* It’s so nice out today that I figured I’d roast a chicken on the grill, so I went to my favorite BBQ website (AmazingRibs.com) and found this stern warning…
Newly appointed state Sen. Chuck Weaver said he backs fellow Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on his Turnaround Agenda, as he prepares for his first day of session next week.
Rauner’s agenda has been a sticking point in the budget stalemate, which has lasted more than 100 days. He’s calling for tort reform, changes to the way unions and the state negotiate contracts and a property tax freeze. Weaver, R-Peoria, called the items on the agenda “critical.”
“If Gov. Rauner wasn’t in Springfield, I would have never touched this job,” Weaver said. “I think we all want to do things that impact our community, but you’re not very smart if you try to do it in a way that can’t be effective. If he wasn’t there I don’t believe my job would be effective.”
I say this isn’t a surprise because Sen. Weaver comes from one of the wealthiest families in the Peoria area, so his pro-business bonafides are impeccable. Weaver’s late father built up a very large and thriving business, which included everything from one of the top angus beef operations in the world to a large string of KFC restaurants. The family farm has also hosted at least one US President.
Though he agrees with the governor’s proposed reforms, Weaver thinks Rauner should spread his efforts out over a few years instead of asking for everything at once.
“I’ve never heard the governor say this, but if he could just get one or two of the items on his agenda every year, it’s going to take three to four years to get them, and we’re going to see big change in our state over the next five to six years as a result of that,” he said.
Seems practical to me.
The Senator should probably expect a snarky phone call from Richard Goldberg in three… two…
U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) will have a primary challenger.
Oswego businessman James Marter is entering the race, claiming Kirk’s stances against defunding Planned Parenthood and for gun control have made him little different than Democrats in the Senate.
Marter has heard it said that Kirk’s moderate positions are what gives him a chance to win a statewide election, but he’d like to see firsthand if voters will back a more conservative candidate like himself.
“That’s kind of the mantra out there, that you have to be a moderate to win in Illinois, but I think we need to run a conservative in Illinois to test that model and see if it’s really true,” Marter said.
In the history of Illinois, has a moderate Republican incumbent ever lost a statewide GOP primary to a completely unknown ultra-conservative challenger?
Indeed, Marter might actually turn out to be a good thing for Kirk if the incumbent tees off on Marter to reestablish his moderate bonafides for the fall campaign.
“Sen. Radogno: Gov. Rauner offered two things today — reforms and compromise. Democrats have to compromise if we are to avoid their tax hike.”
Really? Because Rauner has said he’s open to revenue enhancements (also known as take hikes) to balance the budget. He wants the legislature to adopt his pro-business and anti-union proposals before he’ll talk about it, but he hasn’t ruled it out.
Someday there may be an end to the impasse, and tax hikes could well be part of the solution. Some Republicans may well be called on to support them. Until then, the GOP might want to show some restraint before dismissing any tax hike as something being foisted by the Democrats alone.
The tweet should’ve read: “Democrats have to concede to the governor’s demand to whack unions if we are to pass a tax hike.”
* The governor hasn’t held a formal presser in a while, but he’ll be talking to the media today at 11:30 at the Thompson Center. Click here for live video from our good friends at BlueRoomStream.com. [That live video link isn’t working because the governor moved the location at the last minute. Click here for WGN’s live stream instead.] I’ll post a ScribbleLive feed in a bit.
* Democratic US Senate candidate Andrea Zopp hasn’t had a great few days in the earned media department. Laura Washington…
Outsider status is in vogue. Just ask Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson, marquee disrupters in the GOP presidential primary slugfest. The New York Times recently mentioned Zopp in an article about the rise of “anti-establishment” Democratic candidates.
However, Zopp’s resume includes a decidedly establishment stint as a member of the Chicago Board of Education.
In October 2012, she and the rest of the board voted unanimously to approve Barbara Byrd-Bennett as chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools. In June 2013, Zopp voted to approve a $20.5 million contract with SUPES Academy, to train the district’s principals and administrators.
On Thursday, Byrd-Bennett was named in a 23-count indictment, charged with helping SUPES get CPS contracts in exchange for kickbacks. Byrd-Bennett had previously worked for SUPES.
Now Zopp must defend her support of what appears to be a felonious and costly deal at a time when CPS was in financial crisis. Today, the schools may be on the verge of bankruptcy.
The contract does appear to have been felonious, but others say it was still a good deal and the bankruptcy stuff is hyperbole, but that piece was not good at all.
We, the public, did not learn of Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s profiteering relationship with a private education company from CPS. Nor from the mayor. Nor from the Chicago Board of Education, which to this day is afraid to challenge him. No, it was thanks to Catalyst, an independent education newsletter and an intrepid reporter Sarah Karp who, two years ago, asked simple questions. Why did Byrd-Bennett’s former consulting company get a no-bid $20 million contract almost immediately after she was hired? A company most educators knew nothing about? A company the Emanuel administration had worked with in hiring Brizard before firing him and hiring Byrd-Bennett? At a time when the board was so broke it was shuttering 50 schools?
People, Sarah Karp simply started with a Google search!
Did CPS’ army of lawyers, staffers, and pinstripe board members — including Andrea Zopp who is now running for U.S. Senate — ever consider asking those questions? Or were they too afraid to cross the guy on City Hall’s fifth floor?
Former CPS board member Andrea Zopp, who is now running for U.S. Senate, visited the Tribune Editorial Board in August. Asked about the SUPES contract, she said the board was aware Byrd-Bennett had ties with the company and it did not raise red flags.
“That was a plus, not a negative because she had experience with them,” Zopp said. “So being an employee in and of itself would not raise a bell. To me it was (Byrd-Bennett saying), ‘I work there. I know what they do is good. I did it.’ Me, at the time, I had a lot of respect for her and what she had done so that was a plus.”
No alarms? Really? It’s clear from the indictment that Byrd-Bennett sought to improperly leverage her position — and to hide her deal with SUPES from the school board. That doesn’t excuse board members for making it so easy.
* So, as I told you on Friday, Zopp is going over the media’s heads to voters during tonight’s Democratic presidential debate with some ads on CNN. The first one touts her as “the new choice in the race for Senate”…
The ad also focuses on police misbehavior, without actually saying so.
* The second is a bio spot, describing her as a tough prosecutor and foe of corruption as well as a “community leader and mom”…
* The final ad is apparently designed to air just after the debate. Among other things, Zopp touts herself as “the great-granddaughter of a slave”…
A lawmaker panel is expected to hear testimony on a measure that would automatically register Illinoisans to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license or state identification card.
The director of elections for Cook County Clerk David Orr is among those due to testify Tuesday in Chicago.
The Springfield bureau of Lee Enterprises newspapers reports there are roughly 7.5 million registered Illinois voters, about 70 percent of those eligible
Secretary of State Jesse White has not taken a position on the measure while awaiting more details, including whether the change would increase waiting times at driver’s license facilities and boost costs to train employees to be election registrars. […]
State Sen. Dave Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, sits on the subcommittee that will debate the idea Tuesday at a hearing in Chicago.
He said he is not familiar with the proposal, but said he believes making registration automatic could result in uninformed voters going to the polls.
“If you have to go out of your way to register to vote, you usually have a larger stake in the process. I believe an uninformed voter can actually be harmful to the United States,” Luechtefeld said.
Sen. Luechtefeld’s belief goes all the way back to the founding fathers. It’s been a constant source of tension in our political process.
“Citizens should not be required to opt-in to their fundamental right to vote,” Padilla added. “We do not have to opt-in to other rights, such as free speech or due process. The right to vote should be no different,” Padilla added.
Gov. Rauner has, in the past, supported laws that make it easier to vote or to register, so we’ll see what happens this time around.
Illinois’ next election isn’t until March, but you can go ahead right now and register to vote in it. More the procrastinating type? A new state law says you can now also register right up until, and on, the day of the election, at any precinct.
Republican Rep. Mark Batinick of Plainfield says that’s expensive; judging by how many took advantage of a trail run last year, he says “it would be cheaper for us to send a limousine to the people who are too lazy to register to vote, bring them down to the clerk’s office, have ‘em vote, take ‘em out for a steak dinner.”
Batinick doesn’t want to do away with same-day voter registration; rather, he proposes scaling it back, so there’d be set places for voters to register on election day. His proposal says that in places like the suburban collar counties only one, centralized same-day voter registration location would be required for every hundred thousand residents.
Brett Phillips headed to the polls at Welles Park in the early afternoon on Tuesday, thinking he’d outsmarted the lunchtime crowd of voters.
The joke was on him.
“I got here at 3,” said Phillips, as the clock ticked past 6 p.m. […]
At one point, the line of people waiting just to register — there would be another wait to vote — stretched outside the fieldhouse nearly all the way through the park to Montrose Avenue.
*** UPDATE *** From James P. Allen, the Communications Director at the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners…
Hi Rich,
In Chicago, 3,413 citizens used Election Day Registration at five sites at the Nov. 4, 2014 General Election.
We essentially extended by one day the time we used five early voting sites. Those were all in public buildings. The equipment was already in place. So the total cost was really staffing for an extra day. The staff downtown would have been here in either case, so there were no costs associated with this site. The approximate cost, if I calculate it on the high end, was $7,000.
That works out to $2.05 per voter who used Election Day Registration.
As Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez gears up for her first contested Democratic primary in eight years, she is trying to remind voters of her humble background, highlight her long history of prosecuting crimes and paint herself as a reformer concerned as much with justice as notching up convictions.
She plans to release a web video Tuesday that will serve as her formal campaign announcement for the March 15 contest. Preparing to challenge her are Kim Foxx, a former prosecutor backed by County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and Donna More, also a former prosecutor now in private practice.
“I grew up in Pilsen — neither one of my parents had a high school education,” Alvarez says, as video of her is interspersed amid older photos and background music that sets a dramatic tone. “My dad was a waiter, and my mom worked as a seamstress, after he passed away when I was 12 years old.”
Alvarez goes on to note she’s worked as a prosecutor for 29 years, saying it is “my calling … my passion” to make sure victims “get the justice that they deserve.” Then, addressing criticism that she’s not done enough to reform the criminal justice system and been too slow to probe some alleged wrongful prosecutions, she declares, “The role of a prosecutor is not rackin’ up convictions. It’s about getting to the truth.”
* Yes, this is a web video, not a TV ad. But I don’t know what sort of folks they believe will watch it for two and a half minutes…
Last year, gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner pledged to “crack down on waste” in government in order to save taxpayers more than $140 million.
He also vowed to cut $500 million from the Illinois Department of Central Management Services and find another $250 million in Medicaid savings.
Very little of that has happened to date, as the governor himself inadvertently admitted during a speech last week in the southern Cook County suburbs.
Instead of saving $500 million at CMS, for example, Rauner touted only $15 million in savings, mainly from grounding the state’s fleet of airplanes – although that doesn’t take into consideration the cost of paying mileage reimbursements for all those folks who can no longer fly.
The governor identified a grand total of $107 million in what he said are savings he’s found this year, but most came from cuts at the Department of Healthcare and Family Services, and people I’ve talked to aren’t buying those numbers because some major state cost controls have been allowed to expire. He also failed to mention he vetoed a bill the Democrats said would’ve resulted in $400 million in DHFS savings – far more than his own stated campaign goal and lots more than the $70 million he claims to actually have saved.
Rauner also bemoaned the lack of a budget and the myriad court orders which are forcing state spending at last fiscal year’s levels.
“I can’t control” the court orders, the governor said.
That’s true, but the governor could try negotiating with the stakeholders and the courts to come up with more affordable orders. He’s not a complete victim.
Of course, Rauner repeatedly complained that the Democratic General Assembly hasn’t allowed votes on a single one of his Turnaround Agenda items.
He has a right to complain, but he’s not a legislator. He needs to eventually realize he can’t pass bills on his own.
Rauner also has to come to terms with the fact that “giving” the Democrats some Republican votes on a tax hike roll call in exchange for Democrats whacking unions isn’t exactly a Democratic “win.” To quite a few Democrats, that’s a most definite lose-lose proposition.
For crying out loud, man, what about an infrastructure projects plan? How about finding anything that could help grease a victory instead of this unseemly whining about how the other side won’t cave?
The Democrats, for their part, have got to get it into their heads that they have a Republican governor.
“I’ve stated all year that I will work with the governor cooperatively and professionally, but we will not devastate Illinois’ middle class and struggling families by furthering an agenda aimed at driving down their wages and their standard of living,” House Speaker Michael Madigan said shortly after the governor’s speech last week.
OK, well, first of all, comparing Rauner to Rod Blagojevich earlier this year was definitely neither cooperative nor professional on Madigan’s part, and his press secretary claimed the governor was acting like “a scared second-grader” when he skipped out of that south suburban speech without taking reporters’ questions.
Apart from that, Madigan’s two pension reform laws most definitely were designed to reduce the standard of living of retirees. Rauner was absolutely right last week to point out the various labor law exemptions Madigan has passed for Chicago. Even so, that doesn’t mean the Democrats ever would accede to Rauner’s demand teachers and local government employees should be stripped of their right to bargain over wages, benefits, overtime and working conditions. Ain’t gonna happen, man.
Eventually, because the governor is so anti-union and won’t talk about a budget until he gets some wins on that front, Madigan and the Democrats are going to have to do something that unions don’t love or this impasse will never end.
The problem for the Democrats is intensely political. Rauner’s horrible idea to spend the first four months of his administration touring the state demanding a so-called “right to work” law united unions like never before. Some major trade unions actively backed cuts in pension benefits for public employees, believing it would free up money for other state spending (a position encouraged by Madigan, by the way). Now, thanks to Rauner, they’re all one big happy family.
The Democrats are so frozen in position they can’t or won’t budge until things get so bad they will have no other choice but to ding the unions at least a little bit, which may be the ultimate plan here.
Madigan needs to understand this budget crisis happened under his watch and that the practice of spending money the state doesn’t have must end. He needs to fully grasp the fact that the state’s voters elected a Republican governor, meaning citizens want some of the reforms Rauner is touting.
Rauner needs to understand that Democrats aren’t going to give in to demands that weaken collective bargaining rights and take away power from labor unions. Rauner is correct that Madigan has in the past supported weakening collective bargaining rights, but that isn’t going to happen in the current environment.
Rauner must grasp that governing involves more than complaining about Democrats in front of friendly crowds.
Both sides need to put a clamp on the trash talking.
* But he’s on the road again this week. From the Quincy Area Chamber…
Please join Great River Economic Development Foundation and the Quincy Area Chamber of Commerce as we host Gov. Bruce Rauner for a Town Hall Meeting in Quincy to discuss the path forward for Illinois.
When: Thursday, October 15, 2015 | 2:00 p.m.
Where: John Wood Community College Workforce Development Center | 4220 Kochs Lane | Quincy, Illinois
– Joseph Tybor, the longtime Chicago journalist and press secretary for the Illinois Supreme Court, died Saturday at his home in Countryside. He was 68.
Tybor’s 30-year journalism career included comprehensive coverage of a broad array of subjects, including the Vietnam War, Notre Dame football and his must-read “On the Law” column that ran weekly in the Chicago Tribune.
For the past decade and a half he was a diligent advocate for the Illinois Supreme Court and spearheaded key changes to the Open Meetings Act, which allowed cameras into Illinois courtrooms for the first time.
“His relationships with reporters and his love and passion for the law made him such an absolute great fit at the Supreme Court,” Tybor’s son, Adam Tybor, said. “He was amazing at his job - he fought for his beliefs.”
Tybor, who was born in Chicago and grew up on the near South Side, got his start at the Chicago bureau of The Associated Press in the late 1960s. He was then drafted into the U.S. Army and served from 1969-71. He continued reporting in the military and had an influential story about the transport of deadly nerve gas republished by the AP.
After his discharge, Tybor returned to the AP and began taking night classes to earn his law degree. He earned his Juris Doctor from DePaul in 1979, and two years later he was hired by former Chicago Tribune city editor Dick Ciccone to cover legal affairs.
“At the AP you cover a variety of things,” said Ciccone, who later served as the Tribune’s managing editor from 1982-95. “He could so easily move from a crime story to a weather story to a sports story. He was a very fast writer and very informed on a whole wide world of subjects.”
In 1986, the Tribune nominated Tybor for a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Chicago’s criminal justice system, Adam Tybor said.
His weekly “On the Law” column was a must-read for attorneys, judges, litigants and the general public.
After several years on the legal affairs beat he transitioned to coverage of Notre Dame sports, where he flourished as the foremost authority of all things Fighting Irish. Soon after taking over the beat he started his own side publication, Irish Eyes, one of the earliest online destinations for sports information.
Irish Eyes was a subscriber-based, bulletin board-style site where Tybor published inside information about Notre Dame.
“We just found a letter from Lou Holtz,” Adam Tybor said, “saying ‘Joe Tybor would be the only person I would consider letting write a book about me.’”
After a decade on the Notre Dame beat and as the newspaper industry began to change, Tybor transitioned to a communications role with the Illinois Supreme Court.
He served as the Court’s press secretary until his death.
“Everyone who ever dealt with him regarded him as tough but fair,” Ciccone said.
Tybor was also a nature lover, an avid camper, canoer and paddler. He earned his instructor certification from the American Canoe Association at age 65.
Tybor is survived by his wife, Sandra; daughter, Sarah Clark; son, Adam Tybor; siblings Julia Moore, Donna Siedschlag and David Tybor. He had several grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
Visitation will be held from 3-9 p.m. Tuesday at Hallowell & James Funeral Home, 1025 W. 55th St., Countryside. Mass will be held at St. Cletus Church, 600 W. 55th St., LaGrange, at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to Block Integrative Cancer Center, Skokie, Ill., or the National Pancreatic Cancer Foundation.
* Joe and I talked often about his experience with his “Irish Eyes” site. He was a big help to me through the years and was a “hands down” winner of our 2012 Golden Horseshoe Award for best government spokesman…
The Supreme Court finally allowed cameras in the courtroom this year and Tybor has been everywhere working with media and judges to make the experiment work. He’s getting good coverage for the court, but also helped develop a working cameras policy in Illinois. No one else has had as much influence as a spokesman.
His background in both journalism and the law made him a “logical choice” for the role of high court communications director, then-Chief Justice Charles E. Freeman said when it was announced Tybor would step into the role for retiring press secretary John Madigan.
“His ability to move comfortably in both the legal and journalistic world will better enable the court to help educate the public about its vital role in protecting the rights of citizens according to the U.S. and Illinois Constitutions and the court’s own precedent,” Freeman said at the time.
From there, Tybor spoke about any and all court-related issues, from obscure rule changes to annual budget requests from the legislature. He was also instrumental in more sweeping high court policies, such as the push to allow cameras into trial courts around the state.
“In one simple phrase, Joe did the heavy-lifting,” said Justice Thomas L. Kilbride, who worked extensively to promote the cameras in the courtroom initiative. “He really did a masterful job of researching other states and representing proposals to the Illinois Supreme Court. He was numero uno. He was the guy out in front.”
Almost 80 percent of registered voters in the region think the state and the nation are headed in the wrong direction. Fewer than 15 percent think Illinois and the U.S. are on the right track.
“These results probably reflect some of Illinois ’ current conflicts. Most polls show that more people feel their state is doing better than the nation. Not here. ” said John Jackson, a visiting professor at the Institute. […]
Only 37.4 percent approve of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s performance in office, while 50.7 percent disapprove. About one in eight ( 11.9 percent ) had no opinion about the Republican chief executive.
Senator Mark Kirk’s job approval rating is 30.4 percent, with 22.9 percent disapproving. A plurality of voters in the region – 46.6 percent – don’t know how they feel about the GOP lawmaker.
Senator Richard Durbin has approval ratings that exceed his disapprovals , but not by much. Half ( 50.6 percent ) approve of the Democrat’ s performance and a third (33.5 percent) disapprove. There are 16 percent who don’t know.
The Simon Institute’s Southern Illinois Poll interviewed 401 registered voters across the 18 southernmost counties in Illinois. The counties are: Alexander, Franklin, Gallatin, Hamilton, Hardin, Jackson, Jefferson, Johnson, Massac, Perry, Pope, Pulaski, Randolph, Saline, Union, Washington, White and Williamson.
It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. This means that if we were to conduct the survey 100 times, in 95 of those instances the results would vary by no ore than plus or minus 4.9 percentage points from the results obtained here.
“Voters here have been in a bad mood and they continue to be,” said David Yepsen, director of the Institute.
“The only surprise is how many people don’t have an opinion about Senator Kirk. For a statewide Republican incumbent to have such ambivalent ratings down here isn’t a good sign for him as he heads into a tough re-election campaign. He needs to be running well in this area to offset Democratic strengths elsewhere in the state,” he said.
Charlie Leonard, one of the Institute’s visiting professors supervising the poll, said “though Democrats and Republicans are evenly distributed in our southern Illinois sample, this is still a conservative area, and one might have thought of it as fertile ground for Gov. Rauner. For his approval ratings to be ‘upside down’ in southern Illinois this early in his administration may not bode well for the pro-business agenda he’s been trying to push.”
Andrea Zopp for US Senate
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Friday, Oct 9, 2015 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
The final results are in and as many analysts have noted, “Exelon was the big winner in this year’s [PJM grid capacity} auction.” Here are the highlights:
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Yesterday, a member of the press asked if I am willing to meet the governor halfway.
I replied with an example I’ve used in the past, asking rhetorically if it would be appropriate for me to meet the governor halfway if his stated objective were to enslave me. I knew my words were jarring. I used them not in order to play the “race card,” but because they illustrate an unacceptable extreme.
In no way was I suggesting that the governor is a racist. His personal philanthropy and conduct toward me demonstrate otherwise.
The governor and I have worked together productively in the past and continue to do so. Just yesterday, Gov. Rauner, Leader Currie and I celebrated the expansion of the Chicago Innovation Exchange. Later, I attended a meeting of the criminal justice reform commission the governor convened shortly after taking office. Where we share ideological priorities, we’ve worked together, and where we differ, we’ve engaged in civil discussions. The governor has never failed to be a gentleman. That does not mean I must turn a blind eye to the disproportionate impact many of his demands would have on communities of color while harming low-income and middle-class families of every description.
This crisis won’t be resolved in an arm’s length back-and-forth in the media, and I remain willing to meet with the governor to discuss the topics on his agenda. But in my practice of law, I’ve represented employers in negotiations related to labor, workers’ compensation and civil lawsuits, and I know that when one side insists on extreme approaches as the only possible starting and ending point, a negotiation cannot bear fruit. We can’t forget that we live along a fragile continuum of progress. Not so long ago, employees had few protections and injured workers little recourse, civil justice failed the victims of corporate negligence and minorities were shafted at the ballot box and in redistricting.
The governor also prefers we forget that just six months ago, both Republicans and Democrats funded a set of critical priorities that are simply unsustainable without additional revenue. Instead, he’s content to accuse legislative Democrats – a diverse caucus – of uniformly wanting a tax increase, when in fact, most Republicans agree to the need for revenue, with their votes if not their voices.
I’m willing to negotiate, but a list of inflexible demands plus willful amnesia is no recipe for any negotiation, much less a successful one.
* The governor proposed cutting CeaseFire’s $4.7 million state funding by $3 million in February, and hasn’t released any new money for quite a while. Mayor Emanuel also cut $1 million from the program. The AP says the city’s crime spike could be related…
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner froze money for CeaseFire, featured in the 2011 documentary “The Interrupters,” as Illinois began running out of money because Democrats passed a budget that spent billions more than the state took in. The program was cut off before receiving all of the $4.7 million it was budgeted last fiscal year, and it has gotten no state funding this year as the fight between Rauner and Democrats who lead the Legislature drags on and several programs in Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois shut down.
Meanwhile, Chicago has seen a roughly 20 percent increase in shootings and homicides so far this year compared with the same period in 2014. That included a July 4 weekend that left 48 people shot, including a 7-year-old boy who police say was killed by a shot intended for his father, described as a “ranking gang member” by officers.
None of those holiday weekend shootings occurred in two police districts covered by a Ceasefire-affiliated program that managed to fund itself for the month of July. The same area saw nearly 50 shootings in August. […]
Target Area’s grant was $220,000. Combined with another eliminated grant that helped ex-offenders leaving prison, the state dollars made up 21 percent of the agency’s annual budget, Phillips said.
In July, Target Area used an anonymous donation to train several hundred people on how to prevent conflicts from escalating into violence. The neighborhood into which they were sent during the July 4 weekend saw none of the dozens of shootings and killings that plagued the city over those days, Phillips said.
The following month, when funding was gone and programs had ended, there were 46 shootings in the same area.
The theory behind the program seems pretty sound, at least.
* From a recent WaPo interview of epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health…
“What has been meant by this in the past is that you can approach violence with epidemiological methods, which essentially means that you can apply science to it, figure out where it is, and predict it.
“But we’ve gotten much more sophisticated since then, and now we have very specific health methods for reducing it. We understand that the people doing violence have picked up a set of behavioral patterns by the way the brain copies things. And also that people follow their peers, and there are strong brain processes that encourage you to do that.
“If you go beyond thinking about violence as a moral problem and instead try to understand it as a health issue, many things that were previously unexplainable can be explained. People are always saying “senseless acts of violence,” but that’s really because we haven’t made sense of it. […]
“I’ll give you an example. I worked in refugee camps in Somalia. We had six doctors, and there were a million refugees in 40 camps. There was serious malnutrition, an unimaginable rate of death from diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria. So it seemed like this was an unmanageable problem. But what we did is we recruited tens of thousands of health workers, who were taught just a few simple things that needed to be done.
“These are paid jobs, but they’re paid at a scale that’s different than the people who have gone to ten years of school. Because what’s required to help a mom manage diarrhea, or talk to a sex worker about safe sex, or talk to someone who is suffering a lot, it’s often not that complicated. We’re either giving people nothing or super-everything, and it makes absolutely no sense.”
* Oscar isn’t feeling well, so I need to take him to the vet. He won’t eat or drink (he even refused a hot dog yesterday) and he’s obviously not his old self.
Here he is yesterday cuddling with his Uncle Rob…
Think positive thoughts, please. Thanks!
…Adding… … They are giving him some fluids to make him feel more comfortable and then they are going to run some tests and I should know something in about an hour or so.
…Adding More… The tests all came back negative. He ate some treats but he didn’t want any water. They are now going to take some xrays.
…Adding… The X-rays were negative except that he had an irritated stomach and bowels. They are putting him on a canned, bland diet for now and giving me some medicine for his nausea. We are going home now.
…Adding Still More… We’re home and he’s eating his new food. Wolfed down an entire can. What a relief…
Kent Gray, a lawyer and elected member of the Lincoln Land Community College Board, has been named Illinois campaign director for the presidential campaign of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
A news release from the Trump campaign said that Gray, in a 25-year career, has worked on seven national presidential campaigns and many state and local races. As an attorney, Gray has handled ballot access issues for dozens of candidates for offices from president of the country to local school boards.
Gray, 45, lives in Leland Grove. He lost a 2014 GOP primary for circuit judge.
* Several top Illinois Republicans have been gloating lately about how Trump didn’t have an Illinois presence and how he might not get onto the ballot…
“I don’t know that Trump gets on the Illinois ballot,” warns Republican strategist and former Illinois GOP chair Pat Brady. Absent a significant organization, you’re just not going to get it done in this state.” Brady is backing Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. But other top Illinois Republicans are making similar predictions.
IL GOP PARTY CHAIR HAS NO TRUMP CONTACTS: Illinois Republican Party Chairman Tim Schneider, who is remaining neutral, tells POLITICO that while potential delegates for Bush, Kasich and Rubio have called the state’s GOP HQ raising their hands for those campaigns. “I can’t tell you we know right now, who to contact if someone wants to be a Trump delegate … I’m not sure the Trump campaign understands the complexity of having delegates in every congressional district.” Petitions start circulating Oct. 3 and candidates have until January to get them in. […]
QUOTABLE: “He asked all the usual suspects. They all turned him down.” — Pat Brady on Trump’s attempt to drop roots in Illinois.
* Petition circulation started yesterday. This is not going to be an easy task for Gray because the Trump campaign is so far behind. Even so, he has until early January to find delegates in every district and get their signatures turned in.
Rauner attempted to reframe the debate by arguing Democrats already have voted for various union-weakening proposals in recent years, nullifying their argument that they’d be violating a core principle if they approved his demands. […]
Instead, the governor said, the fight was “about political tactics for the next election versus policies for the next generation” as he insisted Democrats were more interested in protecting their political allies in organized labor than “helping the middle class.” […]
“Length of school day, length of school year, layoffs in Chicago teachers, whenever they needed something out (of collective bargaining), they take it out,” the governor said. “So when somebody argues to you (that) this is about a violation of the core principles of the Democratic Party, call it on them. Call them on it. It’s not true. Simply not true. This is about political manipulation, political maneuvering, not about true genuine policy.”
It’s true that the Democrats have whacked the teachers and AFSCME over the years. Heck, in 2010 those unions boycotted House Speaker Michael Madigan’s campaign funds, and two years later AFSCME flooded Governor’s Day with hundreds of angry, screaming protesters.
But what Rauner wants is patently extreme and most definitely goes against the “core principles of the Democratic Party.” I’m not gonna post it yet again today, but click here if you’re not sure what I mean.
There’s a big difference between taking length of the school year out of Chicago collective bargaining and forbidding teachers and local government employees to bargain on all wages and benefits, overtime and pensions.
C’mon, man.
* Sen. Kwame Raoul rebuts another Rauner argument. The governor says that the fact that he has removed so many items from his list of demands is proof he is negotiating in good faith…
“If you just throw something on the wall that is to the extreme and say, ‘OK, I’m dropping that now,’ that’s not a fair point of departure to say, ‘I’ve negotiated,’” Raoul said of Rauner.
Yep. Dropping “right to work” zones from his agenda wasn’t negotiating, it was accepting reality that there was no way that thing was ever gonna pass and pushing for it was doing more harm to his party than good.
* Will there be state legislative fallout from yesterday’s Barbara Byrd-Bennett indictment? Ald. Burns doesn’t think it’ll be too bad…
It threatens to damage the credibility sorely needed to get the $480 million in pension help from Springfield needed to avert a devastating round of mid-year budget cuts that, Schools CEO Forrest Claypool has warned, could cost thousands of teachers their jobs and send class sizes soaring through the roof.
“There’s a reputation about Chicago anyway. If you’re a DownStater or a suburban legislator who hates Chicago, this confirms why you don’t like Chicago,” said Ald. Will Burns (4th), the former state lawmaker now chairing the City Council’s Education Committee.
“But if something is going to be done for Chicago, the city cannot be the only beneficiary. Suburban and Downstate schools have to benefit as well. So, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think Barbara’s indictment is hurtful. Part of the reason why is there is new leadership at CPS.”
Burns noted that Emanuel replaced Byrd-Bennett with his chief of staff Claypool, whose reputation for integrity is unblemished at the Chicago Park District, City Hall, Cook County government and the CTA.
But downstate and suburban lawmakers, many of them already CPS skeptics, say the Byrd-Bennett case will make a “yes” vote on an emergency aid bill more difficult.
“We want to know where the money goes. Until you get rid of the corruption and the wasteful spending that’s already occurring, then we have no desire to send you anymore money,” said State Rep. Jeanne Ives.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who hired Byrd-Bennett in 2012, issued a statement saying “CPS students, parents, teachers and principals deserve better.”
But a Republican state lawmaker said “better” in his view, might be his bill that would allow local governments to declare chapter nine bankruptcy.
“Certainly, there is a case to be made that CPS is beyond fixable,” said State Rep. Ron Sandack.
* By Kristina Rasmussen at the Illinois Policy Institute, with emphasis added…
Illinois’ growing bill backlog is back in the news, thanks to the warning bells sounded by Illinois Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger.
With Gov. Bruce Rauner rightly rejecting calls for higher taxes until the General Assembly passes much-needed budgetary and economic reforms, a political dance will continue in the halls of the Capitol. Call it the state budget shuffle.
Here’s how it works: Lawmakers essentially have given up on trying to pass a balanced state budget. Of the more than $2.6 billion that flows into state coffers every month, much more goes out the door. That’s why Munger expects a backlog of $8.5 billion by the end of the calendar year if spending isn’t recalibrated.
How is the pie of available funds sliced? The worthiness of any given program has little to do with it. Everyone wants food pantries and crisis nurseries to keep their doors open, but tugging on heartstrings won’t get anyone far. Rather, it’s a game of who has rigged the system so they can jump to the head of the line.
Pensioners have a constitutional clause that guarantees their pension benefits can’t be diminished or impaired no matter how dire the state’s fiscal situation. State workers have binding contracts and court orders that ensure they get paid, even if the state government were to shut down. Lawmakers have a statutory continuing appropriation that means they also will get paid no matter what.
Who doesn’t get preferential treatment? Low-income working moms looking for help to pay for day care. Seniors who rely on community groups for help. Even lottery winners are getting stiffed. The comptroller can try to mitigate the pain the best she can, but she, too, must live within the constraints of the system.
Um, hello? Gov. Rauner proposed cutting that child care program all the way back in February and then pushed through emergency rules designed to decimate it this summer.
The huge child care program cuts are a feature, not a bug.
* From “The Chicago End-Times - The slow humiliation of Chicago’s most vital newspaper” by Sam Stecklow…
The Sun-Times’ website has undergone four redesigns in the last two years (and one very talked-up political redesign), each less popular with the newsroom than the last. “[When the Sun-Times site] changed over from the newest of the redesigns to what it is now, to match the Network site, there was a lot of displeasure in the newsroom about that,” a former longtime Sun-Times staffer said. “I think a lot of employees were confused as to why so much time, and I assume money, to do three or four website redesigns, only to scrap the whole thing and go with this national Network, and then be told we don’t have any money. Well, you had enough money to do four website redesigns that you didn’t want, but you’re laying off employees. The money was just spent in a different place.”
When the Sun Times Network was launched, the Sun-Times newsroom was at once surprised and skeptical. A former Sun-Times employee told me that reporters and editors were asking amongst themselves whether Wrapports higher-ups (chairman Michael Ferro, CEO Tim Knight, and Aggrego CEO Tim Landon) had even thought this thing through properly. “This sort of rewriting existing content into a bloggy national format was sort of an oversaturated market to begin with,” they continued. “Once we sort of figured out what this was, a lot of people asked, ‘How did this cost fourteen million dollars?’ To hire interns and build essentially one website? It wasn’t 70-something websites, it was one website that was poorly done.”
* There are some naughty words, so be forewarned. On the resignation of Tim Knight earlier this week as the CEO of parent company Wrapports…
Former managing editor Craig Newman told me, “I hope that this is good news for the Sun-Times and an end to the failed mishmosh of an experiment that is the Wrapports/Aggrego/Sun Times Network. However, coming on the heels of recent staff departures and continued gutting of the core of the company, the Chicago Sun-Times, it seems more like a rat fleeing a sinking ship—a ship sinking in no small part because of the rat.”
Tribune Real Estate Holdings, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tribune Media Company (NYSE: TRCO), today announced that it has hired Eastdil Secured to begin exploring strategic monetization alternatives for Tribune Tower and adjacent land. The historic 36-story building sits on three acres, with 305 feet of frontage on Chicago’s premiere street for shopping and entertainment, North Michigan Avenue.
“The global renown of this building, its unparalleled location and development potential make this an incredible opportunity and we are expecting a high level of interest from a broad range of private and institutional investors and developers,” said Murray McQueen, President of Tribune Real Estate Holdings.
McQueen continued, “This property offers 100 linear feet more frontage on Michigan Avenue than Rockefeller Center has on Fifth Avenue in New York City. We see this as the future site of an exciting retail destination, surrounded by world-class adaptive re-use of the Tower and additional mixed use development.”
Tribune Real Estate will explore all transaction options with a goal of maximizing proceeds to the company while creating a compelling mixed-use destination for the city.
Built in 1925, Tribune Tower was designed by New York architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, who won a contest held by Chicago Tribune co-publishers Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Patterson to create the newspaper’s headquarters.
Named a Chicago landmark in 1989, Tribune Tower itself would likely remain a centerpiece of any redevelopment. […]
Tribune Media spun off its publishing division — including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other daily newspapers — in August 2014 to focus on its higher-margin broadcasting business. It also retained a real estate portfolio that includes 77 assets, 8 million square feet and 1,200 acres of land. Tribune Real Estate is looking at redeveloping Times Mirror Square in Los Angeles as well as sites in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in Florida, and Costa Mesa, Calif.
Company officials have been talking about this for years, going back to Sam Zell’s days at the helm.
No Illinois GOP members part of powerful conservative House Freedom Caucus
Members of the House GOP are said to be stunned after Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy unexpectedly withdrew his bid to succeed retiring House Speaker John Boehner.
McCarthy needed 218 votes among House members to move into the House Speakership - the third spot in the presidency succession line. The Majority Leader appeared confident that he had the 218 needed to be the next Speaker, but a small group of conservative members chose Wednesday night to throw their support behind Florida Congressman Daniel Webster.
Those votes moving to Webster endangered McCarthy’s win. The 30 to 40 members of the House Republicans are called the “House Freedom Caucus,” group described in the Wall Street Journal as “a small but smart and strategic group.”
And, according to a published list, not one Republican from Illinois is a part of the conservative Republican “House Freedom Caucus.” […]
“You have to be a rock solid limited government conservative to be invited. Nobody in the Illinois delegation is even remotely close to conservative enough to be invited in,” [former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh] said. “Sad.”
U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Channahon recently has begun emphasizing his view that, as he put it in an appearance before Crain’s editorial board Oct. 2, the national GOP and some House Republicans “are alienating the very people we need to win.”
Kinzinger underlined a series of policy views that will rankle the hard right, including advocating a “path to legalization” for immigrants who are here illegally, opposing a government shutdown over funding for Planned Parenthood, renewing funding for the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and calling for “an adult conversation” about whether there should be a hike in the gasoline tax to pay for road and other transportation projects.
Then he twisted the knife a little: “I don’t call them the Freedom Caucus,” he said, referring to a group of about four dozen very conservative House members who finally got their wish last week when Speaker John Boehner announced his resignation. “They’re the ’so-called Freedom Caucus’.”
Yes, this is a national politics post, but you know how I feel about national political “debates,” so keep a civil tongue in your head and in your typing fingers. Thanks, even though I don’t quite know why your tongue would be in your fingers. That’s gross. Take your tongue outta your fingers - unless it’s civil.
Thursday, Oct 8, 2015 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
The final results are in and as many analysts have noted, “Exelon was the big winner in this year’s [PJM grid capacity} auction.” Here are the highlights:
$1.7 BILLION RATE INCREASE FOR EXELON – Exelon engineered the new rules to increase their profits. Their $1.7 BILLION reward will be paid for by struggling Illinois ratepayers.
Byron and Quad Cities Both Cleared the Auction and are Obligated to Run Well into the Future
Exelon’s Low Carbon Portfolio Standard would have raised $1.6 billion over 5 ½ years for Exelon. The Capacity markets, under Exelon-pushed rules, earned Exelon $1.7 billion over only three years.
Illinois doesn’t have a balanced budget, service providers are being decimated and real people across Illinois are hurting. It’s time for Exelon to take their HUGE $1.7 BILLION WINDFALL and stop asking legislators to keep padding their profits.
Enough is enough!
Just Say “NO” to the Exelon Bailout
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Governor Rauner yesterday delivered remarks explaining how reforming collective bargaining is a bi-partisan idea and would save taxpayers billions. In fact, many Democrats, including the House Speaker and House Majority Leader as well as the Senate President and Senate Majority Leader, have voted in recent years to limit and remove collective bargaining requirements in an effort to save taxpayers money.
“Twice in the last four years, Illinois Democrats voted to reform collective bargaining, but now they are hiding behind it to try to force spending higher and raise taxes on the people of Illinois,” Rauner spokesman Lance Trover said. “The notion that collective bargaining is sacrosanct to the Democratic Party is nothing more than political gamesmanship to protect the status quo and hurt taxpayers.”
SB 1 (Pension Reform of 2013)
Senate Democrats voting aye:
Biss, Cunningham, Harmon, Hunter, Jones, Landek, Martinez, McGuire, Morrison, Mulroe, Munoz, Raoul, Sandoval, Silverstein, Stadelman, Steans, Van Pelt, Mr. President
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/votehistory/98/senate/09800SB0001_12032013_005000R.pdf
That’s all well and good. However, the governor has proposed some awfully radical legislation…
Prohibited subjects of bargaining.
(a) A public employer and a labor organization may not bargain over, and no collective bargaining agreement entered into, renewed, or extended on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 99th General Assembly may include, provisions related to the following prohibited subjects of collective bargaining:
(1) Employee pensions, including the impact or implementation of changes to employee pensions, including the Employee Consideration Pension Transition Program as set forth in Section 30 of the Personnel Code.
(2) Wages, including any form of compensation including salaries, overtime compensation, vacations, holidays, and any fringe benefits, including the impact or implementation of changes to the same; except nothing in this Section 7.6 will prohibit the employer from electing to bargain collectively over employer-provided health insurance.
(3) Hours of work, including work schedules, shift schedules, overtime hours, compensatory time, and lunch periods, including the impact or implementation of changes to the same.
(4) Matters of employee tenure, including the impact of employee tenure or time in service on the employer’s exercise of authority including, but not limited to, any consideration the employer must give to the tenure of employees adversely affected by the employer’s exercise of management’s right to conduct a layoff.
Sorry to repeat myself, but no way are they gonna vote for that, governor. No way are even all that many Republicans gonna vote for it, either.
* A good friend stopped by the house today, so I missed this one. From the US Attorney’s office. Not exactly a huge surprise. The full indictment is here…
A federal indictment returned today charges BARBARA BYRD-BENNETT with using her position atop the Chicago Public Schools to award lucrative no-bid contracts to her former employer in exchange for bribes and kickbacks.
The 23-count indictment alleges that Byrd-Bennett steered no-bid contracts worth more than $23 million to THE SUPES ACADEMY LLC, and SYNESI ASSOCIATES LLC, in exchange for an expectation of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks. The companies agreed to conceal the kickback money by funneling it into accounts set up in the names of two of Byrd-Bennett’s relatives, according to the indictment. A later agreement called for the funds to be paid to Byrd-Bennett in the form of a “signing bonus” after her employment with CPS ended and the companies re-hired her as a consultant, according to the indictment.
The companies, which specialize in training principals and school administrators, provided Byrd-Bennett with numerous other benefits, including meals, an airplane ticket, and seats at basketball and baseball games, the indictment states. Byrd-Bennett also expected to receive reimbursement from the companies for costs associated with a holiday party she hosted for CPS personnel, according to the charges.
The Wilmette-based SUPES and the Evanston-based Synesi are also charged in the indictment, along with their respective former owners, GARY SOLOMON and THOMAS VRANAS. Byrd-Bennett had worked as a consultant for SUPES and Synesi before moving to CPS in May 2012. She was appointed chief executive officer at CPS on Oct. 12, 2012.
The indictment charges Byrd-Bennett, 66, of Solon, Ohio, with 15 counts of mail fraud and five counts of wire fraud. Solomon, 47, of Wilmette, is charged with 15 counts of mail fraud, five counts of wire fraud, two counts of bribery of a government official, and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Vranas, 34, of Glenview, is charged with 15 counts of mail fraud, four counts of wire fraud, two counts of bribery of a government official, and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. SUPES and Synesi are charged as corporate defendants with 15 counts of mail fraud and five counts of wire fraud apiece.
The indictment seeks forfeiture from defendants Solomon, Vranas, SUPES and Synesi of all money and property traceable to the violations, estimated at approximately $2 million.
An arraignment date in U.S. District Court in Chicago has not yet been set.
“Graft and corruption in our city’s public school system tears at the fabric of a vital resource for the children of Chicago,” said Zachary T. Fardon, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. “School officials and city vendors who abuse the public trust will be held accountable.”
Mr. Fardon announced the indictment along with John A. Brown, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Nicholas J. Schuler, Inspector General for the Chicago Public Schools.
“The American people expect honest services from their government leaders, particularly those responsible for leading our teachers and caring for our children,” said Special Agent Brown. “The FBI, in conjunction with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners, remains steadfast in its pursuit of those willing to trade the education of our children for their own prosperity.”
“The public education system is harmed when a high-level insider chooses to line their pockets with public funds,” CPS Inspector General Schuler said. “My office is committed to rooting out corruption at any level through joint investigations such as this one.”
The contracts referenced in the indictment were awarded by the Chicago Board of Education, which governs CPS, as part of a CBOE training program called the Chicago Executive Leadership Academy (CELA). One such contract – worth $2.09 million for leadership training of school administrators – was awarded to SUPES within two weeks of Byrd-Bennett’s appointment as CEO, and then extended with an additional $225,000 allocation in 2013. A larger no-bid contract – worth $20.5 million – was awarded to SUPES on June 26, 2013.
The indictment alleges that Byrd-Bennett used her position as CEO to lobby CBOE officials on behalf of SUPES and Synesi, and to actively seek funds from the CPS budget to expand the CELA program for the companies’ benefit. Byrd-Bennett directed CPS employees to obtain the necessary approvals to eliminate competitive bidding from the procurement process, and to ensure that the contracts were awarded to SUPES, according to the indictment.
All the while, Byrd-Bennett falsely represented to CBOE officials that she received no financial compensation from the companies, the indictment contends. In reality, Byrd-Bennett maintained an interest in SUPES and Synesi through a secret consulting agreement, which promised to pay her a percentage of the gross proceeds from the contracts she helped to procure, according to the indictment.
The indictment cites an email between Solomon and Vranas on or about Dec. 6, 2012, which contained a prior email discussion between Byrd-Bennett, Solomon and Vranas. In that email, Solomon informed Byrd-Bennett, in part: “It is our assumption that the distribution will serve as a signing bonus upon your return to SUPES/Synesi. If you only join for the day, you will be the highest paid person on the planet for that day.”
In the late summer or early fall of 2013, according to the indictment, Solomon informed Byrd-Bennett that the CBOE Inspector General wanted to review Solomon’s and Vranas’s emails. Solomon said Vranas planned to use a computer program to delete the emails, and he told Byrd-Bennett to delete her emails as well, the indictment states.
Each count of mail and wire fraud is punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, mandatory restitution, and a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss resulting from the offense, whichever is greater. Each count of bribery of a government official carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss resulting from the offense, whichever is greater. The charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States is punishable by a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss resulting from the offense, whichever is greater.
If convicted, the Court must impose a reasonable sentence under federal sentencing statutes and the advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines. The public is reminded that an indictment contains only charges and is not evidence of guilt. The defendants are presumed innocent and are entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The government is represented by Assistant United States Attorneys Megan Cunniff Church and Lindsay Jenkins.
See this piece in the Journal yesterday? It compares the two states. We could just swap governors for a month and both states could fix their problems.
Both men are well-to-do, spent a lot of their own money on their campaigns and are Dartmouth grads. A swap would give Illinois an all-Democratic statehouse and Pennsylvania an all-Republican one. The two states could then become petri dishes for which party makes for a better state.
I know. Been a long three months. I’ll take two aspirin and lie down.
“State financial aide for college students will not get paid. I’m furious about that. Many social service providers will have to close their doors. It’s outrageous, by putting assistance to the most vulnerable at risk. We should not let that happen. Universities and community colleges will not receive state funding, causing some to wonder whether they will be open for the second semester. Outrageous. Should not happen,” he said. “Unpaid bills will continue to pile up, delaying payments to local governments, pension funds, hospitals, nursing homes, other providers. Pushing down our credit rating and raising interests costs on you, the taxpayers of the state. Should not happen. Not having a budget this late in the year is simply inexcusable and unacceptable.”
Furious, outrageous (x2), inexcusable and unacceptable.
Gee, he sounds like he’s a total outsider with zero role in this drama.
Gov. Bruce Rauner restated his demand Wednesday that weakening the collective bargaining rights of public workers must be part of a deal to end the political stalemate that has kept Illinois without a budget since July 1. […]
In his speech, Rauner contended that a change in collective bargaining inside government “is not a radical idea and it is not a partisan idea.” The governor said Democrats across the country have made union-weakening rules, including in Illinois by allowing the outsourcing of Chicago Public Schools janitors and the elimination of CPS union teachers’ ability to negotiate over longer school hours.
“It’s not about Republicans versus Democrats. It’s about good government. It’s about making sure tax dollars go to education, economic growth, tourism marketing and services for the most vulnerable — not to expensive government bureaucracy,” Rauner said.
“It’s time we in Illinois get serious about collective bargaining reform and unfunded mandate relief in government. It’s a critical bipartisan issue where we can find common ground. Getting rid of unfunded mandates and giving decision-making authority on bargaining, bidding and contracting back to local communities,” he said.
Rauner also argues he’s already compromised by dropping some items he was pushing earlier this year, such as letting local communities create so-called “right-to-work zones,” where union membership would be voluntary. And he notes that Democrats in Illinois and elsewhere have previously backed changes to collective bargaining, even though labor unions are among their most staunch supporters.
He’s right that they have passed bills that unions opposed.
(a) A public employer and a labor organization may not bargain over, and no collective bargaining agreement entered into, renewed, or extended on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 99th General Assembly may include, provisions related to the following prohibited subjects of collective bargaining:
(1) Employee pensions, including the impact or implementation of changes to employee pensions, including the Employee Consideration Pension Transition Program as set forth in Section 30 of the Personnel Code.
(2) Wages, including any form of compensation including salaries, overtime compensation, vacations, holidays, and any fringe benefits, including the impact or implementation of changes to the same; except nothing in this Section 7.6 will prohibit the employer from electing to bargain collectively over employer-provided health insurance.
(3) Hours of work, including work schedules, shift schedules, overtime hours, compensatory time, and lunch periods, including the impact or implementation of changes to the same.
(4) Matters of employee tenure, including the impact of employee tenure or time in service on the employer’s exercise of authority including, but not limited to, any consideration the employer must give to the tenure of employees adversely affected by the employer’s exercise of management’s right to conduct a layoff.
The governor said yesterday that his proposals were not “radical.” That’s radical. Period. It’s time he disavowed that proposal and got down to some do-able changes.
* Bernie reports that the US Supreme Court has refused to heal an appeal filed by the Illinois Policy Institute over the refusal of legislative leaders to grant the institute’s reporters access to the chambers’ press boxes…
“We are disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear our case,” [executive editor of the Illinois News Network Scott Reeder] said. “The only question considered by any judge in this matter was whether a legislative leader’s decision on denying press credentials can be challenged in court. Unfortunately, an appellate court ruled legislative leaders are immune from such lawsuits. The court’s ruling leaves news organizations of all stripes vulnerable to retaliation and discrimination by elected officials. This may well have a chilling effect on coverage of American statehouses.”
Not so, said RIKEESHA PHELON, spokeswoman for Senate President JOHN CULLERTON, D-Chicago.
“We have made no judgment about independent news organizations,” Phelon said. “But court rulings now confirm that our decision to ban thinly veiled lobbying organizations from the Senate floor is appropriate.”
In the appellate ruling, the court stated that though the Illinois Policy Institute is no longer a lobbying group because it formed a new entity — Illinois Policy Action, which does have staffers listed as lobbyists — there was no real difference.
“The IPI is plainly an advocacy organization, and even though it did not register as a lobbyist in 2014, both the House and Senate determined it should have,” the appellate court decision said.
I’m a hardcore 1st Amendment guy and I use INN stuff here on occasion, but the Supremes were right. I don’t think courts should be meddling with which non-legislators can and can’t have access to a legislative floor.
Plus, if the Illinois Policy Institute had succeeded, any lobbying entity could then hire a “reporter” and set up a “news service” and demand media credentials. Not good.
* From the dot points on Gov. Rauner’s south suburban speech yesterday that were sent by Team Rauner…
· As you know, we have entered an unprecedented fourth month without a balanced budget.
· Despite this, state agency directors in our administration have done a tremendous job in managing their departments without a budget.
· We have begun transforming state government, and we’re implementing reforms that will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
· Our efforts are making government less expensive, more effective and more efficient.
o Just last month we saved taxpayers $22 million by ending a bad deal with the Lottery and have now put a new, competitive Lottery contract out to bid.
o At the Department of Healthcare and Family Services, our Administration has taken cost-saving steps that will save taxpayers more than $70 million in the current fiscal year.
o At the Department of Central Management Services, we renegotiated contracts and reduced the state air fleet, netting an additional $15 million to the State through a combination of cost reduction and optimization efforts.
o The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has a license process that’s still done through paper records. By modernizing the system, we are reducing process time by 50% and can save millions of dollars as a result.
o The Department of Employment Security has taken new steps to save millions in unemployment insurance overpayments; we’ve automated the employer tax payment system, reducing process time from 6 weeks down to 1 week; and we’re putting in an automated, real-time Power of Attorney system that will take this process from 4 weeks to one day.
· Faster service, lower cost – that’s what we are striving for everywhere in our administration, to shake up the old, inefficient way of doing things and move Illinois towards becoming a 21st century government.
· But while we do everything in our power to improve government, many of the biggest opportunities to save money require action from the legislature.
Notice anything missing?
How about the cuts to the child care program? That’s saving a whole lot of money. Well, at least it’s saving money in the short term. Not so much when single moms have to quit their jobs or take part-time work.
What happens now is that a young mother, needing financial assistance to put her child in day care while she goes to work or school, applies to a program.
Under Rauner’s rules, she gets turned down, most likely because she makes too much money, which now includes anyone earning minimum wage.
So she goes away.
The child doesn’t go away. The mom’s need for child care doesn’t go away. Her need to earn a living to support her child doesn’t go away.
But the mom moves along to make the tough decisions about what to do next: Child care or stay home? Go on welfare or switch the kid to the unlicensed day care down the street? Pay the child care or the rent?
Alejandra Corral, an Aurora resident and single mother of two, was among dozens of parents and providers who spoke at the hearing.
Corral was deemed ineligible for CCAP in mid-July because her monthly income of about $2,000 was too high. She would have qualified if her monthly income was $838 or less.
Corral, 23, currently pays $100 per month for child care, but that’s only because she works for an Aurora daycare that is giving her a temporary discount.
“If they weren’t doing this, I would have to pay over $2,100 for daycare. I don’t even make enough,” she stressed. “All of us here today are not asking for handouts, we’re asking for assistance. We want to be able to work. If this somehow doesn’t get fixed, I won’t be able to afford daycare for my kids, and I don’t want to be on any more public aid than” CCAP.
OK, maybe I can see why the governor didn’t mention it as an accomplishment, even though he has been pushing to slash this very program since his February budget address.
“Only the Legislature can authorize a budget, and they have failed to meet their constitutionally required obligation to pass a balanced budget.”
That’s true, of course.
* But there’s another passage in that document which is almost never discussed. From the Illinois Constitution…
The Governor shall prepare and submit to the General Assembly, at a time prescribed by law, a State budget for the ensuing fiscal year… Proposed expenditures shall not exceed funds estimated to be available for the fiscal year as shown in the budget.
Now, the difference here is that the Democrats’ budget was blatantly unbalanced and the governor’s budget used blatant gimmicks and smoke and mirrors to “balance” his budget.
“As I have stated since January, the number one issue facing the state is the budget deficit. The governor, however, has refused to focus on solving our budget deficit, instead focusing on other issues. That decision has led to dangerous consequences by forcing the defunding of breast and cervical cancer screenings, child care assistance for struggling families, meals for homebound elderly residents and services for children with autism and other developmental disabilities.
“I’ve stated all year that I will work with the governor cooperatively and professionally, but we will not devastate Illinois’ middle class and struggling families by furthering an agenda aimed at driving down their wages and their standard of living.
“I have repeatedly urged the governor to focus on the budget deficit through a balanced approach of reductions in state spending and new revenue. The budget passed by the House included reductions in state spending, and we passed a bill that included $400 million in savings through the Medicaid program. However, a wide range of human service providers, education advocates, and even business groups like the Civic Federation have stated that Illinois cannot cut its way to prosperity.
“The governor can end the damage he has done to women who rely on life-saving breast and cervical cancer screenings, children with autism and other developmental disabilities, elderly residents, struggling families and other vulnerable populations in need of crucial state support by turning his focus away from issues that would result in lower wages and a lower standard of living for middle-class families and instead work with the Legislature to pass and implement a state budget with a balanced approach that protects the middle class.”
A top Illinois Republican on Wednesday accused Democrats who control the state’s two legislative chambers of using the state’s most vulnerable citizens as “human shields” and “props” to mask the politicians’ financial failures.
“They are using these poor souls as human shields, to deflect the blame from their historical gross mismanagement of state finances,” Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin told POLITICO. “These hearings are nothing more than putting them up, bringing one group up after another that rely on state funding, to say what happens to them when they don’t have a state budget.” […]
The Republican governor earlier Wednesday gave a speech in suburban Chicago calling on Democrats to end the budget stalemate by using their supermajorities. Afterward, Rauner quickly exited without facing the media and Durkin instead addressed reporters’ questions.
“Sounds like Durkin was a human shield when Rauner went running out the door like a scared second grader,” Steve Brown, spokesman to Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, told POLITICO.
I understand that things are tense and that the stakes are truly high, but, sheesh, man.
Impatience with politics-as-usual has also led liberals to enter Democratic Senate primaries and mount more aggressive and well-financed challenges than in years past to candidates backed by the national party establishment.
In Florida, Representative Alan Grayson, a self-styled “progressive champion,” is portraying Representative Patrick Murphy, the Democratic Party’s preferred candidate for the seat being vacated by Senator Marco Rubio, as a “lightweight, empty-suit errand boy for Wall Street.” A former president of the Chicago Urban League, Andrea Zopp, is running in Illinois against the party-backed Representative Tammy Duckworth. And former Representative Joe Sestak is running as a liberal anti-establishment candidate in Pennsylvania.
Bill Daley’s candidate is lumped in with Grayson and Sestak?
* Peoria already lost its Republican Senator, now it’s about to lose its GOP House member…
After nearly 30 years serving in Springfield, state Rep. David Leitch will retire at the end of his current term in 2017, he announced Thursday morning.
The Peoria Republican is the longest-serving GOP member of the state House, where he has served since 1989.
“It’s been the honor of my life to represent central Illinois for nearly three decades,” Leitch said in a prepared release. “I cannot thank the people of the 73rd District enough for the privilege of serving in the General Assembly.”
Among his accomplishments in office, he counts passing the first law requiring insurance coverage for mammograms, securing funding for the expansion of the Illinois Central College campus in East Peoria and arranging the acquisition of the ICC North campus in Peoria after the closure of Zeller Mental Health Center.
He worked to secure a $10 million loan to prevent the closure of Keystone Steel & Wire in Bartonville. After being repaid in full, the money was put into a fund for Peoria County to use for ongoing economic development.
The man is a class act, through and through. He also displayed great courage and supreme dignity during his life-threatening battle with cancer. He’s soft-spoken and effective and he’s going to be missed.
* Eric Zorn admits that an extended special session probably won’t work, agrees that special sessions haven’t worked in the past to break logjams, but he wants one anyway…
A special session would “just cost more money,” said Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, dismissing the idea when talking to reporters in Effingham on Friday. “Let’s not have a special session. Let’s just negotiate in good faith.”
Nice idea, but how’s it been working out?
The legislative leaders and the governor haven’t sat down together since May 29, according to the office of Senate President John Cullerton. And since more than 90 percent of state spending is proceeding without a budget agreement, public pressure has not yet forced serious negotiations, capitulations or compromises.
Granted that special sessions are expensive — $50,000 a day for expenses is the estimate offered by Republican leaders — and don’t have a great track record when it comes to budget negotiations (former Gov. Rod Blagojevich merely underscored his political impotence with numerous feckless demands for special sessions).
But, as noted, they’re a bargain compared with the $16.4 million a day this posturing and inaction is costing us. And they just might work. […]
If a special session wouldn’t break the logjam it would at least dramatize and lend urgency to a story that, by dint of its depressing sameness day in and day out, has fallen out of the headlines.
This is just one more “lock ‘em all in a room” demands that we tend to see during times like these.
Not to mention that coverage of an extended special session would also likely fall out of the headlines.
Illinois Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has said he has five big things he wants for the state of Illinois. On Aug. 25, the Illinois House of Representatives, which is lead by Democrats, brought one of the items up for a vote.
“This will provide tax relief to the people of Illinois,” explained Rep. John Bradley (D-Marion), who called the bill.
Representatives were about to vote on Rauner’s plan to freeze property taxes, something that would transform a main source of revenue for every town, city and school district in the entire state. One might think the fact that a Democrat was sponsoring one of Rauner’s ideas amidst all the infighting was a huge deal—but no.
The discussion—or lack thereof—lasted all of two minutes. The package was voted down, in flames. And the media—Illinois Public Radio included—ignored it.
Because, this had happened before. Many, many times.
Rep. Bradley called the exact same proposal July 21…and, on June 9, June 23, July 1, July 9, July 15, Aug. 5, Aug. 12 and, as noted earlier, on Aug. 25.
* Democratic US Senate candidate Andrea Zopp delivered a stirring speech at the the Illinois State Fair about the declining middle class, the wage disparity between “the have and have-nots.” She also said that she has a “track record of getting results.”
Greg Hinz looks at some of Zopp’s stock transactions when she was general counsel and corporate secretary at Sears…
According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures, Zopp’s first move came on Nov. 23, 2004—just a week after the merger [between Sears and Kmart] was announced—when she executed options to buy and immediately sold 10,000 [Sears] shares, making a $170,000 profit. A few weeks later, on Jan. 31, 2005, she did a similar deal involving 47,000 shares, making roughly a $176,000 profit.
My friends in the investment business would say that’s just taking advantage of your chances. But the problem is that Sears in 2003, when Zopp arrived at the company, laid off 40,000 workers. And tens of thousands of more layoffs came later in the wake of the merger, which like many mergers is all about making companies lean and mean so they can thrive—and make investors money.
Zopp, whose campaign website contains no mention of her corporate record and whose official biography has just one sentence about it, says her job was to be a lawyer, not to run operations, and that the stock options she received were “part of my compensation.”
She also points out—correctly—that Kmart had been in bankruptcy not long before the deal, saying that the merger “saved tens of thousands of other jobs. . . .Sears was seriously challenged at the time. We were doing a lot of things to try to turn it around.” […]
“I hope” the stock transactions and layoffs don’t become a campaign issue in the Democratic primary, she says. “I worked in the corporate world for 10 years as a senior executive. I was compensated for that.”
Zopp makes a good point about the merger, but she’s dreaming if she thinks this sort of stuff won’t be used against her in a Democratic primary campaign. It might not stick during a general, but that’s an entirely different animal than a primary.
SUBSCRIBER: Why do you keep deleting my McCarter comments? Was it the Crazy Caucus or the “win friends and influence people” comment?
ME: I’m trying hard to tone things down. They’re getting out of hand, so even a little vitriol could be met with deletions.
SUBSCRIBER: I hear ya, but c’mon – that was pithy!
SUBSCRIBER: Seriously though, you may want to do a post about it to put everyone on notice. The Dunkin stuff definitely sent many of us the other direction.
Yes, “the Dunkin stuff” did get everybody fired up. I let much of it go for a couple of reasons: 1) He deserved it; and 2) The worst stuff was posted after I stopped monitoring comments that afternoon.
Kyle McCarter announces campaign for Congress Securing Freedom, Liberty and Opportunity for the Future
Lebanon, IL – Saying it’s time for new leadership to restore, renew and recapture the bright promise of America, State Senator Kyle McCarter of Lebanon announced Wednesday his intention to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the 15th District of Illinois.
“This is a very conservative district that believes we should protect life; that believes in the Second Amendment, and believes in limited government and free market principles of economic opportunity for all,” said McCarter. “Ronald Reagan described the heart of American conservatism as, ‘The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way.’ That’s also the heart of the 15th District.”
McCarter, who has served in the Illinois Senate since 2009, said the promise of America has been undermined in recent years by policies and practices that fight against and undermine traditional values. He said it’s time to turn around Washington.
“What we have witnessed in recent years is not how our country was designed to work,” said McCarter. “The burdens of government have grown ̧ in spite of the opposition by a majority of Americans. The federal government has imposed thousands of new rules and regulations, and billions of dollars in new taxes. It has overstepped its bounds and has done so without our consent. Of all the places in Illinois, the place that should have the loudest, strongest voice in Washington is the 15th District, but I don’t see that happening. Respectively, 20 years is enough. It’s time that someone like myself step up and really defend the people of this district.”
McCarter likened the challenging of a long-time incumbent in the race to David versus Goliath, but he said a tough campaign is worth the struggle because the end result will be good for families and communities, and good for businesses and the economy.
“If the last 8 years have showed us anything, it’s showed us we need new blood in Washington,” said McCarter. “We need to ‘Turnaround Washington.’ We need people who think differently, who haven’t given up on the traditional American principles and qualities that made our nation great. We need leaders with energy who are not in Washington to make a career of the Capital, but who are working to improve the lives of citizens today, and to secure a bright, promising and hopeful future for generations to come.”
McCarter said Freedom and Liberty for today and tomorrow includes vigilance and perseverance.
“Unlike what has been happening in recent years, I refuse to compromise on Freedom and Liberty, said McCarter. “We need to return to the traditional American principles that are the bedrock foundation upon which our nation was built.”
McCarter said the nation’s founding documents give the people unique power and authority because the Freedom and Liberty the documents detail are recognized as coming from the “Creator.” McCarter said rights come from God; they are not given to us by the government, which means the people are in charge of their destiny, not a group of individuals in Washington D.C.
“If you feel you have been ignored by Washington; if you feel no one has been fighting for you or will give voice to your concerns and hopes for the future, then walk with me and run with me to win this race,” said McCarter.
Illinois’ 15th Congressional District is comprised of all or parts of 33 counties: Bond, Champaign, Clark, Clay, Clinton, Coles, Crawford, Cumberland, Douglas, Edgar, Edwards, Effingham, Fayette, Ford, Gallatin, Hamilton, Hardin, Jasper, Johnson, Lawrence, Madison, Marion, Massac, Moultrie, Pope, Richland, Saline, Shelby, Vermillion, Wabash, Washington, Wayne and White.
* Forrest Claypool received wide plaudits from editorial boards and pundits when he was appointed to run the Chicago Public Schools, but Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, who has recovered from cancer and is running for another term, points out Claypool’s greatest weakness to the Sun-Times…
Asked how Claypool is faring as CEO, Lewis said, “I think he’s a technocrat. And I think he’s making huge errors. I think he’s alienating a lot of people.” […]
Lewis said she has talked to Claypool and his chief education officer, Janice Jackson, but “much less” than she did with the former CEO, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who was about Lewis’ age and had spent years in the classroom.
“I don’t have that much to talk to him about ’cause he doesn’t know anything about education,” she said.
I wish they’d followed up on his alleged errors and how he’s alienating people, but the point about not knowing anything about education is something that nobody really talked about when he got the top CPS job.
* Because of the impasse, local governments aren’t getting their state motor fuel tax money, their video gaming cut, their salary, infrastructure and social service reimbursements, etc. So I’m actually a little surprised we haven’t seen more stories like this one…
Geneseo officials want to treat the state of Illinois similar to any other deadbeat customer and cut off water, sewer and electric service.
The city is waiting for $837.29 in water, sewer and electric payments for service to the state highway maintenance yard as well as $327.49 for street lights at the intersection of Interstate Route 80 and Illinois Route 82. “We have put them on notice by e-mail to Rep. (Donald) Moffitt. We let him know we’re considering treating them like everybody else,” said city administrator Lisa Kotter.
Her e-mail was sent Sept. 23. “We’re giving them an opportunity to respond,” said Ms. Kotter.
The kerfuffle over utility bills is but one minor aspect of the problems rolling over Henry County and the rest of the state as Gov. Bruce Rauner and legislators prove unable to pass a budget and appropriate money.
Chante Morrison of Galesburg was a working single mother of two daughters when she applied for the state’s subsidized day care program in July.
Morrison, who said she earned about $10 an hour, then learned that the state had changed eligibility criteria for the program and that she earned too much money to qualify.
“I was denied child-care assistance I so desperately needed,” Morrison said at a hearing at the Capitol Tuesday morning. “Soon after that, I lost my job because I couldn’t find affordable day care.”
Morrison was one of more than two dozen people who testified Tuesday against changes in the state’s subsidized day care program imposed by Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration. The changes, which require recipients to earn far less than before to qualify, will make the program inaccessible to 90 percent of those now eligible, opponents contend. For example, a single parent with one child used to qualify with up to $2,400 a month in income. Now the limit is about $660. Co-payments have also increased. […]
Sessy Nyman of Illinois Action for Children said the impact of the changes have become evident. Applications are down 50 percent from a year ago, and caseloads are down by 9 percent after a month. According to a survey conducted by the organization, 21 percent of parents had to turn down a job or quit a job because they could not get the subsidized day care.
Since the rule went into effect, day care owners say they have had to turn away dozens of families seeking day care for their children.
Dawn Meyer, owner of 17 Rogy’s Learning Centers in central Illinois and the Chicago area, said she allowed 163 children who previously used the subsidy to stay enrolled even though her company is no longer receiving money for the subsidy from the state.
“We wanted to keep these families working,” Meyer said.
But, she said she is no longer accepting families who would have qualified under the old guidelines, and she has laid off 31 teachers because of the drop in the number of children being served,
Uber is trying to make its case for expanding in Chicago through new radio ads that trumpet its availability in underserved parts of the city.
The ad, provided to POLITICO Illinois, doesn’t focus on Uber’s biggest battle right now – getting a City Council OK to pick up at city airports.
The ad instead urges residents living in rougher neighborhoods to lean on their aldermen to give the rideshare company broader reach in the city. The company says its Uber X takes an average of five minutes to reach the west and south sides. […]
The ad is already airing on stations like WGCI and WVON, which have greater percentages of minority listeners. […]
The Chicago ad says, “Think about this. When’s the last time you saw a taxi cab in your neighborhood? And have you ever had an empty cab pass you by? And how does that make you feel? People assume that there isn’t much we can do about it. But we can. We don’t have to put up with that any more. With your phone, you can download an app that puts you in charge … Next time you see your alderman, tell them you support Uber’s efforts to bring reliable rides everywhere in this city to everyone.”
