He is and continues to be a guy who cares about people and cares about service. No friendlier guy you’ll ever meet.
Honorable mention to US Sen. Mark Kirk for coming back from a horrible stroke and enduring a very tough campaign.
* The 2016 Golden Horsehoe Award for Best Illinois Congresscritter goes to Mike Bost…
(W)hat it boils down to is Mike works harder than anyone for his Southern Illinois District, when others wont even answer calls, which is why he had widespread bipartisan support to win reelection.
Honorable mention to Rodney Davis for all the same reasons.
* The 2016 Golden Horsehoe Award for Best State Agency Director goes to Tim Nuding at GOMB…
Nuding for moving all that money around to keep some of this place from capsizing. Tough vote to make because on balance they’re not doing a good job but he deserves some praise.
I have nothing but respect for that man.
Honorable mention to Greg Bedalov at the Tollway.
* On to today’s categories…
* Best In-House Lobbyist
* Best Legislative Liaison
I know it’s late in the day (I just plum forgot about it), so do your best to nominate in both categories and please make sure to explain your votes. Thanks!
* From Andrea Durbin at the Illinois Collaboration on Youth…
Hi Rich,
Thought you would be interested to see the brief we filed with the Illinois Appellate Court on the Pay Now Illinois case. As you know, we are fast approaching the end of the calendar year, and with it the expiration of the stopgap spending bill. The expiration of the stopgap, and lack of any state budget, means that providers face tremendous uncertainty about when they will be paid for the work that they do and how they will manage to keep critical services flowing to keep individuals, families, and communities safe and healthy.
The emergency basis for this direct appeal is the breakdown of constitutional government in the State of Illinois. This Court is well aware of the budget impasse between the General Assembly and Governor—now well over a year, and possibly to continue into 2017. A patchwork of court orders has kept up payment to some creditors of the State and not others. Some of the court orders require payment of pass-through federal funds, including Medicaid payments, which do not require consented-to appropriations. But there is one enormous exception. Without any consented-to appropriation, and by order of the Appellate Court, every single State employee, including many who work for the judicial branch, is receiving his or her salary as due on the same regular periodic basis… To date, notwithstanding Article VIII, Section 2(b) of the Illinois Constitution and by a court order that has been left undisturbed for eighteen months, the Comptroller has paid out over $4 billion to state employees without any consented to appropriation by the General Assembly… Significantly, though the State initially sought and was denied direct appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, R. C2782, the State has filed no further appeal or motion since the Appellate Court’s decision to dissolve the order and has been content to leave this temporary restraining order in place by agreement and without pressing for a ruling on the merits.
Meanwhile, in the instant case, the defendants have vigorously opposed a similar action seeking a much smaller payment—precisely for lack of a consented-to appropriation. Furthermore, the Circuit Court inexplicably has failed to provide the same judicial treatment—and since there is no opinion, this Court can only guess the rationale for such a disparity. There is no “classification” that can justify this unequal treatment— and no reason why the Illinois courts should give priority to one kind of payment without a consented-to appropriation while denying another. It is especially unconscionable to inflict such an injury on those who serve the neediest citizens of the State. In AFSCME, the Appellate Court in the Fifth District justified upholding what has become a massive billion-dollar expenditure to State employees because of only a tentative and preliminary assessment that there was a valid legal claim of unlawful impairment of the obligation of contracts. Accordingly, if this Court finds that there is no legal claim of impairment in this case—a ruling on the merits—then it follows that the order of the Court in St. Clair County now paying the state employees—which is based only on a tentative or preliminary assessment of the same legal claim—has to be dissolved immediately as well. Furthermore, under state law, there should be full restitution of $4 billion for wrongful issuance of a preliminary injunction.
Plaintiffs recognize that the Governor and General Assembly have legitimate differences about the budget—or the Governor’s purported reform agenda as a condition for even having a budget. Plaintiffs have no position as to the merits of this political dispute. However, the Governor has in fact entered these contacts and continues to accept services without payment. He has chosen not to cancel or revoke the contracts, as he has power to do under provisions like Section 4.1 quoted in the Statement of Facts. The Governor could have used his line item veto authority to approve those parts of the budget bills—enacted in June 2015 and again in June 2016—that funded the contracts that he and the other defendants continue to enter and enforce. The defendants are always free to cancel the contracts prospectively: what they may not do, or what arises to an abuse of the powers of their offices, is to enter and continue the contracts without paying for them. Accordingly, under the well established “officer exception” to sovereign immunity, Illinois courts can issue prospective injunctive relief to specifically perform the contracts and become current in payments. Or put another way, the court has full equitable authority to bar defendants from both affirming and disaffirming the contracts all at once. Or to put it colloquially, defendants may not have their cake and eat it too.
State police said the headcount in its division of operations, the primary division responsible for traffic enforcement, has dropped from 1,849 in 2009 to 1,462 today because of retirements and attrition.
“No layoffs have occurred,” the ISP said in a statement. “The ISP is working within the budgetary environment by continuously exploring efficiencies, redistributing resources and staffing to meet public safety needs, particularly in high fatality zones.” […]
According to numbers provided to GateHouse Media Illinois, the number of traffic fatalities statewide has risen from 924 in 2014 to 998 in 2015 to 1,029 for this year through Friday.
While that number is up the past two years, it is still significantly lower than 15 years ago. In 2001, there were 1,414 fatalities, and in the 1970s, the number of fatal crashes each year was in the 2,000 range.
The ISP says the increasing the speed limit to 70 mph didn’t have a significant impact. The law took effect in January of 2014, but deaths were already on the rise. From a January 1, 2014 story…
As of New Year’s Eve [2013], there were 973 crash fatalities in 2013 compared with 956 fatalities in 2012, a nearly 2 percent increase. That uptick adds to a 4 percent rise last year, when the death toll of 956 compared with 918 in 2011.
But deaths on Illinois roadways are still much lower than they have been historically, with 2013 the fifth consecutive year that fatalities were below 1,000, a dramatic low compared with the past nine decades.
Texting, low gas prices, etc. are likely factors. But a 20 percent drop in patrolling officers over 7 years can’t be ignored. Also, check out the reduction in tickets issued…
* Ken Griffin briefly attended a Chicago ceremony today with Mayor Emanuel to honor the state’s wealthiest man for contributing $12 million to create two separate bike and pedestrian paths on the city’s lakefront…
But coaxed back to the microphone to explain his ongoing support for two men who, on the surface, at least, are political foes, Griffin said he saw no contradiction between backing Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrat Emanuel.
“I’m a proud supporter of the governor and I’m a proud supporter of our mayor — two great men,” he said. “They don’t always agree, but we need great leaders to get through the problems that we face as a state.” […]
“I’d hope that these two great men would find common ground to keep Chicago at the forefront of our country and to meet the needs of our citizens,” he said before bolting again, this time for good. […]
“Ken and I don’t agree about a lot of things on policy,” [Mayor Emanuel said]. “But we do agree that public service is important, leadership is important, that Chicago is the crown jewel of the state of Illinois, and what we are doing today is investing in the city of Chicago so people can enjoy it.”
“The Office of the State Comptroller’s website shows that today it has more than $404 million to pay down the state’s bills. Despite having that revenue available, Comptroller Mendoza is refusing to process a $78,000 water bill for the Western Correctional Center. Because of her inaction, the facility is threatened with losing access to clean water and sewage service, creating a potential health and safety crisis for the state’s western region. Comptroller Mendoza has both the authority and cash-on-hand to pay this bill today and avoid what could become a catastrophe – she should do so immediately.”
I’m told that the Department of Corrections sent two invoices to the comptroller on December 2nd totaling $78,000. I’m not certain when IDOC received the bill, but if it’s reached the point where the prison is facing a water/sewer shutoff, you’d think the Rauner administration would’ve submitted that payment request a whole lot sooner. Unless, of course, there’s some politics involved.
There’s also a six-month bill payment backlog these days, so it could be a while before that bill is paid unless Mendoza personally intervenes and pays the invoice ahead of somebody else.
Anyway, this is precisely the sort of pressure Comptroller Mendoza can expect from here on out.
…Adding… A very good suggestion from RNUG in comments…
Two can play that game. Mendoza can flag any vouchers held at the agency more than 30 days (or 60 if you prefer) and, instead of putting them in line, shuffle them aside on a “low priory by the agency” pile to be paid whenever the State has extra money to catch up.
Getting the bills out of the agencies and into the Comptroller’s office in a timely fashion will draw the true picture of where the State stands.
* Meanwhile, from a press release…
A group of sixteen House Republican legislators are calling on State Comptroller Susana Mendoza to keep her promise of maintaining former Comptroller Leslie Munger’s policy of “No Budget No Pay’ in place with regard to payment of state lawmaker salaries. Twelve State Representatives and four State Senators sent a letter to Comptroller Mendoza today urging her to defend “No Budget No Pay” in the face of a lawsuit filed by six House Democrat legislators on December 2 suing the Comptroller for delaying payment of their salaries.
“Social service providers and many others who rely upon the state to meet its financial obligations are being adversely impacted, to put it mildly, by the General Assembly’s failure to pass a comprehensive budget,” Rep. McDermed said. “We are calling on the new Comptroller to stand with us in support of the individuals and families whose lives are being irreparably harmed due to the lack of stability in our budget.”
“We do not believe that payment of legislator salaries should be prioritized over the funding of health care and social service providers or others enduring the long delay in state payments,” Rep. Batinick added. “The principle of “No Budget No Pay” should be kept in place; and the General Assembly should come together immediately to pass a responsible state budget in order to prevent further erosion of our social safety net and damage to our economy.”
Attached is a copy of the letter that was sent to Comptroller Mendoza.
She’s already said that she’s against the lawsuit, but, again, this is just the sort of thing to expect for the next two years. The letter is here, by the way.
* Related…
* Editorial: Forget the furniture and do the job: Unless Mendoza can point to specific missing files, furniture or important equipment, it’s regrettable she complained, even if only in response to a reporter’s specific question. She was a good Chicago city clerk and could be a good state comptroller. She only diminishes her reputation for competence by complaining about nothing much.
* Greg Hinz reports on some JB Pritzker contributions to House Democrats…
According to campaign records highlighted by the Rauner folks, $119,400 came from Stateline, which is listed at the same West Loop address as the Pritzker Group, and J.B. Pritzker listed the firm on a 2006 statement of economic interest.
Another $82,000 came from TNDP. It, too, has the same West Loop address, and its registered agent is Jay Robert Pritzker.
Republicans say that’s proof Pritzker is a secret agent of sorts of the governor’s arch-enemy, House Speaker Mike Madigan.
“After raising money for Rod Blagojevich, it’s no surprise that Pritzker is trying to hide hundreds of thousands in donations meant to help Mike Madigan,” Illinois Republican Party spokesman Steven Yaffe said in a statement. “Pritzker is just proving he is a political insider who will always side with Madigan to protect the status quo.”
The Stateline contributions are here. The company had previously made one campaign contribution before this November’s contributions to HDems. And that was for just $200 back in 2008.
The contributions by TNDP are here. No contributions prior to November are on record.
“While other people are finishing their Christmas and Hanukkah shopping, Bruce Rauner is obsessed with politics and J.B.,” says spokesman Dave Lundy. “If he spent a fraction of his energy solving our budget issues, maybe 125,000 college students would be able to go back to school when the stopgap budget expires on Dec. 31. J.B. is a well-known contributor to Democratic candidates and has been for decades.”
Lundy, by the way, was also in the Sun-Times today. Click here for that one.
One Democrat, Rep. Scott Drury of Highwood, told WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight” program he would consider [running for House Speaker against Madigan]. Other names have been dropped, including that of Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook, though she told us discussions of her opposing Madigan were part of a “scheme” by Gov. Bruce Rauner to create a distraction.
No news there. The Tribune has been railing against Speaker Madigan almost since the moment he became Speaker.
* But they do manage to make a few good points. Here’s one…
To the calculus of replacing Madigan we would add: Democrats who support so-called progressive policies aren’t accomplishing those changes with Madigan in charge anyway: No increase in the minimum wage. No graduated income tax. No tax hike on the wealthy. No strengthening of the social safety net. No additional money for education. No changes to the state’s flawed school funding formula. They’re not getting done under Madigan because he doesn’t care about policy. It’s about power.
Not like they’d be for most of that anyway, but whatevs. They’re not wrong.
If every Republican in the General Assembly to be seated next month voted for a different candidate for speaker — yes, GOP members can vote for a Democrat for speaker — only nine Democrats would have to defect to reach the 60-vote threshold for toppling Madigan. Nine.
Let’s start with Democrats who are on record supporting term limits for elected officials and/or legislative leaders, including Madigan. Readers, if your lawmaker is on this list, you might want to give him or her a call. You can find all of their phone numbers at www.ilga.gov. They are: Chicago Democrats Sara Feigenholtz, Fran Hurley and Kelly Cassidy; Robyn Gabel of Evanston; Carol Sente of Vernon Hills; Sam Yingling of Grayslake; Michelle Mussman of Schaumburg; Marty Moylan of Des Plaines; and Kathleen Willis of Addison. Reps. Ann Williams of Chicago and Stephanie Kifowit of Oswego both said they’d be open to leadership term limits.
* Dan Proft and Pat Hughes have a radio program called “Illinois Rising,” which is sponsored by the Illinois Policy Institute. This is from the most recent edition…
PROFT: Here’s the Turnaround Agenda, it’s workers’ comp, it’s property tax caps, it’s pension reform. Those are bullet points. There hasn’t been a simply, succinctly articulated proposal to rally people around on any of these areas. So, it just becomes like an index card of five categories, and that’s not gonna inflame anybody’s passions, and it’s not going to persuade too many people because they don’t know exactly what you mean or what they’re gonna get if we did whatever you call workers’ comp reform or whatever you call a property tax cap, different than what Madigan and Cullerton, the Chicago Democrats, call those same things.
HUGHES: Yeah, and after 18 months, almost two years of it, even those sort of words that were meant to have some meaning, the meaning has been sucked out of them because they’ve been said so many times. It’s a laundry list of terms, so any value they had in the beginning they’ve lost in the entire process.
PROFT: Everybody in this state’s a fiscal conservative, everybody in this state supports property tax caps. We have the worst bond rating of any state in the nation in 25 years, not just in the present. And with respect to property tax caps, we pay the highest property taxes in the nation. So we’ve got a bunch of fiscal conservatives running around supporting property tax caps and we don’t have anything resembling either one of those things.
HUGHES: So the question is… why doesn’t he do it? We’re closer to this political stuff than most people are, we’ve seen the governor up close working publicly and privately. What is it about this circumstance that makes him resistant to what is an obvious, in our view… a smart, meaningful political plan?
PROFT: Pat, you posed a question about the risk, political risk Rauner needs to take to be a transformative governor. He needs to pose understandable and transformative ideas. He needs to take powerful stands, even though they are full of peril, because nothing is going to be given freely to Gov. Rauner by the Democrat power structure in this city and state. That is a known. So the unknown is why isn’t he doing some of the things we suggest he do. Even if you don’t want to pick the spot I say, I suggest you pick, then another spot to kind of get to the same place.
HUGHES: I know Bruce a little bit, I certainly know his history in business and he is not risk averse. You don’t get to be in his position by being risk averse… I think he’s getting advice from people who don’t want him to make the big mistake. Who don’t want him to take too big of a risk this far out, when they can bleed out circumstances, see how the country moves. Maybe Trump will be enormously popular, maybe circumstances will change on the ground. He knows he’s going to be resourced because he can spend $100 million of his own money, why take that risk?
…Adding… Just to clarify, on policy, Proft wants Rauner to take a much, much stronger stand against AFSCME and he wasn’t happy at all that Rauner signed the Exelon bailout bill.
Hughes then went on to question whether Rauner’s advisers were really tied enough to Illinois to want to make it a better place or just focused on Rauner’s reelection. Proft responded by saying Donald Trump “exposed” the consultant class. Trump, he said, didn’t need them, he won without them. Proft admitted that wasn’t easily replicable here, but then said…
What Rauner and his people lack is the sense of there is a revolt that is bubbling below the surface and we need to figure out how ignite it and leverage it, productively. And I don’t think they want to do that. I think they want to play the same old game, and do so, maybe unwittingly, according to Madigan’s rules.
This idea that they’re bleeding the other side out. No. They’re being bled out. They’re the holdout… They’re down 15 and they’re playing Four Corners. They’re not up 15. And, because we have these resources, we’re gonna make Madigan and whoever the Democrat nominee for governor is in ‘18 more of a bogey man than they can make me a bogey man.
That’s not the transformative leadership that was effectively his value proposition when he ran in 2014 and was elected on that basis - that he was an outsider coming in to, lack of a better phrase, drain the swamp in Springfield, or… however you want to translate that to Illinois. And if he’s just playing the tradition game the same way, less reform-minded, less transformationally inclined governors of the past like a George Ryan or a Jim Edgar or a Jim Thompson. If he’s just going to play the same way they did - two bad ideas, let’s split the difference and come up with a bad idea we agree to, like the energy bill that he just signed. That’s a good example of it. If that’s the tack he’s gonna take, that’s the Jim Edgar, Jim Thompson, George Ryan model of governance. That doesn’t end well.
HUGHES: No, and it also bleeds out his initial reason for being elected. He’s losing the outsider, he’s lost it. There’s no way to run as an outsider any more after some of these deals, the temporary budget he cut, the energy bill, the fact that he’s been battling with Madigan in Springfield for all these, the last couple of years. The outsider model is no longer gonna work. He’s gonna have to show that his governance was progress, both politically, which he’s done a little bit with these [legislative] races, but aside from politically, that people’s lives are starting to or going to improve as a consequence of the fact that he’s the leader of this state. And, currently, he can’t point to that.
PROFT: No, he can’t. So where does that put him with the prospects of facing a Democrat challenger that will have as much money as he does?… [Or if, say Downstate US Rep. Cheri Bustos wins the primary] Then Rauner is in deep trouble. And it seems to me they don’t have a sense of urgency, he doesn’t have a sense of urgency about the political trouble he’s in because of the lack of policy risks he’s taken.
I monitor the governor’s Twitter account all day and I’ve noticed a definite uptick in anti-Rauner tweets since the election ended as liberals take out their frustrations on the nearest Republican. But the Democratic Party itself has given Rauner free rein on social media for two years.
* There were also some counter-trolls yesterday, mainly like this one…
* OK, this is really getting goofy. A guy who isn’t in office yet, another guy who didn’t even run for reelection and is leaving office in January and therefore won’t be around to vote for House Speaker, and a Senator known for his intellectual independence. Sheesh…
Three More Added to BossMadigan.com
Time for Halpin, Jackson, and Haine to Demonstrate Independence from Madigan
Today, the Illinois Republican Party added Rep-elect Mike Halpin, Rep. Eddie Jackson, and Sen. Bill Haine to BossMadigan.com, as part of the party’s ongoing efforts to highlight those who empower Mike Madigan at our expense.
“Mike Halpin, Eddie Jackson and Bill Haine have all personally benefited from Mike Madigan, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from Madigan in exchange for rubber-stamping his disastrous policies. As thousands flee Illinois, it’s time for them to admit their mistakes and work to oppose giving Madigan yet another term as Speaker.” – Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Steven Yaffe
Mike Halpin hasn’t even taken office yet and he’s already embroiled in Mike Madigan-related controversy. The Dispatch-Argus caught Madigan “meddling” in Halpin’s primary race, apparently directing $75,000 to Halpin to ensure he became the Democratic nominee. Halpin unbelievably claimed that he “can’t speak to who Madigan supports or doesn’t support.” Then, Madigan funneled $345,000 to help Halpin in the general election. It looks as if Mike Halpin is another bought-and-paid-for Madigan politician. Halpin can prove that wrong by opposing Madigan as Speaker in January.
Eddie Jackson has been a loyal Mike Madigan ally for years. Jackson voted to give Madigan the Speaker’s gavel four times, and in exchange Madigan has directly given Jackson over $100,000. Madigan directs the money and Jackson provides the votes. Take Madigan’s 67% income tax hike for example. Jackson supported it knowing it would cost hardworking middle-class families thousands in higher taxes. Just this year, Jackson voted for Madigan’s $8 billion unbalanced budget, which would have required even higher taxes to balance. Jackson has been just another tax-and-spend Madigan politician, but he has a chance now to change course and oppose Madigan’s re-election as Speaker.
Career politician Bill Haine might be a Senator, but he’s been in Mike Madigan’s back pocket for years, taking over $212,000 in Madigan money. First appointed in 2002, Haine has been around to vote on a decade and a half of Madigan policies, and he supports them every chance he gets. Haine supported the Madigan and Blagojevich plan to borrow $10 billion against the pension system and voted to skip pension payments, calling it a “pension holiday.” While Haine and Madigan shortchanged state workers, they sent the bill to middle class families, together raising the income tax by 67%. It’s time for Haine to stop backing Madigan’s Chicago-agenda by encouraging his colleagues to oppose him as Speaker of the Illinois House.
The video uses clips from the Democratic National Convention, when Kennedy awkwardly scolded reporters for trying to talk to him after he’d addressed an Illinois delegation breakfast meeting in Philadelphia.
“Have some decency. What have you become?” Kennedy asked the reporters as he tried to ride an elevator away from the cameras. He ultimately left the elevator and used a stairwell to flee the scene.
“I’ll admit, my elevator speech needed a little work, but we’ve made great progress since last summer,” Kennedy said in an emailed statement. “Too bad the same can’t be said for Illinois. It’s nice to see Gov. Rauner worried about someone besides himself for first time in two years.”
That’s not a bad response at all. Some self-deprecation combined with a jab at the governor’s inability to move the state forward.
But if Team Rauner follows recent practice and aggressively promotes its new video on social media and Kennedy doesn’t respond in kind, it won’t mean much.
Yesterday, Chris Kennedy responded to the Illinois Republican Party’s new digital ad, highlighting Kenendy’s ties to Mike Madigan, by completely avoiding the subject.
“Chris Kennedy’s dodge isn’t going to cut it. Mike Madigan endorsed Kennedy as an ‘excellent candidate’ for Governor and in return, Kennedy funneled tens of thousands of dollars to Madigan candidates and political groups. It’s time for Chris Kennedy to come clean. Does Kennedy endorse or oppose Mike Madigan as Speaker and head of the Democratic Party of Illinois? – Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Steven Yaffe
*** UPDATE 1 *** The actual question, which you can hear at about the 5:30 mark below, was about several different topics, not just the homeless shelter, and was actually a follow-up to a question about whether Rauner had a fall-back plan in case the GA didn’t pass a real budget…
*** UPDATE 2 *** From the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless…
Hey, Rich.
Just a note on the Northside homeless shelter. As we understand it, it wasn’t necessarily the lack of state money that forced Northside to announce they needed to close the program. It was more driven by the city having too low of a per bed rate for providers. The city has level funded the shelters since 2012. The city gets the money that comes from the Emergency and Transitional Housing line item in the state budget. The city then contracts with Chicago providers. Chicago has been covering the state’s portion of the funding since the budget crisis set in. Back in the summer, the city had told Northside that if the state budget mess didn’t get fixed that they would not be issuing contracts for 2017.
None of this is to say the state budget doesn’t play a huge factor. There is a $100k budget deficit for the program, but that is a structural deficit and it doesn’t necessarily correlate to the state’s portion. So, while theoretically, they could raise $100k to fill the whole, they don’t have confidence they can do that in a sustainable fashion that won’t undermine the rest of the work they do.
Some advocates (not us) have oversimplified the message to it being a $100k hole created by Rauner. There is truth in there, but, like everything, it is more complicated. All that being said, showing up to feed the homeless at the same building this program is slated to shut down was terrible planning on Rauner (and the Food Depository’s) part. And Rauner’s response was even worse. I’m not giving him a pass at all.
Just thought you might want some additional background. If you have questions, let me know.
Doug
Doug Schenkelberg
Executive Director
Chicago Coalition for the Homeless
*** UPDATE 3 *** A person representing a wealthy Chicagoan (Democrat) did reach out to the shelter and was told this…
We have been operating the program at a deficit for several years now. We approached the city for additional funding for over a year now but they were not able to provide the additional $100,000 needed each year to balance the program’s budget. We made the announcement about the closing late summer and at this point don’t even have a contract for next year. We’ve already removed most of our equipment and furniture and have about 14 residents remaining.
Unfortunately the shelter will be closing in the next week or so. I do appreciate you reaching out however and wish I had better news for you.
A group of advocates for homeless residents of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood are blaming the state’s lingering budget impasse for the impending closure of a homeless shelter that’s set to shutter just before the holidays.
The group, which consists of homeless residents, community organizers and clergy, claimed the state’s inability to come up with $100,000 to fund the North Side Housing & Supportive Services shelter is directly tied to the ongoing budget stalemate in Springfield, faulting Gov. Bruce Rauner and House Speaker Michael Madigan. […]
Rauner responded to concerns about the state’s precarious economic situation and the shelter’s funding during a Monday press conference.
“Change is hard,” Rauner said. “We didn’t get into the mess we’re in in a few years, we got here over the last 35 years. So changing the structure takes a little time. I’m frustrated. I’m not the most patient person in the state, but I’m very persistent.”
“We have to do the right thing for the long term,” he added.
The number of Illinois school districts with a majority of students coming from low-income families has jumped from 13 percent to 43 percent over the past decade, a new report shows.
The finding was released by Advance Illinois, a business-backed education reform group, in its biennial report “Every Student Counts: The State We’re In 2016-2017.” […]
As poverty levels increase, the report says, low-income Illinois students remain academically behind their wealthier peers in K-12 schooling and are less likely to complete a postsecondary degree.
Twenty percent of low-income students are college-ready based on scores measured on the ACT college-entrance exam. That’s 39 percentage points lower than their wealthier peers, the report found.
In addition, low-income students are 26 percentage points behind wealthier peers in postsecondary enrollment and 9 percentage points behind in postsecondary completion, the report found.
* The 2016 Golden Horsehoe Award for Best Democratic State Senator goes to Sen. Donne Trotter. He didn’t get as many votes as others, but this nomination by Steve Schnorf won the day for him…
Anyone who knows me knows what I think on Sen Ds. There are some great people in that caucus, like Sens Raoul and Steans and Forby and Munoz. But my vote today tomorrow and always goes to Sen Donne Trotter. Very bright, very well educated, a gentleman, not a mean spirited bone in his body. He is a master of the processes of government and the Senate, but also of the subject matter of a huge range of programmatic areas. Whether you are a player, a powerhouse, or pawn you will receive a respectful hearing in his office. Donne is a problem solver not a show horse (except for his wardrobe of course). I have been involved in this stuff for 40 years now. Donne is one of the best ever.
Honorable mention to Sen. Gary Forby, a truly good guy.
* The 2016 Golden Horsehoe Award for Best Republican State Senator goes to Sen. Karen McConnaughay…
A truly thoughtful legislator, who has been able to straddle the line of Rauner loyalty and independent thinking. She is another one who really wants to accomplish wins for her district and the State, and is engaging in real conversations to try and help us get out of this mess.
Honorable mention to Sen. Sam McCann, the crowd favorite.
* We’re going to skip a couple of categories this year and do three of them today because we’re simply running out of time…
* Best Statewide Officeholder
* Best Illinois Congresscritter
* Best State Agency Director
Please do your very best to nominate in all three categories. And, of course, make sure to explain your nominations or they won’t count.
* The EDGE tax credit program, which is often described as Illinois’ most effective tool to attract and retain large companies, expires at the end of this month. Greg Hinz looks at the finger-pointing…
Rauner’s office declined to comment officially but suggested on background that, rather than deal with Madigan and his demands, a legislative-led effort like Althoff’s new bill would get further. […]
“Their feigning concern about sitting down and negotiating is pretty remarkable for an administration that’s supposed to be filled with pro-business people,” [Madigan spokesman Steve Brown] said in an interview. […]
“The Edge program has been the executive branch’s leading job creation program for years,” [Senate President John Cullerton’s] office said in a statement. “Gov. Rauner didn’t ask for it to continue during the past session or seek legislation to do so. Illinois’ economy relies on our ability to keep and add good-paying jobs . . . (and) the Senate president is committed to working with the governor” on that.
[GOP Sen. Pam Althoff], whose legislation is not yet available on the General Assembly’s website, said it would include reforms, including Rauner’s policy of limiting Edge credits to net new and not retained jobs.
She declined to speculate on why nothing happened this year but conceded, “The focus has been on the lack of a budget for a long time. I just think (Edge) is one of the things that fell through the cracks.”
Althoff is probably right. The impasse war may have distracted the leaders from renewing this tax program. And now everybody wants to blame the other side.
Fiscal conservatism is the economic philosophy of prudence in government spending and debt. Fiscal conservatives advocate the avoidance of deficit spending, the reduction of overall government spending and national debt, and ensuring balanced budgets. In other words, fiscal conservatives are against the government expanding beyond its means through debt.
* Sen. Dave Koehler (D-Peoria) was interviewed by a local TV reporter about the budget…
“There’s gonna be a difference this year, though. Last year, when we separated out the K-12 budget, we passed a whole-year budget on that. It took all the pressure off of the rest of the budget talks.
“If you don’t open schools on time, everybody is upset. If you shut down social services or cause some pain to universities, somehow that doesn’t affect everybody. It’s still serious, but the immediate effect isn’t seen throughout the state.
“I’m a believer this year that if we’re really serious about getting the budget done, we don’t separate out and fund K-12 for a whole year and then have a mess with the rest of the budget. I say: ‘Shut the schools down until we get a budget.’”
Koehler said the reason the Exelon bailout bill passed was because of a believable threat to shut down two nuclear power plants.
Senate President John Cullerton made a similar threat a year ago and it never materialized. Doing such a thing in an election year was just way too dangerous.
Your thoughts?
*** UPDATE 1 *** From Cullerton’s press secretary…
“The Senate President remains focused on a full, fair and balanced budget for all of Illinois, one that rightfully prioritizes education. It’s a focus that he believes the other legislative leaders and governor all share and is why he remains optimistic that a deal can be reached.”
Doesn’t look like Cullerton agrees with Koehler.
*** UPDATE 1 *** From an e-mail to Illinois School Funding Reform Commission members…
Colleagues,
On behalf of Governor Rauner, I would like to wish you all a happy and peaceful holiday season. In these final days of the calendar year, I hope that you will reflect on and appreciate the importance of your work.
On Wednesday, the Illinois School Funding Reform Commission will hold its 11th meeting. Over the last several months, the 25 commission members, along with countless advocates and staff have worked to understand the necessary requirements for an improved PK-12 funding formula. These bi-partisan, bi-cameral meetings have featured spirited, yet professional, discussions to determine how to both increase funding to our most at-risk students and set an adequacy target that recognizes the unique strengths and needs of each community.
I appreciate greatly the willingness of every commission member to engage in thoughtful – and sometimes tedious – analysis of each issue. Given the unprecedented investment of the FY2017 PK-12 budget that was enacted by the General Assembly and signed by the Governor, these efforts afford cautious optimism for the future. I thank all of you who have attended meetings, given written feedback, or spoken with members of the commission.
In light of the commission’s work, comments made recently by Senator Dave Koehler (D-Peoria) that Illinois should “shut the schools down until we get a budget” are irresponsible so we are not commenting on his intent. This is not, nor will it ever be, the position of Governor Rauner who has made it clear that funding PK-12 education is the number one priority of his administration. The Governor will continue to push me and the rest of his team to find a pathway to funding that will meet the needs of all Illinois residents. Right now, that includes working to ensure that backlogged FY2016 Q4 payments are released by Comptroller Mendoza’s office.
Again, thank you for work and dedication on behalf of Illinois children.
The violence in Chicago has continued unabated for much of 2016, with murders and shootings both far ahead of last year even with days left in December. Chicago is one of multiple major American cities seeing an increase in killings since last year, deaths that are coming during a historically safe era but that have still sparked concerns in communities seeing more bloodshed.
Yet even though several cities have seen homicides go up, the situation in Chicago stands out, both through sheer numbers and the impact it is having on murder rates nationwide.
Consider this statistic: The murder rate for the country’s 30 biggest cities is expected to go up by 14 percent this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based law and policy institute. But the killings in Chicago account for an astounding 43.7 percent of this overall increase in murders, meaning that Chicago alone is responsible for nearly half of this spike. […]
In Chicago so far this year, there were 738 murders through Sunday night, according to a police spokesman. The city seems poised to potentially top 750 murders for the year, a staggering total and one that means Chicago will finish 2016 with more killings than it has seen in nearly two decades.
The horror show could very well be what’s causing so much out-migration from the city’s far South Side, which Greg Hinz pegged at almost a 50,000 net loss between 2010 and 2015. That means the far South Side has essentially lost another ward’s worth of people after losing almost 100,000 between 2000 and 2010.
* The most important part of my annual speech to the City Club of Chicago isn’t the speech, it’s the effort attendees make on behalf of Lutheran Social Services of Illinois’ vital early childhood programs. We ask that audience members bring toys to the event, and this year people brought 106 toys, along with $235 in gift cards and $601 in cash.
That cash haul seems a bit lower than in the past, but the good folks at LSSI also told me today that online contributions are still coming in, so click here if you weren’t able to attend, or if you forgot to bring a toy with you yesterday. We need to drive those numbers up!
Utah’s population crossed the 3.0 million mark as it became the nation’s fastest-growing state over the last year. Its population increased 2.0 percent to 3.1 million from July 1, 2015, to July 1, 2016, according to U.S. Census Bureau national and state population estimates released today.
“States in the South and West continued to lead in population growth,” said Ben Bolender, Chief of the Population Estimates Branch. “In 2016, 37.9 percent of the nation’s population lived in the South and 23.7 percent lived in the West.” […]
Following Utah, Nevada (2.0 percent), Idaho (1.8 percent), Florida (1.8 percent) and Washington (1.8 percent) saw the largest percentage increases in population. […]
Eight states lost population between July 1, 2015, and July 1, 2016, including Pennsylvania, New York and Wyoming, all three of which had grown the previous year. Illinois lost more people than any other state (-37,508).
…Adding… More…
Census: Illinois lost 114,000 net to other states; total population shrank by 37,508 #twill#muniland
* Back on December 8th, Comptroller Susana Mendoza told WMAQ’s Mary Ann Ahern that lots of stuff was missing from her various state offices. “Even the TV’s and most of the computers can’t be found,” she said, claiming they were having trouble finding car keys for state vehicles as well.
I checked in with her spokesman who walked back what his boss said. The car keys were located and other stuff seemed to be accounted for. “Most” of the state computers were definitely not gone.
I was told by people close to former Comptroller Leslie Munger at the time that the televisions were private property owned by former comptroller staffers. The same went for some pieces of furniture, like sofas.
But, since Mendoza’s spokesman walked back what his boss said, I decided not to make a big deal out of it, figuring it was just a rookie mistake.
Illinois’ new comptroller says she was left on Day One with offices with little furniture, locked desks and missing documents.
“It did kind of feel like the place was looted,” Susana Mendoza told WLS-AM’s Bill Cameron in a “Connected to Chicago” interview to be aired on Christmas Day. Mendoza said she couldn’t make a “definitive statement” on whether “pilfering” was involved.
Mendoza claims furniture had been removed from her offices, and there were remote controls with no matching televisions, keys that didn’t match vehicles, keys that didn’t match with desks, and missing documents “that people were working on over the last two years.”
“The current staff doesn’t seem to know where these documents are,” Mendoza said. “Maybe they filed them and hid them somewhere as a practical joke. I’m not sure. But it’s really kind of not funny because this is work that belonged to the state of Illinois.
“There are state statutes requiring proper disposal or destroying of state documents, and we’re going to try to track everything down, but it is frustrating because times are so bad as it is,” she said. “We really shouldn’t be wasting precious man-hours trying to track down information that should have been made readily available to us even prior to taking my office.”
First she says it feels like the place was “looted,” then she says she can’t say anything definitively.
That’s essentially the definition of an unfounded, emotional accusation.
And as far as the transition confusion goes, maybe if Mendoza hadn’t announced that she was not taking office until January before checking in with the attorney general, and then headed to Rome for an event/vacation, and then changed her mind and decided almost at the last minute to be sworn in on December 5th after she finally reached out to the AG, some of this mess could’ve been avoided.
But, again, it was a rookie mistake around Thanksgiving so I let it go.
“We’ll just say she’s not an honest individual,” Munger told Ward Room.
“Everything that’s owned by the state is inventoried and tagged with a state number and we did an audit before the transition of offices and after the transition of offices, it’s one of the normal things that’s done,” Munger said. “And there’s not one item that is missing from what should be there that was owned by the state that was left for her.”
“If she really thought that something like that was missing, she should be going to the police, not to the press,” Munger said. “But she’s throwing out these wild allegations, she’s not giving any specifics because she doesn’t have any. She’s just trying to make it look like she just inherited this huge mess.”
As far as missing documents, Munger claimed pertinent financial records are stored in centralized state computers.
“I didn’t have files of anything,” Munger said.
Munger is absolutely right about how Mendoza should be filing a police report before running her mouth like this. Indeed, if she believes a crime was committed involving state property under her control, she’s obligated to report it.
From all I can gather, a property inventory was taken before Munger left office. CMS was even asked to do an independent inventory. Everything was tagged.
So, bring out the list and highlight whatever’s missing and then she has a real story. If Mendoza can’t do that, she should stop calling former staff members crooks. Enough with the wild accusations.
I mean, she is already starting to remind me of Rod Blagojevich. And not in a good way, either. Rod loved to “punch down,” which is exactly what Mendoza is doing here.
As for allegations there were mismatched keys for state cars and desks, Munger said keys were changed in the Capitol for safety reasons when she first took office in 2014. And she said she handed in all keys to an office manager on her last day in office.
Mendoza has complained that she wasn’t able to meet with staff before taking office — another claim Munger rebuts. Mendoza first planned to take office on Jan. 3, but shortly after, she decided to take office on Dec. 5, which was allowed per special election rules.
As for missing documents, “no files, no financial files, nothing that would impact her ability to get in and do the job of comptroller were touched,” Munger said.
Munger also threatened to sue Mendoza during her chat with the Sun-Times.
Mendoza also complained that Munger didn’t leave her a transition letter. Munger seemed eager to confirm that.
“I didn’t leave her any notes,” Munger added. “She informed me through [another broadcast interview] that she knew everything she needed to know about the office.”
“This will be the most expensive race of our lifetime,” a Republican friend assured me last week about the apparently already begun 2018 gubernatorial campaign.
If Democratic billionaire J.B. Pritzker pulls the trigger and decides to run, we can expect that significant campaign spending could begin as early as next month — on both sides. And if last week is any indication, this is gonna be one nasty contest.
The Illinois Republican Party began running robocalls on Dec. 13 to elected Democrats, along with their party’s contributors and activists. The calls sought to tie Pritzker to imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich by using an FBI tape of Blagojevich spit-balling with an aide about getting Pritzker to endow a non-profit organization that the governor could run after leaving office.
The Pritzker camp responded to the robocalls with a statement criticizing Gov. Bruce Rauner for not passing a budget for two years and allowing “human services to be gutted.” The statement from Pritzker’s spokesperson also claimed the governor should have better things to do with his time than to “dredge up the crazy rantings of Rod Blagojevich.” That led to a quickie but rather large opposition research dump that sought to tie Pritzker even more closely to Blagojevich. There was no Pritzker response to that one.
Behind the scenes, Pritzker allies fumed at the absurdly early attack and warned that Rauner was “poking the bear” and would live to regret it. But Rauner’s people mocked Pritzker for being “thin skinned” and warned that last week’s oppo dump was “a very small appetizer.”
The aim here appears to be to either keep Pritzker out of the race or take him out in the Democratic primary before he can present a clear danger in the fall campaign with his estimated $3.4 billion net worth. Rauner has tons of his own money, of course, but he also relies on a couple of super-wealthy friends for additional tens of millions. Pritzker can conceivably fund a race all by himself, although he has recently been meeting with top labor leaders and other party honchos, as well.
So, we can probably expect more of this stuff from Rauner’s state party in the coming days as Pritzker makes his final decision on whether to run. Neither side has yet started a proper opposition research book on the potential Democratic candidate. Last week’s attacks were mainly based on basic Google and Lexis Nexis searches.
But if they’re going to try to snuff him out in the Democratic primary, Pritzker’s online comments about liberal Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders could eventually come into focus, I’m told. Sanders ended up doing pretty darned well in Illinois’ Democratic primary, so alienating a huge chunk of likely Democratic primary voters would be a smart play.
Pritzker, a loyal Hillary Clinton supporter, referred to the insurgent presidential candidate on Twitter by his initials “BS” and tweeted that Sanders was “outrageously McCarthyite.” Pritzker also retweeted an article about how Sanders “said lack of sex and resenting your mom could cause cancer,” pointed to favorable comments about Sanders by the National Rifle Association, referred to the losing Democratic candidate’s campaign manager as “delusional” and occasionally engaged Sanders’ supporters on the social media platform. And I didn’t even look at the guy’s Facebook account.
Illinois Democrats looking for Rauner challenger as Durbin stays in D.C.
Illinois Democrats looking for Rauner challenger as Durbin stays in D.C.
Some Democrats pointed out last week that the Republicans’ Blagojevich-based attacks failed miserably in the just-completed U.S. Senate race against Tammy Duckworth. But the Rauner folks say the issue kept Sen. Mark Kirk in the hunt during the summer, before he was overwhelmed with Duckworth cash in the fall. Indeed, Kirk was polling essentially even with Duckworth throughout the summer.
The Republicans also used the Blagojevich issue in several legislative races, including against state Rep. John Bradley (D-Marion), who once had a public fight with Blagojevich after the then-governor referred to him as a “wall flower” and a pawn of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. That well-covered spat didn’t matter to the GOP, of course.
“For anyone who has a real association with Blago — and I think our argument yesterday is that J.B.’s history was more than fleeting — it is a potent hit,” was how one Rauner guy put it the day after the robocalls were launched.
The question now becomes whether Pritzker is prepared to expose his children to this sort of nonstop mudslinging for almost two solid years. We will probably know more after the holidays. But don’t expect any lull in the negativity while we wait.
“Chris Kennedy comes from a legendary American family with a history of public service, but instead of following in their footsteps, Chris Kennedy chose to serve corrupt politicians like Mike Madigan.” – Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Steven Yaffe
Chris Kennedy has reportedly started hiring staff for a gubernatorial run. But before he did so, Kennedy made sure to ally himself with Mike Madigan.
This summer, Kennedy dodged questions about his secret meeting with Madigan.
After the meeting, Madigan endorsed Kennedy as “a very good candidate for Governor.”
Then, Kennedy gave Madigan’s political front group $50,000, helping Madigan run advertisements attacking Gov. Rauner’s plans to reform Illinois through term limits, a property tax freeze and economic growth.
Chris Kennedy has already shown his hand – he’s just another politician who kisses up to Mike Madigan.
Chris Kennedy may have the name, but he doesn’t act like it.
* Sadly, I couldn’t get the live stream working due to my own inability to remember how to get it started after my hiatus. That said, video of the speech is here, and I did my best to keep up with him using #CapFaxXMAS on Twitter.
* Using those resources, please discuss your thoughts on the speech. What was your greatest takeaway from it?
The Illinois Department of Corrections is making headway toward the goal of a 25 percent reduction in the state’s prison population by 2025, but continued partisan gridlock over the state budget could undermine that progress.
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner set that goal shortly after taking office nearly two years ago and established a commission to make recommendations for criminal justice reforms to keep people out of prisons. The state’s inmate population has dropped from 48,214 on Jan. 12, 2015, the day Rauner was inaugurated, to 43,807 last week, a 9.1 percent decline.
The reasons this is good news are plentiful, and they come from both the social and fiscal sides of things. Here’s the troubling part…
“It’s great that we’re down 9 percent,” said Jennifer Vollen-Katz, executive director of the John Howard Association, a Chicago-based prison watchdog. “We’re seeing numbers we have seen in well over a decade.”
However, Vollen-Katz added, the system is still overcrowded and “we shouldn’t rest on our laurels.”
Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center in Chicago, which has used a series of lawsuits over several decades to push for reforms within the Illinois prison system, agreed with that assessment.
“This system would still be overcrowded if we had 35,000 people in it,” Mills said.
So if there were AT LEAST 35,000, which is 8,807 fewer people than are in the system this month, there would still be overcrowding. And, as Dan points out, the budget constraints make lowering that number even harder. Then toss in the administration’s current relationship with AFSCME, which staffs the prisons, and it seems to present an uphill challenge.
Workers who see inmates every day play a critical role in keeping mentally ill inmates stable, said Dempsey.
“What we’re asking people to do is identify, not diagnose or treat mental illness. It’s about patterns” and documenting changes in an inmate’s behavior so issues can be addressed earlier, he said.
The state also is moving forward on its obligation to open four residential treatment units for seriously mentally ill inmates.
According to Baldwin, work was completed Thursday on renovating a former youth facility in Joliet that will provide 360 beds for mental health care when it opens early next year. Work also is finished on a mental health treatment area at the Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, and bids have been accepted for a second unit there.
Bids are expected in early 2017 for units at the Dixon and Pontiac prisons.
Related…
* With a swipe of governor’s pen, man’s life changed for the better: Even though he wasn’t in any more trouble with the law, Hendricks felt like he was still under a microscope and eventually left Edwardsville in 2005 and moved to Chicago. When he arrived in Chicago, he enrolled in the Illinois Institute of Art and earned an associate’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts. He has worked as a chef for more than a decade.
Each time he applied for a job, though, Hendricks said he was up front with his employers. He told them about the felony conviction, something that haunted him as he got older.
“Being a convicted felon is the ultimate black mark,” Hendricks said. “Telling them you been convicted for selling drugs, it’s an uphill battle. I’ve had to fight for everything that I’ve got.
We’re taking a big step next week. And we’re inviting you to please follow us.
We’re moving from a public affairs journalism organization primarily supported by seed investments and advertising to one supported mainly by your subscriptions.
We started Reboot Illinois four years ago with the help of some seed funding from prominent Chicagoans who were concerned, like we were, that citizens were not getting reliable and fair reporting, in-depth analysis, or a wide range of commentary and infographics about our local and state governments in Illinois.
Our mission has been and remains to inform, engage and activate Illinoisans about the governments we all own.
* “Changin’ is hard. The special interest groups that like the status quo. They’re entrenched. They don’t want a change. It’s taken longer than it should.”
* When asked if he plans to run for re-election: “You know, I’m not focused on politics or elections or races….We’ll think about that in the future.”
* On Trump cabinet: “I haven’t focused very much on the federal issues at all. They’ve got their challenges at the federal government. We’ve got our challenges in Illinois, and I’m very focused on Illinois.”
* “I have long-time said I believe the immigration policy in America is broken, and I have been a strong advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. And I’ve said it repeatedly, I hope the federal government can get its act together and get comprehensive immigration reform. I’m very pro-immigration, but again, I’m focused in Illinois…”
In a stunning admission, the chief executive of a troubled network of group homes told a judge Friday that he didn’t know the whereabouts of six of his residents with developmental disabilities.
It also wasn’t clear that any of the six had their medications with them when they left homes run by Disability Services of Illinois, which lost its license because of safety concerns.
An incredulous Cook County Circuit Judge Kathleen Pantle responded by scolding the operator of Disability Services and sharply questioning his attorney….
The judge encouraged the state to file missing persons reports with police, but Durkin said that couldn’t be done because the state wasn’t given the specific date when each resident was last seen.
At that point, Durkin questioned Goodwin about when each of the five residents had left and asked for the names and phone numbers of the family members they left with. Goodwin said he didn’t have any of those details and only knew that they left sometime after Nov. 28, the date Disability Services lost its license.
Missing person reports have been filed with local law enforcement agencies for the 5 remaining individuals. IDHS and the independent services coordination agencies have been working diligently to locate these individuals and their health and safety remains our top priority. We continue to urge Mr. Goodwin to cooperate fully with our staff, the independent service coordination agencies, and local law enforcement agencies so that we can continue their transition to safe and licensed homes.
*** UPDATE 2x *** - A spokesperson for DHS says the five residents are missing from multiple facilities.
Meredith Krantz, communications director for DHS, said the missing person reports were filed with the Chicago Police Department and the Village of Homewood Police Department. Reports were disbursed among those departments based on where the residents were living at the time they went missing.
Krantz said DHS and Disability Services are due back in Court at 11 a.m. tomorrow.
That’s good as far as it goes, but remember, the people they are surveying still went this year. If they’re worried about the drop in attendance, shouldn’t they be surveying the people who didn’t go?
The answers will be interesting, especially because fair people since forever have said weather more than just about anything else determines the success of the fair. Not much the state can do about that.
Enjoyed international village, but having to dry out the truck after a rainstorm put a damper on the weekend. 2 stars. /snark
Despite provisions of the Racing Act requiring a five day racing program at the Fair, officials were able to stage only four days of races in 2015. Plus, they admit that they overcharged entrants, by requiring a $300 nominating fee, which exceeded 2% of the purses as is required in the Horse Racing Act.
An Auditor General’s report released this week, says that the higher fees were charged in 16 of 36 races in 2014, and 27 of 30 races in 2015.
The report says Fair officials admitted they were forced to charge the higher fees in 2014, “due to the purses for Championship races greatly declining over the years due to less appropriations.”
*AFL-CIO President Michael Carrigan writes in the News-Gazette about parallels he sees between Gov. Rauner’s handling of the budget impasse and the AFSCME contract…
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Rauner’s similar hostage-taking tactics are the cause of the state’s long-running budget standoff. Throughout his term in office, he has refused to work with lawmakers to develop a state budget, instead demanding unrelated — and regularly shifting — changes to state law.
Legislators have rightly refused to knuckle under, but as far as Rauner is concerned, it’s his way or the highway. As a result, everyone from students to seniors is suffering.
Likewise, we all have a big stake in a fair resolution to the contract dispute involving state employees. The 360,000 men, women and children covered by the state health plan — including state and university employees, their dependents, and retirees — need and deserve insurance they can afford. The steep cuts to workers’ income that the governor seeks to impose — averaging $10,000 per employee over three years — would hurt families and communities.
But instead of working to find common ground, Rauner has vowed to force workers out on strike — and to “do it proudly”.
*** UPDATE 1 *** The Governor’s Office sent this in response to the editorial, which was penned by Dennis Murashko and appeared over the weekend in some Gatehouse papers…
What the union now describes as a “scorched-earth approach” is a contract that is nearly identical to contracts that have been agreed-to by 18 other unions, such as Teamsters, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and Operating Engineers Local 150.
The “outrageous” demands that the union refuses to allow the state to implement include requiring employees to work 40 hours a week, instead of 37.5 hours, before being paid overtime. Moving to a 40-hour overtime requirement is consistent with the private sector, federal law and contracts entered into by other state employees outside of AFSCME.
Related…
* Jim Dey: Madigan still king, but his crown is tarnished…In other words, Drury is thinking it over. In Illinois even that halting explanation counts as a rare display of political courage. Because Der Speaker takes no prisoners, even the fact that a challenge is being discussed marks a major change from the past.
Though he might be leaving the Legislature, Moffitt has not entirely ruled out the possibility of running for local office. He said he would consider running for the Knox County Board within the next few years if a position opened and he felt he could “make a contribution.”
Board member TONY DelGIORNO, D-District 22, posted a copy of Sullivan’s prayer on Facebook, and he also wrote that it is routine for board members to give the invocation.
But, DelGiorno said, the prayer “was anything but usual in my opinion. As the grandson of Italian immigrants, a group that 100 years ago was discriminated against because of our Catholicism, I find religious elitism abhorrent to the 1st Amendment principle of religious freedom in a nation and a community that is made better by our friends of all faiths.”
Sullivan, in an interview later, said he was “merely stating some factual history.”
The department cited concerns about the condition of the buildings at Rend Lake Resort and Conference Center, including mold, peeling paint and other possible health and safety related issues. The resort operator notified IDNR of the plans to close the facility.
According to numbers provided to the newspaper, the number of traffic fatalities statewide has risen from 924 in 2014 to 998 in 2015 to 1,029 for this year through Friday.
While that number is up the past two years, it is still significantly lower than 15 years ago. In 2001, there were 1,414 fatalities, and in the 1970s, the number of fatal crashes each year was in the 2,000 range.
The year with the most fatalities on Illinois highways was 1941, when 2,600 people died, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.
A one-time mentor to President Barack Obama, Jones explained that UIC received his donation because that university already has a vast collection of political papers. “Those papers are very, very important,” he offered. The papers bear tremendous social relevance because Jones’ first term in the legislature coincides with the rise of his former colleague, Harold Washington’s ascent to the mayor’s office in Chicago.
I had hoped to create middle ground based on social moderation and spending moderation, which is increasingly necessary for the future of the country.
I always sought to be a problem solver, thinking about not being with the extreme right and extreme left. And my model was always a 45-year-old married woman with children who lives in Arlington Heights in Illinois, which might be the geographic center of common sense.
* WATCHDOGS: More tax money for Chicago’s booming TV, movie studio
The investigation of IDOT’s Emergency Traffic Patrol Division by the executive inspector general’s office ran from 2012 to 2016. The probe concluded that several IDOT drivers made up reports about helping motorists to make it look like they were doing more work than they were, the inspector general’s report said. In other cases, the drivers recorded inaccurate information in reports about people they actually had assisted.
The $2.7 billion plan, which is not likely to see construction begin before 2020, also would add a lane in each direction between the key bottleneck span of I-290, between Mannheim Road and Austin Boulevard.
* As Bernie pointed out in his column last weekend, a number of Statehouse reporters are leaving the press room for new posts in other bureaus. Amanda Vinicky and Mike Riopell have left their respective bureau chief posts to accept assignments at other outlets in Chicago. Ed Cross is crossing over from the media side to be a government spokesman. Kelsey Gibbs and Ivan Moreno are leaving Illinois entirely, and Seth Perlman was forced into retirement after more than 30 years of filling rolls of film and memory cards for the AP.
Those departures (hopefully) mean a new crop of reporters are headed for the Capitol press room.
* QUESTION: What should these incoming writers and broadcasters know about covering the Illinois Capitol?
Related…
* Robservations: WLS drops Michael Savage….Salem Media news/talk WIND AM 560 has renewed Dan Proft as morning host in a multiyear extension announced this week.
“Well, I’ve commissioned artist Bill Chambers to do it. It will be different. It will be unveiled sometime next year. I’ve been posing on and off for the past two years.”
• Q: Will Quinn be wearing his lucky purple tie?
• A: “I think it would be safe to expect that,” he said.
After her husband was elected governor in 1969, Dorothy Ogilvie and her family found that the mansion, then over 100 years old, had not aged gracefully. The couple found the executive mansion in Springfield to be in serious, even dangerous, disrepair, with temporary braces in place to support the structure.
“It was anything but a showplace,” said Kathy Wonderlic Kolbe, who was special assistant to Ogilvie at the time. “Mrs. Ogilvie worked with the preservation team. … She was very encouraging of that preservation and very proud of the result.”
The family moved into rented quarters to make way for the restoration work.
“She was willing to forego the trappings of the wife of the governor,” said John McCarter, who was the budget director in the administration.
* I am the “old buddy” whose coming was foretold to you.
Rich is in transit to the City Club of Chicago for his annual “Christmas with Rich Miller” speech. We will have full coverage, including a live video feed thanks to our good friends at BlueRoomStream, later on.
* Many of you know the deal from previous experience. I work full-time, and blogging while on the clock is frowned upon. With that, a good portion of today’s content will be posted this morning. Anything that breaks, updates, and anything I ran out of time to finish before having to head downtown will be posted during the lunch hour.
With that in mind, please keep it civil in comments.
*repeats cliche line about banishment hammer of death*
Our old buddy Barton Lorimor will be doing a little part-time blogging on Monday. I’ll be in Chicago speaking to the City Club at noon and have decided to take the day off.
If you’re coming to the speech, please don’t forget to bring a toy for kids aged 3-5. We give them to Lutheran Social Services of Illinois for its vital early childhood programs. You can also donate gift cards from places where toys are sold.
* And the latest from VanillaMan, based on the song “Merry Christmas, Darling.” Click here if you aren’t familiar with the tune…
AFSCME stewards have all met
The lawsuits are going through
But I still have one wish to make…
A special one for you!
Oh, State Worker - Darling
I work for Rauner, that’s true
But I am really, your bestest friend
I’m not messing around with you!
Right To Work is so joyful
Governor Rauner’s for you!
But AFSCME pay’s - no holiday
They demand too much from you!
We want you to have Tier 3!
I’d wish you could see
It’s better to have Merit Pay!
Don’t pay your union dues
It’s the right thing to do
Together we’ll find a union-less way!
We wish you were more ambitious
And less suspicious too
I’ve just one wish I’d like to propose
Call me John, not Tokyo Rose
This email’s from me
So dump your union fee
And believe what I say
We’re really not very malicious
We want the best for you!
We’ve just one thing more to confide
Disagree with us, but you can’t hide!
Your email’s not unclassified!
Merry Christmas!
Oh State Workers - DAHLING!
* AFSCME Council 31 is handing out a new flier to state workers to counter some of the statements made by the Rauner administration. This part was the most interesting to me. Click here for the full flier…
The end of overtime pay? What’s Rauner really up to with his plan to change overtime policy? His administration has informed employees that it plans to impose a new regimen in which the calculation of overtime will only count hours actually worked. What the specifics of the administration’s final offer make clear is that holidays, vacation days, and sick days will not count in that calculation: “Only actual hour worked above 40 will be at the overtime rate.”
In other words, if you’re out sick one day, you can be mandated to work 16 hours the next day, but you wont get paid overtime for those additional eight hours!
Worse, because Rauner’s “final offer” allows management to ignore overtime rotation procedures by picking who will be mandated to work overtime, you can be sure that employees in 24-hour facilities who have to use a sick day will be targeted to work overtime when they return. Managers will be making mandatory overtime assignments based on which employees took a sick or vacation day in a given week. [Emphasis in original]
I asked the governor’s office for a response at about 1:30. I’ll post it if they send one.
* Related…
* Berg: AFSCME’s egomania is betraying its members: The length and cost of negotiations thus far is already insulting to Illinoisans. And AFSCME has acted like a spoiled child at the bargaining table.
*** UPDATE *** From Catherine Kelly…
Hi, Rich:
AFSCME’s talk of mandatory overtime is a distraction and a blatantly misleading tactic to divert attention from the fact they currently do not have to work 40 hours a week to earn overtime. AFSCME should stop these games and stall tactics and work with us on implementing the contract.
* The 2016 Golden Horseshoe Award for Best Illinois State Representative - Republican goes to Rep. Ed Sullivan…
These are not normal times, and so I think the award should go to someone who exhibits the traits most likely to lead us out of this mess.
Sullivan is unquestionably conservative. But rather than clinging to orthodoxy like a barnacle, he uses it as an anchor to reach across the aisle, if only for friendship. And unlike the all-or-nothing approach of too many ideologues, Sullivan understands that there is victory in incremental approaches. This year he actually passed a modest improvement to workers comp law almost unnoticed.
Honorable mention goes to Reps. Dave McSweeney and Tom Demmer. Both received strong nominations.
* The 2016 Golden Horseshoe Award for Best Illinois State Representative - Democrat goes to Rep. Kelly Cassidy…
Kelly Cassidy for never saying or doing anything that appears not to be in the best interests of her district or the state. And for being a good human being to all.
Honorable mention to Rep. Litesa Wallace, “for her principled stance on social justice issues, especially for persons with disabilities,” and to Rep. Rob Martwick, who appears to have a very strong and vocal following.
* On to today’s nominations…
* Best Illinois State Senator - Republican
* Best Illinois State Senator - Democrat
As always, make sure to explain your votes or they won’t count. And nominate in both categories, please. Thanks!
* This is from Rep. Al Riley (D-Olympia Fields), an assistant majority leader…
Rich,
I read the post the other day about the Tuesday meeting at the Thompson Center and I wanted to add my perspective to it. First of all, it seems like much is being made about the tenor and tone of the meeting. Frankly speaking, in my opinion, the tone of the meeting was not that much different than one would observe in a typical committee hearing. I would not characterize this meeting as “contentious” or one of “stonewalling” or any other related term, at least when I was there. This is even when doctrinal points were being made on both sides. So, my characterization of the overall meeting was more collegial then I would have expected.
Myself and another Democratic colleague were there for the Local Government Consolidation meeting. It was scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m. I got to the conference room at 4:00 p.m. The earlier scheduled Unfunded Mandates meeting was still going on. That meeting went on until approximately 5:15 p.m.; way over its scheduled ending time. Though many things may have been discussed prior to my arrival at 4:00 p.m, it seemed as though issues of collective bargaining and a few mandates issues were being talked about. During the meeting, one of the attendees from the Democratic side commented on untoward “tweets” being made about our meetings, e.g, lack of cooperation by the Dems, etc. I think a reasonable person might have some pause and concern about statements like that being made about our meeting while it was still going on. At that point there was some pointed statements made, but even then, I would not characterize anything that was said as necessarily being contentious. We moved on and had some good discussion.
At or around 5:15, it was said that because of the time and distance that some people had to come, we would suspend the meeting and reconvene at another date to talk about local government consolidation. I stated that we were all there and to not have a discussion about the other agenda topic was not particularly fair. We had a document of about 30 different bullet points of bills and measures dealing with both mandates and government consolidation provided to us before the meeting. Government consolidation subsumed about 12 or 13 of the roughly 30 bullet points. My request was that we give Consolidation at least the 45 minutes originally allocated to it and discuss those 12 or so measures, than we could always reconvene and expand on what we discussed. Everyone agreed, and that’s what we did.
We went over each of the 12 points and we had some very good conversations about them. At no time, did the conversation get testy. We had some differences of opinion, but frankly that may have been on 4 out of the 12 measures discussed. Most of the differences we did have were technical in nature; fairly easy to resolve in true negotiations. At about 6:00 p.m., there was discussion about next steps and possibly calling another meeting. There was some banter about people having to go home to babies or go to holiday events. I shook hands with everyone and we left.
The two GOP members of the committee I know very well. We don’t share the same ideology on many things of course, but there are some that we do. I worked on bills and issues with them. Representative Batinick and I have had lively discussions about things in the past but at the same time, we have worked on major pieces of legislation, been in committee hearings and also forums outside of the Capitol.
I would characterize my relationship with Representative Batinick and the other Republican member who was at the meeting as being personally cordial. So again, I think that all of these negotiations in public and PSYOPS shots across the bow do not lend themselves to what should be the goal of these hearings.
Everyone who was there knows exactly what happened. There were about 15 people on the teleconference down in Springfield. And there were 7 people at the room at the Thompson Center. All of us have our reputations and track records on how we operate and how we categorize things. And, unlike in Rashomon whereby a number of individual people saw an incident from their particular point of view, 22 or 23 people were in that meeting, and saw and heard everything that happened.
Lets move on, keep our eye on the prize and do what we’re supposed to do - create a fiscally responsible budget for the people of the State, focused on equity and not so much on ideology.
* The day after Bernie Schoenburg published an interview of the potential gubernatorial candidate, the Illinois Republican Party has added him to its BossMadigan.com hit list. Not unexpected…
“Andy Manar, Natalie Manley and Anna Moeller have taken over a million dollars from Mike Madigan, and in exchange they have backed his tax-hiking, reform-free Chicago agenda. Manar was one of the chief architects of Madigan’s 67% income tax hike, whipping the votes needed to crush Illinois taxpayers. Likewise, Manley and Moeller have supported Madigan at every turn, repeatedly voting him as Speaker and rubber-stamping his unbalanced budgets. It’s time for Manar, Manley and Moeller to finally show some independence from Madigan.” – Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Steven Yaffe
Andy Manar
Andy Manar has always aspired to be a career politician like Mike Madigan. Since Manar was 21 years old, he’s held public office, worked government jobs, and received political paychecks from Chicago politicians, often all at the same time. Andy Manar has done pretty well for himself – he’s personally made hundreds of thousands of dollars off Illinois taxpayers.
Andy Manar has held several top positions working for Chicago politicians. For years, Manar served as the Senate Democrats’ Director of Policy and Budget, pushing unbalanced budgets, pension holidays, and higher debt. Later, Manar also served as Senate President John Cullerton’s Chief-of-Staff. During his time with Cullerton, Manar was one of the chief architects of Mike Madigan’s 67% income tax hike in 2011, whipping votes and pressuring lawmakers to crush taxpayers.
Andy Manar was already doing Mike Madigan’s bidding even before he entered the General Assembly. After the 2010 census, Manar was the mastermind behind the redistricting of legislative maps, increasing Mike Madigan’s stranglehold over state government.
Just this month, Andy Manar betrayed the students in his district by voting to bail out Chicago Public Schools with $215 million in taxpayer money. Before the election, Manar voted against the bailout, but now he’s sold out to Mike Madigan. Andy Manar proved that he cares more about Madigan’s Chicago agenda than the families in his own district.
Mike Madigan admires Andy Manar so much that Madigan has showered Manar with over $450,000 in campaign cash for all of the damage he’s done. It’s time for Andy Manar to stand up to Mike Madigan and start working for Illinois taxpayers.
* I always assumed my massive chain pharmacy’s computer system automatically checks to make sure none of my prescriptions interact negatively with each other. I was wrong…
In the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind, the Tribune tested 255 pharmacies to see how often stores would dispense dangerous drug pairs without warning patients. Fifty-two percent of the pharmacies sold the medications without mentioning the potential interaction, striking evidence of an industrywide failure that places millions of consumers at risk.
CVS, the nation’s largest pharmacy retailer by store count, had the highest failure rate of any chain in the Tribune tests, dispensing the medications with no warning 63 percent of the time. Walgreens, one of CVS’ main competitors, had the lowest failure rate at 30 percent — but that’s still missing nearly 1 in 3 interactions. […]
In Illinois, pharmacists who detect a serious interaction must contact the prescribing doctor to see if the order is correct or if an alternative therapy is available, according to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. Pharmacists are then supposed to alert the patient. […]
Mayuri Patel, a pharmacist at a Wal-Mart in west suburban Northlake, said she typically fills 200 prescriptions in a nine-hour shift, or one every 2.7 minutes.
At another Wal-Mart where she was trained, it was even busier, she said: “We were doing 600 a day with two pharmacists with 10-hour shifts.” That works out to one prescription every two minutes.
Chris Kennedy, who is moving toward a run for governor as a Democrat, made his first big hire. Kennedy has secured veteran political ad guru and strategist Eric Adelstein, a Kennedy aide told POLITICO Illinois. Adelstein is a top-tier get for Kennedy. As it so happens, Adelstein boasts this tidbit in his bio: “His grandfather, a civic leader in 1960’s West Virginia, campaigned with Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.” Chris Kennedy is the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy. He is expected to make an announcement about a gubernatorial bid in early 2017.
Adelstein is a good get, for sure. But Kennedy isn’t the only guy doing some hiring.
* I’m told by one of his advisers that Chicago Ald. Ameya Pawar, a noted city progressive who is also seriously considering a gubernatorial bid, is hiring Sam Hobert. “He’s the equivalent of an exploratory campaign manager,” the adviser said. Right now, Pawar is in outreach mode.
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner earned rare praise from Democratic lawmakers Thursday for his effort to reform the state’s criminal justice system.
Rauner - the super-wealthy, fiscally conservative North Shore Republican - is Illinois’ new criminal justice reform champion. Even Democrats called a truce in the bitter state budget war to give Rauner some credit.
During the noon hour, the governor signed the latest criminal justice reform bill. The measure ensures that released prison inmates have a state I.D. upon release from custody.
“It’s extraordinary that we haven’t had this law, this rule before. But better late than never,” Rauner said. […]
“I want to thank the Governor for his leadership on this,” said State Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago.
The new law was sparked by recommendations from Rauner’s Illinois State Commission on Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform, which is attempting to reduce the state’s prison population by 25 percent by 2025. Rauner has signed 15 criminal justice bills since taking office.
“This bill helps those who made a mistake get re-established in their lives,” Rauner said. “By being productive citizens, they’re less vulnerable to going back and making a mistake and committing criminal behavior, and therefore, we’re keeping our communities safer.”
State Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, a member of the commission, called the new law a “symbol of bipartisan work that is desperately needed in this state.
“I’m hopeful that our work on criminal justice reforms will seep out in other policy areas,” he added.
But the bill signing ceremony was held at A Safe Haven, a West Side homeless shelter that does business with the state and could lose access to taxpayer funding if the governor and lawmakers can’t agree to a spending plan to replace a stopgap measure that expires Jan. 1.
The organization’s president, Neli Vazquez Rowland, organized the ceremony, which included testimonials from two individuals who credit A Safe Haven’s services with helping them out of a cycle of incarceration.
Rauner and his wife are longtime supporters of A Safe Haven, the governor said. The couple’s personal donations date to the organization’s founding more than 20 years ago, when the Rauners provided the “angel dust” that helped get the group off the ground, Rowland has said.
But given the budget stalemate between Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, taxpayers’ payments to the organization could be snarled in the political fight. Meetings between the two sides came to a halt earlier this month amid disagreement over how to proceed with negotiations. If no deal is reached by the end of the year, state funding for A Safe Haven and some other not-for-profit providers of state services could be held up as a result.
Asked about the budget implications for the organization, Rauner would not respond to the question. His staff had instructed reporters only to ask “on topic” questions.
* Rep. La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago) told reporters yesterday that he’d “most likely” be for term-limiting Speaker Madigan if that could lead to a compromise with Gov. Rauner on getting a budget…
Yesterday, Democrat Rep. La Shawn Ford indicated his support for term limits as means of compromising with Gov. Rauner to end the budget impasse.
Rep. Ford told CBS Chicago, “What do you think about term limits for someone like Mike Madigan? I mean, that’s a term limit. I would most likely be for that if we could figure out a way to make some compromises with the Governor to help the people that I represent.”
“It’s encouraging to see Democrats break away from Mike Madigan’s irrational opposition to any form of term limits and his unwillingness to compromise. Democrats and Republicans alike should work together to pass bipartisan reforms that the people of Illinois are demanding.” – Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Steven Yaffe
When cornered, politically vulnerable House Democrats always tell reporters and constituents that they had a binary choice between voting for fellow Democrat Mike Madigan and voting for the Republican, so they went with the Democrat.
But if Drury runs, HDems could conceivably have a choice between voting for the Democrat Madigan and voting for a Democrat who’s also a “former federal prosecutor,” as Drury loves to refer to himself.
* People out there in Voter Land simply don’t know Drury like many Statehouse types do. All they’ll know is that some “reformer” Democrat stuck his neck out and the mushrooms still voted for Madigan, who is the most unpopular politician in this state by far.
That’s a precarious position for Downstate and suburban targets. And, don’t kid yourself, plenty of Chicago Democrats also hear about Madigan at the doors and at events.
Drury could make life seriously complicated for his caucus.
…Adding… Some of you may be missing the point here. I doubt at this point that Drury can actually get elected. He’s Scott Drury, after all, and just about every HDem member has already pledged a vote for Madigan.
This post is about the potential political consequences of voting with Madigan and against Drury.
* I heard this was a possibility a couple of weeks ago, so I checked in with Rep. Nekritz, who asked if the Republicans were smoking medical marijuana. She wasn’t interested.
The Drury thing is fascinating only in the fact that the man actually thinks he could find eight Democrats to vote for him for Speaker…
There are 51 Republicans in the incoming House, and if all of them decided to throw their weight behind a Democrat who wasn’t Madigan, they’d have to find only nine Democrats to defect from Madigan to unseat him. Sources in the Illinois General Assembly tell Chicago Tonight that this indeed is the governor’s plan, and they have floated State Rep. Elaine Nekritz (D-Des Plaines) as a potential challenger.
Nekritz told Chicago Tonight, however, that she was not interested in the position. […]
Another Democratic lawmaker who has voted against the speaker on several issues says he is keeping all options open, including whether or not to throw his own name into the mix.
“I want to understand all the rules of how the nomination works, who can be nominated and how they can be nominated,” said State Rep. Scott Drury (D-Highwood). “When I have a thorough understanding of who can put their name forward and who can get by the challenges of voting for them, I’ll come to a decision.
“I’m convinced I’m the only person really studying this issue closely, and come Jan. 11, I’ll be prepared to do the right thing for the state of Illinois and my constituents.”
I swear to you this is not fake news. Well, it’s from a reputable source, anyway.
