The next gubernatorial election is still two years away, but Attorney General Lisa Madigan acknowledges she’s “thinking about” a run for the state’s top job.
Madigan didn’t offer any other hints Monday about a plan to challenge her fellow Democrat, Governor Rod Blagojevich, should he seek re-election.
Madigan says her immediate election goal is to get Democrat Barack Obama elected president in November.
* 2:17 pm - The governor’s quasi-dictatorial decision - blocked so far by two different courts - to start up a taxpayer funded program without legislative approval has resulted in severe consequences….
Illinois pharmacists must help pay for a health care program the Blagojevich administration bungled.
A notice from the Department of Healthcare and Family Services and obtained by The Associated Press tells pharmacies a court order precludes it from reimbursing prescriptions filled under the FamilyCare program Governor Rod Blagojevich expanded.
Illinois Pharmacists Association director Michael Patton says the druggists are out the money they spent for the medication, expecting to be reimbursed under FamilyCare. He says no one can tell him how much money pharmacists are losing.
* 4:10 pm - Buried in this puff piece about Attorney General Madigan are these somewhat surprisingly nice words by Ed Murnane, of all people…
Fears that Madigan would be a trial-happy opponent of tort reform groups have so far proven unfounded, said Ed Murnane, president of the Illinois Civil Justice League.
“She’s been a pleasant surprise to those of us who were concerned that she would be very closely aligned and sympathetic to plaintiffs’ lawyers,” said Murnane, who serves on the board of directors of the American Tort Reform Association.
Murnane noted that while Madigan would not be considered an ally of the tort reform movement, “She has not been the ogre some thought she was going to be.”
He said “problem attorneys general” are known for taking their consumer protection duties and responsibilities too far.
“I do not think that Lisa Madigan has gone overboard, at least not yet,” Murnane said. “She is probably to some extent trying to keep some of her powder dry because she is widely assumed to be keeping a pretty close eye on the governor’s office.”
* Long set-ups usually result in fewer responses, but we’re gonna try anyway. The Tribune has a very well-written, balanced piece on the state’s new “Citizens Participation Act,” which a pro-life group claims was misused against it. The whole thing started over the nasty fight about a Planned Parenthood center in Aurora. The right-to-life groups were doing their best to stop it and Planned Parenthood retaliated with some harsh words…
Scheidler sued Steve Trombley, president of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, alleging libel for saying to the Aurora City Council, and in an ad in a local newspaper, that the [Pro-Life Action League] has “a well-documented history of violence.”
* Planned Parenthood’s response to the suit…
“Illinois’ Citizen Participation Act . . . specifically protects the constitutional right to engage in the very type of speech that is at issue here,” Planned Parenthood said in a court filing.
Acts in furtherance of the constitutional rights to petition, speech, association, and participation in government are immune from liability, regardless of intent or purpose, except when not genuinely aimed at procuring favorable government action, result, or outcome.
It argues for dismissal on a variety of familiar grounds: because the allegedly defamatory statements were true, because they can be given an innocent construction, because they didn’t even refer to the individual plaintiffs.
But leading the list is the assertion that the Citizen Participation Act gives Planned Parenthood “absolute immunity against plaintiffs’ claims.” That’s because the organization was campaigning for local political support, and the CAP — to quote it — provides that “acts in furtherance of the constitutional rights to petition, speech, association, and participation in government . . . are immune from liability, regardless of intent or purpose” [emphasis added]
* Even the sponsor is a bit surprised that the law was used this way…
Illinois State Sen. John Cullerton called himself a Planned Parenthood supporter but acknowledged its use of the act was not what he had in mind when he pushed for it to become law. Still it is the judge’s decision as to “whether or not that law is appropriate to the facts,” he said.
* A bit more background…
[David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School] said anti-SLAPP laws got their start in the 1970s as environmentalists spoke out against big developers. “If we didn’t have them, we would have significantly reduced public speech on many, many important public issues,” Ardia said.
* Question: Does the state law go too far, or is it necessary to stop lawsuits which can chill free speech? Explain fully, please.
* The Tribune points out the glaring loophole in Illinois “revolving door” prohibition. The prohbition doesn’t work because waivers are too easy to get…
Last week, tollway chief Brian McPartlin announced that he was leaving to become a vice president of McDonough Associates, an engineering and architectural firm that has received more than $30 million in tollway contracts while McPartlin was in charge. He’s asking the state ethics commission for a waiver of the one-year rule, and he’ll almost certainly get it.
Per tollway rules, McPartlin played no role in the McDonough contracts, an agency spokeswoman says. And that’s likely good enough to satisfy the toothless law. Since 2005, 14 applications for waivers have been filed; only one was denied.
In seven of those cases, the ethics commission determined the applicant wasn’t substantially involved in a contract or regulatory decision that directly affected a prospective employer. That’s a pretty squishy requirement, especially when applied to agency chiefs, who are running the show regardless of who makes the day-to-day decisions. Does your boss need to be in the room to influence your decision-making? Probably not. Does that mean he’s not a player? Ha. […]
Granting waivers to employees who can demonstrate they have no conflict of interest sounds fair, in principle. But the law’s wording is so loose that it applies to only the most egregious conflicts, which is not to say that McPartlin’s situation is among them. But if Illinois is serious about stopping the revolving door, it needs to be more realistic about what constitutes a conflict of interest, and less generous about granting waivers. A prohibition doesn’t mean much if you can get a waiver simply by asking for one. [emphasis added]
Exactly.
* Speaking of ethics, the AP takes a nuanced approach to Barack Obama’s claims that he shepherded an earlier ethics bill through the GA…
“When I was in Illinois, I passed the toughest ethics reform in 25 years there, despite the opposition of Democrats and Republicans,” the Democratic presidential candidate told a New Hampshire audience last month.
In fact, Obama was part of an ensemble that negotiated the legislation and built support for it. And the ethics bill passed by lopsided margins of 52-4 in the Senate and 102-3 in the House, although its riskier moments came earlier during those behind-the-scene negotiations that Obama was heavily involved in.
As always with ethics bills, the behind-the-scenes negotiations are the most important part.
* The sticking point on this particular bill was the state’s practice of allowing politicians to convert all of their campaign funds to personal use. The old bulls, who controlled the process, made it clear that they wouldn’t move any bill that contained that language. So, they were essentially bought off with a “grandfather clause” that allowed the old-timers to keep their cash…
The grandfather clause allowed Illinois politicians to continue making personal use of a combined $15 million, an Associated Press analysis showed. Obama was eligible to convert just $14,000 to personal use and chose not to do so.
Obama’s campaign says the loophole was vital to the bill’s success. “Making the law apply retroactively was a poison pill that … would have killed the bill,” said spokesman Justin DeJong.
That’s true. Many old-timers didn’t see a need for an ethics bill at all, let alone one stripped “their money” from their pocketbooks.
Still, critics are right that the bill wasn’t exactly the be-all-end-all that Obama proclaims.
* Research 2000 is a decent polling outfit, but because the Democratic-biased Daily Kos site has commissioned polls from the firm, its surveys are getting short shrift. I wouldn’t be too sure about the detractors’ arguments. The polls look pretty legit to me, although there is room for argument about their “likely voter” screens. Nobody really knows yet who is going to vote and in what numbers.
Research 2000’s latest DK poll is of the Mark Kirk/Dan Seals congressional race. The methodology…
A total of 400 likely voters in the Tenth Congressional District were interviewed by telephone between September 30 and October 1, 2008.
Those interviewed were selected by the random variation of the last four digits of telephone numbers. A cross-section of exchanges was utilized in order to ensure an accurate reflection of the district. Quotas were assigned to reflect the voter registration of distribution by district.
The margin for error, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than plus or minus 5% percentage points.
That’s pretty standard stuff and the usual universe for congressional polling.
* And here’s the matchup, with Kirk’s September polling (just 300 respondents) in parentheses…
Kirk 44 (51)
Seals 38 (29)
* The head-to-head toplines….
* Kos’ conclusion…
To win, Seals must further erode Kirk’s support among Independents and even Democrats (currently at 12 percent), while getting his name ID up with his district’s electorate (29 percent don’t know him, including 32 percent of Independents).
* Meanwhile, Republican congressional candidate Aaron Schock appears to be back in the good graces of the Peoria paper. Check out this lede…
Aaron Schock is young, smart, handsome, rich and lucky.
The columnist goes on to show how Schock profited from flipping properties to public entitites and prominent local institutions like Bradley University. But, in the end, Schock gets a pass.
* I never believed for a second that the Chicago Tribune would endorse a “Yes” vote on the constitutional convention referendum. I figured their huffing and puffing over the ballot language shenanigans would give them political cover to oppose the referendum itself.
Decide right now that you’ll vote yes Nov. 4 on what could be the most important ballot measure you’ve ever encountered. Then relax as the establishment foes of a constitutional convention do their best Halloween act to scare the bejabbers out of you and every other citizen of Illinois.
And when their goblins fly at you, heads spinning, with their best “Bwaa-Haa-Haa!” about the dangers of a con-con, don’t flinch. They’ll screech that convention delegates—your fellow citizens—could try to raise tax formulas, or repeal individual rights, or steer planet Earth into the sun. Answer the bloodcurdling spirits with the mantra they cannot refute: Before our constitution actually would change—We . . . have . . . the . . . final . . . say. All of us. In another referendum. We have to vote proposed revisions up or down.
Wait, it gets better…
Vote yes because if this referendum proposal fails, you do have a guarantee: The sweet-smiling panderers who run this mismanaged state will give you 20 more years of what you have now.
You cannot challenge the interests that own too much of Illinois if you don’t climb into the ring with them.
Big finish…
Let the scaremongers tell you that democracy is dangerous for Illinois. Keep murmuring, We . . . have . . . the . . . final . . . say. Then vote yes on the con-con referendum proposal.
The Tribune muckety-mucks pal around with some of the big business types who staunchly oppose the referendum, and who also happen to advertise in their newspaper/radio/TV stations. That editorial took guts. Good for them.
* Meanwhile, Kurt Erickson, who has been a Statehouse reporter for years, comes as close as one can get to endorsing a “Yes” vote…
The last time the question was on the ballot was in 1988, when the call to revisit our government’s rule book was defeated by nearly 2 million votes.
Since then, we’ve watched the disparity between wealthy and poor areas of the state continue to grow when it comes to educating our children.
We’ve seen a governor go to jail. We’ve seen another governor become the focus of federal prosecutors as he’s presided over a government that is deeply insolvent.
We’ve watched the state’s legislative leaders amass grand powers to control what gets voted on - or doesn’t - in the House and Senate.
We’ve seen them disappear behind closed doors to negotiate out-of-balance budgets that are then sprung upon the rank-and-file lawmakers at the last minute, take it or leave it.
We’ve watched competitive races for the Legislature become few and far between because of the way legislative leaders have gerrymandered district maps to assure they keep their power intact.
Those types of issues could be addressed by a constitutional convention.
* Erickson is now the third Statehouse columnist to write favorably about a “Yes” vote. Scott Reeder endorsed it late last month. And then there’s me. That should tell you something. None of us have any skin in this game. We are honestly advising readers from first-hand experience and practically begging them to listen to our pleas.
* Related…
* Judge orders rewrite of Nov. 4 referendum question
Federal investigators are zeroing in on whether Tony Rezko paid for all or part of a $90,000 rehab of Gov. Blagojevich’s Northwest Side bungalow as the corruption probe of the state’s first family accelerates.
Since Rezko’s felony conviction in June, the FBI has been investigating how the former top Blagojevich fund-raiser billed the governor and his wife for the work, who paid for it and whether Rezko ever arranged for cash to be passed in envelopes to the Blagojeviches, several sources familiar with the probe told the Chicago Sun-Times.
A grand jury has issued at least one subpoena related to the project, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Agents also have inquired about the governor’s wife’s real estate dealings with Rezko and whether Rezko might have disguised payments for the work through sham billings at a large housing development he was building. […]
The questions about the Blagojevich house are part of a joint investigation by the FBI, IRS and U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Other aspects include whether the governor’s administration traded state posts or contracts for campaign cash and Patti Blagojevich’s real estate dealings.
How weird if the Gov (and his wife) end up imprisoned over home improvements when they could have lived on the Taxpayer’s dime in a mansion in Springfield.
* Related…
* Contractors dealt directly with gov’s wife, who ‘definitely knew what she wanted’
The 1,080 layoffs are projected by the Daley administration to save $98 million. They represent the biggest purge in Daley’s nearly 20-year tenure as mayor.
Izard, the Chicagoan who won the most recent season of Bravo TV’s “Top Chef,” is the latest famous face appearing on campaign materials for Tony Peraica, the Republican Cook County Board member running for state’s attorney.
“Our community would be further divided,” she said. “Children from the village of Sugar Grove would go to three different elementary schools. Our goal is to regain our sense of community.”
“Houses aren’t selling at the prices sellers are looking for, but they are still selling them for a profit,” said Naperville-based Coldwell Banker agent Gail Niermeyer.
Charged Friday with forging a name on a liquor license, Island Lake Mayor Thomas Hyde is the third current or former public official in the rural Lake County hamlet to be arrested since last year and accused of crimes related to their official duties.
heard at the National Archives that over sixty new books on Lincoln will be published during the bicentennial. I believe it, too; seems like everybody wants to get a new Lincoln title into print sometime soon.
* Sorry for your troubles, Cub fans, but us Sox fans still see some life in our team. I’d like to humbly suggest this theme song for today’sgame. Turn it all the way up…
