27 Comments - SAP - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:04 am: ==What the three Democratic leaders need to do very soon is meet and bring this thing home.== Yup. The surrogates have taken this as far as they can. Time to land this plane. - phocion - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:04 am: Conspicuously absent from the Politico article is the role of organized labor in all of this. Spinning it as keeping the environmentalists happy = a win is just lazy reporting. If they get everything they want, labor won’t be happy. And I’m pretty sure labor can put a lot more boots on the ground than can the enviros. - Oswego Willy - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:06 am: ===What the three Democratic leaders need to do very soon is meet and bring this thing home.=== In “instances”, leadership to meet and get things done between the actors had been… lacking. Governing is a communal thing… 60/30 signature… no one but many making things happen. It’s a glaring miss, actually. - The Fellow Edgar - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:06 am: Or don’t. Maybe if it’s this much of a strained process, maybe it’s just not worth it. As much as the enrivos think Illinois can end climate change, they might want to consider the fact that it’s global warning, not Illinois warming. - GOP Truth Squad - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:16 am: at least the Republicans can’t be blamed if this fails. - Angela - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:18 am: ==He wants the bill done right== I suppose all the parties feel this way and that’s why compromise seems essential here to finish the deal. - Simply Sayin' - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:19 am: If this is as important as they claim it is, they need to do the right thing and pass something. They’ve listened to the stakeholders long enough and now its time to finalize things in the best interest of the state. - Frank talks - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:19 am: It’s a new day- used to be Madigan would just make the call and that was that. People have been waiting for years for this opportunity. Time for all three leaders to show it’s not just a one person show and get it done. - JS Mill - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:26 am: =at least the Republicans can’t be blamed if this fails.= LOL, I guess that is what the micro minority party has become these days. Sounds like a good campaign slogan for them. - Howard - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:36 am: The legislature doesn’t need JB. It is going to take super majorities to pass so they can override any veto. Bail out the nukes, expand the RPS and go with a “net zero” option. Put it to bed. - Joe Bidenopolous - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:36 am: ===And I’m pretty sure labor can put a lot more boots on the ground than can the enviros.=== What’s the over/under on how many of those boots the Governor actually needs to help his re-election? I’m pegging it at 0.5 and taking the under - Blue Dog - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:39 am: As Jay Hoffman knows. Closing prarie state and decarbonization are huge industrial issues. - VerySmallRocks - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:45 am: = Or don’t. Maybe if it’s this much of a strained process, maybe it’s just not worth it. As much as the enrivos think Illinois can end climate change, they might want to consider the fact that it’s global warning, not Illinois warming.= Illinois is the 5th/6th largest energy user state, >4% of US, equal to many European nations and Asian nations that aren’t China or India. The economically dodgy and newly antiquated Prairie coal plant is the 7th largest polluter in the US. Illinois is a significant part of global warming. - Excitable Boy - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:45 am: - labor can put a lot more boots on the ground than can the enviros. - Not everything is about campaigning. Pritzker understands the science, we need to act now on decarbonization. I’m all for finding a way to keep these workers employed, but coal plants isn’t the answer. - Oswego Willy - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:46 am: Celebrating the utter uselessness of one party to process is why that same party is a super minority. - JS Mill - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:50 am: I still like @Candy Dogood’s suggestion (from a different post) of nationalizing the nuke plants. They cost the taxpayers a fortune any way, let’s cut out the corporate welfare/begging and deal with the coal plants separately. And they do have to be dealt with. - Oswego Willy - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 11:54 am: The leverage to this isn’t to the politics of campaigns. The leverage to this is a governor can easily not sign things or veto things that a special interest group thinks is important and can’t leverage that governor to sign. If Harmon’s CoS wants to be such a barrier, then I suspect Harmon will follow what his CoS thinks is good. Good for whom is likely who could be hurt by this not getting done. - Perrid - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 12:02 pm: “at least the Republicans can’t be blamed if this fails.” Oh I don’t know, if any of them cared enough about climate change to do something it wouldn’t matter if a few Dems had cold feet. - Anonymous - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 12:03 pm: Are you kidding me with this line of BS, Governor? “The governor’s office has a stern message: No last-second bills and no gifts for pals. Pritzker wants to see the bill long enough to take a good, hard look at it. No popping it out late next Monday night or early Tuesday morning and jamming it through a committee before the lawyers have had a chance to carefully go through it and make sure there aren’t any special gifts for favored lobbyists or interests. Hmmm… no last minute bills. Budget - Check Maps - Check Taxes - Check All last minute Democrat bills that you signed. - Candy Dogood - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 12:04 pm: We should probably consider adding a stakeholder to the concern besides “environmentalists” which makes them sound more like an ideologically based faction than reasonable human beings that are trying to reduce the amount of extinction threatening pollution we generate so that we don’t all parish in the mass extinction we cause. Labor’s position on this issue and coal plant owners have taken a position that is against the public interest and while we can pretend that people building coal plants in the 1980s or 1990s were ignorant of climate change, all of the stakeholders in the construction of The Prairie State Energy Campus and to go through considerable effort to ignore the writing on the wall. It is unfortunate that public entities run by politicians trying to win votes by peddling climate science ignorance were bamboozled into taking out bonds to pay to construct a giant coal plant, but that’s what happened. Weighing the long term interest of our spieces against the ability for these politicians trying to save face or labor organizations trying to protect a small amount of jobs while ignoring the tens of thousands of jobs that will be created to switch off of energy sources that produce CO2 pollution is just ridiculous. Some group calling themselves Climate Jobs Illinois who then turns around to advocate in favor of keeping coal plants open shouldn’t be allowed at the table at all. They’re blatantly dishonest and set out to mislead the public from the day the organization was created. We do not have another three decades of Eff around time before we get serious about this solution while coal lobbyists throw their money at people in an effort to continue to create conditions that will cause the deaths of tens of thousands of people over the decade to come. There are going to be some people involved in these talks that don’t have the moral fiber or basic understanding of our accelerating calamity to be the leaders we need as a society in the 2020s and 2030s and they need to get out of the way and find a job where they’re not making decisions that contribute to whether or not the government of 12 million people does jack to address climate change. - Oswego Willy - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 12:10 pm: *Any* governor has the prerogative of signature or holding off that signature until satisfied. That’s what winning and making policy or signing bills means. - Phineas Gurley - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 12:23 pm: The Madigan mythology is getting a bit tiresome. I was involved in several major “working group” issues where he wasn’t able to impose his will any more than the current gov / speaker / President are able to. It always takes the imminent crisis to get to resolution. Everything before then is posturing and/or can-down-the-road kicking. - levivotedforjudy - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 1:22 pm: Now-a-days the thought of going into a “smoke filled” room to get something done seems primitive. But stuff did get done in those “smoke filled” rooms. Light’em up folks and get this done. - Tammy - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 2:02 pm: Prairie State isn’t just a union issue — that’s been way overplayed in the political analysis of this standoff. it’s also a local issue for a whole bunch of legislators who represent municipalities and co-ops that depend on Prairie State for power. It needs 36 and 71 to pass, so if just a handful of legislators are pulled off the bill by local concerns the margin of error becomes very slim. - Anon - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 3:48 pm: Prairie state is in Jason Plummers district. Why are the Senate Dems trying to do that guy any favors? The amount of jobs pale in comparison to 2,000 union nuke jobs .. - Been there done that - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 4:29 pm: Lazy reporting? Lazy policy position. Has the Governor engaged with the regional transmission operators or modeled the financial impact of shutting down fossil fuel plants? MISO had a recent event that required all generators to be active to meet peak demand. Renewable energy cannot consistently meet demand. Governor’s policy would increase consumer cost and force blackouts. Politics or just bad policy? - Biker - Wednesday, Aug 25, 21 @ 8:05 pm: That $317 in Renewable Energy funding already collected requires reauthorization on Aug 31 or the money will be refunded to rate payers. Both the Senate and House meet Aug 31. Here’s hoping. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.