* Dear Joe, pick a lane…

Ask DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett who’s the Republican with the best chance of capturing the governor’s job in 2010, and he’ll say, “I am.” Talk to him some more and you get the distinct impression he’s more interested in running for state attorney general.

“I have the ideas and leadership qualities to take the state in a new direction,” he said of his potential as a gubernatorial candidate in a recent interview. A few moments later as he discussed his political options, he switched focus: “Attorney general is an office that’s tailor-made for me.” […]

“Part of me says I’d like the rematch [with Madigan]; however, I’d like to continue my career as a prosecutor as attorney general.”

A few minutes later he added, “I’d like to end my career as an appellate judge or Supreme Court justice.”

Words fail me.

* AG Lisa Madigan talks about an under-appreciated aspect of her office which probably won’t get a lot of coverage in the 2010 contest…

“When you become attorney general, you don’t realize how much of the work is involved in the provision of healthcare to people,” said Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who has pursued an array of investigations, lawsuits and legislation in that arena. […]

During Madigan’s first term, Illinois hospitals had a tense relationship with the attorney general, who shamed many of them with a critical report on their contributions toward indigent care and pursued legislation that would have compelled every hospital to dedicate a sum equal to at least 8% of operating costs toward narrowly defined charity care.

“How has it been to work with an attorney general who is an activist on this issue? It’s been on the one hand very challenging at times,” said Howard Peters, the Illinois Hospital Association’s senior vice president for government affairs. Even in that year, however, Illinois hospitals fended off what they viewed as a draconian charity-care requirement while working with Madigan toward consensus on a second bill regulating hospital billing and collection policies, which became law. “Because the attorney general and her staff were open to interaction, dialogue and debate, even when we had serious disagreement, it resulted in being able to develop good policy,” Peters said.

* Potential trouble for Burris in 2010?…

Six funeral homes are suing the Illinois Funeral Directors Association, accusing it of coordinating a Ponzi scheme built on life insurance policies.

In the legal action, akin to a shareholders’ suit in the corporate world, the funeral homes say they’re on the hook for potentially tens of millions of dollars in funeral costs because a pre-need funeral trust fund administered by IFDA Services, a for-profit arm of the non-profit IFDA, has been bleeding money. The fund is supposed to pay for funerals for an estimated 49,000 people in Illinois who took out pre-need policies.

The IFDA should never have been in the trust business in the first place, the state comptroller’s office has ruled. The IFDA trust got its start thanks to a license issued in 1980 by then-state Comptroller Roland Burris, who went on to become an IFDA lobbyist and was ultimately appointed to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.

Larry thinks so and promises more.

* Related…

* States Urge Large-Scale Loan Mortgage Modifications - Attorneys General call on Feds to prevent foreclosures

* AT&T’s U-verse service gives short shrift to public-access programming - Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan joins investigation of its practices

* AG press rlease on LaSalle County Illegal Gambling

* The state comptroller’s office and funeral home directors insist that no one who has purchased a pre-need contract guaranteeing payment of their funeral expenses is at risk.

* Student credit card crackdown: A new legislative push in Illinois may be making college campuses less welcoming to credit card companies. Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias has proposed legislation to restrict the promotion of student credit cards on colleges and universities in the state.

* $75 million returned in ’08