Exelon’s Quad-Cities nuclear power plant could close on June 1, 2018, the company said in a release Friday announcing its first-quarter earnings.
Exelon said the Illinois Legislature must pass legislation that it says would level the energy playing field in the state in order for the plant to remain open beyond that date. Exelon said the plant also must clear an upcoming PJM capacity auction in order to remain viable.
In addition to the Quad-Cities plant, Exelon said the Clinton, Ill., nuclear plant would shut down on June 1, 2017, if the Legislature doesn’t act and the energy auction isn’t favorable.
On Thursday, Exelon presented legislation it wants the Legislature to pass. In its release Friday, the company said it need the Legislature to act by May 31 in order to avoid a shutdown of the two plants. The capacity auction results should be available by May 24, the release stated.
* The Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition has been talking with Exelon about its new bill. Its response…
The Coalition has engaged in productive discussions with ComEd and Exelon Generation about legislation that achieves these goals. At this time, those discussions have not concluded, and we have not yet reached an agreement. We look forward to reviewing the details of this new proposal, and continuing discussions toward comprehensive energy legislation that achieves the goals of the Illinois Clean Jobs bill.
AARP Illinois and other groups, however, blasted away. Click here.
State Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, has postponed a vote on his school funding reform plan to give lawmakers more time to digest how it would affect schools in their legislative districts.
John Patterson, spokesman for Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, said lawmakers were given yet another set of numbers Thursday, the third in two days. […]
The State Board of Education released a set of numbers Wednesday morning, hours before Manar initially planned to call the bill for a vote in the Senate. Those numbers showed a big increase for the Chicago school system while cutting aid to a number of suburban and downstate school districts. Republicans immediately seized on the numbers as evidence the funding reform bill was intended as a bailout of the financially troubled Chicago school system.
Manar said the numbers were flawed because they didn’t take into account an amendment he’s filed to his bill to further tweak his formula. The board then issued revised numbers to reflect the amendment. But Manar and other Democrats complained the numbers compared Manar’s plan to the current K-12 budget, not to Rauner’s proposed increase. The latest numbers reportedly make that comparison.
So, apparently it only takes the ISBE a few hours to run numbers on an education funding reform bill because they produced three in less than 24 hours. Manar asked them to run his numbers months ago, but they didn’t do it.
That’s ridiculous. The Board needs to stop playing games. You may agree or disagree with Manar’s approach here, but it’s a legitimate approach and obviously he needs to keep playing around with it until he finds the right combination. He can’t do that if the ISBE shuts him out.
* Today is my mom’s birthday. Sunday is Mother’s Day. Like many people who were born in late December or early January, she too often only receives on present for both occasions. Sorry about that, Mom!
Instead of a question, how about you tell us a story about your own mom?
Fifty-nine percent of residents citywide support the decision [by the Chicago Teachers Union] to strike, and that soars to almost three-quarters among African-American parents living with children.
(O)nly one-third of residents say the police are doing a good job. Nearly six in 10 think officers are not punished harshly enough in cases of excessive force. And a majority of residents believe the police are more likely to use deadly force against black people and that African-Americans and Latinos are usually treated unfairly by the city’s criminal justice system.
* Passage came after a very long, very difficult negotiating process. Kudos to the sponsor for working with the other side of the aisle. And kudos to prosecutors for working cooperatively with the sponsor to get something done…
A measure guaranteeing that juveniles under the age of 15 have a lawyer during interrogations in murder investigations is heading to the Illinois House.
The Illinois Senate overwhelmingly approved an amended version of a plan by Democratic Sen. Patricia Van Pelt on Thursday. Van Pelt initially proposed a measure guaranteeing legal representation to juveniles under 18 in murder investigations. Illinois law already requires legal aid to children under 13 during these interrogations.
Van Pelt says children often falsely confess to crimes because they don’t understand the process.
She said the proposal would also require videotaping such interrogations and simplifying language describing to juveniles their rights.
* Meanwhile, as I’ve said before the Department of Corrections too often looks at ideas in tiny silos instead of backing up and looking at the big picture. IDOC opposed this bill instead of working something out, probably over money…
A bill aimed at lowering the cost of phone calls for people incarcerated in Illinois and prohibiting the state from profiting on such calls cleared the Illinois House on Wednesday.
The measure, HB 6200, is sponsored by Rep. Carol Ammons, D-Urbana. It passed the House, 69-44. […]
Under the legislation, prison phone calls could only cost a maximum of 5 cents per minute (and 23 cents per minute for international calls), a rate that is almost 80 percent less than is currently being paid for the same calls. Illinois receives about $12 million each year from prison phone revenues, the highest in the country, Ammons said.
“This bill will put children in connection with their families by lowering the cost of prison phone calls,” she said.
Maybe you don’t care that prisoners are getting ripped off by the state, but it’s not cool.
Kirk is trying to walk a narrow path. He is distancing himself himself from Trump’s policies and rhetoric, but also has said he will back Trump if he was the nominee and suggested Trump could even help the Republican Party.
Asked in an interview with CNN last week if he’d support Trump for president, Kirk said: “Certainly, if he’s the nominee.” Given the opportunity to revise his comments after Trump’s win in Indiana, Kirk’s campaign declined.
Kirk said in that interview that even as he runs against many of Trump’s positions, specifically citing an “isolationist” foreign policy debuted last week, he is comfortable sharing a ticket with the mogul. He even said Trump might help the GOP brand down the line.
“Donald Trump is kind of a riverboat gamble,” Kirk said. “He won the Illinois primary, in this case we have seen the Republican vote up and the Democratic vote down, so it looks like it’s a net benefit.”
* Duckworth campaign response…
“Republican stalwarts Bruce Rauner and Paul Ryan — not exactly a pair of liberals — are refusing to support Donald Trump, while Mark Kirk has happily fallen into line. Kirk even suggested there’s a ’net benefit’ to having Trump on the ticket. Trump has shown himself to be dangerously unserious and unprepared for the office of the Presidency, but apparently the ‘R’ after his name is all Kirk needs to see. Kirk has shown bad judgment before, but his reflexive support for Trump may top it all.” — Matt McGrath, campaign spokesman
I talked with Illinois State Rep. Ron Sandack (R-Downers Grove) Thursday, who supported Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Sandack said he’s not really sure he can come around to Trump.
He’s going to try, but it’s not a given. Trump is going to have to really change his tone - and some of his policies - to win Sandack over. When asked if the Illinois Republican Party could become more fractured this year, Sandack said that is a risk of Trump’s candidacy.
“I mean heck, to be completely blunt, the Republican Party in Illinois has barely been a blip on the radar,” he said. “We’ve had our own problems getting our message out, making ourselves far more attractive to taxpayers and constituents from a policy perspective.”
Sandack suggested the Illinois Republicans pick a small handful of core principles to unite the state party. And if Trump doesn’t come around to where he is and change his tone, then Sandack may end up focusing on his own re-election campaign this fall.
“I want to see some effective Republican policies displayed by our Republican candidate or I may just focus singularly on me and in my local race,” Sandack said.
Southern Illinois University officials are bracing for another enrollment drop in the fall — and they’re pointing fingers at Springfield.
“We’re not there yet to give you specific data,” said SIU Carbondale Chancellor Brad Colwell. “But we will be down if projections hold. It’s not because of a lack of anything the Carbondale campus has done.”
Instead, Colwell said students and parents are telling school administrators they are “worried about what’s happening in Illinois.”
“Our data is showing they’re not going to another Illinois institution. They’re leaving the state,” Colwell said, speaking to reporters after SIU’s Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday morning. […]
[Carbondale Mayor Mike Henry] and others also noted that nearby schools located in other states are taking advantage of Illinois’ soured political climate, and places such as Southeast Missouri State University and Murray State University in Kentucky have stepped up their recruitment efforts of Southern Illinois’s graduating high school seniors.
People are voting with their feet. But come November, they’ll vote the traditional way. And it ain’t gonna be pretty for incumbents if they don’t get this thing solved.
Gov. Bruce Rauner addressed the Illinois General Assembly on Wednesday, outlining his plans for next year’s state budget. The poindexters whipped out their calculators.
But the crucial takeaway was broader than an exercise in number-crunching: We’re at the end of the road in Springfield. No more pavement, nothing but dirty orange barricades and languid yellow warning lights.
They said the same thing a year earlier. We were supposed to ignore Gov. Rauner’s actual budget proposal and instead focus on the big picture of our dear leader’s glorious agenda.
What [Rauner] should have done this year was introduce a budget that reflects actual state revenues. Show the austere budget. Lay out the cuts. The Democrats are going to make Rauner the bad guy no matter what, so he might as well just do his job.
On that, we’re in total agreement, at least on the policy of presenting a real budget.
* Unfortunately, she is also way behind the times with much of the rest of her column, which dredges up stuff from months ago that we’ve endlessly discussed here, including Rauner’s stupid attacks on Senate President John Cullerton and the snarky frat boy attitude of some of his top staff. Better late than never, I suppose, but I believe things have changed.
The current reality is that Rauner and his staff have been working overtime to stay calm and be reasonable behind the scenes. Some Democratic legislators are actually praising Rich “Prince of Snarkness” Goldberg. And as I mentioned earlier today, Senate President Cullerton is working cooperatively with the governor, despite their history. Also, while we don’t yet know where Speaker Madigan’s heart is, he has sent his staff to budgeteer meetings, which is at least a sign of good faith.
* I’ve actually seen some real “growth” and discipline by the governor and his people lately. Maybe I’m wrong. I could be. Maybe he’ll blow everything up again with a ridiculous press conference today or tomorrow or sometime before the end of the month. It ain’t gonna be easy for him to keep a sock in that yappy “I’m the real victim here” motormouth of his.
But, to my eyes (and unlike some Chicago pundits, I regularly go to the Statehouse and talk to people on every possible side during and after session days and even on some weekends - hey, it’s not just my job, it’s my life) things are improving. A lot.
Some of the Madigan folks think I’m a bit tetched these days. But if the governor and his people can maintain this level of reasonableness and professionalism, then the Statehouse could very well tilt against Madigan by the end of this month. That already clearly happened with the stopgap funding bill for higher education, whether another Tribune columnist wants to believe it or not. Madigan needs to meet Rauner’s olive branch with his own and try to end this nightmare, not prolong it.
Child protection investigators in Illinois can now get hands-on training in the state’s capitol.
George Sheldon, director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, helped dedicate the training center Monday at the University of Illinois Springfield.
The small blue house on the University of Illinois Springfield campus is no ordinary home. It’s a training center for state child protection investigators. The training center also has a mock courtroom where case workers experience the legal process. […]
“Training needs to be more than just a textbook,” [Sheldon] said.”That’s what this house does and that’s what the simulation in the courtroom does.”
The courtroom utilizes a judge — usually retired Sangamon County judge John Mehlick — real prosecutors and defense attorneys and witnesses (a volunteer actor and actress from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine) to train investigator-witnesses.
Retired Sangamon County assistant state’s attorney Sheryl Essenburg, who specialized in crimes against children when she was a prosecutor, designed the courtroom experience and works with the program.
“Those who have gone through it say it’s the most real experience they’ve had,” Sheldon said.
Mehlick said he likes being able to tell the trainees what they could do to improve their testimony — something he couldn’t do when he was presiding over a real case.
The state is unveiling new opportunities for kids coming out of foster care. DCFS is starting a career readiness program.
Illinois Building Futures is expanding work and career training opportunities. The expansion is evident in places like Champaign, Peoria, Rockford and others.
Young adults in the program will have access to training and employment services through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.
Gov. Rauner unveiled a test program Wednesday designed to provide mentoring, training and jobs for young adults aging out of the state’s foster care system.
The Illinois Department of Commerce will identify businesses willing to hire and help former wards of the state. Rauner said the idea is to ensure children who didn’t grow up with encouraging parents or educational opportunities still have the chance to enter the workforce and support themselves.
“We can’t let these young people fall through the cracks,” Rauner said during a news conference at his Capitol office. “Too often (these children) end up being homeless, they have to resort to crime to feed themselves, and it’s a tragedy of terrible proportion.
“You got to have the experience, you got to have the opportunity to go work, and know what that really means, and what’s involved and the discipline that requires,” Rauner added. “You can’t be thrown out at 21. I don’t think you’ll be able to take care of yourself.”
* And make sure to watch Part 1 and Part 2 of WGN TV’s “New hope for fixing Illinois’ broken child welfare system.”
* They are indeed getting along much better in the Senate, and this is indeed a big reason…
Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois Senate believe they’ve found a successful formula for ending nearly yearlong partisan standoffs over state spending.
For the second time in as many weeks, senators from both sides of the aisle came together Thursday to approve funding for public universities, community colleges and grants to low-income students, all of which had been deprived of state money since the fiscal year began July 1 without a budget in place.
The winning formula: spending bills that aren’t tied to items on Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s pro-business, union-weakening “turnaround agenda” but are tied to specific revenue sources. […]
The measure approved Thursday would spend $454 million to bring eight state university systems up to 60 percent funding, the same level that Chicago State University received in a measure Rauner signed into law last week. That part of the plan was approved on a 55-2 vote.
The spending would be covered by letting the state off the hook for repaying money borrowed from special funds to plug holes in last year’s budget. That portion passed on a 54-3 vote.
But here’s the problem: There aren’t enough fiscal gimmicks and special fund sweeps in the world that can patch this gaping budget hole. Eventually, they’re gonna have to come to an agreement on aspects of the Turnaround Agenda.
Having said that, I think the Senate Dems are working intently to find a path to end this madness. The question, as always, is what the House Dems will do.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel took a dim view Thursday of a package of tax increases the Chicago Teachers Union proposed to help cover a massive funding shortfall at the school district, instead calling on union leaders to join him in pressuring state lawmakers to change the way school districts are funded to bring more money to the city.
The mayor was responding to a revenue package union officials released Wednesday they said could shore up the district’s finances as a $675 million pension payment is due next month. Rather than raising taxes here, however, Emanuel said the onus should be on Springfield to change how school district pension costs are covered.
“Chicago taxpayers already pay twice for pensions,” Emanuel said when asked whether he backs any of the CTU ideas. “They pay for their own teachers’ pensions in Chicago when they pay property taxes. They also pay income taxes that supports every other teacher’s pension. The idea is not to ask people to pay taxes more, which would give our state, get them off the hook for actually fully funding education fairly so poor kids are not adversely affected by the state of Illinois that underfunds education as a total set of dollars.”
Emanuel has not been shy about raising taxes big and small during his five years in office, championing increases to parking and hotel taxes, 911 fees and water and sewer rates, in addition to the huge property tax hike and trash collection fee he pushed through as part of his 2016 budget.
CPS has a billion-dollar structural deficit. The state won’t ever cover that.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner won’t attend the Republican National Convention in July and won’t be endorsing Donald Trump, Rauner aides confirmed on Thursday, while not entirely disavowing the presumptive GOP nominee.
And it’s not yet clear whether Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger will make the trip to Cleveland, as she faces a challenge from Democrat Susana Mendoza this fall.
If she goes after Rauner ditched, she’s nuts. I highly doubt she’ll attend.
While Rauner has dubbed the presidential campaign’s rhetoric “appalling,” he has publicly stated — as the head of the state’s Republican Party — that he will support the nominee.
“I’ll do everything I can to work with that nominee,” Rauner said in March.
Rauner repeatedly had sought to stay out of the presidential race, though he did say that as leader of the GOP in Illinois, he would back the eventual nominee. But Rauner aides stressed there are various levels of “support,” and that the governor would not be giving Trump a formal endorsement.
Underscoring the politics behind Rauner’s move, the governor’s decision means he also will not accept the traditional role of heading up Illinois’ 69-member convention delegation and the high-profile media appearances that come with it. At the same time, Rauner avoids any potential appearance with Trump, which some advisers said privately would not be helpful to the governor back home.
“My feeling is we overestimate the impact of tactics and underestimate broad trends and demographics,” he said. “What Trump does or doesn’t do may have less impact than what Munger or Kirk does. Then there’s the broader context of the election and who votes and who doesn’t vote and what gets people to come out to vote.”
People pay infinitely more attention to presidential races than comptroller races, but that last sentence is most certainly valid. The headwinds ain’t gonna be kind.
His appeal among disaffected Republican primary voters is intensely visceral: He’d arrive in Washington a billionaire businessman in a hurry and get things done. After years of gridlock in Washington, who doesn’t find the idea of an outsider appealing? […]
Trump is an undisciplined political neophyte who loves the limelight and promises big changes, most of which appear either implausible or too vague to take seriously.
