Far and away, my favorite time— I have to say, as governor I’ve watched virtually no television. Back before being governor, I would love the classics, like for example I would always like to see “The Dick Van Dyke Show” or some other classic, family shows the 60s. I love that stuff, it’s kinda teary-eyed to me, and it’s a great way to relax.
* The Question: What TV show do you never miss? Explain.
Why is that encouraging news? Because the state budget is $38.5 billion. So, according to the Institute, waste accounts for just 0.14 percent of state spending. Every penny counts, but that’s a pretty darned good ratio, if you ask me.
* Predictably, that’s not how the Institute sees things…
A new report highlights waste and pork in Illinois’ budget and its author says it just highlights the slap in the face to Illinois taxpayers.
* The report claims that “$3.6 million on the development of the World Shooting Recreational Complex in Sparta, in addition to $2.6 million on operating costs” is “wasteful.” Not everyone agrees…
State Sen. Paul Schimpf, R-Waterloo, said the report is misleading.
“Any report that does not consider all of the economic benefits the shooting complex brings to the southern Illinois region is an incomplete analysis,” Schimpf said. “This report omits any such assessment. At best, it’s shortsighted; at worst, it’s misleading.”
One person’s wasteful spending is another person’s vital economic development tool.
The Institute also claims that all Illinois Arts Council spending is wasteful.
…Adding… This came in Wednesday night and I didn’t see it until Thursday morning…
Rich,
I saw your post about the Waste Watch report today. For context, this research identified nearly $100 million in wasteful spending in Illinois state and local government, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The fiscal year 2019 state budget accounts for over $81 million of that total, including $54 million in pure waste and $27 million in pork spending, or politically-motivated favors and special projects. The report intentionally excluded the state’s overspending on government worker health insurance, duplicative administration, and inflated pension benefits, choosing to classify them as “structural overspending” though they could easily fit a broader definition of waste.
While you’re obviously right that eliminating these projects wouldn’t balance the budget, that’s no excuse for this kind of spending when the state has $8 billion in unpaid bills, the lowest credit rating in the nation, and just hiked taxes on the average Illinois family by about $730. The other big problem here is transparency. Because there was no time for public comment and debate over this year’s budget, the merits of these projects was left up to a handful of powerful legislative leaders.
Regarding the Sparta World Shooting Complex, many people are defensive of waste and pork that personally benefits them or their region. The intent here is not to say these projects have no merit, but rather that they are not essential government functions and that Illinois cannot afford them given our fiscal crisis. Indeed, if items like the Sparta World Shooting Complex are valuable, people would be willing to pay for them voluntarily and they could be run as private for profit businesses.
Any amount of waste in state government is a slap in the face to taxpayers. Every dollar the government spends comes out of a taxpayer’s pocket first. Academic research has long shown that people are more willing to pay taxes when they see valuable services in return. Meanwhile, polls show: 1) Illinoisans have the lowest level of trust in their elected officials among all 50 states; and, 2) Over half of our residents want to leave the state and taxes are the number one reason. The $100 million in wasteful spending identified in this report helps explain both these polling results.
Adam Schuster
Budget and Tax Research Director
Illinois Policy Institute
President Obama has deported more immigrants that any other president, causing extremely painful family hardships and hurting our economy. When Democrats controlled Congress and held the White House in 2009-10, they had the chance to pass immigration reform, as President Obama promised he would, and yet they did nothing. The humanitarian crisis at the border today cries out for leadership that is lacking.
Unfortunately, my own Republican Party is even more to blame. Too many Republicans in Washington choose to ignore the problem. Even worse, some Republicans are downright hostile to immigrants, failing to recognize that America’s past, present, and future would not be nearly as bright and prosperous without our culture and heritage of immigration.
Not all Republicans are that way. In March, I attended a pro-immigration reform rally in Chicago along with former Illinois Governors Jim Edgar and Jim Thompson and former U.S. House Speaker from Illinois Dennis Hastert, all Republicans. Republican Illinois Senator Mark Kirk voted in favor of last year’s bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate. […]
I will advocate changing our broken national immigration system, to secure our borders and prevent more from entering our country illegally, but also to increase the number of those who can legally come here, and to treat those who are already here in a humane way that preserves families and integrates them into the mainstream of our economy and society. After all, that is the American way.
In 2016, Rauner signed a bill that provides cash welfare, state-funded health care and food assistance to undocumented immigrants who were victims of human trafficking, torture or “other serious crimes,” while awaiting federal visas.
Chicagoans want to work. You ask someone in Lawndale, Austin, Englewood whether they want to work. They do. They’re looking for jobs. Those jobs in too many cases are being filled by illegal immigrants. That’s wrong. I support legal immigration. Legal immigration is good and America is built by legal immigrats. But illegal immigration, we have immigration laws for a reason, and Mr. Pritzker has been very clear he says there’s no one here illegally. There’s no such thing as an ‘illegal person.’ That’s just not true. And he said specifically that he supports sanctuary cities and making Illinois a sanctuary state. I do not. We have immigration laws. They should be enforced. And the lack of economic opportunity on the South Side and West Side is a major driver of the violence there and we’ve got to fix that.
*** UPDATE *** Press release…
Bruce Rauner went to Little Village to stand on stage with our community leaders and celebrate Mexican Independence Day September 16. Yesterday, he blamed Chicago crime and statewide unemployment and low wages on “the massive number of illegal immigrants.” In addition, individual leaders offered the following additional comments:
Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia: “Bruce Rauner is unfit to be Governor and a complete disgrace to our great state. He is so desperate to win re-election that he feels compelled to attack a vulnerable group of hard-working people because his administration has been a total failure. I’m going to do everything in my power to vote this Trumpian out of office.”
Illinois State Comptroller Susana A. Mendoza: “All Illinoisans should reject Governor Rauner’s attempt to jump-start his failing re-election campaign by adopting President Trump’s racist and divisive scape-goating of immigrants. Governor Rauner’s gutting of after-school programs and mental health services has far more to do with Chicago’s crime spike than immigrants do. Local and national records show immigrants - both legal and undocumented - commit far fewer crimes than other groups in our country. My immigrant parents brought nothing but a strong work ethic to this country. Governor Rauner’s “Swedish immigrant” grandparents from Wisconsin would be ashamed of him.”
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois: I never thought that Governor Rauner would shame himself by adopting Donald Trump’s dangerous and divisive lies. This is a new low for Governor Rauner who will now go down in history as a demagogue with no scruples.
The time for evacuating along the coast has come and gone. First responders will not be able to come out in the middle of the storm. If you chose to stay in an evacuation zone, you must SEEK REFUGE IMMEDIATELY.
We are currently in SWFL. People in the path of the storm were told it was too late to evacuate quite some time ago. Please don’t spread advice that is ill-advised at best (and deadly at worst) to those in a state you know nothing about. You’ve done plenty to screw Illinois, don’t start on Florida.
Ouch.
…Adding… The tweet recommending evacuation has been taken down.
There’s a strong argument to be made on behalf of Erika Harold, an attorney from Urbana who would make fighting corruption one of her priorities. A state like Illinois could use more corruption fighters, of course, and the likelihood of a Democratic governor being elected with a legislature controlled by Democrats increases the value of having a Republican check on its power in the attorney general’s office.
But there’s a better argument to be made on behalf of Kwame Raoul, a state senator from Chicago with a great depth of understanding of the law and the passion and experience to use it actively on behalf of the citizenry in keeping with the traditions of the attorney general’s office.
Whereas Raoul could be expected to confront federal infringement on vital Illinois interests such as clean water, the reality is that Harold would be unlikely to resist those challenges.
She argues that the job of the office is to uphold the law and thus personal views don’t enter into it. But so much of the office’s priorities are determined by the attorney general’s priorities that it’s simply inescapable that personal views would matter.
Raoul’s attacks, while perhaps politically effective, are bizarre.
The right to get an abortion and participate in a same-sex marriage are federally guaranteed constitutional rights that are not subject to either a popular vote or veto by any public official.
Raoul appears to recognize that reality. But he insists he should be elected attorney general to protect those rights in the event they might come under legal assault sometime in the future. That’s a pretty weak argument to make.
Indeed, it smacks of obsessing about the past.
Legal abortion has been a fact of life for more than 40 years.
Same-sex marriage is relatively new, but there’ll be no turning back there either.
Society has rendered its judgment on that dramatic social change, and it’s in place to stay.
Illinoisans would be best served by a candidate who’ll address current problems and issues. That candidate is, unquestionably, Harold.
Notice how the ad is so super positive, but Gov. Rauner isn’t shown until the 12-second mark (and then only briefly) and his name doesn’t appear on screen until five seconds before the ad ends. The thinking may be that when a candidate is as unpopular as Rauner is, they had to set a positive mood before bringing him fully on screen or people would tune out. That’s one reason why I think Rauner’s own recent positive ad doesn’t work well.
The Economic Freedom Alliance is funded by the Illinois Manufacturers Association. No word on where the IMA is getting all this cash. You’ll recall they spent big bucks against Sam McCann this month and ran a “toilet” ad against JB Pritzker.
Theories among Republicans at the luncheon included the leak about the [Cook County Inspector General’s report on JB Pritzker’s alleged property tax scheme] being made because Speaker Mike Madigan is setting Pritzker up to be elected as governor. But the person that will really end up running the state will be Juliana Stratton - a Madigan puppet - betraying Pritzker and sealing his rule of the state’s Executive Branch, Legislative Branch and Judicial Branch.
I’ve heard more than one Republican suggest this, so the conspiracy theory is not as off the wall as you might think. It’s almost undoubtedly wrong, but there’s absolutely no question that Madigan will benefit from a scandal-weakened Pritzker.
A billionaire governor who is popular with his party’s progressive legislative wing would really put Madigan on the spot. He’s been running interference for business groups for years on stuff like the minimum wage, rent control, etc. His entire legislative agenda has always been built around the political needs of his most politically vulnerable incumbents, and those folks by definition represent at least potentially GOP-leaning areas. Going full-bore lefty on everything isn’t something he’s ever done or has wanted to do. He picks his spots carefully.
So, when partisan Republicans constantly blast Gov. Pritzker (if he wins, of course) for being a “criminal,” that’ll play right into Madigan’s hands. Pritzker really needs to get this behind him.
Also, just as an FYI, Juliana Stratton is a House Democrat who was elected with strong Madigan support, but she’s nobody’s puppet.
* Meanwhile, as we all know, Madigan has his own issues that he’ll have to deal with in the upcoming session. And his most vulnerable incumbent, Rep. Natalie Phelps Finnie (D-Elizabethtown), just publicly ran away from him…
“I’ve been dumbfounded. It is nonsense and ridiculous,” Phelps Finnie said. “Madigan has been there too long. We all agree on that.”
So, yeah, Pritzker could be weakened by this property tax thingy, but Madigan’s name is so toxic that he’s becoming less able to protect his members. And as we’ve already discussed today, politics is basically a protection racket.
WALLETHUB, a personal finance website, released a study earlier this past week comparing local economic growth of communities across the country.
Out of 515 U.S. cities, Springfield ranked 507th in local economic growth. Or, looking at it another way, the website determined that the capital city is the ninth-slowest growing city in the country.
The metrics that that determined the findings: population growth, median household income growth, job growth, poverty rate decrease, regional GDP growth, unemployment rate decrease, growth in number of businesses, working-age population growth, foreclosure rate decrease, median household income growth.
[Eric Berglund, the CEO of the Land of Lincoln Economic Development Corp. (LLEDC), the city and county’s new joint economic development arm] said Springfield has been bogged down the past few years by the lack of a state budget, general uncertainty over the state’s larger fiscal situation and population loss among other things. But, he said the region’s affordable cost of living and other fundamental strengths can set it up for future success.
According to the report, Champaign is Illinois’ fastest-growing city, but it ranks an abysmal 343 on the list. Naperville is a few spots back and Chicago ranks 374, just behind Cicero. Yes, you read that right.
Decatur is dead last on the list at 515. Springfield ain’t much higher than that.
* I’ve been telling subscribers about this TV and radio ad campaign for weeks. Crain’s published a story a few days ago…
A media campaign raising alarms about skyrocketing property taxes is a signal that a rift in the state’s Republican Party shows no sign of healing. The campaign comes from Liberty Principles, the Illinois super PAC that once counted Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner as one of its biggest donors.
“Save Your Home Now” ads running on television and radio advocate for a 1 percent “hard cap on property taxes as a percentage of home value,” which it points out has been implemented in California and Indiana. The website claims the plan would halve the property taxes of most Illinois homeowners.
It’s also the same plan proposed by former Rauner opponent Jeanne Ives, the Republican state legislator who challenged the governor in the primary earlier this year. Ives and other independent-minded Republicans have slammed Rauner for not doing enough to bring down taxes in a state whose real estate taxes are the second-highest in the nation.
Liberty Principles Chairman Dan Proft said the purpose of the campaign is to support “independent conservative reform candidates” across Illinois who are committed to the property tax issue. Proft is a Republican political operative and radio host who in recent years has created an empire of stealth conservative media outlets, including local “newspapers” with a clear ideology. […]
Kent Redfield, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said that efforts like Save Your Home are designed to “really purify and take over the House Republican caucus” from both Democrats and Rauner allies.
* Proft has spent a fortune on these ads to try and drive people to his website. Here’s one…
That tagline is certainly original, at least for a TV ad. But is it working? Proft says the ads are driving traffic to his site. But will that actually help candidates win?
Politics is basically a protection racket. You help me fend off opponents and make me otherwise relatively content and then I support your leadership. If you don’t do either, I run away and find someone else.
This ad campaign is entirely a different thing. I’m really not sure yet what it is.
* I suppose we’ll find out what he intends to do at this upcoming City Club event…
Illinois GOP: Now What?
Moderated by Tom Cross
Dan Proft, Pat Brady & Kristen McQueary
Today, Ipsos released new election data in partnership with Reuters and the University of Virginia Center for Politics, showing that Democrat J. B. Pritzker (50%) holds a double-digit lead over Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner (30%) in the Illinois race for Governor. Among likely voters, 62% view both Pritzker and Rauner as “traditional” politicians.
The top issues in determining the vote in Illinois are the economy (16%) and healthcare (15%). On the issue of the economy, likely voters are tied on whether they think Democrats (40%) or Republicans (38%) have the better policy. On the issue of healthcare, however, 53% of likely voters feel that Democrats have the better policy as opposed to 27% who feel that Republicans have the better policy.
57 percent of likely voters say they prefer a generic Democratic congressional candidate while 35 percent prefer a Republican. 62 percent disapprove of President Trump’s job performance while just 37 percent approve.
68 percent say they are “very motivated” to vote for a candidate who would “defend laws that protect healthcare for people with pre -existing conditions,” while 25 percent say are “somewhat motivated.” Whew.
While Gov. Bruce Rauner is turning up the heat on illegal immigration this week, just 27 percent say they are “very motivated” to vote for a candidate who would “make it a priority to deport more illegal immigrants from the US.”
Just 23 percent say they are “very motivated” to vote for a candidate who will support President Trump, while 49 percent say they are “very motivated” to vote for a candidate who will oppose President Trump.
Do you approve or disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president? 46% Approve; 49% Disapprove; 5% Don’t know
Would you prefer Republicans to retain control of the House of Representatives or would you prefer Democrats to take control? 50% Reps. keep House; 43% Dems. take House; 7% Don’t know
Do you support or oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court? 51% Support; 45% Oppose; 5% Don’t know
As you may know, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of committing sexual assault when he was a teenager. Would you say you believe the allegations, you do not believe the allegations, or you simply are unable to come to a conclusion? 32% Believe; 36% Do not believe; 32% Don’t know
Do you support electing more people who describe themselves as feminists? 50% Support; 35% Oppose; 15% Don’t know
Is it important to elect more women to public office? 77% Agree; 14% Disagree; 9% Don’t know
As you think about your member of Congress, would you prefer your representative to support President Trump and his agenda, or to serve as a check on the president and his agenda? 43% Support; 51% Check; 6% Don’t know
The partisan split on the poll was 25 percent Democrat, 34 percent Republican, 39 percent independent and 1 percent other.
President Donald Trump won this district by almost 4 points two years ago. Sen. Mark Kirk won it by 8. Comptroller Leslie Munger won it by 21. Hultgren won it by almost 19. Times change.
* Keep in mind that this is a Morning Consult poll and their methodology is on the opaque side. Anyway, here you go…
For the seventh quarter in a row, the 10 most popular governors in the country are all Republicans.
Six of the governors who top the latest edition of Morning Consult’s Governor Approval Rankings — based on 361,607 surveys with registered voters across the country conducted July 1 through Sept. 25 — are on the ballot next month and appear to be cruising toward re-election.
* Republican Gov. Charlie Baker in Massachusetts is at the top of the national list. Gov. Rauner is the third least popular in the country…
GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois is the least popular governor on the list up for re-election this year, with 62 percent of voters in the state disapproving of his work. In Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker is seeking a third term, 50 percent of Badger State voters disapprove of him, making him the second least popular Republican on the ballot next month.
Just 25 percent approve of Gov. Rauner’s job performance. 13 percent either don’t know or have no opinion.
Today Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza released her first television ad of her re-election campaign: “Tough As Nails.” This ad highlights Mendoza’s fierce ability to take on challenges, whether on the soccer field or against Governor Rauner, and fight for what she believes in. In December 2017, Politico described Mendoza as a “tough-as-nails one-time All Midwest soccer star.”
As Illinois’ fiscal watchdog, Mendoza has transformed the Office of the Comptroller and shifted its priorities back to protecting the people. In only two years in office, Mendoza has achieved a long list of accomplishments including: passing the Debt Transparency Act to provide greater disclosure of state debt and save taxpayers billions; introducing the lowest Comptroller budget in 20 years; and recovering more than $36.5 million in outstanding debt for more than 400 local governments around Illinois.
Mendoza has led the resistance against Governor Rauner’s disastrous administration. Just as she did on the soccer field, Mendoza never backs down from a challenge. She has the strength and determination to keep fighting for the people of Illinois as Comptroller.
Susana Mendoza: All I wanted to do was play soccer. And my mother said oh no, honey, you can’t play soccer. Only boys play soccer. My dad said if she wants to try it, let’s try it. After the first time she gets kicked in the shins, it’s gonna hurt, she’s not gonna want to play. I got kicked in the shins, I just kicked back harder.
Soccer Coach John Randall: They said, ‘Coach, she’s a girl!’ and I said I know, she’s the best player I have.
Susana Mendoza: I do play in a male-dominated world, but when people tell me I can’t do something, it just motivates me even more.
