A retired state judge has filed suit in Sangamon County to block a new state law that will begin charging state retirees premiums for their state health insurance.
Gordon Maag, a retired appellate justice who lost a bid for the state Supreme Court in 2004, wants the law declared unconstitutional.
He also is asking that the case be declared a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all retirees affected by the law.
Maag argues that the new law “purports to diminish and impair the benefits of members of pension and retirement systems of the state of Illinois, in that [the law] abolishes free health insurance to Illinois retirees who were and are entitled to free health insurance on account of working for the state for 20 or more years of service, or, in the case of retired legislators, four years, and in the case of retired judges, six years.” […]
A staff member for Attorney General Lisa Madigan, whose office will defend the new law in court, said hearings in the case apparently have not yet been scheduled.
* The fight will be over whether health insurance is a constitutionally protected benefit of membership in a pension system or whether it’s a perk granted by the General Assembly. From the Constitution…
Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.
Springfield is Illinois’s third capital, the end of a migration that followed the state’s pattern of settlement from south to north. The first capital, Kaskaskia, is in the southwestern corner of the state. The second, Vandalia, is in Southern Illinois, along modern-day Interstate 70. The capital was moved to Springfield in 1839, as the result of a legislative campaign by Abraham Lincoln and his fellow Central Illinois senators. At the time, Springfield was close to the state’s population center. Chicago, which had been incorporated just two years before, had less than 5,000 people. It didn’t become a major city until the late 19th Century. By then, Springfield, which is located just a few miles from the geographic center of Illinois, in Chestnut, was established as the capital.
If we wanted a capital that was as close to all the people as possible, we could move it to Morris, which is the population center of Illinois.
* If you’re not familiar with Morris, it’s the red dot southwest of Chicago on this map…
Morris is a city in Grundy County, Illinois, United States. The population was 13,636 at the 2010 census.
Morris is home to the Dresden Nuclear Power Plant, which provides a substantial portion of the electricity supply for the Chicago metropolitan area. Included among the Dresden plant’s reactors is the first commercial nuclear reactor, housed in a spherical concrete and steel shell; it has since been decommissioned, and two more modern reactors (of 1970s vintage) now generate its electricity.
Currently, Morris has one of the few prospering and historically intact downtowns in Illinois. Visitors and shoppers come a distance to enjoy the tranquil small town shopping atmosphere. In addition to the downtown, there are outlying businesses such as five motels, a theater, restaurants, a furniture store, two drug stores, boat sales, three grocery stores, hardware stores, banquet hall, and numerous retail stores and gift shops.
Morris enjoys the benefit of being the Grundy County seat and has a large hospital and modern schools. There are many small parks, ball diamonds, tennis courts, two golf courses, a swimming pool as well as the Gebhard Woods State Park and the William G. Stratton State Park for boat launching on the Illinois River and a skatepark located near White Oak elementary school. Morris Community High School is known to be located on an abandoned mining network that stems for approximately five miles. Each summer a live re-enactment of “King of the Hill” is performed daily by the Morris Players club at the intersection of Black St and Bedford Rd.
Morris is situated along the Illinois River at the intersections of U.S. Route 6, Illinois Route 47, and Interstate 80.
It’s also reasonably close to I-55.
* The Question: Should we move the Illinois capital to the state’s population center? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
Republican Rodney Davis raised about $440,000 in the six weeks since he became his party’s new nominee for the open 13th district in Illinois.
Davis, a former top aide to Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), will report just more than $400,000 in cash on hand to kick off his bid, according to a source close to the campaign.
* His Democratic opponent isn’t much on fundraising…
Gill’s aides did not return an email request seeking comment on the campaign’s fundraising numbers. But as of March 30, online records show Gill’s campaign had $20,000 in the bank — and the same amount in debt.
* And the Illinois Republican Party piled on today in an e-mail…
Three time losing Congressional candidate David Gill is showing once again just how far out of step he is with the views of Central and Southwest Illinois.
Monday, just minutes before President Obama announced he wanted to extend Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans making less than $250,000 per year, Gill told Champaign radio station WDWS (http://www.wdws.com/audio/2012-07-09/07-09-12-drdavid-gill.html) (20:46), “I certainly think we need to allow the President George Bush tax cuts to expire. I think that’s, at the least, a starting point.”
“If we needed any more proof that David Gill is far outside of the mainstream of Central and Southwestern Illinois residents, this seals the deal,” said Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady. “David Gill wants to raise taxes on all of us. Residents of the 13th District are already having a hard enough time making ends meet, and David Gill wants to send more of our tax dollars to Washington. That’s the definition of a radical agenda.”
“Friday, we learned the national unemployment rate is above eight percent for the 41st month in a row,” said Brady. “David Gill’s radical and dangerous economic plan, combined with his plan for socialized medicine is an extreme combination for Central and Southwestern Illinois.”
Actually, if you listen to the interview, Gill was responding to a question about the top ten percent of income earners, and goes on to talk about taxing the wealthy. But he wasn’t specific and clear, so he left himself open to this shot, cheap as it may be.
The GOP has a new attack website up called DrRadical.com. There’s not much to it as of yet.
* Other stuff…
* Dold, Biggert, Schilling first up in DCCC ad attack
* No campaign contribution ban from casinos, no stronger oversight of the Chicago casino all adds up to no signature on a gaming bill, says Quinn…
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says he won’t sign a gambling expansion bill in exchange for a promise that legislators will pass an ethics measure in the fall.
Quinn made the comment Monday at a ceremony during which he signed a measure into law that expands a tax credit program for businesses that hire veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also Monday, a business and labor group pushing the gambling expansion sent Quinn a letter saying they support his call for tighter ethics controls, including limits on campaign contributions. It’s the first time the Illinois Revenue and Jobs Alliance has expressed support for increased ethics measures, and signals the group is willing to work with the governor to make the gambling expansion a reality.
The group wants more gambling to create new jobs and bring in hundreds of millions of dollars more a year to state coffers.
“While not a panacea, gaming expansion would bring desperately needed employment and revenues to Illinois,” wrote Bill Black, a former Republican state representative from downstate Danville who chairs the group. “We submit that Illinois is simply not in a position to say ‘no’ to jobs and revenue, while gaming customers continue to pour into neighboring states.”
But a close reading of the actual letter shows some hedging…
We remain flexible as to the precise language and what ethical guidelines should accompany SB 1849. As a group, we do not endorse one approach over another. But we do support a framework for campaign contribution limits, among other safeguards.
* In upholding the federal health care reform program, the US Supreme Court also ruled that part of the law was unconstitutional. Congress could not withhold all Medicaid funding from states if they refused to participate in the law’s huge Medicaid expansion, the court ruled, calling it unconstitutional coercion. From Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion…
In this case, the financial ‘inducement’ Congress has chosen is much more than ‘relatively mild encouragement’ — it is a gun to the head
* The federal government is constantly putting strings on money it doles out to the states, so this ruling has made people wonder what might happen to current and future federal “inducements,” and if states might now be emboldened to take other federal requirements to court. NPR looks into the matter…
“It is true that this is the first time that the court has invalidated an expansion based upon restraint on federal power,” says James Blumstein, a law professor at Vanderbilt University who wrote an amicus brief in the Medicaid case that anticipated Roberts’ ruling.
“But they’ve always said for years, decades, that this [limit] existed,” Blumstein says. “If this [Medicaid rule] had not crossed the line, the line wouldn’t have existed.”
So where exactly is the line now? No one is certain.
In his health care opinion, Roberts cited a 1987 decision, South Dakota v. Dole, in which the court found that it wasn’t “impermissively coercive,” as the chief justice put it, to require states to raise the minimum drinking age to 21 or lose 5 percent of their federal highway funds.
The sum at stake amounted to less than one-half of 1 percent of South Dakota’s budget at the time — a lot less than the share of federal Medicaid money that makes up every state’s budget, which is about 15 percent, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.
But because there’s such a big gap between the amount of money the court has said is permissible and the amount it has ruled is unconstitutional, no one has a clear sense of how much leverage Congress can wield over the states.
It’s possible that the Medicaid ruling will remain an outlier. Medicaid is far and away the largest federal-state program, and it was an unusual move for Congress to put the entirety of existing Medicaid dollars at risk, as opposed to a small percentage of program funding. […]
On the other hand, nothing in the court’s opinion suggested that it views Medicaid as unique because of its size.
…Adding… So far, six Republican governors have said they won’t participate in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion program. The Washington Post looks at the history of the program…
Medicaid got a chilly reception when it launched in January 1966. It was up to the states to decide whether to participate and only six initially signed up: Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. Twenty-seven followed suit later that year. Across the country, governors weighed the boon of new federal dollars — Washington would foot half of Medicaid’s bill — against the drawback of putting state money into a new program.
Nascent Medicaid programs quickly faced threats: Republican legislators in the New York introduced a bill in 1967 calling for the state to “live within its means” and repeal its Medicaid program.
Doctors, meanwhile, lamented the program’s bureaucracy and griped that payments often arrived late. “Doctors’ complaints tie up our telephone lines all day, every day,” Frederick W. Richmond, chairman of the Citizen’s Committee for Medicaid, told the New York Times in 1967. Some pharmacists voted to boycott the program altogether.
* As you already know, the Republican legislative leaders have stalled the pension reform negotiations over the question of whether Downstate and suburban schools should make their own employer contribution to the pension fund. They’ve demanded a study to demonstrate that Chicago is doing pretty well with school funding, and that the city’s claim that it is being forced to unfairly shoulder its pension contribution burden on its own is overblown.
That study won’t be completed until August, so the pension reform talks are on hold until then. But Margaret Longo, the superintendent of Forest Ridge School District 142, penned an angry op-ed in the Southtown Star that lays out the city’s advantages…
The Chicago Public Schools educate 16 percent of the children in Illinois, with the suburban and downstate districts educating the rest. The state’s funding formula for Chicago Public Schools — money for special education, bus transportation, free and reduced lunch and breakfast programs, summer school and educational service centers — is based on fiscal year 1996 student population totals that have not been updated.
Since then, CPS has lost enrollment, but the money has stayed with the school system, which now has a disproportionate share of funding relative to the number of students it serves.
As an example, Chicago Public Schools receive funding for teaching disabled students through a grant based on the old enrollment figures. CPS now educates 15 percent of the students with disabilities but receives 42 percent of the funding for special education. Is this the free lunch you spoke of, Mr. Speaker?
Another illustration of the disproportionate funding for Chicago Public Schools concerns students lacking English language skills. CPS has 26 percent of such students but an outdated formula results in the school system getting 40 percent of the money to educate them.
A more recent example is the federal grant program entitled “Race to the Top III.” Chicago Public Schools receive 89 percent of the money allotted to public schools in Illinois, or $19 million of the $21 million disbursed.
School districts throughout Illinois deal regularly with unfunded and underfunded mandates, and, thanks mostly to local taxpayers, our schoolchildren still get services despite the lack of federal and state funds. The taxpayers pay because most government education funds do not follow the students.
If you asked suburban taxpayers if they would rather pay $164 more per year toward teacher pension costs (to supposedly equal how much more Chicago taxpayers pay) or get millions of dollars for their schools that now go to CPS through an unfair and archaic funding formula, I think they would choose the latter.
David Sykuta has been around the Illinois General Assembly for a long time, and he doesn’t like what he sees.
Sykuta, 62, of Springfield, is retiring at the end of the year as executive director of the Illinois Petroleum Council. He’s been with the organization, which represents large oil refiners, marketers and transporters, since 1976 and has been executive director since 1986. He began legislative work in 1973 as an intern with Sente Democrats, but switched to Senate GOP staff until joining the council.
He’s not the first to say this, but what he’s seen over time is a concentration of power in leadership.
“They’re still fine people,” he said of lawmakers, “but I think the system has just become tilted way too much toward leadership power. I have a problem with a system that can allow leadership on either side to just replace all the members of the committee if they don’t like the outcome. … It takes on a lot of aspects of the Politburo. … And this is how we’ve ended up where we are right now fiscally.
“I always thought one person could make a difference,” Sykuta said. “I still feel that way, but not so much, just because the power of the leadership is so strong on both sides.
Whenever I’ve been asked what one reform I would make to the General Assembly I almost always say I’d forbid the leaders from appointing committee chairmen and committee members and make the staff beholden to the committees rather than the leaders. Right now, the entire process is so tightly controlled by leadership that they can basically do anything they want. A stronger committee structure would devolve some power away from the top.
* Meanwhile, the State Journal-Register editorialized in favor of removing caps on contributions when outside independent expenditures reach $250,000 in statewide campaigns and $100,000 in other campaigns…
The reform groups that worked hard to get the current limits onto the books are not pleased about this. That’s understandable.
“Gov. Quinn’s signature on this bill has carved a large loophole into the campaign contribution limits law,” said Brian Gladstein, executive director of the watchdog group Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. “He has made it easier for large campaign contributors to buy political favors.”
This is how candidates like Rod Blagojevich end up on the phone discussing how to squeeze $100,000 from a donor in exchange for signing a bill beneficial to said donor. Luckily for Illinois, the FBI was listening when Blagojevich did exactly that in 2008. And really, who would be more prone to tacitly offer favors in exchange for heavy contributions than a candidate running in a panic from a powerful super PAC?
But there’s a fairness aspect to this that we can’t overlook. Set upon by a hostile, well-heeled independent expenditure PAC intent on a candidate’s defeat, it hardly seems fair that the targeted candidate must abide by limits that don’t apply to the entity intent on his or her defeat.
I couldn’t agree more. The reformers have yet to counter this fairness aspect with a valid argument. They’re simply living in the past.
* House Speaker Michael Madigan’s point person on pension reform told the Daily Herald that she doesn’t expect any action until after the election…
Illinois state Rep. Elaine Nekritz doesn’t expect lawmakers to act on pension reform until after the Nov. 6 general election, though Gov. Pat Quinn said they should be ready to return to Springfield this summer to work on the contentious issue.
“It’s not ideal,” Nekritz, a Northbrook Democrat and a member of the governor’s pension reform committee, said of the prospect of politics delaying the issue until after the election.
However, “I feel that on May 30, we were so close to having a real piece of legislation. And so, if it gets done in a lame-duck session … it will get done because it’s the right thing to get done,” she told the Daily Herald editorial board.
Quinn and top legislative leaders have planned to meet again in August to try to hash out an agreement on pensions. On Monday, he warned lawmakers should be ready to return to Springfield.
“Summertime is a good time to act, and so the legislators have to be on their toes here that this is a matter that is confounding our state for decades, and it must be resolved, now,” he remarked during an appearance at Soldier Field in Chicago to sign a law on veterans tax credits.
Nekritz also said that she doesn’t believe any pension reform will take effect before July 1st of next year because the pension systems want the GA to stick to the fiscal year timeline.
* Indicted Rep. Derrick Smith’s attorney has submitted his witness list to the House Select Committee on Discipline. Victor Henderson says he wants to question “CS-1,” the federal government’s unnamed mole who allegedly passed the $7,000 cash bribe to Smith.
Henderson also wants to question FBI Special Agent Bryan Butler, who was the arresting officer in the case.
Smith’s attorney wants the committee to subpoena both people or be given the right to subpoena them himself. Needless to say, it’s highly doubtful either of those things will happen.
* Henderson also disclosed in his evidence list that he intends to ask for an extension of the committee’s scheduled July 19th hearing. According to Henderson, they’ll want the extension “in order to obtain other, unidentified, exculpatory evidence.
The July 19th hearing will be the committee’s one and only hearing before recommending his punishment to the full House.
Congressman Jackson’s medical condition is more serious than we thought and initially believed. Recently, we have been made aware that he has grappled with certain physical and emotional ailments privately for a long period of time. At present, he is undergoing further evaluation and treatment at an inpatient medical facility. According to the preliminary diagnosis from his doctors, Congressman Jackson will need to receive extended inpatient treatment as well as continuing medical treatment thereafter. We ask that you keep Congressman Jackson and his family in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult period.
It looks to me that his staff has been kept in the dark as well.
At a Chicago press conference, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., stopped just short of calling on Mr. Jackson to immediately detail why he is on an indefinite leave of absence from Congress.
But, in the coded language of politics, Mr. Durbin was surprisingly frank, as the diplomats would say, in his first public comments on the flap.
“As a public official, there comes a point when you have a responsibility to tell the public what’s going on,” Mr. Durbin said. Mr. Jackson “will soon have to make a report on the physical condition he’s struggling with.”
The senator would not define “soon” and said a temporary exception perhaps could be made if there were some “medical necessity” for telling constituents only that Mr. Jackson is being treated at an unnamed health facility for “certain physical and emotional ailments,” as a statement from his office termed it.
U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
But Mr. Durbin said he’s “concerned” by the news blackout, and noted that he has received no information about Mr. Jackson’s condition.
* Some people play their politics by attempting to turn their opponents’ strongest attributes into their biggest liabilities. And some folks are more successful at this little game than others.
It remains to be seen whether Congressman Joe Walsh will succeed in turning Tammy Duckworth’s military heroism into a liability, but it doesn’t look likely, mainly because Walsh just isn’t all that credible on anything.
If you missed this story during my vacation, here’s how it all started…
Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), locked in an election battle with Democrat Tammy Duckworth — who lost both legs and partial use of her arm in Iraq — said she talks too much about her military service, something “true heroes” don’t do.
Walsh’s comment — especially coming before the Fourth of July — touched off a firestorm on Tuesday that spread beyond the 8th Congressional District in the northwest suburbs, where the two are running.
“Now I’m running against a woman who, I mean, my God, that’s all she talks about. Our true heroes, the men and women who served us, it’s the last thing in the world they talk about. That’s why we’re so indebted and in awe of what they have done,” Walsh said.
Duckworth Campaign Manager Kaitlin Fahey, in a statement, said “Walsh’s comments insult those who sacrificed to make this country free. Tammy is proud of her over 20 years of service with the Army and her family’s legacy of fighting for this country. We can’t recognize our servicemen and women enough and ask that we keep them in our thoughts during this holiday week.”
Walsh issued a statement in reply on Tuesday — and did not back down on the point that he thinks Duckworth talks too much about her military service.
“Of course Tammy Duckworth is a hero,” Walsh said. “I have called her a hero hundreds of times in the past four months. Just like every man and woman who has worn the uniform, her service demands — demands — our utmost respect. That’s why I recognize our veterans at the beginning of every one of my public town halls. However, unlike most veterans I have had the honor to meet since my election to Congress, who rarely if ever talk about their service or the combat they’ve seen, that is darn near all of what Tammy Duckworth talks about.”
* Walsh also said last week that, unlike Duckworth, John McCain was very reluctant to use his military service to his own political advantage…
One of the first McCain TV ads of 2007 featured a young McCain being interviewed in a Hanoi prison.
Interviewer: How old are you?
John McCain: Thirty one.
Interviewer: What is your rank in the army?
McCain: Lt. Commander in the Navy. … hit by either missile or anti-aircraft fire, I’m not sure which. And the plane continued straight down and I ejected and broke my leg and both arms.
Interviewer: And your official number?
McCain: 624787
The viewer hears the announcer say, “One man sacrificed for his country.”
It led to another ad based on McCain’s favorite scripted debate sound-bite: “I was, I was tied up at the time.”
In mid-December 2007, McCain completely gave up on subtlety: “One night, after being mistreated as a POW, a guard loosened the ropes binding me, easing my pain. On Christmas, that same guard approached me, and without saying a word, he drew a cross in the sand. We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas.”
In March 2008, the McCain campaign released its first national ad — one-fourth of which was interrogation footage taken while McCain was a prisoner of war.
And then in June 2008, in his first general-election ad, McCain told voters, “I was shot down over Vietnam and spent five years as a POW. Some of the friends I served with never came home.”
* Then Walsh took heat for his subsequent CNN appearance…
When Rep. Joe Walsh looks back on his brief and inglorious career in Congress, he will have many moments to blame for his demise, but none more colorful than Thursday afternoon, when he managed to utter the word “Ashleigh” 91 times over the course of a 12-minute interview.
Oh, c’mon. He’s not gonna blame himself for anything. The guy is a professional victim…
In response to the Democratic criticism, Walsh issued a statement calling the controversy a “political ploy to distort my words and distract voters.”
“She’s a hero with whom you disagree,” Ingraham said helpfully. “…Most disabled people that I know just want to be treated like everybody else and they don’t want to be babied.”
“He really disrespected 23 million veterans across this nation with those comments,” Duckworth told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir later on Tuesday. “Anyone who has worn the uniform of this great nation for a single day has done more for their nation than Joe Walsh has ever done.”
Oh, come on. Some guy in his first day of basic training has done more for the nation than Walsh? Look, I don’t agree with the guy and find him irritating, but, really, this “super citizen” stuff is getting outta hand here.
* And as far as military service goes, just about nobody in Illinois talks more about their service these days than Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger. Check out his website.
* To sum up, Walsh’s claim against Duckworth is nothing more than a phony, hyperpartisan DC issue. Duckworth’s response was way over the top. Just another day on the campaign trail.
* Related…
* Joe Walsh’s words reap big cash for Tammy Duckworth: While the email didn’t specifically ask for donations, it so far has brought in more than $85,000, this at a time when “only a couple of thousand” normally would have been expected, according to a Duckworth spokeswoman.
* Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill into law Friday that repeals campaign contribution caps when outside groups and individuals start dumping big money into their races…
A spokeswoman for the Democratic governor conceded it’s a short-term fix to ensure campaign fairness since the U.S. Supreme Court and a federal ruling in Illinois put a crimp on enforcing limits on such outside groups, giving rise to super PACs with deep pockets.
“This new law is necessary to keep the playing field as level as possible,” Quinn spokeswoman Annie Thompson said. “This issue absolutely requires more analysis and more study to figure out what the best long-term reforms might be.”
Just three years ago, Quinn signed into law campaign-cash limits in Illinois after his two predecessors, George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich, landed in federal prison for political crimes. But the law just took effect this year.
Generally, it restricts contributions to a candidate to $10,000 for individuals, $20,000 for corporations, labor groups or political parties, and $50,000 from political action committees or the candidate’s committee.
The caps disappear if independent expenditures reach $250,000 in a statewide race or $100,000 in other races.
* Reaction from the goo-goos was harsh and a bit over the top. From a press release…
The co-chairs of the CHANGE Illinois! coalition on Friday said Gov. Quinn’s signing of Senate Bill 3722 has damaged the state’s campaign contribution limits system and opened the door to unlimited contributions in election contests where independent expenditure groups spend significant amounts of money.
Under the new law, there will be no limits on campaign contributions in any election where spending by an independent committee (or super PAC) exceeds $250,000 in support of a candidate in a statewide race or $100,000 in an election for state legislator, mayor, judge and all other non-statewide contests.
“This new law could open the floodgates to a torrent of special interest money surging into the campaigns of candidates seeking some of the most important offices in our state,” said CHANGE Illinois! Co-Chair Peter Bensinger. “Those unlimited contributions will carry more opportunities for the kind of corruption that has denied Illinoisans a fair and honest representation in their governments.”
So, what happens to that “fair and honest representation” if outsiders can dump uncapped millions into campaigns here? The reformers have yet to answer that question.
The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform ripped the governor, saying he’s opened a huge loophole in the state’s campaign finance laws,
“He has made it easier for large campaign contributors to buy political favors, and he has moved Illinois back toward the same kind of system that produced two corrupt governors now serving prison sentences,” said Brian Gladstein, the organization’s executive director. “He has opened the door to a return of Blagojevich-proportion contributions in the 2014 gubernatorial election.”
On Friday, the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform contended the law provides a road map for any candidate who wishes to evade the limits. He or she could urge a group to pour in major donations on behalf of either side, and both sides would see the limits removed, said David Morrison, the group’s deputy director.
“With this law, I’m confident there will not be limits in a governor’s race,” Morrison said.
Except the reformers never admit that state law already forbids candidates from urging any group to make independent expenditures, under penalty of perjury…
Each quarterly report shall include the following information regarding any independent expenditures made during the reporting period… a certification, under penalty of perjury, that such expenditure was not made in cooperation, consultation, or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, any candidate or any authorized committee or agent of such committee.
* As you already know, Gov. Pat Quinn refused to pay for state raises for 30,000 unionized workers last year because he claimed the General Assembly didn’t appropriate enough money to fund them. Quinn was right about the lack of appropriations, but during my vacation a judge ruled that he has to prove it…
A nonbinding arbitrator’s ruling last summer sided with the union representing nearly 30,000 state workers, saying they should get the raise. Now Cook County Judge Richard Billik Jr. says the arbitrator should consider the administration’s contention that $75 million needed was not provided by the Legislature in the budget for fiscal 2012. […]
Billik sided with some of the administration’s arguments, including that Quinn can’t spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by lawmakers even if bound by a contract.
But the judge said that for that argument to hold up, the administration must prove that it lacked the money, and he ordered the matter sent back to the arbitrator for additional fact-finding. No date was immediately set.
“It is the court’s view that because the amount of funds is disputed, further proceedings are necessary. … The case is remanded to arbitration,” Billik said.
Quinn insisted the moves were necessary to restore fiscal stability to Illinois when questioned by reporters after signing the budget over the weekend. “A lot of those facilities have been in place for a long time, but having said that, the mission has to be to carry out what’s good for the people of Illinois in their needs, and we cannot see state government putting facilities in places as an employment program”, said Quinn.
Quinn once again emphasized his reasoning for closing both the Jacksonville and Murray Developmental Centers. “We’re not going to have an institution-based system. Now we’re in the future. We’re moving forward towards community care. I think it’s a better way to go. It makes sure that they’re is a way of independent living, and a fulfillment opportunity for those who are in those systems. It’s a fundamental policy difference that I have with some members of the General Assembly, but I think that is what the people of Illinois want”, said Quinn.
It once belonged to a succession of Roman Catholic cardinals in Chicago. Then, it went to an Illinois secretary of state who would later be remembered for the shoeboxes stuffed with cash that he left behind after his death. Most recently, it adorned the car of a former Illinois first lady. […]
But for the past decade, Illinois’ No. 1 license plate — the most coveted of all the state’s nearly 7.8 million passenger-vehicle license plates — has quietly been kept out of circulation.
That has been the case ever since the widow of former Gov. Richard Ogilvie relinquished the showpiece plate in 2002. […]
But told that that’s the case by a Chicago Sun-Times reporter, Quinn now has a plan to put passenger plate No. 1 back into circulation.
He wants the plate sold to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to programs for military veterans.
The governor has long been a proponent of auctioning off coveted low-digit and single-letter license plates, which for decades have gone to those with political clout — including more than a few who ended up being felons.
Four other states now allow license plates to be auctioned to the high bidder.
No one can say for certain how much Illinois’ No. 1 might draw. In 2009, though, Delaware plate No. 11 pulled in a whopping $675,000 at auction. And that was No. 11, not No. 1.
* Related…
* ADDED: Prison workers say violent incidents on rise
* Budget blocks funds for prisons Quinn is to close
* Illinois Services Threatened As Pension Hole Grows: “It’s a little bit humorous to me,” Allan says. “The retirement card that I received today simply says ‘thank you.’ And the reason for that is because there are so many state employees and university people retiring within the city of Springfield that you cannot go into any store and buy a retirement card at this point.”
* Advocates praise Quinn’s plan to close juvenile prisons: “Consolidation of the youth prison system will drive down the cost of a system where the annual cost has recently risen to close to $100,000 per bed. That drains away money that could better be spent on rehabilitation of our youth and helping them transition safely back into their communities,” said Paula Wolff, senior executive of Metropolis Strategies, a Chicago-based civic organization.
* I’m trying to catch up on all the stories I missed during my vacation. So, rather than make you wait while I read through all the articles, let’s start the day with a question. The setup…
U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., used a fake name — Hillel Underwood — when he entered a suburban Chicago hospital in January after a stroke that has kept him from the Capitol ever since. […]
Eric Elk, a top Kirk aide, wrote in an e-mail that the senator used the alias to “enhance his privacy” and “reduce the chances of unwanted visitors” when he checked into Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital on Jan. 21.
Elk said Kirk “follows procedures recommended to members of Congress by the sergeant at arms, including using a pseudonym when checking into the hospital.”
Chicago native Terry Gainer, who formerly led the Illinois State Police, is Senate sergeant at arms. Gainer said Friday that he was aware early on that Kirk was going to be hospitalized, but he could not recall when he discussed with the senator using an alias.
“I don’t know that there was a threat, but I know he or his staff was concerned to want that privacy,” Gainer said. In the past, he said, he has counseled senators to use pseudonyms when checking into a hospital.
So, apparently, using pseudonyms is standard practice.
* The Question: What pseudonyms do you think would be appropriate for other state politicians?
