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*** UPDATED x1 *** Bill to repeal 1995 Chicago school reforms clears House

Monday, Apr 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The status of HB2275 looks harmless enough…

Amends the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act. Removes language concerning impasse procedures involving an educational employer whose territorial boundaries are coterminous with those of a city having a population in excess of 500,000. Repeals provisions concerning subjects of collective bargaining with that educational employer.

The bill cleared the full House last week 73-35.

* Way down at the bottom of the bill…

The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act is amended by repealing Section 4.5.

What would happen with the repeal of that section? The mayor’s office says these items would be put back into the collective bargaining process…

· Class size;
· Class staffing and assignment;
· Class schedules;
· Academic calendar;
· Length of the work and school day;
· Length of the work and school year;
· Hours and places of instruction; and
· Pupil assessment policies.

Section 4.5 (Subjects of Collective Bargaining) is here.

* Greg Hinz had the scoop…

Quietly approved by the House late last week was a bill that would repeal 1995 reforms passed early in the tenure of former Mayor Richard M. Daley that took certain topics, including class size and the school calendar, off the collective bargaining table, making them discretionary to management rather than mandatory subjects for bargaining.

Daley implemented some changes under the law, most notably beginning to appoint members of the Chicago Board of Education, a change under attack in other pending legislation. But Emanuel went much further, often bragging he changed a Chicago Public Schools system that had had what he said was among the shortest school days and years in the country.

The shift always has rankled the Chicago Teachers Union, in part because it applied only to Chicago and no other districts in the suburbs or downstate. A similar CTU bill stalled last year in Springfield, but it breezed out of the House largely on a party-line 73-35 vote last week, and according to the union, there is good reason to believe the measure has the support of Senate President John Cullerton and will be signed into law if it reaches Gov. J.B. Pritzker. […]

“The bill would take away CPS’ bargaining leverage,” said one top schools insider who asked not to be named. “It will sharply increase the likelihood of a strike” next fall, when a new CTU contract is supposed to go into effect.

That’s a big payback for the CTU, campers.

*** UPDATE *** WBEZ…

Last week, the Illinois House passed a bill lifting these bargaining restrictions with 73 members voting yes and 35 voting no. The “no” votes came from Republicans. In the Senate, Democrats hold a bigger majority. Similar bills have passed in the House previously but have stalled in the Senate.

But now, Senate President John Cullerton tells WBEZ it might be time to revisit these provisions, according to his spokesman John Patterson.

In addition, both candidates for Chicago’s mayor and Governor J.B. Pritzker are considered more CTU-friendly than Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Gov. Bruce Rauner, which could increase the chances of the bill making it to the governor’s desk.

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What Steve Rhodes said

Monday, Apr 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Tribune…

“I don’t care what the polls say, we cannot leave a stone unturned,” U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly said in South Shore, with her endorsed candidate Lightfoot by her side. “We have to do everything we can do. We have to run like we are behind. Don’t take anything for granted.”

Meanwhile, Preckwinkle’s top allies kept encouraging voters to ignore talk of endorsements and polls, of which there have been few, and focus on turning out in big numbers for the Cook County Board president.

Steve Rhodes…

When one camp is warning about complacency due to poll numbers and the other side is urging voters to ignore the poll numbers, that means both sides agree on the poll numbers.

* Tribune…

Preckwinkle also spent a chunk of the day visiting various South Side grocery stores, though her campaign didn’t publicize them. It did, however, tweet photos of her visiting shoppers at Jewel stores in Brainerd and Grand Crossing, a Food-4-Less in Chatham and the sprawling Walmart in Pullman.

Rhodes…

A campaign that doesn’t want publicity on the weekend before Election Day is a campaign that is either incompetent, is afraid that their campaign stops will draw embarrassingly little enthusiasm, or doesn’t want to face the questions that come with media attention. I’d say the Preckwinkle campaign checks all three boxes.

* And the lack of enthusiasm showed later…

Later in the day, White and Preckwinkle joined U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, Ald. Walter Burnett, Ald. Jason Ervin, city treasurer candidate and state Rep. Melissa Conyears-Ervin and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson for what the County Board president’s campaign advertised as the weekend’s closing get-out-the-vote rally, but a crowd of just 60 people was scattered throughout the sanctuary.

Rhodes…

Oy.

Yep.

…Adding… Chicago Tribune editorial…

Tuesday is Mandate Day. After 22 years of Mayor Richard M. Daley from a family political dynasty, and after eight years of Emanuel who brought an insider, Washington, D.C. portfolio, voters have the opportunity to turn the keys over to outsider Lori Lightfoot. Chicagoans, do that forcefully.

Steve Rhodes…

Bear in mind that for the last three decades, the Tribune editorial board has been, forcefully, in the corners of Daley and Emanuel, issuing no less than eight endorsements over that time - all of them!

Now the Trib wants to shame you into fixing their (unacknowledged) mistakes. If editorial board members thought about it, they’d realize that we’d all be better off if readers following their advice the last 30 years would’ve been better off sitting at home on Election Day! Stupid citizens, look what you did listening to us! Now we need a mayor to get us out of this mess! Get out there and vote or you have no right to complain about how wrong we’ve been!

Our very own Tim Willette adds: “It wasn’t long ago that the Tribune endorsed Bill Daley for mayor! If you endorsed Bill Daley for mayor, you have no right to complain!”

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Breaking down Friday’s most intense House debate

Monday, Apr 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Illinois News Network…

After a heated debate, calls of racism, and shouting, the Illinois state House of Representatives voted to require all publicly held companies in the state to have at least one woman and one African-American on the company’s corporate board.

State Rep. Chris Welch’s bill, which passed Friday, would require any publicly-traded company headquartered in the state to have at least one woman and at least one African-American on its corporate boards starting in 2021.

Maybe I missed something, but I heard no explicit “calls of racism.”

The bill is here.

* To the debate…

Rep. Tony McCombie (R-Savanna): No disrespect, Representative, but is this a real bill?

Rep. Chris Welch (D-Hillside): This is a real bill.

McCombie: Who writes this stuff? I mean this is, this is getting crazy here. Just because you have the super majority, the super-duper-duper majority doesn’t mean you have to keep continuing to pass bills that haven’t passed over the last three or four different years. This is blowing my mind. You guys are gonna put your governor, our governor on the books for being the biggest business busting person in the nation.

Welch: No, I think Rauner has that title already.

McCombie: You are putting him on a spot here that is not going to help him, I’m telling you. I strongly urge, this bill is really quite offensive. I agree with Davidsmeyer, why are we not talking about seniors, why are we not talking about different religions, why are we not talking about people that are disabled? Why are we getting in, why are we continuing to get in the private businesses? Destroying our ability for this state to grow. And we all agree in this room, every single person we agree that we have to grow our way out of this mess. I strongly, strongly urge a No vote and, you know, Representative, you have always been one that comes forth with a bill that sometimes I disagree with and then you come back and you change a mandate to a ‘may’ and it’s a better bill. This is a bad bill. This is a horrible bill. I don’t even, you guys gotta get it together here. No offense, but this is, this is something else. I urge a No vote.

Rep. Will Davis (D-Homewood): The previous speaker said ‘No offense.’ I’ll just say ‘Offense taken’ in that respect. Offense is already taken. I often say when I sponsor diversity bills that I wouldn’t have to do them if people would act right. We wouldn’t have to do these kind of things if all of us act right.

* Leader Davis went on like that for a while and Rep. Steven Reick (R-Woodstock) decided to add his own “contribution”…

I don’t care whether you are offended or not by the fact that we are against this bill. The fact remains that you’re not gonna get anything in this country in the way of being treated equally if you’re gonna take offense at every damned thing that comes up.

Whew.

* The response from Rep. Margo McDermed (R-Mokena), who sits down the row from Rep. Reick…

Agreed.

* But the Republicans were not finished…

Rep. Deanne Mazzochi (R-Elmhurst): Just out of curiosity, if we set a precedent with this bill, could we then pass a bill saying that we mandate Christian men be represented on a corporate board?

Rep. Welch: You have the right just like I did to file your bill. If you like that, file the bill.

Mazzochi: Can we mandate that conservative Republicans have to have a seat at the table on corporate boards?

Welch: You can certainly file that bill.

Mazzochi: Well, I’m asking, if that bill gets filed would you then support it?

* All heck kinda broke loose…

Welch: Listen, Representative, I’m not gonna stand here as a black man with a five-year-old daughter and be ashamed that I’m fighting for her to have a seat at the table… If you believe corporate Republicans and conservative Republicans have a right [to be] at the table, file the bill! We can debate it, just like we’re doing here today. But I’m not going to be ashamed to stand here and fight for the people that sent me here! Let’s stand up for our people! You should be ashamed of the arguments coming out of the other side today.

And that’s when Mazzochi asked if Rachel Dolezal, the woman who claimed she was black and wasn’t, and whether a white woman from South Africa would also qualify.

McCombie eventually rose to defend herself, saying people who know her understand she wasn’t trying to make this about race, and Welch said he wanted to make a change to the bill and pulled it out of the record. Several minutes later, Welch said he had changed his mind and asked for a “Yes” vote.

* House Republican Leader Jim Durkin rose to clarify…

Durkin: Rep. Welch, let’s make this perfectly clear that this doesn’t apply to any privately held corporation, correct?

Welch: It applies to publicly held corporations. […]

Durkin: I’ve been down here many years when sometimes the debate on this floor gets heated. And I think sometimes our emotions carry over. And I just witnessed it and I think it’s best for us to take a deep breath and I want to talk about my caucus. This is a bill that is important to us because we believe in the free market system. And we traditionally have. We disagree about how we are to manage corporate America. We take the position that we think government should take a step back, let those entities make decisions on their own. We believe that the more that government micromanages the private businesses and corporations in Illinois and in this country is not the best way for us to move forward and to grow our economy. So I speak on behalf of the caucus that our objections are nothing more than we just have a difference of agreement of how our free market, our private markets should work. And I hope that we do not turn this matter into something that I’ve gathered through this last hour of how this debate went because that doesn’t reflect my caucus.

Durkin went on to say “There clearly are places and times when there has to be some oversight,” of business but, on the whole, Republicans are for free markets. He called Rep. Welch a “gentleman” and said “Let’s just take a vote.” It passed with 61 votes.

* But it wasn’t over yet. Rep. Rita Mayfield (D-Waukegan) rose at the end of Friday’s session to give this speech…

I’m extremely disappointed that two women, two founding women of our House Democratic Women’s Caucus chose to vote ‘No.’ These are individuals who stood before the Women’s Caucus and said they would stand up for women, they would stand up for our rights, they would stand up for us across the board. But yet they chose to vote ‘No’ on a bill that would’ve empowered women. I’m extremely disappointed with their vote.

* Politico…

The bill passed 61 to 27 with a few Democrats opposed, including Kelly Burke (Evergreen Park), Anna Moeller (Elgin) and Deb Conroy (Villa Park). Conroy is co-chair of the House Dem Women’s House Caucus. Dem Rep. Rita Mayfield (Waukegan) called out the women who opposed the measure in a point of personal privilege after the vote.

A check of the roll call shows that Burke, Moeller and Conroy did not vote either way on the motion. No Democrat explicitly voted against the bill.

In the end, taking a walk or voting “Present” have the same impact as voting “No.” They do not necessarily have the same intent, however.

…Adding… As Rep. McDermed points out in comments, she voted “Yes” on the bill.

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*** UPDATED x1 *** Progressive, peer-reviewed study: Pritzker’s tax plan falls $280 million short

Monday, Apr 1, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The buried lede…

The peer-reviewed exam by the Project for Middle Class Renewal and the Illinois Economic Policy Institute constructed eight scenarios based partly on progressive income tax structures among Illinois’ neighbors. The Associated Press obtained the study in advance of its release.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed changing the state’s flat-rate income tax system, in which everyone pays 4.95 percent, to a progressive structure in which wealthier residents pay a higher percentage. It would start at 4.75 percent for the lowest wage earners, remain at 4.95 percent for those earning $100,000 to $250,000, and top out at 7.95 percent for incomes over $1 million.

Authors Robert Bruno and Frank Manzo constructed eight scenarios, drawn in part from graduated tax structures in nearby states such as Iowa and Minnesota, and tested each against five public policy goals: Cutting taxes for at least two-thirds of taxpayers, reducing property taxes by 10 percent, protecting small businesses, wiping out Illinois’ built-in $1.2 billion “structural” deficit, and boosting education and brick-and-mortar funding by hundreds of millions of dollars. […]

Pritzker’s measure is among the scenarios evaluated by Manzo and Bruno, director of the University of Illinois’ Labor Education Program and head of the Project for Middle Class Renewal. The study determined that the Democrat’s plan would mean a tax cut for 85.3 percent of tax filers , no change in the current liability for 12 percent of taxpayers, and an increase for 2.8 percent — those making more than $250,000 a year.

It would generate $3.12 billion extra per year, less than Pritzker’s estimate of $3.4 billion

According to the AP and to one of the study’s authors, the study figured Pritzker’s corporate tax hike into its projection.

Business interests have been saying for weeks that the Pritzker proposal wouldn’t raise as much as advertised, but this is the first group on the left saying the same thing.

Click here for the study and click here for the press release.

Overall, the report had good news for the Pritzker camp. But it’s not good at all if the governor’s revenue projection is off by 8 percent.

I’ve asked the governor’s office for a response.

*** UPDATE *** The governor’s office points out that the study didn’t run Pritzker’s actual plan. The study “implemented” the plan using Fiscal Year 2018 numbers, instead of the higher incomes during Fiscal Year 2021, when the plan would first be implemented.

That explains a lot of the discrepancy. They also went back a year earlier to calculate their estimates than Pritzker (2015 vs. 2016).