Chalk it up to good intentions, bad policy. Democrats in Springfield are pushing legislation that would require public school districts to pay teachers a minimum salary of $40,000. Sounds righteous , right?
The idea is part of a broader agenda to address a teacher shortage mostly outside Chicago in rural districts that struggle to fill openings and retain staff. It’s a serious problem that impacts learning. Kids endure rotations of teachers and substitutes, or miss out altogether on hard-to-staff subject areas such as physics and foreign languages. We get it. […]
There are ways to attract quality teachers that don’t involve a state-mandated starting salary. How about lifting nonmonetary barriers that make the profession unattractive? Teachers certified in other states who move to Illinois often deal with more than a year of Illinois State Board of Education roadblocks and paperwork.
Professionals with bachelor’s degrees who decide to teach midcareer face more than a year of required classes, testing and job shadowing.
Have only an associate’s degree but want to teach? Sorry. Here’s your stack of prerequisites.
On one hand, policymakers, who don’t understand that the education of students is much more than a test score, tell teachers, “Because we want the best for our kids, we’re going to test our students to prove that they’re learning what they’re supposed to be learning and then we want to evaluate teachers based on those tests.”
Yet, at the same time, educators nationwide are told by non-educators: “We should lower the standards for the people to whom we entrust our children’s education and upon whom we rely to fill their heads with knowledge and stimulate a love of learning.”
See the contradiction? The goal is “better teaching” and “better results,” yet the proposal is to accomplish those goals by lowering the bar for classroom teachers. This is illogical.
It’s painful to state something so obvious: Not everyone can teach. Acquiring a bachelor’s degree and spending a few years in another profession doesn’t mean you have the skills it takes to manage a classroom of 25 students. You don’t walk in, untrained, and understand all of the different ways those students learn and how to assess whether they’ve actually learned what you’ve taught them.
Those skills are not typically acquired in the two years it takes to earn an associate degree.
Teaching is a profession. To address the teacher shortage, instead of “easing” teacher licensure requirements, let’s show our teachers their work is valued. Acknowledge that teaching is a profession.
* The Question: Should the state establish a minimum wage for public school teachers? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
The death of Pamela Knight, an Illinois Department of Child and Family Services caseworker who was attacked and beaten while attempting to take a child into protective custody, was a high-profile example of what many say is a reality: Caseworkers’ jobs can put them in dangerous situations.
The Illinois General Assembly was quick to unanimously pass a resolution praising Knight and expressing condolences to her family and friends.
But bills that would give DCFS case workers like Knight the same protected status as police officers and firefighters harmed while performing official duties have stalled in a House committee. And though a similar Senate bill has shown new signs of life, it, too, faces a difficult climb to passage. […]
The bill was introduced in January but lingered for months in a Senate subcommittee, often a place where legislation goes to die. But last week, the bill was revived and cleared committee with no opposition.
Even if it clears the Senate, there’s still a problem with the House. So, we’ll see.
* Legionnaires’ outbreaks prompt bills to mandate faster notifications: Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, D-Aurora, said that testimony prompted her to sponsor one of these notification bills, House Bill 4278, criticizing the method used by the facility which she described as was “simply word of mouth.”
* Illinois Senate views marijuana as opioid alternative: The Senate voted 44-6 Thursday to allow doctors to prescribe medical marijuana as an alternative to opioids . Those addicted to opioids would also be eligible to apply for a medical card to use marijuana.
* Letter: Illinois lawmakers can stop TrumpCare from harming Illinoisans with preexisting conditions
* Editorial: Illinois legislators snub voters on fair maps again: Like Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who is seeking re-election, Pritzker has vowed to veto any gerrymandered maps if he wins. But will he? It is up to all of us to require not only that he keep that pledge, but even prior to the election, he show real leadership in the push for a fair map referendum. He did not provide that leadership this spring.
* Two legislative research staffs to merge: The Legislative Research Unit, which does research for the General Assembly and puts out a range of publications, is apparently going to merge into another group that serves lawmakers: the Commission on Government Forecasting & Accountability. LRU and COGFA are among legislative support services controlled by the General Assembly. “I think all the leaders are for it,” said STEVE BROWN, spokesman for House Speaker MICHAEL MADIGAN, D-Chicago, of combining the two services. “From time to time, you review operations, and there’s a decision you can consolidate these entities and maintain these services.”
* Illinois counties declare ’sanctuary’ status for gun owners: At least five counties recently passed resolutions declaring themselves sanctuary counties for gun owners — a reference to so-called sanctuary cities such as Chicago that don’t cooperate with aspects of federal immigration enforcement.
Bruce Rauner doesn’t want to “dwell on the past” after 13 Veterans and spouses died on his watch and 11 families are suing the state for negligence after Rauner failed to end the Legionnaires’ crisis and keep our Veterans safe.
When asked if he thought an administration email trying to blame his fatal mismanagement on combat Veteran and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth was “proper,” Rauner responded, “I don’t think we should dwell on the past.”
“Bruce Rauner let 13 Veterans and spouses die on his watch and then his administration tried to pin it on our combat Veteran U.S. Senator, but Rauner doesn’t want to ‘dwell on the past,’” said Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh. “Years of fatal mismanagement and blatant cover ups deserve our full attention, and to suggest otherwise is an insult to the wellbeing of our nation’s heroes.”
* This is how the Senger campaign responded last week, with emphasis added by me…
The simple, bipartisan fact is that for years, including the past Blagojevich and Quinn administrations, our veterans homes suffered from chronic underfunding that impacted the care our veterans received along with the critical maintenance and modernization of the state’s veterans facilities.
There is no doubt that the lack of proper funding for veterans over the last decade has exacerbated the problems we currently face. If we choose to ignore the past, systemic failures to fund our veteran’s programs, then we are destined to continue to face these challenges in the future and that was the point of my comment–we need to understand how and when these problems started in order to find long-term solutions.
Not to mention that the governor almost constantly talks about the disastrous years before he was elected. That’s almost his entire schtick.
So, does “the past” actually start in December of 2014?
Speaker of the House Mike Madigan “I don’t go to Springfield for the people that live off of investment returns, I go for the people that work everyday to live.” pic.twitter.com/t4dIQQaWtl
* Amanda Kass looks at the bill backlog. You can skim this first part if you are already well-versed in the budget impasse…
I estimated that the state’s General Fund spending was $32.8 billion in FY2016*, which was only about 7% less than the last “normal” year, FY2015. In other words, during the two-year impasse, most of the state’s spending was still legally authorized for a variety of reasons.
Even though most state spending was legally authorized in FY2016 and FY2017, the state didn’t actually have enough revenue to pay all its bills, so a backlog built up—leaving a growing number of vendors with state contracts in the lurch. Imagine trying to keep your business afloat while waiting years to receive payment for services already rendered. Instead of just holding onto the bills, some of these vendors turned to third-parties to offload this debt. Vendors are able to do this because of the Vendor Payment Program (VPP), which then Governor Pat Quinn created in 2011.** Under the VPP, a vendor sells its debt to another entity (known as a “Qualified Purchaser”), and this provides the vendor the cash it needs to keep operating. The state incurs a penalty charge when it pays bills late, and the interest rate is 9% or 12% depending on the underlying service. The Qualified Purchaser gets the interest penalty fees when the underlying bill is eventually paid by the state.
Importantly though, the VPP is only for bills that are for legally authorized spending, and the program was suspended in 2015 during the budget impasse. In 2016, Governor Bruce Rauner created the Vendor Support Initiative (VSI), which is just like the VPP except it’s for bills for which “no appropriation or other legal authority currently exists to pay the invoice.” This brings me to my first head scratcher: how was the Governor able to unilaterally create this program? Moreover, how were bills allowed to stack up if there was no legal authority to spend money on those goods and services? Remember, during the impasse most state spending was legally authorized, and several court cases occurred specifically to hash out whether spending on specific aspects of the state government (for items like state employee payroll) could continue.
That first question is a very good one. How could the governor unilaterally create this new Vendor Support Initiative, which deleted the previous requirement for an actual appropriation? The state constitution is clear that no expenditures can be made without an appropriation. Also, why were some vendors allowed into VSI and others weren’t? I suspect that some were simply more “important” to the governor than others (Dept. of Corrections vendors vs. human service providers).
The answer to the second question about how the bills were allowed to stack up is fairly straight-forward: During the long impasse, the Rauner administration convinced some crucial vendors (particularly Department of Corrections and human service providers) that they’d eventually get paid. So, those vendors kept providing their goods and services - or new vendors were brought in if somebody dropped out. And some of those same vendors (Corrections) were enticed to stick around by unilaterally deeming them qualified for late payment interest benefits in Rauner’s new Vendor Support Initiative, which means they could also sell their debts to Qualified Purchasers without a formal appropriatioin.
This brings me to my final set of questions: Which vendors have sold off their bills, and how many bills have Qualified Purchasers bought? This should be relatively straightforward to figure out because Qualified Purchasers are required to submit monthly reports detailing this information. Nearly a year ago I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Central Management Services (CMS) asking for those reports from April 2011 through May 2017 for all Qualified Purchasers (QP). What I got back seemed like incomplete records and didn’t align with previous reporting done by Dave McKinney. For example, the records I received for Payplant (a QP) showed it hadn’t bought any bills, while McKinney reported that Payplant purchased $475,330 worth of bills between November 2015 and August 2016. I also didn’t receive any reports for Illinois Financing Partners (another QP), which Pierog reports has purchased $1 billion worth of receivables since 2015. I sent several follow-up emails to CMS and even asked the Public Access Counselor (which is part of the Attorney General’s office) to review CMS’s response, but never heard back from either entity.
Sounds like Comptroller Mendoza needs to look at this issue as part of her budgetary transparency initiatives.
…Adding… From Rep. Stephanie Kifowit (D-Oswego)…
Hi Rich, I just read your post on the VSI program. I have actually been critical Of the new program under the Rauner administration since it was changed from VPP and effectively removed the Comptroller from the equation. As Vice Chair of General Services I have been on the record, and directly asked questions to the qualified purchasers of the legitimacy of the new program. My concerns were routinely rebuffed by CMS. I’m glad this situation is finally being brought to light.
Republican Governor Bruce Rauner tells WGIL that a progressive tax plan is a job killer, and would do more harm to the state than good.
“Every state that has gone to a graduated income tax – or what they call a progressive income tax… I call it a destructive income tax – every state that’s done it, the middle class families that make $40,000, $45,000 $50,000 have seen their taxes raised.” Rauner said. “Nobody is getting rich on that. That’s a middle class family income they end up paying a lot higher income taxes too.” […]
Rauner says that Illinois should follow Iowa and Wisconsin’s example and cut their income taxes. […]
Rauner says that in Minnesota, which has a progressive tax plan, a single taxpayer making around $25,000 pays 7% income tax. He called that tax rate “outrageous”.
Yes, that’s the published tax rate (the tax rate actually applies to income above $25,891, but it’s kinda close enough, although the important thing to remember is that only income earned above that rate is taxed at a higher rate, which the governor really messes up here).
But if you use a tax payment calculator, you’ll see that a single Minnesotan making $25,000 a year will owe just $797.15 in state income taxes. That’s an effective tax rate of 3.2 percent. (At 26,000, the effective rate is 3.27 percent.)
How can they afford to do that? By making higher income earners pay more.
The CTBA should send the governor a dozen roses.
*** UPDATE *** Let’s go back to the governor’s interview with WGIL…
“Kentucky, which has been stealing jobs from Southern Illinois for a while now, they just got rid of their graduated income tax and went to a flat tax at a lower rate. So they can grow more jobs, higher family income.”
He didn’t mention an important point…
The Kentucky tax reform plan Bruce Rauner praised today? It also expands the sales tax to new services like dry cleaning, fitness centers, labor for auto repairs, pet grooming, and BOWLING
According to Tribune Editor Bruce Dold, supervisors and managers, along with non-newsroom employees, will be excluded from the new negotiating units.
“As we move ahead, we need to be united as one organization with an important purpose – to help the company transform and thrive as a business, and to serve our readers world-class journalism,” he said.
In late April, Tribune management opted not to recognize the union, which was approved by reporters by a massive margin. They did continue to review the situation however, and ultimately decided to recognize the union’s right to negotiate on behalf of its members.
“People need to realize that what we do is important,” reporter Mary Wisniewski said after the initial decision in April. “We’re doing good, important professional work, and we need real news and real investigations to support our Democracy.”
The union will not represent supervisors, managers and other non-newsroom employees, but there is some disagreement over whether certain editors and editorial board members should be included.
“We will engage in further conversations concerning whether certain job classifications will be included in the bargaining unit,” Dold said in his email.
* A text from a bemused Democrat…
Hahahaha. Bruce Dold and the Trib management always telling elected officials to stand up to unions. Did it take them one week or two to cave? Can’t wait for the edit board fairshare payments.
The staff made its demand on April 24th. The Tribune agreed to terms on May 6th.
* As we all learned in 2011, Chicago mayoral candidates must have established residency in the city for at least one year before the first round of voting. Next year’s first round in Chicago is February 26th. This year’s primary was March 20th. Now, on to the Tribune…
Ra Joy, the lieutenant governor candidate on Chris Kennedy’s unsuccessful Democratic ticket, said he will decide by the end of the week whether to join the large field running for mayor.
Joy said he wants to see a change from two-term Mayor Rahm Emanuel. […]
Joy also said he has been making the case that Kennedy, who voted from his home in suburban Kenilworth, “has been essentially keeping residence in the city of Chicago since January.”
Since Kennedy voted from his Kenilworth residence in March, convincing a judge that he’s really a Chicago resident is gonna be pretty darned tough.
Most residency decisions center on intent. And one way to prove intent is by voting from a particular address. For instance, this passage is from the dissenting appellate court decision that Rahm Emanuel lost in 2011…
At all relevant times, including the time he was in Washington, D.C., the candidate [Emanuel] continued to pay property taxes for the Hermitage house, continued to hold an Illinois driver’s license listing the Hermitage house as his address, continued to list the Hermitage house address on his personal checks, and continued to vote with the Hermitage house as his registered voting address. [Emphasis added.]
As you know, the Supreme Court eventually put Emanuel back on the ballot, precisely for stuff like that.
What: Gov. Rauner, DHFS Director Felicia Norwood, legislators and stakeholders announce a major new statewide behavioral health initiative
Where: A Safe Haven, 2750 W. Roosevelt Road, Chicago
Date: Monday, May 7, 2018
Time: 10:00 a.m.
This is Rauner’s first media availability since last Tuesday.
* Last week, Gov. Rauner and several other Republicans formally endorsed Tim Schneider’s reelection as state GOP chairman. Yesterday, Rauner primary opponent and his chief GOP critic endorsed Schneider’s opponent. Press release…
Today, State Representative and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) joined State Representative David McSweeney (R-Barrington Hills) in announcing their endorsement of Committeeman Mark Shaw for Chairman of the Illinois Republican Party over incumbent ILGOP Chairman Tim Schneider.
“Mark Shaw has a record as a commonsense conservative who is unafraid to stand up for our party platform and take on the political ruling class in Illinois,” said Ives. “He will work with all members of our party to win races so we can pull this state back from the brink of financial disaster. The current chair has demonstrated neither the willingness or ability to advance our party in such a direction.”
“Simply put, Chairman Schneider has failed as our state party chairman. Under his leadership dozens of Democrats went unchallenged in state legislative seats, he alienated the conservative ILGOP base in the gubernatorial race by choosing sides in a primary, and under Schneider’s leadership a man who proudly associates with the Nazi party is on the ballot as a Republican. His tenure has been an unmitigated disgrace,” Ives continued.
After the disastrous 2017 legislative year, during which 15 legislative Republicans joined Democrats to enact the largest permanent tax increase in the history of the state, McSweeney said, “if we cannot agree on no new taxes as Republicans, then we cannot agree on anything. Tim Schneider failed to unite our party against a massive tax increase.”
McSweeney went on to say, “Mark Shaw is a solid conservative who will work to expand the Republican Party. Tim Schneider, Chairman of the Illinois Rauner Party, is an inept insider who has badly damaged the party of Lincoln and Reagan.”
Both legislators have served in the Illinois General Assembly since 2013 and have led on issues of tax cuts, government accountability and spending reform.
Ives plans to attend the ILGOP State Central Committee meeting on May 19th in Springfield where the election for state party chairman is scheduled to take place.
…Adding… DGA…
Governor Bruce Rauner’s struggling reelection campaign got more bad news this weekend as state Representative Jeanne Ives announced she would back the effort to take down Rauner’s handpicked party chairman. The Illinois GOP Party Chairman election has turned into an ugly affair and threatens to enflame the party’s open wounds.
Rauner recently told a radio station he was “unifying all Republicans,” but the truth is he’s done next-to-nothing to bring disgruntled Republican voters back into the fold. He lied about his interactions with Ives, failed to hold any “unifying” event, and now is using the same attack that infuriated Ives’ supporters on his new Republican opponent, state Senator Sam McCann.
“The last thing Rauner needs right now is another reminder that nearly half the Republican Party wanted to dump him,” said DGA Illinois Communications Director Sam Salustro. “Voters of all parties sent Rauner a powerful message that they were sick and tired of his failed leadership — and it’s clear he still hasn’t learned his lesson.”
* The Belleville News-Democrat lauded the comptroller for her accomplishes in a recent editorial, but also called her a “political lapdog”…
Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza pushes hard to get Illinois leaders to face fiscal reality, but it’s too bad that so much of what she says starts with “blame Rauner.” […]
Here’s Mendoza’s problem: Everything gets couched in those “blame Rauner” terms. That debt period is the governor’s tenure in Springfield. The hidden governor’s employee bill and interest accounting comes as Mendoza pushes J.B. Pritzker to replace Rauner.
Illinois’ fiscal meltdown should be blamed on more than the last guy to arrive at the blast furnace. Analysts gave us a near junk bond rating because Illinois failed to change spending patterns or address the $130 billion pension deficit as others did after the recession hit.
So “hurrah” for Mendoza the fiscal watchdog. “Boo” for Mendoza the political lapdog.
Plenty of blame and finger pointing is deserved by everyone in that capitol rotunda. Single-mindedly placing blame on the slightly experienced billionaire we’ve got does little to convince anyone that the new inexperienced billionaire would do any better.
I really wish you would pay closer attention to what I say during my frequent visits to your Editorial Board. At no time did I ever “blame Rauner” for the entirety of “Illinois fiscal meltdown” as you misrepresented in your editorial.
I have told you on multiple occasions that Rauner walked into a mess and deserved no blame for the $5 billion backlog of bills he inherited. What he does own is more than tripling that backlog by deficit-spending more than any other governor in state history.
I did not “blame Rauner” alone for the bad practice of hiding staffers on other agency payrolls to mask the size of his staff and budget. My exact words to you were: “It’s something that every single Governor as far back as we can tell has done. So it’s not unique to Governor Rauner … In all fairness, Governor Quinn was a chronic offender. It’s not okay if Quinn does it. It’s not okay if Blagojevich did it. It’s not okay if Ryan did it. And it’s still not okay that Bruce Rauner does it. But it’s not just a Bruce Rauner thing.” […]
You are upset with me for reporting that Governor Rauner ran up more late payment interest penalties in 2½ years than all the Republican and Democratic governors and legislatures did in the previous 18 years combined. I say if the shoe fits, Gov. Rauner can wear it.
You say the governor is the “last guy to arrive at the blast furnace” of the state’s fiscal meltdown. That may be, but he then shoveled more than $1 billion dollars into that furnace in late payment interest penalties. And that number continues to grow. I showed on my report the actual numbers of late payment interest penalties that each of his Republican and Democratic predecessors ran up. I admit there are no clean hands here.
Eastern Illinois University’s legislative liaison Katie Anselment had some strong words for legislators during an Illinois Senate Higher Education Committee hearing last week.
Anselment testified against a bill that would create a pilot program to allow a Downstate community college offer nursing bachelor’s degrees. The four-year universities view this legislation as a dangerous slippery slope toward turning community colleges into full-on competitors.
I’m not going to take a stand on the merits of this particular bill. There are good arguments pro and con. It is, after all, just a pilot program. The sponsor wants to address a very real nursing shortage, but the nurses’ union is strongly opposed, believing it won’t create any net new nurses and will instead just shift current students around.
Anyway, setting all that aside, Anselment began her testimony with a searing indictment of the current state of higher education in Illinois after the more than two-year budget impasse that caused universities to lose most of their state funding. Legislative liaisons are lobbyists, so they don’t usually go off on legislators in public, but this time was different.
Anselment said the state’s relationship with its public universities “has been a bit of a ‘Catch-22′ situation lately.” In other words, darned if they do, darned if they don’t.
“Hold the line on tuition, while we reduce your state funding,” universities are told by the state, she said.
“Focus on teaching, but pay more attention to marketing and technology,” Anselment said.
“Whittle down your programmatic offerings and don’t try to be all things to all people, but make sure your majors reflect today’s modern economy and are responsive to regional workforce needs,” she said.
“Tell us in excruciating detail just how bad of a position we’ve left you in thanks to the budget impasse, but stop the outmigration and convince more Illinois families to choose Illinois public universities.”
And then, later in her testimony, Anselment had a mic-drop moment: “At a time when public universities are being admonished to up our enrollments despite declining numbers of high school graduates, to identify and implement more efficiencies in our operations, to focus on what we do best and to consider eliminating duplicative offerings, this bill sets the stage for opening up 48 new taxpayer-funded competitors in a State that has recently proven unable to reliably support the nine universities it already has.”
Whew.
That’s pretty much everything in a nutshell right there.
Illinois used to have an unwritten budget rule that higher education received one dollar for every two dollars received by K-12.
But Gov. Rod Blagojevich strongly believed that universities were too top heavy with administration. His solutions of reduced state funding and a tuition freeze kick-started the decline of higher education in this state. That decline continued under Gov. Pat Quinn and, as with just about everything else, became infinitely worse under Gov. Bruce Rauner during the long impasse.
One of Gov. Rauner’s current big ideas is to force universities to downsize by becoming more specialized. That may be fine, I suppose, for graduate and post-graduate levels.
But how many high school kids truly know what they want to major in when they apply for college? The first year or two of college are supposed to be an exploration of possibilities. Gov. Rauner graduated from Dartmouth, which doesn’t allow students to declare a major until their sophomore year.
By forcing universities to shed undergraduate degree programs, Rauner would likely narrow their ability to recruit students because their options could be too limited.
I don’t intend to say here that public universities are completely blameless. They’ve made way more than their share of mistakes over the years. They can and should do a whole lot better. And some under-utilized degree programs could be dumped without much disruption.
Instead of trying to create and sustain higher education jewels throughout Illinois, the state government has allowed too many universities to slowly deteriorate.
Solving most of their problems will take money, which the state currently does not have. And it will also take ingenuity, but not the kind that would actually threaten their very existence.
We’ve had so much drama and turbulence since Blagojevich. One day, hopefully soon, this state’s leaders will start building instead of childishly blowing stuff up. Last year’s K-12 funding reform was a decent start. Higher education ought to be next.
