* I had planned to shut down the blog yesterday for the holiday because I have a lot of errands and other stuff to do this afternoon and figured traffic would be light here, but changed my mind. I’m not sure why.
Anyway, you’re on your own for the rest of the day. Please try to be nice to each other and keep the conversation Illinois-centric. As always, you can monitor any breaking news with our live coverage post below.
* I will leave you with an excerpt from an email I received Monday from a person who worked for a former governor…
Hi Rich—someone just forwarded me your post on Karl. I did not realize he was Wordslinger! Karl was a friend of ours. … He was a great guy. We were able to stop by the memorial at Doc Ryan’s a few weeks ago and I know his family will be happy to see all the support from the Capitol Fax Blog community.
It’s like the man had two identities, along the lines of a Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne. To his family and friends, he was Karl Oxnevad, a great dude with a fine family living the good life in Oak Park. Unbeknownst to most of those folks, he was also one of the most influential voices in the state.
You cannot imagine how many political types have told me they were crushed by the news of his death. Whether they agreed with him or not, they listened to what he said.
* From a very reliable person who lives in Chicago…
I was walking to work and see this guy standing on the curb yelling into his phone. Look over. It’s Bruce and Diana. He has crutches and a scraggly beard. He looks disheveled. And he keeps correcting someone on the other line and yelling his address into the phone.
The former governor was standing outside his apartment building when he was spotted yesterday. I had heard he’d injured his ankle.
* Meanwhile, Mrs. Rauner was spotted at the governor’s office in the Thompson Center yesterday…
A hearing officer has recommended Gail Simpson should be declared the winner of the race for the Ward 2 seat on the Springfield City Council that was initially too close to call.
Retired Judge John Mehlick, who is overseeing a vote recount process on behalf of the city, said in a report made public Tuesday that after taking into account the recounted ballots and his rulings on which disputed ballots should be awarded to a candidate or thrown out, Simpson defeated Shawn Gregory by 0.361 of a vote.
The fraction-of-a-vote advantage happened because of 13 ballots where voters were assisted in filling out their ballots, but the required affidavits that must be filed by in such cases were incomplete. Most of the voters who got assistance live at the Mary Bryant Home for the Blind and Visually Impaired, according to documents filed during the challenge process.
In his report, Mehlick said that due to the error, all 13 ballots should be thrown out and all candidates’ vote totals should be reduced proportionally based on what percentage of the vote they received in the precincts where the 13 ballots were cast.
Yields on Illinois bonds spiked higher on Tuesday in the U.S. municipal market after a constitutional challenge to $16 billion of the state’s general obligation bonds was launched on Monday.
Illinois already pays the biggest yield penalty among states in the $3.8 trillion market due to its low credit ratings, which are a notch or two above junk.
Greg Saulnier, an analyst at Municipal Market Data (MMD), said the spread for Illinois GO bonds over MMD’s benchmark triple-A yield scale had tightened over the past two months as investors gobbled up higher-yielding debt, leaving the state’s bond prices at a greater risk of falling.
“The lawsuit headline was like adding a spark to a powder keg so to speak and trading swiftly indicated spreads wider by 20-25 basis points,” he added.
Pritzker and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza dismissed the lawsuit as a political tactic by John Tillman, the chief executive officer of the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, that will be tossed out of court. The case, also filed by New York hedge fund Warlander Asset Management claims the state’s record pension bond sale in 2003 and debt issued in 2017 to pay a backlog of unpaid bills were deficit financings prohibited by the constitution.
Warlander owns $25 million Illinois general-obligation bonds issued in 2001, 2014, 2017 and 2018. Those bonds would be more secure if the firm succeeded in having the other securities invalidated, since there would be more money available to service the debt.
Analysts are skeptical. Citigroup Inc.’s Vikram Rai and Jack Muller published a note on the case after the bank was inundated with calls. They said the lawsuit is unjustified because the Illinois Constitution allows debt to be incurred as long as the law details the specific purpose of the debt and how it will be repaid. Even if it did succeed, they said, the government would likely find a way to repay the debt to avoid being penalized in the bond market. […]
Jason Appleson, a portfolio manager at PT Asset Management LLC, said he believed market consensus is that the lawsuit was frivolous. […]
Appleson attributed the initial widening to “a couple of scared buyers” affecting a light trading day in a slow market. “If this moves forward in court, I think we could see some more widening but if it’s shut down we could see a snap-back in spreads given the market conditions.”
* More person on the street interviews about the 19 cents per gallon Motor Fuel Tax increase on gasoline…
John Taylor – a retired state worker – said he doesn’t mind paying the extra few dollars that are set to go to infrastructure repairs.
“The drivers ultimately have to pay for the roads,” he said while filling up at a gas station off Interstate 55 in Springfield Monday. “I mean who else do we think would pay for them? They’ve been neglected for years. I think it seems fair.”
Still, not everyone is happy with the increase. Jo Flowers, from Springfield, was getting gas at the same station. She said higher prices may affect how much she drives.
“I have to make sure I have enough gas to get back and forth to work,” said the single mom who works at a mail sorting company across town from where she lives.
There is zero doubt that this tax hike will cause some pain. But we cannot continue to allow our infrastructure to deteriorate like it has been. The problems created over the past couple of decades through neglect or outright malice need to be addressed, and this is just one of them.
Waste haulers, who maintain large fleets of gas-guzzling garbage trucks, plan to pass the added cost along to consumers as soon as possible.
Most garbage trucks burn diesel fuel, which saw an even higher 21.5 cent-per-gallon tax increase kick in Monday, bringing the total state tax to 44.5 cents per gallon.
Lakeshore Recycling, which has 225 residential and commercial garbage trucks working in Chicago and the suburbs each day, will see its costs rise by at least $1 million annually, said CEO Alan Handley.
The Morton Grove company services 350,000 residences and 30,000 businesses, including all Chicago Public Schools, and empties the garbage cans in communities such as Highland Park, Wheaton, Skokie, Evanston and Deerfield. Both residential and business customers will likely pay the tab for the state’s fuel tax increase, Handley said.
“The cost has to be passed along,” Handley said. “We can’t absorb all that.”
Big trucks do far more damage to roads and bridges than cars. And somebody has to pay to fix those roads and bridges, including the customers of those waste hauling services.
About 15 protesters backed up traffic on Monday along a busy intersection in Collinsville as a statement against the doubling of the state gas to 38 cents as part of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s new $40 billion state budget.
Demonstrators intimated they thought they were speaking for all state residents in making their voices heard.
Pritzker said all the road repairs will actually help families save money in the long run, despite the taxes.
“Families that are enduring $500 per year of damage to their cars because of the potholes because of the problems on our highways and our roads,” Pritzker said.
He also says the bill provides money for towns to do their own work. Sesser mayor Jason Ashmore said he’s hoping for help with the town’s sewer and water systems.
“We’ve made tremendous strides in our water and sewer infrastructure, but a lot of it is still from the 1930s so we’re still trying to get that updated,” Ashmore said.
No one is happy about the taxes, including [Rep. Dave Severin, R-Benton], but he said they need to happen.
“People in southern Illinois are going to see changes, and they’re going to be good changes, we just got to get people to hang with us,” Severin said.
But the gas tax is certainly the most painful. With this new hike, Gov. Pritzker and progressive tax proponents just broke their promise to give tax relief to Illinois’ middle and lower class.
Remember that when the progressive tax amendment comes on the ballot next year. Proponents are going to promise the middle class a tax cut, but it won’t be true.
So… don’t vote yourself a modest income tax cut because of the gas tax hike?
Cassidy’s courage in taking on the state’s most powerful Democrat prompted another Madigan staffer, Sherri Garrett, to seek her out to share her own allegations of “bullying and repeated harassment” by Mapes, who ultimately resigned from his positions as chief of staff to the speaker and executive director of the Illinois Democratic Party [last year]. […]
“My relationship with the speaker this year has been quite positive. We started the session off with a really good conversation about what had happened between us and what we wanted to do differently moving forward,” Cassidy said. “And I think we both stuck to the plan through this session in terms of a more communicative direct discussion.”
But has the #MeToo movement, which has led to the resignations of several in the Madigan world, changed the speaker?
“I don’t know what to place that on, the changes in the way the House was run this year. Could it be his direct reaction to that? Could it be just the difference between Mapes’ leadership style and Jessica’s [Basham, his current chief of staff] leadership style? Is it a combination of the two? I don’t know because I try really hard to not spend time in anyone’s head but my own.”
“I can’t really say which I think it is, certainly some combination of those things probably had an impact on it. But things were different. Things were definitely different in the House this year,” Cassidy said.
* This is one of Wordslinger’s first comments on the blog. It’s from an August 2007 post about some Rod Blagojevich shenanigans…
Is there anyone who can get through to this guy and tell him to move on? Durbin, Rahm Emanuel, Obama? Maybe a Jim Thompson or a Jim Edgar? Anyone inside his admininistration? If there’s another CTA fire, or a bridge collapses, and there’s no capital budget, he, as the face of Illinois government will pay a dear price.
* Here’s his reply to a 2007 Question of the Day about our strongest memories of Harold Washington…
Political:
His alliance with and resurrection of George Dunne after he had been cast out by Byrne.
To benefit Mondale, running as a favorite son in the 1984 Illinois Presidential Primary to keep Jesse from winning.
The final defeat of the Vrodlyak 29 with the special election of Luis Guiterrez. First order of business: Firing Ed Kelly and the Park District Board.
Quote: Asked if his fight with the Two Eddies was racial: “It’s not racial. They’d support a purple ape if they could control him.”
And in addition to “Hocus Pocus Dominocus,” I’ll add “Willie Lump Lump,” a handy description of any self-important non-entity.
* And here’s one from March 2008 about a poll showing broad support for medical cannabis…
Hard to believe that we’re still so rigid when it comes to this issue.
Throwing marijuana, medical or otherwise, into the same boat as crack, meth and heroin in a “war on drugs” is just silly.
I’ve been around the block a few times and have sampled my share of mind-altering substances. Based on that, I’d be more concerned about catching my kid with a bottle of Jack Daniels than a joint. I hope he does neither. But if you want to hear yourself sound stupid, try explaining to a kid why pot is illegal and whiskey is advertised on Sunday tv sport contests.
It’s 2008, not 1958. The Woodstock generation is pushing 70. Next issue, please.
* From 2010, when the Ricketts family wanted to finance Wrigley Field upgrades with a $200 million state bond…
The Ricketts rollout was about the biggest bellyflop for a first-time dive into the Illinois political pool in a long while. Confusing for all, painful for some.
Kass has four or five columns — Cellini, Daley runs the country through Obama, Quarters Boyle, Obama/Rezko — that he just recycles over and over, rewriting a couple of paragraphs here or there.
Maybe now that Fast Eddie is out of the can he can get some new material.
I’m really gonna miss that guy.
Click here and help put Word’s daughter Emma through college.
…Adding… We want to keep the grand total of contributions under $20,000 for tax reasons, so keep that in mind, please.
All-American Rejects will play the DuQuoin State Fair on Saturday, August 24.
Fair officials made the announcement Monday.
The pop rock band best known for songs “Swing Swing” and “Move Along” joins a mostly country lineup featuring Wynonna Judd, Shenandoah, and Restless Heart.
OK, now scroll through the fair’s lineup on the WSIL TV website. Here’s the Tuesday show…
Tuesday, Aug. 27: Confederate Railroad, Shenandoah and Restless Heart. Confederate Railroad has been a hit-making force in Southern rock since the 1990s, with two releases going platinum in the ’90s.
I checked and was told the state canceled Confederate Railroad’s contract.
Last month, I asked you whether you thought booking a band named Confederate Railroad, which has Confederate battle flags on the cover of its latest album, for a show in Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, at a state-owned facility was appropriate.
* The Question: Is canceling this show appropriate? Make sure to explain your answer.
* As I told you yesterday, Wordslinger’s family had requested donations to “members of the Oxnevad family, to be put towards continuing higher education.”
Word’s daughter Emma is attending DePaul to become a journalist and is doing a summer internship at the Sun-Times. I reached out to her yesterday to ask her to set up a GoFundMe page so we could help defray her costs.
My name is Emma Oxnevad, and I’m Karl’s—or as you knew him, Wordslinger’s—daughter. My family and I read through the outpour of love and admiration you all had for my dad and his work and it touched us all. I have countless memories of my dad sitting at a computer, typing away on Capitol Fax, and it would have meant the world to him to see how much you all admired his wit, perspective, and humor. He was one of a kind, and you all saw that.
When speaking with Rich Miller, he suggested the idea of a GoFundMe in order to help put me through my last two years of college. I’m a journalism student at DePaul—I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far—and given the sudden nature of my father’s passing, paying for school is becoming even more daunting than before.
I am not one to ask for favors from strangers, nor am I one to ask for people’s hard-earned money for my own benefit. However, my dad always made sure that my financial aid at school was covered and up-to-date, and I know he would want to make sure that I would have some security stored away for the time I have left in school.
Any amount is appreciated, as are the beautiful tributes you all left for my dad and his work. He understood the power of words and conversation, and he would be absolutely floored by the love in this thread.
Thank you all very much and keep up the discourse.
-Emma
Emma’s goal is $10,000, which I suggested. I will match the first $2,500, but that will still only get us half way. So, I’m asking you to dig as deep as you possibly can on this one.
As has been obvious over the past couple of days, Wordslinger meant a lot to everyone who spent any time at all on this website. Let’s pay it forward. Please, click here.
…Adding… I just received a call from someone who would like to remain anonymous. We have another donor who will match the first $2,500 raised on Emma’s GoFundMe site. Pretty cool.
The plaudits J.B. Pritzker received from a smattering of observers following the recent legislative session was the kind of attention for which most politicians only dream.
Is it any surprise with supermajorities in the General Assembly that he and the Democrats passed a lot of legislation? Of course, one might argue the bar was set pretty low given his predecessor’s preference for choosing fights over accomplishments.
One must wonder, as the new fiscal year begins today, if voters are as receptive to the governor’s version of “thinking big” as much as Springfield insiders and some members of the press.
That “smattering” included the organization he ran for years, the Illinois Manufacturers Association. From a Friday press release…
“Manufacturers need a modern infrastructure system to compete in today’s global economy and this capital infrastructure program builds a bridge to the future. We applaud Gov. JB Pritzker and lawmakers for making this game-changing investment in our infrastructure that improves Illinois’ economic competitiveness,” said Mark Denzler, president & CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. “Infrastructure creates jobs and allows for safer families, faster commutes and the efficient movement of people and products around the world. Rebuild Illinois also funds important career and technical education programs to help address the skills gap and workforce challenge facing manufacturers across Illinois.”
And while he’s distancing himself from Bruce Rauner now, Baise’s organization endorsed him in 2014 and 2018.
Also, he was one of the most connected “Springfield insiders” of them all for decades. I mean, his Springfield roommate was Speaker Madigan’s best friend. Now he’s supposedly an outsider? Please.
The governor doesn’t like that term—but sometimes the truth is hard to accept.
How else would you define removing the ceiling on our tax rate to give the politicians in Springfield the freedom to raise rates on whatever “class” they decide to target if incoming revenues don’t match their ferocious appetite for spending?
Kind of sounds like they’re getting a blank check.
As I’ve said before, I do believe that this constitutional amendment will eventually allow the General Assembly to raise taxes on upper income folks without dinging the middle-income and lower-income folks. I don’t think the question is “if,” but “when.”
The state’s agriculture department is working to get the regulatory framework up and running for the adult-use recreational cannabis law.
After Gov. J.B. Pritzker enacted the measure last week, legal sales of recreational cannabis for adults 21 and older are expected to begin Jan. 1. But first, the rules and framework for recreational sales need to be completed.
Illinois Department of Agriculture Director John Sullivan said state officials want to make sure there’s plenty of product for when retail sales begin.
“We’re going to be overseeing and regulating the growing, the processing, the craft grow and the transportation,” Sullivan said. “Big role, a lot of responsibility.”
To do all of that, he said the department needs more people.
“Getting people in place is really going to be one of our first steps, because it’s going to take more manpower to do that,” Sullivan said. “So we’re reviewing that to make sure we’ve got the proper staff there.”
To start, only the existing medical cannabis businesses will be allowed to cultivate, produce and dispense cannabis. On the retail level, that means 55 existing stores will have to meet the demands of a 13 million-person state with a massive tourist population. Each of these existing operators will be allowed to open a second store, but the realities of real estate site selection, permitting and build out means that none will likely open before adult-use sales begin on Jan. 1, 2020, and most won’t come online until mid 2020.
But the biggest problem will be the lack of production capacity in the state. Illinois currently has a small medical cannabis program, with a current patient population of around 70,000, when compared to most states. The state has issued 19 production licenses, controlled by fifteen businesses (including my own company, 4Front, which operates a cultivation facility in Elk Grove Village) to cultivate and produce cannabis for the state’s dispensaries. These businesses will all be allowed to transition to serve the adult-use wholesale market in time for sales to begin on January 1.
The immediate problem is that these businesses have built a physical production infrastructure designed to meet the demands of a 70,000-person medical market. They are nowhere near equipped to meet the market demand for 13 million residents and 58 million annual tourists to Chicago alone.
Days after the Illinois legislature voted to legalize recreational cannabis, Nature’s Treatment of Illinois, a medical marijuana dispensary in Milan, had a problem: People kept showing up at their store wanting to buy weed.
The bill had not yet been signed into law by Gov J.B. Pritzker — that wouldn’t happen until late June. But the deluge of foot traffic forced employees to put up a door sign that recreational marijuana was not yet for sale.
And while low-level marijuana charges have plummeted, the racial divide in drug arrests has persisted. State numbers show that African-Americans in Colorado were still being arrested on marijuana charges at nearly twice the rate of white people.
But that statistic was offered without any sort of context. For instance, this is from the Colorado Independent…
In 2017, roughly one in 28 adult black men in Colorado was in prison. Put another way, African Americans made up 18 percent of the prison population and only 4 percent of the state’s adult population, an incarceration rate that was seven times higher than the rate for white Coloradans.
* Rep. Villanueva talked about her mom during last week’s press conference. She was being treated in a Catholic hospital, which wouldn’t sign off on access to medical cannabis…
Rep. Celina Villanueva’s mother was diagnosed with cancer last August. Her mother, who is undergoing chemotherapy, expressed interest in using medical cannabis for pain management, but hasn’t been able to participate because she wasn’t able to find a doctor at the facility where she receives treatment to sign off, Villanueva said.
“She’s one of many people throughout this state and one of many people throughout this country that could not find relief within the cannabis program,” said Villanueva, one of the sponsors of the recreational cannabis bill. “And that’s something that I carry with me every single day. I did this for her. And for those people that unfortunately fall outside of that program that don’t want to be on opioids in order to help the symptoms of their diseases.”
* If I was the king, towns would have to hold a referendum before opting out to prevent the set in their ways types from doing this…
Recreational marijuana businesses won’t be allowed in Morton.
After a brief discussion, Village Board members voted unanimously Monday to ban recreational marijuana growers, cultivation centers, and dispensing, processing and transporting facilities that could have set up shop in Morton after the passage last week of a new law legalizing recreational marijuana within Illinois.
“This is the tip of the spear,” village attorney Pat McGrath told board members. “I’ll be bringing more ordinances to you before Jan. 1, 2020, that deal with other issues caused by the state law, like public possession of marijuana.”
* The Sun-Times has an occasional tendency to shift into tabloid-style “Reefer Madness” reporting and this piece is a good example of that…
The law legalizing the recreational use of marijuana beginning Jan. 1 provides an exemption to the Smoke-Free Illinois Act that banned smoking at workplaces and most public places because of the health threat of secondhand smoke. A similar exemption already was in place for cigar lounges.
That means smoking once again could become commonplace at public places in Illinois, according to the law’s chief sponsor — but only of marijuana, not tobacco, which remains largely banned at workplaces and businesses.
Surprised to hear that, health advocates say allowing more smoking of any kind in indoor public places is a bad idea.
“This is a step backwards for the health of the people of Illinois,” says Kathy Drea, head of advocacy for the American Lung Association in Illinois.
Um, no. I also talked with the bill’s chief sponsor and she said the language was designed to allow for cigar bar type establishments. Local governments could, in theory, allow weed smoking in other places like bars. But nobody believed that would happen here and it was discussed during the House debate.
As for legalizing pot, Cassidy said the restorative and social justice aspects of the massive cannabis bill are what brought her to the measure. But she has an “open mind” when it comes to using marijuana. Cassidy said she “looks forward to the day when it’s not a novelty question” — “nobody asks me if I drink wine.”
She also celebrated legalization by getting a tattoo just days ago: a cartoon of a paper bill waving hi. It features marijuana leaves and a sash that reads “bill.”
Here’s the little guy…
Caption?
*** UPDATE *** Sen. McClure…
Hi Rich,
I was just looking at your blog and noticed that it linked to a recent story on smoking marijuana in public from the Chicago Sun-Times. I spent quite a bit of time explaining to the Sun-Times on Friday afternoon that their analysis of the bill was incorrect. Instead of discussing my analysis of the bill in the story, they chose to quote me in a very misleading way. They did not allow for any of my analysis of the bill. I called and expressed my unhappiness with the Sun-Times this morning, and asked them to print the following response which I wrote last night:
I am writing in response to Tom Schuba’s recent article about smoking marijuana in bars, restaurants, movie theaters, and other public places. His story quoted me out of context and failed to mention my assertion that the new recreational marijuana law will not allow people to smoke marijuana in such places. The law in question is the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act (HB 1438).
The Act states in Section 10-35(a)(3)(F) that it “does not permit” the use of cannabis “in any public place.” Additionally, it does not permit smoking cannabis “in any place where smoking is prohibited under the Smoke Free Illinois Act” (Section 10-35(a)(4)). Much later in the Act, it states that “[a] unit of local government…may regulate the on-premises consumption of cannabis at or in a cannabis business establishment within its jurisdiction in a manner consistent with this Act. A cannabis business establishment or other entity authorized or permitted by a unit of local government to allow on-site consumption shall not be deemed a public place within the meaning of the Smoke Free Illinois Act” (Section 55-25(3)). A “cannabis business establishment” is defined as a “cultivation center, craft grower, processing organization, dispensing organization, or transporting organization.” The intent of that language is to allow local governments to approve smoke shop dispensaries where customers can sample cannabis and purchase it in the store like customers do at cigar shops.
The language does not permit marijuana use in any bar, restaurant, or movie theater. Why? Because none of these locations by themselves meet the definition of a “cannabis business establishment.” The law only authorizes local governments to regulate the on-site consumption of cannabis at cannabis business establishments, and it does not allow local governments to regulate the on-site use of cannabis at other facilities.
Smoking marijuana is not just banned in places where smoking is prohibited under the Smoke Free Illinois Act. The law also does not permit the consumption of marijuana “in any public place.” That is independent from the reference to a public place within the meaning of the Smoke Free Illinois Act. This is the language that we voted on in the Illinois State Senate, and this is what will take effect next year. People will not be allowed to use marijuana at bars, restaurants, or movie theaters.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker visited Rockford Monday morning to mark the start of the process toward building a new casino in the area.
Organizers handed out playing cards and poker chips that read “J.B. Bet On Us” and “Our Governor Is Aces.” A bill he signed last week allows for 6 new casinos statewide, mostly in cities near the Illinois border. Pritzker said casino revenue is a key component of his capital plan:
“This additional revenue helps ease some of the pressure on escalating property taxes,” he said, “and most importantly, we’re going to do everything possible to help Rockford beat Beloit and attract casino-goers from across the border.”
According to Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara, the city alone could get anywhere from $4 to $8 million. The casino would also create some 600 construction jobs and over 1000 jobs just at the casino.
“This means jobs for families in our community. This means revenue to the city,” said McNamara. “So, we can not burden people with property taxes. This is a good deal.”
“From the first time we met, we had a number of asks outlined on behalf of the city of Rockford,” [Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara] said. “I am here to say that every single one of those, he delivered on.”
“I can tell you as a Republican, we have never had an opportunity where a governor stepped up, saw there was gridlock going on, and got people in to the room and made the case that we need to get this done,” [Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford] said. “The urgency of getting this done this year, and with the governor’s help we were finally able to get this done. We have an opportunity to bring those people back home and bring more back home.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker received standing ovations and many thanks at Waukegan City Hall Monday as he tours the state highlighting his Rebuild Illinois Capital and Transportation programs that will benefit Lake County.
One of the bigger prizes was a casino license for Waukegan.
State Sen. Terry Link, D-Indian Creek, a former Waukegan resident, joked about how he has “in my spare time for the last 20 years, I’ve been working on a bill. I just kept misspelling some words and they’d cancel it. We’d do a few other things, and they’d cancel it,” he said, drawing laughter. […]
Under the capital program, money is earmarked for the following Lake County projects: $61 million for interchange construction at Routes 176 and 41 in Lake Bluff and North Chicago; $58.7 million for reconstruction and widening of State Route 22 in Kildeer and Long Grove; $45 million for stabilization of the Adeline Geo-Karis Illinois Beach State Park shoreline; $26.7 million for a new classroom building at the College of Lake County; $1.7 million for dredging on the Chain O’Lakes; $3.5 million for capital improvements at Rosalind Franklin University in North Chicago; and $1 million for renovations to North Chicago High School, according to the governor’s office.
At a news conference alongside Pritzker on Monday touting the capital bill, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she wants the city casino to open “as soon as possible.
“Obviously we’ll be involved in the process,” Lightfoot said of the study. “I’m hoping we can get it done relatively soon, so we can start the process.” […]
A Chicago casino has eluded city officials as a potential cash cow since at least 1992, when former Mayor Richard M. Daley first floated a proposal. Link noted that Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, the state’s most profitable gaming site, pulled in more than $440 million last year.
“And [Chicago’s casino] will be much more profitable than that,” the senator said.
Lightfoot, Pritzker and transit leaders appeared together at a news conference to discuss spending projects under the plan.
One of the projects planned for the Chicago area is the $561 million reconstruction of Interstate 190, the westernmost leg of the Kennedy Expressway, from Bessie Coleman Drive to Interstate 90. The project, which will include the addition of auxiliary lanes, is intended to improve safety and access to the expanding airport, according to the state.
Another $72.6 million will go toward improvements to 38 bridges on the Kennedy from the Edens Expressway to Hubbard Street, the state said.
Other big area road projects include $1 billion for the expansion of Interstate 80 in Will County, which will involve the replacement of two deteriorated bridges over the Des Plaines River in Joliet. The Illinois Department of Transportation also plans to spend $92 million to rebuild the intersection of 95th Street and Stony Island Avenue, which will include reconstruction of railroad bridges, plus bicycle and pedestrian improvements.
“Pardon our dust in the next few years while we rebuild Illinois,” said Omer Osman, the state’s acting secretary of transportation.
Governor JB Pritzker is scheduled to visit southern Illinois Tuesday.
The governor is making stops at Walker’s Bluff and at Laborers Local 773 in Marion to tout the recently passed Rebuild Illinois package.
Part of that package was the expansion of gambling in Illinois. It allows for more sports betting, video gaming expansion, and six new casinos, one of which will be at Walker’s Bluff.
* Not sure of the news value of this, but here’s the Tribune…
When Gov. J.B. Pritzker was caught speeding on Geneva Lake in Wisconsin last month, he was driving a sleek, custom-built wooden speedboat that’s among the most expensive on the lake. […]
The boat Pritzker was driving is a brown, 28.7-foot wooden craft built in 2010 by Van Dam Custom Boats, a luxury wooden boat maker based in Boyne City, Michigan, according to a copy of the June 7 warning Pritzker received and the boat’s Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources recreational vehicle information report, documents obtained by the Tribune. […]
The Don Don model is described on the Van Dam website as a “contemporary boat with exotic automotive style,” built with “mahogany milled from a single log” and a stainless steel steering wheel, and able to reach speeds of more than 60 mph.
Brian Jahns, a sales executive at Gage Marine on Williams Bay, who has sold wooden boats in Lake Geneva for 27 years, said the Don Don is “ultrarare.”
* I’d wager that this is just exactly the sort of overreaction that the plaintiffs may have been hoping for. Yet another misleading piece from Bloomberg…
Joe Mysak, Bloomberg News’s foremost expert on the $3.8 trillion municipal-bond market, has a saying about Puerto Rico: It was technically “in” the market for state and local government debt, but not “of” it. That is to say, for a number of reasons, it has always been considered an outlier.
Indeed, munis are off to a blistering pace in 2019, with mutual and exchange-traded funds focused on the debt on track to pull in a record amount of cash this year. Investors are buying even though a closely watched gauge of relative value would suggest the bonds are a screaming sell. Never mind that at the start of the year, a federal oversight board argued that more than $6 billion of Puerto Rico’s general-obligation bonds should be declared null and void because issuing them in the first place breached the island’s constitutional debt limit. It’s just an outlier, after all.
Or is it?
John Tillman, the CEO of conservative think tank Illinois Policy Institute, and Warlander Asset Management’s Eric Cole, a protege of Appaloosa Management’s David Tepper, are teaming up in an effort to invalidate a whopping $14.3 billion of Illinois debt on the grounds that the state’s pension bond sale in 2003 and securities issued in 2017 to pay a backlog of unpaid bills were in fact deficit-financing transactions prohibited by the constitution.
* I mean, the constitutional passage in question is only 88 words long. Even people from New York can handle that…
State debt for specific purposes may be incurred or the payment of State or other debt guaranteed in such amounts as may be provided either in a law passed by the vote of three-fifths of the members elected to each house of the General Assembly or in a law approved by a majority of the electors voting on the question at the next general election following passage. Any law providing for the incurring or guaranteeing of debt shall set forth the specific purposes and the manner of repayment.
That’s the specific passage referenced in Tillman’s legal filing. You tell me where it prevents bonding to pay off old bills because I sure as heck don’t see it.
*** UPDATE *** The markets were indeed spooked…
and more bad news from my man at Municipal Market Data Dan Berger…..MMD widened IL GO spreads by 20-25bps based on trading activity……market otherwise quiet during this holiday week so folks believe its the headline
* The Question of the Day on a Friday afternoon ahead of Father’s Day weekend in 2014…
Do you have any fond political memories of your father?
Here is the late, great Wordslinger’s contribution…
Late in his much-too-short life, my old man developed a highly unlikely and completely accidental friendship with Bob Dole.
When I was a kid, in 1977, my peeps and I went to Norfolk to see my old man’s brother, who was in port as chief engineer on an oil tanker.
On the way back, we stopped for a few days in DC to see the sites.
Back then, security was nil. You pretty much had the run of the place. We went to Rep. Simon’s office on the Hill and the very nice people there loaded us up with same-day passes for the White House, the Pentagon, and some special exhibitions at the Smithsonian.
Just imagine; on the same day, we got a pass for a special White House Rose Garden tour, and got to shake hands with Pres. Carter, Rosalyn and Jackie O., who was there for some reason (my mom thought that was way cool).
Long story short, over the course of a couple of days, we kept bumping into Sen. Dole, all over town.
You have to remember, Dole had been Jerry Ford’s hatchet man in the 1976 race, and was considered to be in the GOP right wing (can you believe it?).
My folks were Norwegians and red-hot, anti-fascist, anti-commie, civil rights liberals.
Finally, after bumping into him one more time, Dole approached us and said “we have to stop meeting like this” and started chatting up the old man.
My parents were immigrants and could be very self-conscious about their accents. So when Dole asked if there was something he could do for us, they kept mum.
I knew what my folks wanted, though, so I piped up “we’d like to meet Sen. Humphrey.”
“Let’s go,” Dole said.
“Senator, we need to be…” a Dole aide started to protest.
“Shut up,” Dole explained.
As we made our way down to the Capitol Hill subway system, Dole and my old man got lost in conversation. Dole had had a tough time in WWII, and I know the old man had, too, though he never talked about it.
As my aunts recounted over the years, when he was about 21, the old man and his crew had been arrested by the Gestapo for stealing food from a Nazi storehouse. They were in a slave labor camp until VE Day and some of them were worked and starved to death.
Meanwhile, the Dole aide who had been told to “shut up” was trying to find out why the Senator was taking such an interest in us.
My mom wouldn’t talk, so he was pressing me, the kid with corncobs coming out of his ears.
“So, where in Kansas are you folks from?” he asked.
“We’re from Illinois,” I said.
“Oh? Huh. So how do you know Sen. Dole?”
“Um, from TV.”
Now he’s getting pissed. “No, I mean why is he taking you to see Sen. Humphrey right now?”
“I don’t know.”
We took the subway to some huge Senate hearing room. The old man and Dole sat together and continued talking. I sat with Mr. Shut Up. My mom sat with Sen. Kennedy (she considered herself an honorary Kennedy after meeting Jackie O and Teddy, and would talk about them like family whenever they popped up in the news).
I think it was the Foreign Relations Committee.
But we didn’t go in for a while. The old man and Dole stood to the side, continuing to talk.
I know they were talking about the war, when they were young men.
The old man had never said ten words to anyone in his family about the war, but here was this old Norsky liberal, thick accent and all, chewing the ear of the GOP vice presidential nominee. And Dole was listening.
Finally, Dole approaches the big doors, and they’re swung open for him.
He marches us down the center aisle of this huge, crowded hearing room, takes us right up to Humphrey and says “Hubert, your Illinois fan club is here.”
Humphrey was dying from the cancer and didn’t have any hair. But he lit up like a light bulb, took us to some back corridor and he, Dole and my folks chatted like old friends about this, that and nothing in particular.
My parents were thrilled and talked about their day with Dole and Humphrey for the rest of their lives.
Dole didn’t have to do any of that. We were nobodies. My parents weren’t from Kansas; they weren’t citizens, they couldn’t even vote.
But he did because he was just a decent man, and made my folks feel like big shots in Washington, like they’d really made it in America.
It’s about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Just a sweet, selfless act of kindness.
Dole and the old man would exchange Christmas cards til my Dad died. My old man didn’t change his politics, but nobody could say a word against his pal Bob.
Years later, when Dole was running for president in Iowa, I got to know Dole a little better. I liked him a lot then, I like him more now.
And I voted for him for president, for me, my mom and my old man.
That story says more about Wordslinger than just about anything he ever wrote here. This blog is just never going to be the same without him.
* By the way, Karl’s daughter Emma is studying journalism at DePaul and is doing an internship with the Chicago Sun-Times this summer. We’re going to talk a bit more about her today, but I wanted to show you this…
A very big thank you to everyone at @capitolfax for the outpour of love and admiration expressed for my dad and his work. My gratitude can never be expressed enough. https://t.co/ZZ4Orhja0L
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