. Patterson Funeral Home & Crematory from 2 to 5 p.m. July 2. A memorial service will be held at 5 p.m. Inurnment will be private. … In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts in his name may be directed to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
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The family had a lot of buffers
Monday, Jul 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Speaker Madigan’s team has always denied that they put two Latino Democratic candidates into Madigan’s 2016 primary race to take votes away from well-funded challenger Jason Gonzales. But depositions from a few people involved reveal the involvement of 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn’s brother Kevin (who worked out of Madigan’s office until given the boot after being accused of sexual harassment) and of one of Madigan’s precinct captains, Eugene Pagois.
The entire Tribune story about the depositions is a must-read, if only for passages like this about former HDO and Cicero Voters Alliance precinct worker Joseph Nasella…
Nasella didn’t easily give up his story about what he said was the Madigan camp’s request to help another candidate get on the ballot against the speaker.
According to court records, Nasella avoided process servers in Hammond, Lansing and his mother’s 10th Ward residence for months. But after a federal judge issued an arrest warrant, he turned up.
Even then, Nasella initially came across as a reluctant witness during the lengthy deposition. A lawyer’s attempt to get some basic information on the record proved a challenge.
“Where I live and who I f— is my business,” responded Nasella, 55.
This is a truly fascinating story. You’ve got one guy, Nasella, who has wandered from one public job to another (he’s currently at IDNR) and literally hid out from process servers for months to avoid testifying about his petition effort allegedly directed by Kevin Quinn, the brother of Madigan’s “general.” And another guy, Michael Kuba, who reads at the 6th grade level and apparently accompanied Madigan precinct captain Pagois while Pagois obtained signatures so that Kuba could sign the petition sheets and obscure MJM’s direct involvement.
I got tired just writing that paragraph. Imagine how much energy and effort they’ve had to put into that race, before, during and for three years after. I mean, sheesh, did they also fly in uncles from Sicily to attend the depositions?
Madigan ended up winning with 65 percent of the vote. Maybe they should focus on doing that sort of precinct work and dump the dark skullduggery.
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* My Crain’s Chicago Business column…
Some of the finest minds in the state recently explained to me the importance of a mostly unnoticed line in the state of Illinois’ new capital projects plan.
University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer, Argonne National Laboratory Director Paul Kearns and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Provost Andreas Cangellaris touted new state government funding for a program that could be “even bigger than supercomputing” (Zimmer) and a “paradigm shift” in technology (Cangellaris).
What is this marvel? Quantum physics. It’s the study of subatomic particles that don’t behave in the way we understand “normal” physics. The particles do things like exist in two places simultaneously, move through what we would consider solid objects and change their form when observed. Google it. It’ll blow your mind.
The idea is to try to harness these tiny particles to do stuff like create vastly improved computing systems or design totally new types of pharmaceuticals or unbreakable encryption.
In 2017, the University of Chicago invested $100 million and partnered with Argonne and Fermilab on a project called the Chicago Quantum Exchange.
While the University of Illinois may be better known for its supercomputing and internet breakthroughs, which led to pretty much everything digital that we take for granted today, the institution has been studying quantum physics since the early 1950s. It joined the exchange in October.
President Donald Trump signed a bill in December providing over a billion dollars for quantum research. The military is especially concerned about China, which successfully conducted a quantum encryption experiment and is reportedly spending billions on the technology.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been involved with high-tech development for years in the private sector, and he says he’s familiar with quantum physics. He also knew about U of C’s $100 million investment and its search for more partners. So he decided
Click here to read the rest before commenting, please.
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Pick a lane
Monday, Jul 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the $45 billion infrastructure bill into law last week during a three-day fly-around to several Illinois cities.
It’s a good bet that the billionaire Pritzker paid for the plane that took him and whatever staff he brought to the various venues, since he’s regularly done that since taking office in January. The state hasn’t had an appropriation to pay to operate its fleet of aircraft since Gov. Bruce Rauner halted their use during a long period of political gridlock.
Illinois is close to 400 miles long and over 200 miles wide. Flying is far more efficient and much less exhausting than driving to cities throughout this state in a day or two or even three. The governor should have better things to do with his time.
The state-owned airplane fleet was a constant source of irritation to good government types back in the day, and we regularly saw news articles about their use and/or over-use.
The Associated Press, for instance, published a story in 2007 about how then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich had taken almost 1,000 flights on state planes in five years. Blagojevich was known to commute back and forth from his home in Chicago to Springfield on days when the General Assembly was in session.
Several politicians, including former Gov. Pat Quinn, were legitimately criticized over the years for taking state planes to official government events and then hosting campaign events nearby. The government flights essentially helped subsidize their campaigns.
But the debate shifted during Gov. Rauner’s one and only term. The mega-rich Republican was criticized by a reform group in 2017 for renting a helicopter with his own personal money to visit a flooded area in Lake County. The executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform said at the time that there should be some sort of public disclosure when private funds are used for state purposes.
And Gov. Pritzker was just criticized by another reform group for paying for private jet rides for him and his staff to official events in Washington, DC and New York. “It feels wrong,” said the executive director of Common Cause Illinois, according to Chicago’s NBC 5. The reformer said the use of private money for public purposes concerned him.
It may “feel wrong” because of the amount of money involved, but there are some elected officials of more modest means who choose not to accept travel and mileage reimbursements, or per diems or whatever. For that matter, some public school teachers dip into their own pockets to pay for classroom supplies. What do we do about them?
Not long after Pat Quinn was elevated to governor after Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office, an Associated Press story favorably highlighted Quinn’s decision to pay for most of his overseas travel as lieutenant governor out of his own pocket. The story also reported that Quinn refused to accept a daily meal allowance when traveling and often paid for his own hotel rooms. “The thrifty image is in contrast to Blagojevich, who was criticized for his frequent use of state aircraft,” the article’s author claimed.
Not a single good government group spoke up back then to say Quinn’s alleged thriftiness with state money by paying his own way “feels wrong.” But two rich guys in a row have taken heat for using their own money for trips on private aircraft instead of billing taxpayers.
I get the class consciousness angle here. “Get a load of Mr. Bigshot flying around on private jets.” But the guy is rich beyond most of our comprehensions and, just like Rauner before, Illinoisans knew that when they elected him. Candidate Pritzker flew around the state on a fleet of private planes and now Gov. Pritzker is doing the same.
Maybe there’s a dollar point above which personal spending for public purposes could be disclosed. But it “feels” like such a law would be targeting one guy. And to what end? Are we really entitled to know how much an elected official spends out of his or her own bank account rather than charging taxpayers?
The reformers need to think this whole thing through and come back with an actual policy proposal that goes beyond feelings and addresses the potential for real abuses. The Center for Illinois Politics announced last week that it would host a public forum about this topic so it could be thoroughly discussed. Fine by me.
Either way, pick a lane. Don’t spend decades complaining about the use of state-owned planes then suddenly shift to criticizing privately funded flights.
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