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Question of the day
Thursday, Oct 9, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The setup…
As the nationwide mortgage crisis puts the squeeze on homeowners, the Cook County sheriff’s office is on pace to evict more people than ever from foreclosed homes.
At least it was until Wednesday, when Sheriff Tom Dart announced he wouldn’t do it anymore.
Dart cited the growing number of evictions that involve rent-paying tenants who suddenly learn their building is in foreclosure because the landlord neglected to pay the mortgage. By refusing to do any foreclosure-related evictions, the hope is that banks will change their policies.
As it happens, the decision also will spare from eviction those legitimately in foreclosure.
* Dart explains…
Too many times, our deputies arrive at a home to carry out a mortgage foreclosure eviction, only to find a tenant — dutifully paying their rent each month — who is unaware their landlord stopped using that rent money to pay the mortgage. They had no fair warning that they were about to be thrown out of their home.
That’s because, in many cases, the banks have done nothing to determine, in advance, who’s living in the building — even though it’s required by state law. Instead, those banks expect taxpayers to pay for that investigative work for them.
That stops today.
We won’t be doing the banks’ work for them anymore.
* The Illinois Bankers Association responds…
“By ignoring the law and his legal responsibilities, he is carrying out ‘vigilantism’ at the highest level of an elected official,” the statement read. “This cannot be acceptable to anyone, regardless of their viewpoints.”
The statement noted numerous laws are in place to protect homeowners and renters, including provisions for giving notice.
* Question: Do you agree or disagree with Sheriff Dart’s decision? Explain fully, please.
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Peter Fitzgerald, then and now
Thursday, Oct 9, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Former Illinois US Senator Peter Fitzgerald went after Barack Obama yesterday on behalf of John McCain’s campaign…
“For Senator Obama, reform and nonpartisanship is something to campaign on but not something he does when he actually gets into office,” said Fitzgerald who served with the Illinois Democrat in the state legislature. Fitzgerald added that Obama was nothing more than “one of those state Senators from Chicago who viewed the Democratic Party as being right 100 percent of the time and the Republican party wrong 100 percent of the time.”
* More…
“I don’t ever recall him working across party lines [when Obama was in the state Senate]. He is a very partisan and ideological Democrat.”
* More…
“In fact he rode the Chicago machine to where he is today.”
* More…
Looking at Obama’s career in Springfield, Ill., Fitzgerald said, “I don’t recall him as being a reformer.” […]
Fitzgerald acknowledged that Obama has collaborated with GOP state lawmakers on legislation, but said the bills probably had prior approval of Democratic leaders. “They weren’t controversial and it didn’t take courage to do that,” he said.
GOP influence in the state is minimal, he said.
“The Republicans there, at this point, have little or no power, and they’re just not relevant,” Fitzgerald said.
* However, the Obama campaign passed around this response yesterday…
Fitzgerald, In His Farewell Speech, Noted His Two Years Of State Senate Service With Obama And Said He Was “Almost Unequaled In His Potential And Promise…He May Surprise The Political Pundits By Voting, Crossing Party Lines At Times That You Don’t Expect Him To…” In 2004, Senator Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) said on the Senate floor, “Barack Obama, my successor, I wish him well. It was a privilege to have lunch with him yesterday in the Senate dining room. I served with Barack Obama in the State senate for 2 years. He was coming in, in the legislature in Springfield, in my last 2 years of service there. He is an uncommonly bright and talented young man.
He is 1 year younger than I. He is the first African-American president of the Harvard Law School. He is almost unequaled in his potential and promise. I am confident he will be a credit to the State of Illinois. I think he may surprise the political pundits by voting, crossing party lines at times that you don’t expect him to. It may be a challenge for him with Senator Durbin as his whip. But I see Barack Obama as possibly being a fairly moderate voice, more moderate than many people suspect.” [Congressional Record, 11/19/04]
* And conservative columnist George Will had these thoughts today about trying to use the Chicago stuff against Obama…
It is less that Obama has bad ideas than that Obama is a bad person.
This, McCain and his female Sancho Panza say, is demonstrated by bad associations Obama had in Chicago, such as with William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist.
But the McCain-Palin charges have come just as the Obama campaign is benefiting from a mass mailing it is not paying for. Many millions of American households are gingerly opening envelopes containing reports of the third-quarter losses in their 401(k) and other retirement accounts — telling each household its portion of the nearly $2 trillion that Americans’ accounts have recently shed.
In this context, the McCain-Palin campaign’s attempt to get Americans to focus on Obama’s Chicago associations seem surreal — or, as a British politician once said about criticism he was receiving, “like being savaged by a dead sheep.”
Thoughts?
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The city’s garbage politics
Thursday, Oct 9, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The big deals are done without a hitch…
The City Council on Wednesday gave lightning-fast approval to Mayor Daley’s $2.5 billion plan to privatize Midway Airport, despite an alderman’s complaint that the blockbuster deal was “shoved down our throats.”
* And more nanny state ordinances are passed…
By unanimous vote Wednesday, the City Council expanded the 2005 restriction that forbids talking on hand-held cell phones while behind the wheel. Violators could face a $75 fine, with the penalty rising to as much as $200 for violations that occur “at the time of a traffic accident.”
* But the city’s media is all atwitter about the latest apparent incident of the failure of political patronage…
Chicago garbage collection crews work fewer than six hours a day — and get “paid to do nothing” for 25 percent of their time on the clock — costing taxpayers at least $14.3 million a year, according to an internal investigation denounced as a “witch hunt.”
During a 10-ward, 10-week surveillance, Inspector General David Hoffman found that waste and falsification of time in the Bureau of Sanitation is “systemic and pervasive and extends to all wards,” aided and abetted by poor supervision by layer upon layer of middle management.
* The allegedly poor performance wasn’t just “aided and abetted by poor supervision,” it was apparently the root cause…
[The inspector general] identified “extremely poor supervision” as the “principal cause” for the waste and fraud that Chicago taxpayers can ill afford.
* The Sun-Times editorial focuses mostly on the workers, but way down in the piece is this truism…
Supervision of garbage crews must improve. As the report notes, any boss “mildly interested” in making sure their garbage crews were working wouldn’t have to do much to ensure they were. It doesn’t take an agent from “CSI” to notice a garbage crew worker sleeping in his car.
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to notice when a worker goes missing for two hours for a leisurely lunch — as the inspector general’s team noticed.
Worker productivity is the supervisors’ responsibility. It’s a bit different in a patronage system because workers are often “protected” by their sponsors. But a good supervisor can usually get around that problem. Trouble is, the supervisors are also patronage guys.
* Union leaders point to the mayor’s desire to lay off a bunch of garbage workers as the reason behind this probe…
“My members are out there to do a job, and they do the job well,” said Lou Phillips, business agent for Laborers Local 1001.
He said city officials have told him to expect 302 of his 1,100 members to be laid off after Daley proposes his 2009 budget next week.
Chicago Federation of Labor leader Dennis Gannon thinks the timing of the report is not coincidental. “It’s a cheap shot,” he said.
* The Tribune goes to a productivity expert for his take on the investigation…
It’s the attention to minor offenses that raises eyebrows among productivity experts. They say the inspector general would be hard-pressed to find an American office in which workers don’t tackle personal chores on company time or begin their morning chit-chatting.
“That happens in most workplaces,” says John Gallagher, chief executive officer of the Challenger, Grey and Christmas outplacement firm. “To look at what the garbagemen are doing moment by moment is treating them like they’re children. You should treat employees as adults and judge how they’re handling their jobs.”
I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t about an excuse to privatize the system.
* Related…
* Council OKs $2.5 bil. Midway deal
* Aldermen tell wish lists for Midway lease proceeds
* Aldermen give thumbs-up to Midway privatization
* Airport income
* Daley to ask for homeowner property tax relief
* Alderman goes to bat for 127 towed for race
* Council delays vote on giving divorcing homeowners break
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More budget shenanigans
Thursday, Oct 9, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller
* More of that heroic leadership from the governor that we’ve all come to expect…
Gov. Rod Blagojevich has approved diverting $221 million in the state budget that lawmakers hope will prevent layoffs and program cuts, but he said Wednesday that it’s up to a potential rival, Comptroller Dan Hynes, to determine whether the money is available.
That leaves in question the fate of 323 state employees, who have been told they’ll lose their jobs soon, and 24 state parks and historic sites that would be shuttered.
Hynes pointed out that the legislation requires him to transfer the money to a “budget relief fund” in quarterly installments. So more than $110 million will be available by today, spokeswoman Carol Knowles said.
Punt to Hynes and let him take the heat from special interest groups for emptying out those state funds.
* But, wait, there’s more…
Further muddying the issue is that Blagojevich still hasn’t signed a companion bill that authorizes spending the money. Even if he does, the administration is not obligated to spend it.
“It isn’t a guarantee he won’t close parks and lay off these people,” said Rep. Gary Hannig of Litchfield, one of the Democrats’ top budget negotiators. […]
Because there is a question about how much money might be available, Quinn said, the governor will not immediately act on the companion bill that authorizes where the swept money is to be spent. She said the administration is proceeding with preparations for the previously announced cuts that will result in the layoffs and site closings.
Hannig said it appears Blagojevich “has made up his mind he wants to close parks and lay off employees and cut human services.” If there are problems with the sweeps bill, they can be fixed before the cuts are implemented, he added.
* And what about the governor’s complaint about transferring money out of those special funds? Well…
Rep. Gary Hanning, a Litchfield Democrat and House member who negotiated the deal, said the bill was in the public domain in the House for a week, and it sat in the Senate for two weeks. Democrats and Republicans of both chambers had an opportunity to voice concerns and ask for changes, some of which were accommodated before they sent it to the governor.
“All through that period of time, the governor and his people sat silently by and never weighed in one way or the other, so we assumed that they were OK with this bill,” Hannig said.
The governor’s office offered another statement that his office made its concerns known in September
September. Late September. After both chambers had passed the bill.
* Another marquee quote…
[A Blagojevich spokesperson] called Hannig’s statements “empty political rhetoric.”
Kinda like saying you made your concerns known in “September” and not saying that it was “late September, after both chambers had acted.”
* Meanwhile, the governor is doing some interesting stuff at Pontiac state prison. The guv wants to close the prison over legislative objections, and now he’s transferring some maximum security prisoners out of Pontiac to minimum security facilities…
[AFSCME] says the Department of Corrections plans to move 50 prisoners by Friday to a minimum-security prison in East Moline and another 50 next week to a minimum-security facility in Taylorville, meaning its appeal of Wednesday’s decision could come too late to stop the transfers.
* Columnist Barb Ickes notes that the East Moline facility is in a residential area and quotes an AFSCME official as saying that these large, last-minute prisoner transfers “are rare, if not unprecedented.”
But Department of Corrections spokesman Derek Schnapp said it happens all the time. When asked whether the East Moline Correctional Center ever has received 50 inmates in one day, he said, “I don’t know about East Moline.” […]
Asked whether a three-day notice was practical, he answered, “We can give it (notice) the day of. There is no set guideline on notification.”
That’s peculiar. Does the Department of Corrections truly make a habit of simply dumping dozens of inmates on unknowing state prisons? Surely not. The East Moline prison this week has 1,060 prisoners, and the place was built to accommodate 688. A fair warning would seem in order.
Thodos said he doesn’t think the prisoners are going to stick around. More likely, he said, the move is part of Blagojevich’s bigger plan.
“My personal opinion is that this is probably a stop on the way to Thomson,” he said.
The governor wants to eventually close Pontiac and move many of the prisoners to the Thomson facility.
* Related…
* Uncertainty with Blagojevich’s bill concerns parks advocates
* Empty offices symptomatic of cuts
* Gov, Legislature neglect those who need help most
* Tom Jennings named Agriculture director
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* CBS2, which first reported that the investigation of Gov. Rod Blagojevich appeared to be seriously heating up, had a pretty explosive report last night…
Several sources tell [CBS2] that federal agents are preparing charges of tax fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice against the governor.
The case against the governor reportedly focuses on allegations first made five years ago by his father-in-law Ald. Dick Mell involving alleged trading of jobs for five-figure campaign donations.
Sources claim newly issued subpoenas show First Lady Patti Blagojevich is also under scrutiny. She took nearly $200,000 in real estate commissions – some on deals done with the convicted Tony Rezko. They allegedly coincided with the award of state contracts by her husband’s administration. [emphasis added]
* And it looks like the feds have been pressuring Tony Rezko partly by holding him in solitary confinement for months…
[Rezko defense attorney Bill Ziegelmueller] said Rezko is currently being held in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, two blocks from the downtown courthouse.
He said MCC officials disagree with the designation as “solitary confinement” but that Rezko is being held in an area often used for punishment and is not allowed to mingle with the general population.
* More from Ziegelmueller…
[Rezko] doesn’t get out. There’s no cell-mate, there’s no ability to walk around the cell block and he’s in the area that they have for discipline purposes and he’s been there now for, I guess since June.
Ziegelmueller would not say if he thought it was a tactic by prosecutors to pressure Rezko into cooperating with their investigation into corruption in state government under governor Rod Blagojevich. The Metropolitan Correctional Facility, is — like the U-S attorneys office — part of the department of justice. A spokesman says when designating an inmate, the jail gets information from many sources including the U.S. attorney’s office.
Getting out of that cell to talk to the G must almost seem like a vacation to Rezko.
* Rezko’s defense attorney also had something to say about Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s constant references to a letter written by Rezko which claimed he was involved in no illegal activites with Blagojevich…
On Tuesday, Blagojevich said he hoped Rezko “tells the truth” and said he wasn’t worried about his former adviser and fund-raiser talking about him.
The governor pointed to a letter Rezko sent St. Eve earlier this year saying he wasn’t going to make up lies about Obama and Blagojevich.
Ziegelmueller said both the letter and the governor’s comments speak for themselves.
“I think everyone else can draw their own conclusions,” he said.
49 Comments
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Morning shorts
Thursday, Oct 9, 2008 - Posted by Kevin Fanning
* Race riot sculpture to be unveiled Saturday
A miniature monument commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot will be unveiled at 4 p.m. Saturday during the Illinois NAACP’s 72nd annual state convention at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel & Conference Center.
* Judge denies request to stall transfers from prison
* Waukegan, Des Plaines renew developer partnerships in pursuit of casinos
With a deadline looming, officials in Des Plaines and Waukegan have extended development agreements aimed at luring a casino to their communities.
Applications to the Illinois Gaming Board for the long-dormant 10th casino license are due Tuesday.
The Des Plaines City Council voted this week to renew an exclusive agreement with Chicago developer Neil Bluhm in its bid to land a casino.
* Island Lake: A village trapped in turmoil
In the last 15 months, the village has been tarnished with political scandal and news of the weird.
Three politicians, including two mayors, have been charged with crimes related to how they run the village.
The village also made headlines in the spring after a landowner threatened to turn his property into a pig farm to prevent Island Lake from building a water tower nearby. About the same time, two trustees had a Vietnam veteran arrested because he pointed his finger at them while wearing a Marine Corps T-shirt with a picture of a man pointing a rifle. They claimed it was a veiled threat at a heated board meeting.
* District Backs Union-Designed High School
Next fall Chicago could have its first high school formed by labor unions. The project is among 18 new schools the district is recommending for Board of Education approval this month.
The Illinois Federation of Teachers and Service Employees International Union Local 73 have formed a nonprofit group to run the school. They’ve agreed to locate the school in West Garfield Park, a mostly African American neighborhood. Carlene Lutz works for the teachers union.
* City leaders to recommend approval of gay high school
* Gay-friendly high school may open here in 2010
A “gay-friendly'’ Chicago public high school that will weave gay and lesbian “heroes” — from James Baldwin to Gertrude Stein — into its curriculum was among 20 new school proposals unveiled Wednesday.
* Gay Pride High School Clears Hurdle
* Cop freed: ‘My mom was crying. I started crying’
* Districts welcome MVCC, with some exceptions
* Tinley Park OKs zoning change for Moraine Valley satellite campus
* Tinley approves Moraine campus after lawsuit threat, heated battle
* Teachers, administrators in Kaneland School District 302 to meet with federal mediator in effort to avoid strike
* $300 million for road work
Lawmakers in Will County think they have the solution to what ails the nation’s troubled economy: Build more roads.
County Board members on Wednesday unveiled an ambitious, $300 million transportation package to help unclog crowded roads, repair bridges and improve safety in some of the most dangerous intersections. The seven-year plan could generate as many as 8,400 new jobs in Will County and would be paid for with local, state and federal funds, including the state’s newly approved regional transportation tax, officials said.
* Adler president to McCain: Sky machine not an overhead projector
The overhead, “you can probably get for $10 or so on eBay,’’ said Knappenberger.
But to replace the Adler’s sky machine, which creates stars on a domed ceiling, would cost $3 million to $5 million.
* Presidential Politics Hit Adler
* The Stupid Vote
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