In October 2017, a group of politically involved women calling themselves Illinois Say No More authored an open letter alleging a culture of rampant sexual harassment and discrimination at the state Capitol. It spread like wildfire.
In it, they detailed the double standard permeating state politics , enduring inappropriate advances and the fear of being retaliated upon if they spoke up. And they demanded better, calling on elected officials to create lasting, systemic change.
A year and a half later, much of their rage hasn’t dissipated. Illinois has been slow to implement reform for those working both under and outside the Capitol dome, part of a worrying national trend in the #MeToo era, they say.
“Addressing the issue of sexual harassment is complicated but this delay is disheartening,” said Katelynd Duncan, Chicago-based fundraiser and political consultant, who co-authored the piece. “It feels like a slap in the face of women, of our cause and of female political operatives specifically. We want our elected leaders to show us we matter. Just as much as our male colleagues. That’s it. And that’s not happening.”
* Sen. Melinda Bush, you will recall, passed her own bill that took months to craft only to see it thrown into House talks about an omnibus proposal. She was super-angry about it last month, but she told me the other day that she was satisfied with the talks so far. She said pretty much the same to the Center for Illinois Politics…
Bush publicly confronted members of House leadership on the status of her bill - and even made a point of bending Madigan’s ear at his annual fundraiser at Springfield’s Yacht Club to attempt to get the bill moving again.
On May 7, Bush said, she spoke with Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s chief of staff called about the issue, who offered help and support. She said she also engaged in a two-hour meeting with members of the four legislative caucuses.
“We basically all agree on the concepts,” Bush said. “We’re all at the table negotiating and I’m hopeful. I’m really trying to get through this process with pressure and respect.”
The ongoing investigation into sexual harassment complaints in House Speaker Michael Madigan’s office could cost Illinois taxpayers up to $1.4 million — and it’s unclear whether the findings will ever be made public.
Under fire from members of his own House Democratic Caucus, Madigan announced last June he had hired the law firm Schiff Hardin to conduct an investigation into how complaints of bullying and harassment from his then-chief of staff and members of his political organizations were handled in the speaker’s office.
He selected former federal prosecutor Maggie Hickey to conduct the audit. Hickey, now a Schiff Hardin partner, had served as the executive inspector general under Madigan’s nemesis, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
But nearly a year later, Hickey’s work continues. […]
Madigan’s noncommittal answer about releasing the final report troubled a former statehouse watchdog.
“There should be a way to make public the key findings and conclusions so that members of the public can collaborate with members of the General Assembly and find solutions to issues that have been really difficult for many years in Springfield and beyond,” former Legislative Inspector General Julie Porter said.
The motor fuel tax bump would be a hard pitch for Democratic Rep. Emanuel Chris Welch, from Hillside, to make to his constituents, he said.
“From 19 cents to 44 cents a gallon for gas is a lot of money and to go home and try to explain that to people — that’s hard to do, especially in a district like the one I serve,” Welch said.
And Rep. David McSweeney, a Republican from Barrington Hills, said while it is “clear” the roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure in the state need attention, raising the motor fuel tax is not the way to pay for it.
“I oppose this bill because I don’t support an increase to the gas tax, and I think we need a capital bill, but I think we should use the revenue from the sports gambling bill,” he said.
Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker wants to legalize that practice, and he projected $200 million in revenues from sports gambling licensing fees in his proposed budget. It is one of several revenue streams in Pritzker’s budget that are not guaranteed to become law.
$200 million wouldn’t even make a dent in the problem.
…Adding… Rep. McSweeney…
Rich,
Sports gambling will likely produce closer to $300 million. Even if you use a $200 million annual revenue stream, you could issue about $2 billion of debt based on that. I support bonding for a capital bill. The current proposals do not yet have a bonding component.
As is the case everywhere, the needs across Sangamon County and the city of Springfield are numerous. However, in their meeting with [Deputy Governor Christian Mitchell], local leaders made clear their top priority — without a close second — is securing the funds necessary to complete the remaining phases of the Springfield Rail Improvements Project.
“If you want one project, and that was driven home by the deputy governor, is ‘OK, is this really your top priority with rail?’ I said yes, without a doubt it is,” [Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder] said. “So, to me, it signified you have limited funds, what do you want with those limited funds if you get one request?”
The capital request, put together by local political and civic leaders in conjunction with the Land of Lincoln Economic Development Corporation, includes $121.2 million needed for the completion of the rail project.
The project, which started with rail underpass construction on Carpenter Street in 2014 and has an overall price tag of $315 million, aims to alleviate rail congestion downtown by consolidating train traffic from Third Street to 10th Street and through building a series of overpasses and underpasses along the corridor.
* Some top Dems have been asking for this new track…
Today, Think Big Illinois released a new ad highlighting why Illinois voters should have the opportunity to decide whether they want a tax system that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few. The ad, “A Chance To Vote,” also calls out opponents of a fair tax for their “nonsensical” and “completely incorrect” claims in their desperate attempts to keep our current unfair tax system in place.
“A Chance To Vote” will run on television in Chicago and Springfield, and across digital platforms. Watch the ad here.
“There are very few times where Illinoisans have the opportunity to directly decide an issue that impacts them and their families. Legislators in Springfield have the chance to give voters that opportunity, and let them choose whether they want to keep our current unfair tax system in place or want a system that works for everyone,” said Quentin Fulks, Executive Director of Think Big Illinois. “While opponents of a fair tax continue to rely on misleading claims and false attacks, Think Big Illinois will continue to stand up for middle-class families in the fight for a fair tax.”
That’s what newspapers call the attacks against the fair tax.
They can’t defeat the plan on its merits, so they’re trying to jump it on the low road.
If the General Assembly gives the green light, we’re all going to have a say at the polls next November.
The people of Illinois deserve a chance to vote on this important proposal.
This is fair and necessary.
It’s time for change.
Let’s make our tax system fair.
…Adding… To address some folks in comments who are arguing for even more constitutional questions on the ballot, I would agree with you. That’s why I strongly supported a constitutional convention in 2008. But an overwhelming 67 percent of voters rejected the convention, so they essentially agreed with the status quo. And that status quo is we can only vote on what the General Assembly puts on the ballot. The people spoke. It’ll be 2028 before that question automatically comes before them again and it was abundantly clear that would be the case in ‘08.
* Opponents of cannabis legalization have repeatedly trotted out claims that legalization results in dramatically increased usage by children. Rep. Kelly Cassidy said once that “you see steady decreases in youth use if you do [legalization] right.” Politifact chose to fact check her…
Since 2014, the data show no statistically significant uptick in pot usage among teens so legalization hardly leads to the reefer madness some critics feared. But the numbers available for Colorado and other states that have lifted bans for adults also don’t reveal the clear pattern of decline in youth pot use that Cassidy described.
Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize retail marijuana sales, so they have the longest track records to study.
In Colorado, a 2018 report by the state Department of Public Safety’s Division of Justice reviewed data from the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, which includes answers to various health questions asked of more than 40,000 middle and high school students every other year. The survey is conducted by the state’s Department of Public Health & Environment.
Results from the survey show 19.7% of Colorado high schoolers reported using marijuana within the past month in 2013, the year before the first retail marijuana store opened. In 2015, that figure rose slightly, but experts told PolitiFact in 2016 that increase was not statistically significant. In 2017, the rate dipped to 19.4%, slightly lower than it had been in previous surveys dating back to least 2005. […]
The state [of Washington] conducts a biennial youth health survey similar to Colorado’s, which breaks its data down by grades. Its results show some small declines but suggest little has changed there either, with decreases of 1% between 2014 and 2016 among 8th and 10th graders who said they currently used pot, followed by 1% increases for both grades in 2018. For 12th graders, rates fell by 1% the year after retail sales began and have remained at that level, which is in line with pre-legalization rates. […]
Changes in the other five states where retail sales are underway are even more difficult to evaluate than Colorado or Washington. Alaska’s state survey reported no statistically significant changes since recreational cannabis was approved for adults in 2014 and hit the market in 2016. Results in Oregon, which followed a similar timeline, were mixed. And it’s too soon to assess results out of Nevada, California and Massachusetts, which each repealed bans in late 2016 but only began allowing sales within the last two years.
*** UPDATE *** Press release…
In response to a recent PolitiFact/BGA story on the accuracy of State Representative Kelly Cassidy’s comments on teen use, Legalize Illinois issued the following statement:
Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers
“Colorado, Oregon, California, Massachusetts and Maine all show declines in teen use since legalizing adult-use cannabis. Washington state saw declines in two of the three age groups it studied. Somehow, though, the Better Government Association found it possible to describe Rep. Kelly Cassidy’s statement that, ‘In states that have legalized, you see steady decreases in youth use if you do it right’ as ‘mostly false.’ We hope this was an honest misreading of the data and not a temptation to create click-bait.
“Let’s look at the facts. Nationwide, use by 9th-12th graders has declined from 23.1% to 19.8% (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) In Oregon, use among 8th graders has declined from 9.7% to 6.7%, (Source: Oregon Healthy Teens Survey), in Nevada 19.3% to 17.9% (Source: Nevada Youth Risk Behavior Survey) and in Washington from 20% to 17.2% (Source: Washington State Healthy Youth Survey.) And so on.
“The BGA story itself cites the Colorado declines but editorializes that the study is unreliable because its data is ‘baseline and preliminary.’ What Rep. Cassidy said – and what the BGA chose to malign her about – was the statement, ‘In states that have legalized, you see steady decreases in youth use if you do it right’. The statistics show she is correct.
“To borrow from the BGA’s own designation, we rate their story as follows: ‘Mostly False – The story contains particles of truth but ignores critical data that would have given the reader a more accurate impression’.”
If you listen closely to what Democratic state Reps. Sam Yingling and Jonathan Carroll are saying in public about their opposition to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s graduated income tax proposal, they appear to believe that Pritzker’s proposed tax rates aren’t high enough.
Yingling and Carroll are both demanding significant property tax relief. “In Illinois,” Rep. Yingling wrote in the Chicago Tribune last week, “the disproportionate reliance on and financial burden of property taxes to fund government — roads and bridges, education, police, fire and other essential services — is devastating.”
“My constituents are concerned that their taxes will go up without essential property-tax relief,” Carroll was quoted as saying.
No sane person would argue that property taxes are too low in this state. Yingling didn’t mention school spending in his letter to the Tribune, but that’s by far the largest item in the local levies. And that’s why both Yingling and Carroll signed on to a resolution during the last General Assembly opposing a proposed shift of pension costs from the state to local school districts, which would’ve driven up property taxes much higher than they already were.
But unless a solution to this mess involves a Bruce Rauner-style elimination of collective bargaining rights for unions, or drastic cuts to school classrooms and to municipal operations (which both Yingling and Carroll would oppose), combined with a wholesale elimination of state mandates and sweeping forced district consolidations, then lowering property taxes right away will require lots more money from the state. And state money doesn’t grow on trees as it does at the federal level.
Sen. Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, has been working on this issue for years and told me that significant state-funded property tax relief would cost about $7 billion to $8 billion every year. That means almost quadrupling Gov. Pritzker’s proposed $3.4 billion tax hike on upper-income Illinoisans. Or, if the flat tax was kept in place, it would require at least a couple of percentage points added to the current income tax rate, taking it to almost 7 percent for everybody.
Rep. Yingling, however, voted against the 2017 income tax increase that ended the state’s two-year budget impasse. Rep. Carroll was not yet appointed to his seat when that bill became law over Gov. Rauner’s veto.
State funding and lots more were all discussed during the property tax working group meetings set up and facilitated by the governor’s office that both Yingling and Carroll attended — although Carroll reportedly missed the final meeting. Yingling reportedly suggested some ideas, but no agreements could be reached, mainly because if this was so easy it would’ve been done decades ago.
Property taxes have been a major issue in this state since the 1980s, when the share of the state’s funding of schools started sliding downward and local property taxes started shooting up. A half a point was added to the income tax in 1989 as a sort of “welcoming present” to newly elected Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Half of the increase went to schools and the other half went to local governments.
But that money eventually got rolled back into GRF and the state did things like cap suburban property tax increases, which, as homeowners in Yingling’s Lake County will certainly attest, obviously didn’t work as advertised.
Rep. Yingling passed just four of his House bills this year. None of them were bad ideas, but none would significantly reduce anyone’s property tax bills, either.
Rep. Carroll passed a bill (co-sponsored by Yingling) to place yet another unfunded state mandate on local schools to make sure third-party driver education teachers were properly certified. Those sorts of mandates drive up local taxes.
Nobody can read anyone’s mind, but Rep. Yingling’s 2017 income tax hike vote probably explains a lot more about his current refusal to support the graduated tax than his stated concerns about property taxes. He perpetually votes like a vulnerable targeted member, even though his district is now pretty safely Democratic. And Rep. Carroll has a whole lot of high-income constituents in his even more Democratic Northbrook area district who likely aren’t pleased with the prospect of paying more money to the state.
The fact that neither legislator bothered to give the governor’s office a courtesy heads-up on their intentions to publicly oppose the plan also speaks volumes.
If these two seriously want to significantly reduce property taxes, then they should introduce a bill to actually do it – and to pay for it. Otherwise, they’re just grandstanding and forcing everyone else do the heavy lifting.
*** UPDATE *** Rep. Carroll confirmed my suspicion that he wanted even higher state spending to lower property taxes. From Mark Maxwell’s Capitol Connection…
Maxwell: You’ve already singled out the property tax thing. How do you address that though at the state level because so many local governments are the ones that make those decisions? How does the state force their hand?
Carroll: We have to fund education better. I mean, that’s the bottom line. Almost 70 percent of property tax bills go to education. We have to find a way to fund education better through the state.
And that means more money, and money doesn’t grow on trees. Unless he wants huge cuts to state programs (Narrator: He doesn’t) Carroll is arguing here for even higher tax levels that Pritzker is proposing.
