- Gov. Pat Quinn no longer wants teachers to pay an extra 2 percent of their paychecks on pensions next school year. […]
Officials with the Illinois Education Association, however, say they’re still fighting against Quinn’s plan to skimp on pension plans for incoming teachers.
Check out the video. He was booed more than once, and scolded the teachers about being “impolite” for interrupting. “Will you let me finish? You can yell at me all you want”…
* 1:36 pm -SB600, which requires direct elections for the Republican state central committee, passed out of a House committee on partisan lines today - meaning Democrats supported it and Republicans opposed it.
The bill now goes to the House floor for final passage. The state GOP has threatened to sue to block implementation if it becomes law.
Gov. Pat Quinn, who is asking voters to pay more in state income taxes, indicated Tuesday he would also like them to cover the costs of statewide campaigns next year as part of reforms to clean up Illinois government.
The new governor has yet to say whether he will seek election to the job but suggested lawmakers should approve public financing for the governor’s race before they go home May 31.
Quinn said a similar idea passed in 1983 but was vetoed.
He told a Rotary Club of Chicago audience Tuesday that if the law was in place, it might have prevented the pay-to-play scandals of his predecessors, former Govs. George Ryan, a Republican, and Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat.
* The Question: Do you favor or oppose public financing of gubernatorial campaigns? Explain fully, please.
* Bonus Question: Would public financing have “prevented the pay-to-play scandals” of Ryan and Blagojevich? Why or why not?
* This all or nothing gambit obviously won’t work legislatively, but it’s probably a good political move for Gov. Quinn, who can point the finger of blame at others…
With less than a month until lawmakers are set to leave for the summer, Quinn says he is not willing to compromise on his reform commission’s six part plan.
The Governor says “we have to get all” reforms pitched by the group of statehouse outsiders.
That would include campaign contribution caps, term limits for legislative leaders, a new way to draw the state’s political map, and even recall for voters. […]
The Governor is now saying he’s the “quarterback” and he’ll have to soon “call some plays.” But it is his all or nothing approach that may eventually doom his reform agenda.
This is now all about politics and public perception because Quinn obviously knows he can’t possibly pass the commission’s complete agenda.
DuPage County Board Chairman Bob Schillerstrom made it official Tuesday — he’s eyeing a run for governor in 2010.
The Naperville Republican has put an exploratory committee together, and said he will be ready to announce his intentions by mid-summer. The committee is the first step towards a long-rumored Schillerstrom campaign.
Schillerstrom said he had cut taxes in seven of the past 10 years in DuPage County and said his executive experience should play to voters statewide. Still, Schillerstrom’s tenure has not been without controversy on various fronts. Last year, state GOP Chairman Andy McKenna publicly criticized Schillerstrom for pushing Springfield for higher local taxes and the county later benefited as an offshoot of a sales tax increase for the Regional Transportation Authority.
That didn’t stop Schillerstrom from criticizing Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn’s state budget plan calling for an increase in income taxes, offset for some by higher personal deductions. “He essentially passed on the tough decisions to the hard-working men and women of Illinois and that’s the wrong thing to do in a recessionary period like this,” he said.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett takes a swing…
Birkett said Schillerstrom’s potential run for the office would not be a factor in his decision, and said running a statewide campaign might be more than Schillerstrom is ready for. Birkett has won two state primaries, one for attorney general in 2002 and one for lieutenant governor in 2006, but lost both general elections. […]
“I understand Illinois, I appreciate Illinois, and I look forward to discussing and arguing with Joe Birkett and other candidates about what we can do,” [Schillerstrom] said.
[Schillerstrom] noted that because of the work needed to clean up the state’s financial health, “It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the next governor may be a one-term governor.”
Viewed as a social moderate, Schillerstrom acknowledged that the battle within the GOP among conservatives and moderates has hurt the party and said his exploration of a run for governor is based in part on whether rank-and-file Republicans understand “we don’t want to waste all of our assets—whether they’re emotional, financial or issue driven—in a primary” that helps a Democrat to win.
U. S. Rep. Mark Kirk, preferred by GOP ticket-planners to run for either governor or senator, will decline both jobs in order to seek reelection to his House seat, I have been told on what I believe is excellent authority. The reason is not political but personal. His decision will likely be spun as acknowledgment that no Republican can win either race… a conclusion the liberal media will quickly buy and propagate: but the true reason lies not in politics but with other concerns.
* Almost since the day he was arrested, Rod Blagojevich has demanded that the federal government release full copies of the tapes made during its covert surveillance. That way, he said, we could put his remarks into their proper context. Well, he has those tapes now…
Prosecutors have turned over to Rod Blagojevich’s lawyers 400 hours of recorded calls and at least 1 million pages of documents they say are evidence in the massive corruption case against the ex-governor. […]
There are an additional 300 boxes of documents Blagojevich’s lawyers can go through, another 2 million documents involved in the case and at least another 500 hours of recorded phone calls that were deemed not pertinent, lawyers in the case say. The evidence was so voluminous, it came with a 185-page index.
If Blagojevich appears on any radio or TV shows in the future, he should be pressed to release those tapes. All of them.
* In related news, the Sun-Times reports today that Blagojevich pal and mega fundraiser Chris Kelly has talked to the feds, but isn’t yet cooperating. The Tribune’s headline: “Another former ally may cooperate with feds,” is actually far more than the actual story reveals.
* Also yesterday, partisanship flared during a joint legislative reform committee hearing. House Republicans tried to pass legislation to “fumigate” the hospital planing board. Background…
The hospital CEO and whistleblower who helped ignite the FBI’s corruption case against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Tuesday that the state’s controversial health planning board should be scrapped.
Edward Hospital CEO Pam Davis said the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board denied Edward’s 2004 request for a hospital in Plainfield because of her refusal to partake in pay-to-play politics. Davis called for an end to the planning board, which she said weighs hospital proposals totaling $5 billion.
House Republicans, led by Minority Leader Tom Cross, want to fire Jeffrey Mark, executive secretary of the Health Facilities Planning Board, and David Carvalho, a deputy director of the Illinois Department of Public Health that oversees the employees. “In our efforts to continue to fumigate state government, this is another board that needs to be sanitized and start fresh with new players from top to bottom,” Cross said.
Cross added, however: “While we are not alleging that either of the two that held these positions themselves did anything illegal, corrupt activity happened under their watch. They were there before, during and after corrupt activity occurred.”
House Democrats said there was no reason to legislatively fire the two, and the bickering commenced.
Executive Secretary Mark was recommended for his job by Tony Rezko. But Democratic Sen. Susan Garrett claimed that Deputy Director Carvalho was also a Rezko guy…
Garrett asked Carvalho about a conversation they had at the Statehouse Inn. Carvalho said he told her that in the Tony Rezko documents Mark had a ‘TR’ next to his name (meaning Rezko helped him get the job) and it would surface, but Garrett said she remembered it differently.
Garrett said Carvalho told her Tony Rezko recommended him for his job.
Carvalho denied the claim and maintains that he has never met Rezko.
*** UPDATE 3 *** Daley jumps aboard the bandwagon…
Mayor Daley threw his support today behind an effort to the repeal a 1 percent Cook County sales-tax increase that was approved last year.
Daley said that doesn’t mean he’s withdrawing his support for Cook County Board president Todd Stroger, who pushed for the increase and said Tuesday he will veto the repeal.
*** UPDATE 2 *** CBS2 raw video of the county board meeting is here.
*** UPDATE 1 *** Click here to listen to President Stroger say a veto of the tax rollback could be an “excercise in fertility.”
[ *** End of Updates *** ]
* This vote was completely unexpected, as was the turmoil it caused…
Cook County commissioners voted Tuesday to repeal last year’s unpopular sales tax increase — but taxpayers shouldn’t hold their breath that they’ll soon be paying less at the cash register.
The 12-3 vote to roll back the 1 percentage-point increase next January was a political body blow to Board President Todd Stroger, who immediately vowed to veto the measure.
Commissioners acknowledged they may not have the votes to make the tax repeal stick. An extraordinary 14 of 17 County Board members are needed to override a president’s veto.
* Chicago Public Radio has a great play-by-play. A gradual rollback was initially introduced after the TV cameras had left the chamber. But then after some debate, Commissioner Roberto Maldonado moved to amend the bill to immediately repeal the one percent sales tax…
STROGER: And when you talk about this tax increase, know something about it! Talkin’ about the world and all that crap. What do you know about the world?
A normally reserved Daley stepped out of character and took on President Stroger.
[MAYORAL BROTHER JOHN DALEY]: And you might want to listen for a change.
And there was a preview of what’s likely to be a highly contentious Democratic primary in 2010 between rivals Forrest Claypool and Todd Stroger.
CLAYPOOL: We have a real problem here with a board only being able to do so much to reform and streamline this government without a chief executive who’s willing to do those reforms.
STROGER: That’s exactly what I like. Passing the buck. We can’t do anything. We’re only elected. We only make $85,000 a year to do nothing!
* As noted above, Stroger threatened a veto, which will likely be impossible to override. But then later in the evening came this…
In an absolutely scorching statement released late Tuesday, Mr. Stroger threatened “thousands” of health and public safety layoffs and the closure of “at least one — and possibly two” of the county’s three hospitals. […]
The statement says the repeal would cost the county $245 million this year and roughly twice that next year. The “quarter-of-a-billion disaster” is occurring only because its advocates “have once again chosen to put their political opportunism ahead of the public well-being,” the statement says.
“Their dangerously responsible (sic) position threatens health care for hundreds of thousands of our patients, and will force the layoff of thousands of union workers at a time when the economy is facing its deepest crisis in 60 years,” it states.
Doomsday cuts might help Stroger make his case that the tax hike was needed, but, then again, he’s so unpopular that the cuts would probably only damage him more. A veto, of course, would just drive on more nail into his political coffin. He’s got more nails in that coffin than True Value.
Also, you may see movement on a bill soon in the state Senate which will greatly lower the veto override requirement from the currently outrageous four-fifths majority.
The governor of Illinois kicked off a massive wind power convention today at Chicago’s McCormick Place. Chicago is making a play to become the nation’s wind power hub, but it faces stiff competition.
At least eight major wind power companies have their corporate headquarters in Chicago. The region also has a number of factories churning out turbine parts, and officials would love to get their hands on some more of those green jobs. But Illinois was a bit late to the game in crafting policies and incentives to lure them, says Josh Magee with Emerging Energy Research. He says states like Iowa have already sopped up a lot of the demand.
MAGEE: We’ve already seen a substantial amount of investment in many of these components. Illinois or any other state that is looking to attract new investments is, in a very real way, now playing catch up.
The report describes encouraging results for the Chicago Housing for Health Partnership, the first program in the country to link hospitals serving homeless, chronically ill patients with organizations that help people find federally subsidized housing.
The organization was formed in 2002 to deal with a common and unfortunate situation: Ill, homeless people are discharged from hospitals and end up back on the streets without regular medical care. Inevitably, their health deteriorates.
Between September 2003 and May 2006, Stroger Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago recruited more than 400 homeless individuals with chronic medical conditions to participate in a study testing the hypothesis.
Two-hundred-seventy-five Bartonville Employees were notified today they will likely be laid off.
The potential layoffs come after Caterpillar terminated two major contracts with X–PAC, a supply chain service provider. X–Pac’s Bartonville facility handles parts packaging and export consolidation services for CAT.
As we recounted yesterday, the 120-year-old suitmaker is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and has attracted three potential bidders — two of which want to revitalize the company and another that reportedly favors liquidation. Recent reports indicated that Wells Fargo, which provided a “debtor in possession” loan to keep operations afloat during the restructuring, has been leaning towards the idea of liquidation, which would provide a quick return but result in the loss of over 3,000 jobs nationwide. The bank — which accepted $25 billion in federal bailout funds and reported a first quarter return — will likely select a “stalking horse” bidder this week.
The union that represents HartMarx’s 1,000 Illinois employees, Workers United, has been ramping up efforts to save the company. Helping out has been Rep. Phil Hare, who worked at HartMarx’s Rock Island factory for 13 years before entering politics. Today, Rep. Jan Schakowsky leant a hand as well.
In an interview moments ago, the Illinois congresswoman told us she spoke with Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf this afternoon. “I made it clear that I had thought, even without the $25 billion they got in TARP funds, we wanted him to take into consideration that jobs would be lost and to accept a bid that would actually keep Hartmarx open,” she said. Stumpf apparently told Schakowsky that he has an obligation to his shareholders. Her response: “I reminded him that taxpayers, including people who work at Hartmarx, have a stake in this too and are helping to bail out the company.”
Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget calls for scores of new prison guards to be deployed at facilities across Illinois. At a time when private industry is shedding jobs, that potential increase in employment has drawn positive reviews in Illinois’ prison towns.
The County Board on Wednesday approved another $190,000 in payments to former employees who made the allegations against Moore.
One of the patronage suits was brought by Carmen Fludas, a 39-year office veteran laid off from a job as a troubleshooter and interpreter in March 2007. Fludas, who had won several employee commendations, will be paid $90,000 under her settlement. James D’Antonio, a 10-year employee who rose to assistant supervisor, will get $100,000.
But that doesn’t mean Crestwood officials can rest easy. As unusual as it would be for prosecutors to file criminal charges in connection with the village’s well usage, one recent case suggests such a move would not be completely without precedent.
Just last Thursday, the former supervisor of a municipal water treatment plant in Fort Gibson, Okla., pleaded guilty to a federal charge of making a false statement to state regulators in a report certifying the safety of the plant’s drinking water.
They must show that someone acted willfully, knowingly doing something he was aware the law forbids, according to David Uhlmann, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who was chief of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section.
That “higher burden” is one reason why “there are precious few criminal cases brought under the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Uhlmann said.
But some on a House panel expressed concern over what they characterized as panic when news of the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, first broke.
Illinois Department of Public Health Director Damon Arnold told lawmakers they’re urging people not to overreact. But he said officials had to first treat the H1N1 virus as potentially deadly, because they didn’t yet know whether it was.
The Illinois Department of Public Health director told state lawmakers Tuesday that it’s important to remain vigilant in the face of the H1N1 flu virus, but fears of a pandemic flu are overblown.
“We have to keep these things in perspective, look at them rationally, know what the threat is and deal with it in a rational way. We know right now that this virus is acting very similarly to the regular seasonal flu,” said Dr. Damon T. Arnold, head of the state public health agency.
The number of confirmed cases of H1N1 swine flu statewide has jumped to 82, from nine on Monday — a rise state health officials attribute to a move to get test results more quickly.
Illinois has 40 probable cases awaiting confirmation.
After the legislative Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability recommended last week to close Howe Developmental Center in Tinley Park, Gov. Pat Quinn decided this week to conduct his own investigation to determine if the facility should be closed. The committee also recommended closing Tinley Park Mental Health Center, although the governor has not announced if he will conduct an investigation of that facility.
“I learned from the process of killing the Blagojevich gambling proposals that gambling is not a wholesome activity,” Madigan said in the statement, “and we’re not going to deal with that this year.”
Tuesday, May 5, 2009 - Posted by Capitol Fax Blog Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
Severe overcrowding in Chicago’s public schools has long placed barriers on the potential of the city’s Hispanic students. Overburdened facilities in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods have denied students opportunities for individualized attention and created other hassles such as multi-tracked calendars, staggered scheduling, and busing.
This is why UNO is calling on state legislators to support construction of new public schools in overcrowded Hispanic neighborhoods. However, UNO is also putting forth its own proposal to build 8 new UNO schools over the next 4 years that would add 4,890 new seats to overcrowded neighborhoods.
To fund this proposal, UNO is calling on the state for a $99 million investment which it will use to leverage an additional $99 million through private partnerships. This 50/50 matching program brings together public and private support to improve educational opportunities for our communities at less cost to the public and it is guaranteed to bring quick results.
Already, each new UNO campus can be built at half the cost of a traditional public school and in half the time. Furthermore, because UNO elementary schools open at full capacity, they will bring immediate relief to nearby overcrowded public schools.
UNO’s proposal for a public/private partnership goes a long way in rethinking the model for new school construction and creating new solutions to overcrowding.
Specifically, the Commission recommends [limiting] a person’s total service in the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives, President of the Senate, Minority Leader of the House and Minority Leader of the Senate to a total of (a) ten years in any one office and (b) fourteen years combined in two or more offices.
* The Question: Do you support this reform? Explain fully, please.
* Bonus Question: The commission also wants to bar outside income for the Senate President and House Speaker. Do you support that idea? Explain.
Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias on Monday defended using proceeds from the state’s troubled college savings program to purchase a hybrid SUV, saying it was a cost-saving move that allows staffers to more effectively promote the Bright Start program.
While Giannoulias said the vehicle is primarily used to promote the savings plan, he could not give details on how and when the vehicle was used. He said his office would begin to keep a vehicle log, saying it was “probably an oversight” not to do so from the beginning.
The problem isn’t so much the SUV, but combine that with one of the investment funds in the Bright Start program losing big bucks and creeping journalistic shorthand and the thing is quite toxic…
The college savings plan is supposed to allow parents to put away money and earn interest for their children’s education, but the fund lost more than $85 million last year.
Again, just one of the investment funds in the program lost $85 million, so the Tribune and others are making things look worse than they actually are. However, Crain’s points out that two other funds lost money as well, although less than the $85 mil.
The state’s senior U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, who traveled overseas with Giannoulias earlier this year, has not decided whom he will support to become his colleague from Illinois. Durbin said in the meantime the treasurer would have to diffuse his own controversies.
“He is going to have to show in this early stage he can answer questions directly and satisfy any concerns people might have. He will come to learn that standing in front of these microphones is part of this business,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, (D) Illinois.
Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is threatening banks that fail to invest in their communities. He says financial institutions will have to sign a pledge before they can receive state deposits. Giannoulias says banks must promise to make small business loans, and work to prevent home foreclosures.
GIANNOULIAS: I do think there’s a lot of potential for future legislation to put even more stringent requirements. But this is, what we think is a reasonable first step. We don’t want banks to lose even more money we just want them to pay attention to their communities
That will make a nice TV ad. Money overcomes plenty of negatives, and he has tons of dough. But that’s no excuse for Giannoulias not having a full handle on his office.
State Sen. Matt Murphy of Palatine is the latest Republican to publicly consider throwing his hat into the 2010 Illinois governor’s race.
Murphy said Monday it’s a “definitive maybe” as to whether he’ll enter the GOP primary. “I’ve got to see what the interest level is and if I can rally enough support to make the run,” Murphy said. He expects to make a decision by the end of May.
One of the report’s key recommendations for a Medicaid global waiver is a block grant approach that would lock in the State at its currently poorly funded level while shifting ALL of the risk to the State – without the State having total control of the Medicaid program.
In other words, if Medicaid costs skyrocketed, the state would be left with the bill.
Much of the work and resulting conclusions from the consultant (the Lucas Group) underlying the report’s recommendations appear to be substandard and outdated, and in many cases, based on flawed assumptions.
Steven Guerra, a holdover from the Blagojevich administration as the governor’s deputy chief of staff for social services, was fired Friday. […]
He made news in late 2008 when the Chicago Sun-Times reported that he had served 23 months in prison after being convicted of contempt of court in New York in 1983. He had refused to testify in connection with investigations of a Puerto Rican separatist group that claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings in the U.S. that killed six and injured dozens from 1974 to 1983.
Schakowsky’s strong numbers carry through to the general election, according to Lake Research findings. In a poll of 600 likely Senate race voters last month, respondents who were asked to choose between Schakowsky and Kirk in a general election chose Schakowsky by a six-point margin of 36 to 30 percent.
As I already told you, that poll was taken in December and the 36-30 number included a surprisingly large number of leaners. The base numbers were 23-20.
* This e-mail just arrived…
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, will host the Ultimate Women’s Power Lunch with special guests Valerie Jarrett and Tina Tchen on May 11, 2009.
* Fox Chicago’s Jack Conaty has produced a well-done and quite interesting profile of House Speaker Michael Madigan. It’s our must-watch video of the day…
Former state representative Robert Molaro takes a slightly different view. “Not to take a line from the godfather, but Mike will ask for something and when you refuse it he doesn’t ask a second time, he doesn’t ask a second time when he’s been refused the first,” says Molaro.
Dr. Robert Sawicki, medical director of OSF Home Care Services, said 95 percent of symptoms for patients seeking pain relief are managed with available therapies, such as medicines, implantable pumps and surgeries.
“In the studies I have read, the evidence in favor of medical marijuana is not very compelling,” Sawicki said. “If it would be no better or worse than what is already out there, why bring it to market?”
Exactly. Why allow terribly sick people to just smoke a joint when they can be prescribed highly addictive opiates, cut open on operating tables or have pumps implanted in their bodies? Yes, that’s so much better.
The Chicago Crime Commission today issued a stern warning on the implications of legalizing marijuana in Illinois. There is serious apprehension among law enforcement that the pending medical marijuana legislation will provide protection for drug cartel operations and their drug trafficking efforts.
The Department of Homeland Security has identified international drug cartels as a serious threat to the United States. Cartels are already working with gangs in the Chicago area to traffic marijuana and other drugs. “There is concern in law enforcement circles that, if passed, the Illinois medical marijuana law could legitimize cartel operations and provide cover for their trafficking efforts,” according J.R. Davis, Chairman of the Chicago Crime Commission.
“Cartel members, posing as legitimate marijuana growers, would be difficult if not impossible to detect. As a consequence, they will easily expand their influence in Chicago and extend their reach into other Illinois communities,” he added.
Notice how this argument was framed. Cartels will expand their influence in Chicago and then infect the pristine hinterlands. Nothing like fanning the flames of urban fear.
If they’re worried about illegal drug cartels, perhaps they can just come out in favor of total legalization and then American corporations can get into the act. I doubt the Walgreen family would hire gun-toting thugs to attack Osco’s turf.
Faced with a grim financial picture, state lawmakers are mulling over proposals to raise taxes on certain unhealthy habits: smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and sipping soda pop.
Supporters of the tax hikes view them as “win-win” propositions because they would generate funds for state government while simultaneously reducing people’s consumption of tobacco, alcohol and sugary drinks. […]
“As the economy gets worse, more people turn to drugs and alcohol,” said the [Illinois Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Association’s] chief executive officer, Sara Moscato Howe. That triggers a greater demand for addiction treatment and prevention services, she said.
If enacted, the nickel-a-drink tax would generate an estimated $254 million a year, Howe said. IADDA wants to use $74 million of that to boost funding for substance-abuse treatment programs. The rest would help state government plug its budget hole, she said.
I can think of one non-addictive drug that is consumed totally tax free. How about you?
* Thank you, Gov. Quinn, for your common sense advice on not listening to the idiotic swine flu hysteria…
This grotesque media and political overreaction ought to serve as a valuable lesson to us all.
If media sources that you normally trust grossly overreacted and helped feed the panic out of ignorance or in order to bring attention to themselves, then you’ve now hopefully learned that your trust was horribly misplaced. Don’t believe them again.
And the same goes for politicians who screamed and wailed about closing the Mexican border (as if that was possible), or staying off trains or whatnot. Morons.
Yes, H1N1 has a past history of horrific problems. It wiped out thousands of people during World War I. So, any outbreak should obviously be handled with extreme care and media attention is deserved. But the simplistic overreaction to a handful of tragic deaths in a dirt poor region of a very poor country with a lack of both clean water and any real health care infrastructure was just disgusting from the get-go…
As dust begins to settle from the swine flu crisis, some health officials here say the pandemic grew from hype and hysteria. In the past 10 days, Americans have rushed into emergency rooms, bought out medications and glued themselves to the news for updates on H1N1. […]
“This is absolutely an overreaction,” said Dr. Rene Santos, infectious disease specialist at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey. “We see 36,000 deaths in the United States a year from influenza and its complications yet we don’t have the same amount of hype and alarm.”
No doubt, this was and still remains a serious story and it deserves serious reporting. Instead, we mostly got Bizarro World craziness.
Feared pandemics that prove to be slower moving and less deadly than predicted, such as the swine flu scare of 1976 and the SARS scare of 2003, always look overhyped in the rearview mirror.
Actually, they looked overhyped to many in real time.
* Illinois prisons: Low-level inmate is killed by cellmate with violent past when Illinois prison officials OKd housing them together
Joshua Daczewitz was a first-time inmate at a minimum-security prison when he tested positive for cocaine.
So corrections officials transferred the pudgy, bespectacled Daczewitz to one of the state’s toughest prisons as punishment and put him in a cell with Corey Fox, a lifer in for murder.
That turned out to be a fatal mistake.
With a history of violence even behind bars, Fox had been locked up alone for a year not long after pummeling and threatening to kill a cellmate and confessing to his desire to kill again. Yet after Fox was transferred to Menard Correctional Center in late 2003, several staffers at the maximum-security prison cleared him to share a cell with Daczewitz.
LAZ Parking, a company that does business in 16 states and brings in more than $200 million annually, was poorly prepared to take over Chicago’s parking meters when the handoff from the city took place Feb. 13, the firm acknowledges.
It relied heavily on mall security guards and workers from a temporary job-placement agency — all with no experience in the parking industry — to reprogram the city’s approximately 36,000 meters and change over the decals that provide drivers with rates and rules, company officials said.
But LAZ did not have nearly enough of the hand-held devices that shoot an infrared beam to reset the meters so that they provided the correct amount of time for each quarter inserted into the coin slot, according to workers hired for the task.
“My premise is that the papers have great content. It’s content that people want and they find valuable,” Tyree said. He said the challenge is figuring out how the company can operate on revenue that’s still falling from heydays of more than $400 million a year. In 2008, the company’s revenue was $323.8 million. Like other newspaper companies, Sun-Times Media Group has struggled with declining advertising income as business and some readership moves to the Internet. But circulation at the Chicago Sun-Times has held steady or increased while other major papers declined.
Tyree said he expects the company will be sold via the bankruptcy proceedings within 60 days. The company’s biggest creditor is the Internal Revenue Service, which alleges it is owed $608 million. Bankruptcy could induce the IRS to settle for whatever a buyer pays.
* Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky was in Peoria over the weekend and made an appearance on Fox Chicago Sunday, as did Patrick Collins. Since I’m having trouble viewing the video, I’ll note that Progress Illinois claims Collins said he wasn’t interested in political office next year.
* That same PI post reminded me to reach out to Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Cook County President and congress. He’s now hinting about a run for governor. Actually, he’s working behind the scenes with some folks and I’ll have more for subscribers tomorrow…
“I have talked to some people about running next year [for Governor] and it is something that we are actively considering.”
Murphy, by the way, rightly points out in a press release that several of the governor’s reform commission agenda items came from bills he sponsored.
* This AP story on Alexi Giannoulias shows how journalistic shorthand is one reason why I believe the PR problem about the SUV is worse for the treasurer than some may reckon.
* The Heartland Institute’s Tom Swiss has a rundown of possible GOP statewide contenders. Here’s his take on Joe Birkett…
Birkett is decent at public speaking, but needs new material. Everyone has heard his “I was a golden gloves boxer who is willing to fight for you” story at least 20 times. In the unlikely event Birkett’s name ID takes off, he will stay in the race, but as other campaigns ramp up, he will need to make some serious changes from his 2006 strategy if he wants to be competitive. Birkett clears the field as the run-away favorite for Attorney General.
And some of what he says about Dan Proft…
Debates could be a two-edged sword for the ideological Proft, he will have no problem with any questions but will need to appear likeable. He is prone to occassional outbursts of righteous anger. Proft will also have to distance himself from Cicero politics.
* If any of those above-mentioned people do run statewide next year, I gotta wonder whether TV reporters will show up or just send the video pool…
Four Chicago television stations are expected later today to announce they soon will be sharing newsgathering resources at general news events, sources said… Stations could be sharing raw video through the arrangement by the end of the month. […]
Rather than send independent crews to shoot the same news conferences, sports events and other non-exclusive news, the local news service will dispatch a single crew to provide pooled raw video. What each competing outlet’s reporters, editors and producers do with the raw video is up to individual rival operations.
House Bill 682, introduced by Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), would require that any state legislator who proposes an increase in criminal penalties that would result in more people going to prison get a fiscal impact statement of what that would cost. The estimate would be made by the Department of Corrections or Department of Juvenile Justice.
In addition, the legislator would have to identify a revenue source, such as a new tax or a reallocation of money from elsewhere in the state budget, to pay the extra cost.
The bill, modeled after a seven-year-old Virginia law, would not prohibit the General Assembly from imposing harsher penalties for criminal conduct, but it would encourage lawmakers to more fully weigh the benefits (such as increased public safety) against the costs.
Back in 1987, for example, it might have been helpful for the Legislature to know what the financial impact to the prison system would be when lawmakers lowered the threshold for a Class 1 felony for the manufacture or delivery of cocaine from 10 grams to just a single gram.
* The Question: Should this Raoul proposal be applied to all new spending bills, not just prison-related legislation? Explain fully.
* The State Journal-Register has spent the past two days giving thumbs up and thumbs down to various aspects of the Illinois Reform Commission’s report. The paper never once mentions, however, that the reform commission chairman and many of its members are demanding that the full report must be enacted or Illinois risks leaving doors open to more corruption. The SJ-R’s ratings can be found here and here.
The paper gives a thumbs down to adopting federal campaign contribution limits, suggesting a $10,000 cap is more reasonable. Another thumbs down goes to the creation of an Office of Procurement, which was the centerpiece of the commission’s procurement reform agenda. More thumbs down went to establishing term limits for legislative leaders and creating a public corruption division within Illinois State Police.
“No endorsement” was slapped on a few areas, including changing the budget process (”It’s unlikely the recommendations would have changed anything that happened over the past six years”), FOIA penalties and establishing an Office of Transparency.
* The Tribune ran a blustery front-page editorial yesterday demanding support for the reform commission’s agenda without revealing that it also has major reservations about some of the reform commission’s recommendations…
Right now, many of Illinois’ 177 legislators are just as determined to protect themselves and their clout. They’ll try to mollify you with reassurances that “I’m open to change” or “We’re discussing this” or “Everything’s on the table.” Not good enough. Reject the pabulum. Demand results.
* But the Daily Herald notes that the reform commission never submitted actual legislation, and quotes the governor’s spokesperson as refusing to comment on when such legislation will be drafted. Still, the headline on the story reads: It may take wheeling and dealing, but Quinn’s ethics reforms may pass.
Rep. Chuck Jefferson and other Democrats want the state’s top watchdog, Auditor General Bill Holland, to complete a full investigation into what harm Blagojevich might have caused during his six years as governor.
“We are just trying to make sure we are doing everything we can to continue to protect our state from the (former) governor,” said Jefferson, a Rockford Democrat. “We are cleaning up after him.”
So, I’m not sure why there’s opposition…
“I think it is an interesting idea, but I don’t really see how that works to the advantage of the citizens right now,” said Sen. Dale Risinger, R-Peoria. “We all recognize the damage the ex-governor did. I mean, after all, we went through an impeachment, we went through a trial. Those issues came out in that.”
A full and complete audit would likely reveal even more damage caused by Blagojevich. Like this, for instance…
In a little-noticed move in December 2006, Blagojevich pardoned the successful Oak Park restaurateur for an old tax-fraud conviction. And the now-impeached governor took the additional step of forever wiping that blemish from Abu-Taleb’s record.
While Abu-Taleb successfully maneuvered through the state’s byzantine clemency process, as many as 20 others who were exonerated of crimes failed to persuade Blagojevich to clear their records.
Something else sets Abu-Taleb apart from those others: the campaign contributions that rolled in to Blagojevich from a powerful Chicago law firm run, in part, by an Abu-Taleb relative who was a character witness in the clemency case.
However, the audit shouldn’t be used to stall reform measures this year. It could be used to help draft more reforms next year, though.
* Related…
* Reeder: If voters think they pick their legislator, they’re wrong
While parents come to grips with major investment losses in a college savings program, public records show that Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’ office spent Bright Start proceeds to buy a $26,000 SUV he uses as his state car.
The purchase is surfacing as the politically ambitious Giannoulias continues to face criticism for his oversight of the Bright Start investment program, which lost $85 million last year.
The details aren’t as horrific as the lede makes them out to be. The car wasn’t paid for with Bright Start profits, but with a fee paid by the investment manager’s firm. Still, not good.
The treasurer’s office claims that staff also use the car…
But Burnham could not provide a breakdown of how often that particular Ford Escape is used for Bright Start-related purposes and said no log is kept of how that car is used or for what reasons.
Again. Not good.
* Meanwhile, Drudge linked to this video last week with an ominous headline about potential US Senate candidate Congresswoman Schakowsky claiming that the “public option” for health insurance would put private insurers out of business. See it for yourself…
* Related…
* ADDED: Vallas says County Board presidency decision weeks away: Vallas has been exploring a Republican run for the County Board presidency since February and had expected to make a decision in mid-June. But now, he said, he has sped up his timetable because “there are other people that are trying to make decisions about what they want to do next and they’re at least a couple of people waiting to see what I will do.”
* Jesse Jackson Jr Speaks About Ethics Probe: “One fact will never change, whatever the outcome…I offered the former governor nothing and the former governor offered me nothing,” Jackson said.
Everybody at the Illinois Statehouse always says they’re for a major, multibillion-dollar public works construction plan.
The problem has been that they could never agree on how to spend the money and how to pay for the massive beast.
House Speaker Michael Madigan has taken the blame for the failure of the “capital plan” during the past couple of years, and rightly so. He used every trick in the book to block it.
Then again, if Madigan hadn’t killed Rod Blagojevich’s extremely loosely written capital bills, Blagojevich would’ve probably tried to steal every last dime. To say that there were billions of dollars in almost completely undefined spending would not be an exaggeration.
With Blagojevich gone, everybody now wants to know where Madigan is on capital. And, as usual, nobody really knows what he’s thinking. But lots of folks believe the tea leaves look ominous. Things just aren’t going well.
The governor hasn’t yet started really working legislators on behalf of his tax hike proposals. Madigan has said that passing a budget and closing the $11 billion to $12 billion deficit is his first priority, and Quinn won’t back away from his income tax increase. Most legislators have never taken a truly tough vote, and hiking the income tax rate by 50 percent certainly qualifies as truly tough. The longer the tax hike is up in the air, the longer the capital plan could be delayed.
House Republican Leader Tom Cross has refused to support any tax or fee hikes to fund the capital bill. Instead he’s pushing a plan derided by Madigan to vastly expand gaming during the worst gaming recession since time began.
Leader Cross and Speaker Madigan have been feuding all year, and Cross has upped the ante lately by publicly embarrassing Madigan almost every day on the House floor with one loudly debated motion after another to move hot-button but obviously dead bills out of committees. The Republicans always lose the procedural votes and then they immediately blast negative robocalls into targeted Democratic districts deriding politically vulnerable Democratic incumbents for voting against Mom and apple pie.
Things are getting awful testy in that chamber.
Using the recent past as a guide, Madigan might be expected to just jam through a no-tax doomsday budget, forget a capital plan altogether and adjourn. That’s essentially what he did last year.
If Madigan did that again this year the result would likely be catastrophic. But perhaps a catastrophe might have to occur to wake everybody up to how serious this situation really is. Voters might be more open to a tax hike if they saw their state and local governments collapse.
There is another historical model, however: The “old” Mike Madigan. Back in 1983, the state’s economic situation seemed hopeless, the state deficit was out of control and Republican Gov. Jim Thompson was begging for tax hikes. Madigan eventually relented and passed a temporary income tax hike and a one cent sales tax increase.
Nobody can really take the chance that “Old Madigan” will return, even if his daughter Lisa Madigan is leading Pat Quinn in all the polls. A recent Public Policy Polling survey of likely Democratic primary voters had Attorney General Madigan leading Gov. Quinn 45-29. A March poll of just Chicago Democrats had Madigan ahead of Quinn by a similar margin.
So, in a desperate bid to stop the unthinkable, a large group of unions and construction industry groups have plunked down a million dollars to run a TV ad during the month of May. The ad, which will air all over the state, lays out the case for a capital plan and urges people to call their legislators.
They wouldn’t bother spending that kind of money if they thought the capital plan was a sure thing and had complete confidence in Madigan. And, yes, it is more than a little ironic that unions have to help ante up a million dollars in advertising to pressure a Democratic legislative leader to enact a major public works bill during the worst economic contraction since the 1930s. To say that Madigan has too much power would be the greatest understatement of the century.
The ad itself isn’t exactly stunning, but that’s probably not the point. Showing Madigan, Cross and everyone else that they’re willing to spend serious cash to back up their words is what will get the attention. Money always talks.
* The winner is . . .: Gov. Pat Quinn and the Illinois General Assembly for not appropriating any state funds to help run the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
* Give Metra credit - they’re adapting : “It’s amazing how the system seems to operate like it’s the 1930s,” Bond told the Chicago Sun-Times at the time. The agency doesn’t accept credit cards even for monthly passes, which can cost more than $200.
Fitch Ratings on Friday revised its outlook on the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority’s credit to negative as it prepares to enter the market as soon as next week with a $500 million financing that - based on current market conditions - could include $400 million of Build America Bonds.
* Steve Stone: Cubs fans will pay high price for Wrigley renovation, big salaries…
Nobody’s talking about the $400-500 million it will cost to renovate Wrigley Field. If they have to play somewhere else, you’re probably talking about losing $100 million per year. The fans who come to Wrigley Field every day might not want to come to U.S. Cellular or go to Milwaukee. You could do the renovation in sections so you can continue to play in the ballpark. But realistically if you want to do it right, you need to shut it down.
So now you have a team that you bought for $850 million, and throw in the renovation, and you have $1.4 billion in the deal. Tell me how you’re going to get that back without the fans paying a tremendous part of that?
In 2007, the General Assembly established the Illinois Power Agency to procure power on behalf of Illinois utilities. For 2009, ComEd is purchasing electricity for its customers through this new process, which is overseen by the ICC.
The resulting electricity prices and winning bidders were made public Friday by the ICC.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan hailed the decrease and the process that led to it. “The 2009 procurement prices demonstrate conclusively that the new procurement process works as intended,” she said in a statement Friday. “The Illinois Power Agency, the new agency that administered the procurement process for the first time this year, is making a difference and that is an economically positive difference for Illinois families.”
The current procurement process originally was proposed by Madigan and adopted in 2007 as part of a settlement of numerous lawsuits filed by Madigan attacking the legality of the reverse auction and raising allegations of market manipulation, a release from her office said. The settlement also included $1 billion in rate relief for ComEd and Ameren customers.
“The decision to replace ComEd’s reverse auction looks even better when we look at what’s happening in other states that still use a reverse auction – where recent prices have been as much as three-times higher than the prices produced this spring by the new Illinois procurement process,” Madigan said.
Like hundreds of Crestwood residents, former residents and those who worked there, Mix is concerned water consumption triggered the cancer she now is battling. She suffers from mycosis fungoides, also known as Alibert-Bazin syndrome. It’s a rare form of lymphoma that affects the skin.
As Mark Kleiman of UCLA has noted, 46,000 Americans die every year on the highways. In contrast, 17,000 die from criminal violence. Granted, emergency medicine has had a big impact on the number of people who die from criminal violence, but the same can be said of highway deaths.
In some sense, the decision to avoid crime by fleeing cities in favor of auto-dependent suburbs is irrational: The move actually increases your chances of dying prematurely. That crude calculation ignores the angst and anxiety that my father had in mind when he told his white lie. No one wants to live in fear. And for any number of reasons, the fear of an impersonal auto collision can’t match the fear of the indignity of being mugged, or for that matter being stabbed or shot dead. The millions of middle -class Americans who fled inner cities were fleeing this psychic turmoil, and it’s hard not to sympathize with them. This fear also led to an explosion in the ownership of personal firearms and a climate of political and cultural polarization that is still with us.
But what if crime isn’t a natural disaster? What if it is a problem that we’ve made worse through wrongheaded policies?
That’s why we applaud the creative maneuvers by Homewood Mayor Rich Hofeld to save a dealership in his town, Steve Peters Chevrolet. We think it could serve as a model for other towns and proactive mayors, so pay attention:
Hofeld worked with the Cook County Board to establish new rules for property tax breaks for certain businesses.
U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, a freshman Democrat whose 14th District would be bisected by the controversial outer-belt, is trying to pull the plug on what would be the Chicago region’s latest major highway. Instead, he wants to spend the money on other road projects but will need congressional approval to do so.
* U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock is GOP’s young, rising star
One particularly fascinating element of the infodemic phenomenon is that the spread of rumors or news throughout society looks exactly like the spread of diseases; they are communicated in the same ways and patterns. (You’ll note that in both the SARS case and the current instance, it was the infection of Americans that kicked mainstream media into gear and elevated the story into a code-one frenzy.)
[Space/time continuum altered and comments opened.]
* I agree with almost every single word in this Collin Levy column. Go read the whole thing…
To be sure, Illinois, which has no limits on campaign contributions, is a sort of wild frontier for reformers who sense an opportunity to crank down on the power of cash, and to test-run all the favorite bans and regulatory hoops they’d like to impose. They’re probably hoping the public will forget Mr. Blagojevich was their champion last time around. After having voted for McCain-Feingold as a member of Congress, he pressed for a state version of the law in 2005, when he was governor, calling it “the right thing to do.” And why not? Even if the law had passed (it didn’t), it would have cost him little. Political money that might have gone to the governor’s coffers would instead have been channeled into shadier environs, just as it has on the federal level. […]
Contribution caps don’t help level the playing field or weaken corrupt pols, either. According to a Chicago Tribune analysis this month of tens of thousands of campaign contributions over the past decade, if the state donation caps had been in place in the 2006 election, Mr. Blagojevich still would have outraised Republican Judy Baar Topinka by 3-1.
For campaign finance reformers, the problem is always “too much” money. But as Illinois shows, the problem isn’t the money, it’s the politicians. Three other states — Utah, Oregon and Virginia — have no contribution limits. Yet they haven’t a shadow of the political scandals Illinois has spawned. According to research by the Center for Competitive Politics, the three states that the Justice Department ranks as having the lowest rates of public corruption — Iowa, Oregon and Nebraska — do not have stringent campaign finance restrictions.
In 2007, the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice issued a report calling Illinois’s relatively unregulated campaign system “broken and badly in need of reform.” But it also called Minnesota, which has contribution limits and public financing, “broken and badly in need of reform.” Ditto Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. As former Federal Election Commission chairman Brad Smith points out, “broken and badly in need of reform” turns out to be the universal condition of campaign systems, which reformers never run out of new proposals to fix.
In Illinois, redistricting is done by the legislators. Though guided by rules that call for compact and contiguous districts with roughly equal population that fairly represent minority groups, politics still dominate. If legislators and a commission of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on a map — which almost always happens — a bizarre tie-breaker scheme kicks in. Two names, one Democrat and one Republican, go into a hat. The winner tips the voting power in his party’s favor, giving that party final say on redistricting.
Iowa lives on another planet. There, a nonpartisan group, with help from a computer software program, creates the maps. The legislature then votes to accept or reject. Out of that process, Iowa created a map in which 64 incumbents were thrown into districts to face other sitting incumbents, said James Nowlan, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois.
We believe the Iowa model can work in Illinois, despite considerable differences in population and geography from Iowa, and we urge the Illinois General Assembly to seriously consider it.
