* I have some stuff to do, so I won’t be able to blog on Monday. Hey, it’s August. Hopefully, things won’t really ratchet up until the State Fair. Anyway, let’s rock…
* The Law Bulletin’s Josh Weinhold got a rare interview with Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Kilbride. Weinhold asked Kilbride about the ongoing pilot project to put video cameras in courtrooms…
LB: What will you be looking for and paying attention to in the pilot program?
Kilbride: What we’re looking for is basically two things. One, that we obviously don’t have problems that disturb an orderly trial process. That’s the basic one. The other one is related — that not only is it not disruptive, but that the rights of the defendant to due process and to a fair trial in a criminal court room, that that’s always protected.
Those are the two things that we’re monitoring and I’m pleased to say that, thus far, based on the five circuits we’ve got, of the reports we’ve received from chief judges, there have been no problems reported.
* The Question: Do you support the idea of putting video cameras in Illinois courtrooms? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
I am sick and tired of writing stories about kids caught in the crossfire — about a little boy having his brains blown out while watching cartoons, or little girls being shot while jumping rope, or being pushed by their mother in a stroller, or while selling candy. So sick and tired.
When will it stop?
And after all these years, I finally know the answer. It’s simple: When we muster the collective will — moral, ethical and political — to make it stop, by any means necessary.
* Former Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney James Gierach responded…
As a former Chicago prosecutor, I sat on the edge of my kitchen chair as I read Sun-Times columnist John Fountain’s July 5 piece, “Why can’t we stop the killing?”
But like many in positions of influence, Mr. Fountain cannot see or chooses to ignore the prohibition elephant in the room. His answer is that we need the “moral, ethical and political will” to make the killing stop. I don’t know which to do first: vote, pray, go to church or continue doing all three. […]
I support CeaseFire, but all mainstream violence solutions have a serious shortcoming: They start with prohibition as a given. Prohibition has been the bipartisan political consensus ever since President Richard Nixon declared the glorious war on drugs in 1971. I support calls like that of Mr. Fountain for more social, religious, economic and political initiatives.
But each of us should demand an end to the war on drugs—not because drugs are good but because the drug war is worse.
The war against drugs doesn’t work; it puts more uncontrolled and unregulated drugs everywhere. Both the good guys and the bad guys support it: the drug cartels and Chicago street gangs on one team, and the police, court and prison personnel, drug treaters and municipalities that share in forfeited plunder with the relish of Uncle Scrooge on the other.
Who is against the drug war? Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
LEAP is an international nonprofit of former drug warriors. Drugs are too dangerous not to control and regulate, and prohibition has surrendered that control to street gangs and cartels. It is time to create a system of control and taxation with different regulations for different drugs depending on the relative harm posed by different substances.
* Department of Human Services Director Michelle Saddler was dragged in front of the House Human Services Committee this week to explain why DHS decided to stop investigating client deaths for the insane reason that dead people were no longer eligible for state services. Her response…
She added that the department made a “very poor choice of words” when it declared the deceased “ineligible for services” in its paperwork. She said the decision “raised concerns about our commitment to adults with disabilities.”
The Quinn administration is closing several state facilities for the mentally and physically disabled and moving those folks into privately run operations. Saddler’s DHS runs those facilities and family members, who were already freaked out about the moves, have every right to be furious that the people in charge at DHS thought it was no big deal not to investigate clearly suspicious deaths of people they oversee.
“A very poor choice of words”? Really? That hearing should’ve been used as an opportunity to instill confidence in the state’s ability to handle these sorts of problems. Instead, we get stupidity like this? What are we, children?
Ugh.
Here’s a question: Why does Michelle Saddler still have a job?
The Illinois Department of Human Services has dropped its contract with the Community Mental Health Council on Chicago’s South Side, contending the agency is fiscally mismanaged.
DHS spokeswoman Januari Smith Trader says millions of dollars has been given the mental health center, but it “continues to experience serious fiscal mismanagement and eventual insolvency.”
Dr. Carl Bell, the center’s head and part-time professor of clinical psychology and public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, blames the center’s fiscal problems on the state’s woes. He notes Illinois began slowing payments two years ago. He says as a result, the center he founded in 1975 has lost seven psychiatrists, in addition to therapists and case managers.
“They kept telling us that they wanted us to stay open and that was as late as May,” said Bell. Told that sources claim there is an outside audit that may show some fiscal mismanagement with patient funds, Bell, who has already confirmed that the state audit “came back clean,” said, “I obviously don’t know. For the last two-years, they (the State of Illinois) have been paying us slowly. We’ve been paying staff slowly so we’ve been losing staff slowly but surely and some of those people were fiscal people. “If you don’t have people in place to have a good accounting, I have no idea what’s going on. I have no idea where the money is. I know we have some money in the bank but that’s on hold because we owe somebody and they put a stop to that. I know nobody is stealing any money. I know that. I know we spent every penny on patient care to keep the business going,” said Bell.
“I don’t know how there could have been an outside audit because we don’t have any numbers. We don’t know. I got a Department of Labor claim from one of the employees. I don’t know how much money the Council owes me. I do know it’s a lot of money, but I don’t know how many paychecks they (the staff) has been paid because nobody knows. […]
When contacted, Gov. Pat Quinn issued the following statement. “Over the past several years, the Department of Human Services (DHS) Division of Mental Health has advanced millions of dollars to Community Mental Health Council (CMHC) in an effort to ensure continuity of care for consumers and to give the company an opportunity to improve its fiscal situation. “In addition, DMH provided more than two years of educational assistance regarding financial and program reporting requirements. To date, CMHC has made no effort to repay the state and has consistently shown an inability to meet its contractual obligations. “CMHC continues to experience serious fiscal mismanagement and eventual insolvency - they have not made payroll in many months, cancelled health insurance for employees and their families, and have been the subject of mounting complaints to the Illinois Department of Labor. “Therefore, DMH was unable to renew CMHC’s contract for fiscal year 2013. We have a number of area providers already in place to support CMHC consumers with their mental health needs and are currently in discussions with others.”
However, Dr. Bell has repeatedly said the Council has not been paid by the state since March and that for the past two-years the state has been slow in paying causing him to lose valuable people including those in charge of the finances. Bell said as late as May state officials said they wanted to continue doing business with the Council, which is why he computerized the patient’s records. He has received one complaint from the Department of Labor, but without access to the records he does not know how much state owes anyone including himself. Bell has not been paid since March and continues to use his funds to take care of patients he now sees in front of the building entrance.
* Related…
* State lawmaker: DHS ‘failed’ in protecting disabled adults
* Guest column: Singer Mental Health Center must stay open
* The Southtown Star editorial board freely acknowledges that Gov. Pat Quinn’s decision to replace a bill’s language with an assault weapons and high capacity magazine ban was political posturing and likely unconstitutional. But the paper still supports the proposed law…
We could scold Quinn for grandstanding except that he is right on the merits. Citizens can judge his motive for themselves.
But we believe this nation eventually will overcome zealotry on both sides of the gun control issue and arrive at a compromise regarding the possession and sale of military-style assault weapons. We fear that some horrific event, or series of events in close succession, will occur as to make it inevitable.
If there is little middle ground now on the weapons, Quinn might have been wiser simply to regulate the magazines that supply their bullets — magazines that can enable a shooter to kill 100 people without taking a breath.
High-capacity magazines were used in virtually every mass shooting in the U.S. from Columbine in 1999 to last year’s attack in Arizona where six were killed and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was wounded to last month’s theater attack in Colorado.
California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C., ban or limit the use of such magazines, and more states, including Illinois, should.
Getting rid of assault rifles and their magazines is the right decision, even if the Legislature isn’t willing to take that step now. Sooner or later, it will.
* Steve Chapman didn’t write about the big massacres, but instead looked at crime statistics to prove his point that the assault weapons ban proposal is essentially meaningless…
Jesse Jackson claims that the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, reduced the number of these guns used in crimes. In Miami, he says, they were implicated in 4 percent of murders in 2004, but today, the figure is 21 percent.
What Jackson omits is that the number of murders in Miami is virtually unchanged — from 69 in 2004 to 68 in 2011. Maybe that’s because guns not covered by the ban are just as capable and lethal as those that were. If you ban red cars, fewer people will die in red cars. Just don’t expect overall highway fatalities to change.
If allowing these guns stimulated more killing, the national murder rate wouldn’t have declined by 13 percent after the ban expired. But that’s what happened.
Prohibiting “assault weapons” is a pointless gesture. Those who propose a ban are only proving they don’t understand basic facts about guns and violence or don’t care.
In my mind, at least, both pieces have some truth in them. Ignoring the use of the high-capacity magazines aspect of the proposal and focusing solely on the assault weapons ban is a convenient way to get around a real problem. But there’s also little doubt that the weapons ban itself can be seen as more hype than substance.
* Illinois Statehouse News has a pretty good piece of media criticism today. The service interviewed people who’ve been studying and working with prison issues for decades…
“There is increased tension, so there’s an increase in prisoner-on-prisoner fights, but that’s because it’s hot. And the prisons have been on lockdown and they’re overcrowded, and there are no programs left so everybody is sitting in their cells. So there’s a good story here, but it’s not the one being told,” said Alan Mills, legal director of the Chicago-based Uptown People’s Law Center, a nonprofit legal center that handles cases on behalf of inmates. […]
“I’ve been disturbed by the lack of any sort of skepticism on behalf of the press. I don’t see how you can report that anytime there’s an assault it must be related to closing a correctional institution without asking for somebody to prove it. Anytime there’s an incident in any prison … the union puts out a press release,” he said. “Things are terrible, but it has nothing to do with prison closures.”
* More…
Laurie Jo Reynolds, who has taught at Columbia College in Chicago and is the organizer of Tamms Year Ten, a grassroots campaign to educate people about the effects of long-term prison isolation, said the incidents are being used to bolster the argument that no prisons should close.
“I think it deceives the public about what the true issues are. It confuses the public, and it makes it harder for the governor, the (Department of Corrections) and anyone else to pursue evidence-based public policy,” Reynolds said.
“They are creating an environment of scare tactics and fear mongering,” she said. “We all need to work together to reduce overcrowding, and everybody needs to buy into true evidence-based policies to reduce prison populations. But they’re creating such a polarized political environment, it’s not good for the dialogue and it’s also not good for the policies.”
* The John Howard Association’s executive director John Maki also weighed in…
“What we’re seeing here is decades of asking the system to do more than it can possibly do with the amount of resources we’ve given it,” Maki said. “Everyone is feeling that — from the administration to the staff to the inmates. The answer isn’t to have more staff. The answer is to do what other states have done, which is to reduce the prison population.” […]
And the state’s complicated cultural and economic relationships are playing out in the prison debate right now, he said.
“The average citizen should keep in mind that it’s in everyone’s interest to have the most effective prison system possible, but also because we spend more than a billion dollars a year on this system,” he said. “As all these battles are getting played out, citizens should be asking how does this help what we all care about – safer communities and a safer state.”
Arguing that Governor Pat Quinn’s push to close several state prisons is worsening dangerous overcrowding and that inappropriate inmate transfers pose a safety risk to prison workers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31 filed suit today in Alexander County in far Southern Illinois.
The union is seeking an injunction to halt the threatened closure of prisons at Dwight and Tamms, adult transition centers in Carbondale, Chicago and Decatur, and youth centers in Joliet and Murphysboro. Governor Quinn is pushing to close the facilities despite opposition from prison employees, a legislative oversight commission and lawmakers who provided adequate funding to keep them open. The closure push comes even as the adult correctional system is overflowing with more than 48,000 inmates in facilities built for just 33,000.
The lawsuit details grievances filed by the union over the threat to employee safety posed by rushed transfer of inmates to other prisons ill-equipped to cope. While the state has refused to resolve the grievances, it is rushing to transfer inmates and hasten closing facilities.
“Inmates are being sent to prisons that are too crowded, too short of staff or lacking appropriate security features to safely incarcerate them,” AFSCME Council 31 executive director Henry Bayer said. “We’re asking the court for an injunction to prevent the state from moving forward with any closure until the related grievances have been resolved.”
“Plaintiff brings this lawsuit to protect its members that are at risk of injury and death due to the decisions of the Governor of the State, the Illinois Department of Corrections and the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice to close multiple correctional facilities and to absorb the inmates at those facilities into an already overcrowded and overburdened correctional system,” the filing explains. “[A]lmost 5,000 inmates and youth will be transferred due to these closings. Many of the inmates that will be moved are those who have been intentionally segregated in the correctional system because of the danger they pose to guards and to other inmates. … The insertion of these inmates into the overcrowded prisons of the State will inevitably foment unrest that will put employees, other inmates, and the general community at risk.”
Tamms Correctional Center is located in Alexander County. It is the state’s only C-max (closed-maximum-security) prison for inmates who have committed or instigated violent attacks on employees or fellow offenders while incarcerated. Since the closure of Tamms was announced, employees throughout the prison system have documented rising tensions, increased gang activity, a higher incidence of weapons inside the facilities and more assaults on staff.
The suit notes that, “maximum security inmates at Tamms will be transferred to the maximum security prison in Pontiac, Illinois, where they will be single-celled. This means that many prisoners at Pontiac will now be double-celled in order to make space. This domino effect will make Pontiac a much more dangerous place to work”.
The large-scale reclassification and transfer of inmates precipitated by the closures poses a threat to prison employees and the public in nearly every Illinois region. If Dwight is closed, its inmates will go to Logan, with Logan inmates going to Lincoln and Lincoln inmates distributed statewide. Tamms transfers to Pontiac are already causing secondary transfers to Stateville, Menard and elsewhere. Joliet’s maximum-security transfers will go primarily to medium-security St. Charles and Kewanee. Nearly all these prisons are already at or well above safe capacity.
The union’s filing comes amid intense media attention to volatility and violence in state prisons, employee criticism of the closures and the Quinn Administration’s retaliatory efforts to silence rank-and-file whistleblowers.
“The Quinn Administration is failing its duty to ensure a safe workplace for its employees. Instead, it is sending men and women to work each day in prisons that the state’s own actions are making more dangerous,” AFSCME director Bayer said. “We’re asking the court to put a stop to these actions until our members are assured that when they pass through those prison gates, they will be as safe as possible.”
* 2:30 pm - The text of AFSCME’s complaint is here.
Resurrecting messaging and policy positions that many would argue lost her an election against now-convicted Rod Blagojevich, State Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka is barnstorming the state pimping poverty and big government solutions like a liberal Democrat.
Yesterday, while on her “Illinois Has Heart” tour, Topinka told the State Journal-Register that “Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois General Assembly should undo some funding cuts to social service programs that serve the needy… Just because we had a bipartisan budget agreement does not mean that it was good, does not mean that cuts could not be made but could not have been made better,” said Topinka, 68, a former state lawmaker, state treasurer, state GOP chair, and gubernatorial candidate.
“I don’t like bureaucracies,” Topinka told reporters, “but when you are dealing with the neediest of the needy, that’s where government kicks in — the old, the sick, the infirm, the children. … So if you’re going to make cuts, first look somewhere else.”
Topinka said she named her tour of social-service organizations “Illinois Has Heart” because Illinois should be known for more than corrupt politicians and pension-funding problems. Of course, until the state is cleaned up and the pension and budget problems fixed, there is no solution or ability to pay social-service organizations. Topinka was not queried about that fact.
* The Question: Do you agree with the Illinois Review or Comptroller Topinka? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
Illinois employers will no longer be allowed to ask workers or job-seekers for their social media passwords.
Governor Pat Quinn has signed the so-called ‘Facebook law,’ which is intended to protect the online privacy of workers and people applying for jobs. The bill comes as a result of some hiring managers requesting passwords to log in to the accounts of prospective employees as a way to weed out applicants.
* The signing prompted a little editorializing from a Trib reporter…
It’s unclear how many companies in Illinois were asking workers or prospective employees for their social media passwords. As such, it’s difficult to determine whether the bill is the type of legislation coming out of Springfield that is a solution in search of a problem.
Some law enforcement authorities in the state have argued that they need the right to ask for social network passwords so they can get a complete picture of an applicant’s life.
But Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the Illinois branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, doesn’t buy that.
“There are all sorts of investigative devices that, of all people, law enforcement has to examine and think about the backgrounds of the people that they hire,” he said. “What they don’t need to know is what they think about politics or other things, which are often the kinds of things people post on their Facebook account.”
Lori Andrews, a professor at IIT’s Chicago-Kent College of Law, said research has shown that 75 percent of employers require their human resources departments to look at online profiles before offering an applicant a job, and that a third of employers have turned down applicants based on those searches.
“Some of this is very improper,” Andrews said at Wednesday’s event.
Andrews noted that online profiles can contain information about a person’s religious beliefs, political affiliations and sexual preference.
* The bill’s original sponsor, Rep. LaShawn Ford (D-Chicago) says the issue was brought to his attention by constituents…
Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, said he decided to sponsor the legislation after hearing from several constituents who were asked to list their passwords on job applications. Ford said the measure will remove some of the barriers people face when looking for employment.
* And Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno was the chief Senate sponsor. From a press release…
“Employers certainly aren’t allowed to ask for the keys to an employee’s home to nose around there, and I believe that same expectation of personal privacy and personal space should be extended to a social networking account,” said Leader Radogno, who pointed out employers are not allowed to ask employees or job applicants about age, sex, race, or sexual orientation—all information that could be easily gleaned from a social networking site. “This law will not only protect employees’ reasonable rights to privacy on the Web, but will shield employers from unexpected legal action.”
* Employers will still be able to set usage standards for company computers and company time, and they won’t be stopped from looking at public Facebook and Twitter pages. From the statute…
Nothing in this subsection shall prohibit an employer from obtaining about a prospective employee or an employee information that is in the public domain or that is otherwise obtained in compliance with this amendatory Act of the 97th General Assembly.
* The House sponsor had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get this bill passed. The first version, filed in May of 2011, had no exceptions or definitions. The second version, filed in February of this year, expanded the exceptions and added definitions. The third version, filed in March, expanded those even further. The changes helped the bill zoom out of the House in late March on a vote of 78-30. It passed the Senate unanimously in May.
Ford did a good job of introducing a new concept and patiently shepherding it through the process. Ford also supported Dan Hynes against Quinn in the 2010 Democratic primary and there has been some lingering animosity between the two men. But Ford was invited to yesterday’s presser, so things must be better now.
Anybody out there ever post something on Facebook they’ve regretted?
* I’m not trying to single out Sen. Rezin here, but we have a recent quote so let’s use it. This has been the standard response to the Democratic push to shift employer pension costs away from the state and down to local school districts…
“It is not helping to stabilize pensions. It is purely shifting a cost that is in the state budget down to local budgets,” said state Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris).
The district still may terminate the agreement without notice if the state’s property tax extension law is passed or changes are made to the teacher pension law that would shift the burden of teacher pension payments to the school board. [Emphasis added.]
In other words, if the cost shift passes, teacher pay raises can be nullified without notice. Why would the district want to do that? To keep their own pension costs down. If they finally have skin in the game and can no longer make state taxpayers pay the costs, then they’ll likely nullify the pay raises.
So, for at least one district, the cost shift idea is already having an impact.
On Monday, Quinn advocated giving school districts 12 years to phase in their shares of pension costs.
Twelve years is, of course, a very long time for districts to absorb those costs.
* But there doesn’t seem to be any hurry by anyone on either side of the aisle to get this done right away…
“If it affects next fiscal year, then we should work on it and refine it and pass it in the next legislative session,” [Rep. Pam Roth (R-Morris)] said.
*** UPDATE *** I missed this one earlier. Speaking of delays…
Illinois Senate President John Cullerton renewed his call Wednesday for the House to take up pension changes affecting only state employees and state lawmakers.
The Chicago Democrat said acting on even a portion of the state’s pension funding dilemma should send a message to bond rating agencies that the state is addressing its financial problems, including underfunding of its pension plans.
“The rating agencies should look to the vote that we took in the Senate and hopefully the vote that they’ll take in the House and see we passed major, major pension reform,” Cullerton said.
