* From a press release…
Yes for Independent Maps on Friday withdrew its petitions seeking a referendum on a constitutional amendment to remove politics from the process of drawing legislative district boundary lines. Deborah Harrington, Chair of Yes for Independent Maps, issued the following statement after Cook County Circuit Court Judge Mary Mikva’s ruling prohibiting the State Board of Elections from taking any further actions on the petitions:
In her ruling, Judge Mikva held that the redistricting initiative as written does not fall within the scope of a ballot initiative permitted by Section 3, Article XIV of the Constitution. The good news is that Judge Mikva concluded that “redistricting appears to be fair game for amendment” by a ballot initiative process and specifically upheld many of the components of the redistricting initiative.
We have concluded that we are not going to proceed in this election cycle. Instead, we will put the lessons learned in this campaign and from the judge’s ruling to good use. This experience will make us better prepared to win the next campaign to give voters an opportunity to have a voice in the redistricting process.
We built an unprecedented bipartisan statewide coalition of more than 5,000 volunteers and 1,000 contributors, including groups as broad-based as AARP Illinois, the League of Women Voters of Illinois, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and grassroots organizations representing diverse and minority communities. Together, we will continue the fight to reform an issue that once mattered only to politicians but now is on the minds of Illinois citizens.
The reform would not have taken effect until after the 2020 Census. We still have at least two more statewide elections – in 2016 and 2018 – to bring a redistricting amendment before voters and an opportunity to revise the language to address Judge Mikva’s objections.
Redistricting reform elsewhere in America has been just as difficult. For example, California’s recent reform required three attempts before it became reality. We remain committed to changing the status quo and enacting a redistricting process that will give Illinoisans a stronger voice in how their state is governed.
My bet is that the problems with their petitions had more to do with it. They have tons of money, why not fight on in the courts if their petitions were soild?
*** UPDATE 1 *** The remappers’ press release deeply undercuts the argument by supporters of Bruce Rauner’s term limits case that this was a politicized court decision.
Let’s review, shall we?
On the one hand, the State Board of Elections was allegedly “evil” because they were just doing their job when finding serious faults with the remap reform petitions, but on the other hand the Board OK’d Rauner’s term limits petitions.
On the one hand, Judge Mikva is the handmaiden of the “combine” for striking down these two initatives today, but on the other hand the remappers didn’t disagree with her opinion.
Of course, screamers are gonna scream and professional victims are gonna claim they were victimized.
As such, I’m sure the Tribune editorial board (comprised of the shrillest screamers and the most professional of all Illinois political victims) will have no problems reconciling this extreme cognitive dissonance in its own collective mind - whatever’s left of it, that is.
*** UPDATE 2 *** I told subscribers last week that Mike Kasper’s crew had found about 20,000 duplicated signatures in their review. This is from Rick Pearson…
Just a few days ago, attorneys for the opponents [of the remap reform effort] headed up by Michael Kasper, who has longtime ties to Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, laid out a series of claims that they found numerous examples of repeat signatures in violation of state law, incomplete information from petition circulators and even a few cases where nearly entire pages appeared to be duplicated, with identical names in the identical order. That is a telltale sign of “round-tabling,” a time-dishonored tradition in which people sit around a table and take turns signing petitions, choosing names out of a phone book or just making them up.
But, yeah. The State Board of Elections is evil.
*** UPDATE 3 *** Sun-Times editorial…
(M)any of the board of election questions appear legitimate. The questioning was not all about politics, as some have suggested.
I’d go further and say it wasn’t at all about politics. If you’re not registered to vote, your signature doesn’t count. Period. No arguing. If you’re signing dozens of times, they don’t count, either. If somebody is signing for you, it doesn’t count.
There’s absolutely nothing subjective about that whatsoever. The only subjective objections dealt with 12 percent of those rejected, and the Board of Elections has a reputation for being quite lenient on that particular issue (Chicago is just the reverse). So if the state board said those were illegible signatures/addresses to the point where they couldn’t figure out who the heck signed them, then it’s pretty likely that the signatures weren’t legible. Same goes for matching petition signatures with voter registration signatures. The city is known for being hugely picky, the state is not.
The cold, hard fact is the remappers had no chance with that flawed stack of petitions they submitted.
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* 12:07 pm - From a Bruce Rauner press release…
Just moments ago, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Mary Mikva ruled against the Committee for Legislative Reform and Term Limits and in favor of the Madigan-backed lawsuit to prevent the people of Illinois from voting on the Term Limits and Reform constitutional amendment in November.
“Today we saw the entrenched special interests that fund and support the political status quo prevail, and the people of Illinois be denied the right to chose for themselves if term limits should be the law in Illinois,” said Term Limits and Reform Executive Director Mark Campbell. “We’ve always known that term limits opponents would use the courts to try to protect the failed status quo, and we’ve long been prepared to defend our initiative in the Illinois Supreme Court, which we intend to do. We are confident that we will prevail there, and the people’s voices will be heard in November.”
More in a bit.
* 12:09 pm - I have confirmed that both constitutional amendments were struck down as unconstitutional today - term limits and remap reform. I’m currently trying to get a copy of the judge’s ruling. Stay tuned.
* 1:14 pm - Sorry for the unavoidable delay. To read the opinion, click here.
* The Sun-Times story is all about Madigan…
In a win for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Cook County judge on Friday ruled in favor of a lawsuit that aimed to stop two referendums on the November ballot — one that would impose term limits, the other that would change the state’s redistricting process.
Cook County Judge Mary Mikva permanently enjoined election officials from putting either measure on the ballot.
Behind the lawsuit was Madigan, who opposes both measures. Madigan has previously derided both proposed referendums as “all Republican politics.”
* The Tribune went for substance…
Mikva said that in deciding previous cases, the Illinois Supreme Court’s “precedent dictates a very narrow provision for allowing the voters to directly enact amendments to the Illinois Constitution.”
Mikva ruled that “any term limits initiative appears to be outside what is permissible” under the state constitution and previous court rulings. She said term limits by themselves have been found not to affect “structural or procedural” changes in the legislature. She said adding other components, such as changing the number of senators and representatives “cannot save this initiative.” […]
As for the remap amendment, Mikva said “a differently drafted redistricting initiative could be valid,” but the one submitted went beyond changing the structure and procedure of the General Assembly by limiting who could draw the new map lines. […]
Under previous state Supreme Court rulings there is a limited window for using petition initiative attempts to change the 1970 Illinois Constitution. Such initiatives must affect both the structure and procedure of the General Assembly to be eligible for the ballot.
* 1:33 pm - One thing to note about the Rauner camp’s response and the Sun-Times story is that this judge was agreed to by all parties. They could’ve objected, but they didn’t.
Just keep that in mind when the professional victims start screaming.
* 1:41 - From the Quinn campaign…
Quinn for Illinois spokesman Izabela Miltko issued the below statement regarding today’s court ruling on Bruce Rauner’s poorly-drafted proposal. The Governor strongly supports term limits and redistricting reform that ensures equal representation of minorities. Miltko said:
“Governor Pat Quinn has strongly supported term limits since 1993 when he spearheaded a statewide petition drive for a citizen referendum to establish term limits in Illinois.
“During that petition drive, Bruce Rauner was nowhere to be found. Now, 20 years later, he turns up with a poorly drafted, election-year proposal. Rauner has nobody but himself to blame for harming the term limits cause.
“As the Governor said in 1994 and believes to this day, it is unfortunate that the people of Illinois have been denied the ability to enact pure term limits directly through referendum as Governor Quinn has long advocated.”
In 1980, Quinn led the successful petition and referendum drive that enacted the Cutback Amendment, which reduced the size of the Illinois House from 177 members from 118. This was the first and only constitutional amendment ever enacted by citizen petition and referendum in Illinois history.
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*** UPDATE *** Gov. Pat Quinn vetoed the bill late Friday afternoon. The veto message is here.
[ *** End Of Update *** ]
* The Better Government Association wants Gov. Pat Quinn to veto this bill…
On the all-important issue of government transparency, lawmakers took a giant step backwards with uncharacteristic speed.
A weakening of our most valuable transparency tool, the Freedom of Information Act, breezed through both chambers in a single week in May.
Motivated by suburban government complaints about the strain of responding to comprehensive FOIA requests, lawmakers passed HB3796, which gives municipalities additional time to respond to so-called “voluminous” requests from citizens, and lets them charge the FOIA filers up to $100.
The extra time’s not a deal-breaker, but the fees are arbitrary and unreasonably high, which seriously undermines the ability of regular citizens to access the public information they’re entitled to.
* Look, there are some strange people out there who file loads of FOIA requests. It has become a problem for some local governments, and they’re not all in the suburbs…
“We actually do hear from quite a few (municipalities),” said Joe Schatteman, who handles FOIA issues for the Illinois Municipal League, which supported the bill.
“There was a central Illinois community that came to our office, and they brought this volume of requests that this one person had,” said Schatteman, who also is a Chatham village trustee. “It was a community that had two staff people. In order for them to fill these FOIA requests, they had to pay these two staff people overtime. The other portion of their job duties when unfulfilled for two or three weeks. When it gets to a point of disruption of government services for the general good, that’s when we have concerns.”
[Sponsoring Rep. Bob Rita] said he is trying to address a problem faced by Tinley Park, a city in his House district.
“They get an enormous amount of requests in for enormous amounts of data or information through electronic format,” Rita said. Current FOIA law does not allow cities to charge fees for information delivered in electronic format.
“I’ve seen some of the requests,” Rita said. “It’s like give me every email between Employee A and Employee B and Employee C for the last four years. They’ve had some real issues with the same person continuously asking for enormous amounts of information.”
* But I do agree with these aspects of the Illinois Policy Institute’s otherwise hyperbolic objections…
HB 3786 has an incredibly narrow definition of what constitutes a voluminous requestor.
“(h) ‘Voluminous request’ means a request that: (i) includes more than 5 individual requests for more than 5 different categories of records or a combination of individual requests that total request for more than 5 different categories of records in a period of 20 business days; or (ii) requires the compilation of more than 500 letter or legal-sized pages of public records unless a single requested record exceeds 500 pages.”
Government documents can be quite long. A single board packet for a modestly sized municipality in Illinois can easily total 200 to 300 pages. Ask for two or three board packets and you are now considered a voluminous requestor.
If a citizen watchdog simply asked for all of the documents in our 10-Point Transparency Checklist, the law would allow public bodies to immediately label them as a voluminous requestor.
And the financial implications of the bill would be a real burden for most citizen requesters.
If the electronic record is in PDF format, a $100 charge would be leveed if it takes up more than 160 megabytes of data space. If it isn’t in PDF format, requesters could be charged up to $100 for more than 4 megabytes of data.
For context, Google Drive gives users 15 gigabytes of cloud storage – that’s 15,360 megabytes – for free.
Currently, for electronic requests, public bodies are only allowed to charge the cost of the recording medium to transmit the data, which is usually $1 or less. The proposed charge of up to $100 represents a potential 10,000 percent increase in the cost of a citizen making a simple FOIA request.
* The bill had wide bipartisan support in both chambers. This reflects the undeniable fact that “voluminous requesters” are a real problem in some communities.
But the fees are way too high and the trigger is way too low. There should be a compromise here. Quinn ought to AV the bill.
* Meanwhile...
Around 30 people showed up at a Clark County Park District Board meeting in May, hoping to speak openly about recent park-related controversies. After most sat through a 2-1/2 hour closed session, the board returned to open session only to inform the crowd that they would not be allowed to speak to board members.
That’s when John Kraft, a member of a local watchdog group, sprang into action. Rising to his feet, Kraft informed the entire board that he was placing them under citizen’s arrest for violating the Illinois Open Meetings Act, specifically the provision that ensures the public can address their elected representatives at an official meeting.
Wow. But it gets even better…
For “eight or nine months” Kraft says he’s been holding a printout of the citizen’s arrest statute in his wallet — just in case he had to invoke it against a public board that failed to allow public comment. […]
Clark County Sheriff Jerry Parsley personally responded to the scene that night, because he knew it was a heated situation. He told the BGA that Kraft handled the citizen’s arrest responsibly, and the board was definitely in violation of the Open Meetings Act by not allowing the public to speak.
“It’s not that they should have. They’re mandated to,” Parsley said. “The people need to have their voice. It’s not a dictatorship. It’s a democracy.”
Good for the sheriff.
* So, while some citizens may be making a nuisance of themselves just to do it, it’s important to remember that local governments have a very bad habit of breaking these very clear state laws…
A citizen’s arrest may be rare, but Open Meetings Act violations are a widespread problem in Illinois. The Illinois attorney general’s office says it fielded nearly 400 complaints in 2013. Many of those ended in re-training of public officials in violation, a spokeswoman said.
In fact, the spokeswoman said that in the Clark County Park District Board’s case, all seven board members were up-to-date on required Open Meetings Act training provided through the attorney general’s office.
Sheesh.
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*** UPDATED x2 *** Putting it into context
Friday, Jun 27, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* From a press release…
As organizers prepare for this year’s Chicago Pride Parade, expected to attract record-breaking numbers past last year’s one million mark, LGBT couples and leaders gathered today to condemn Bruce Rauner for his intolerant stance against marriage equality and thousands of gay and lesbian Illinois families.
“An enemy of equality could become governor of our state. He poses a clear and present danger to our ability to protect our loved ones through marriage. That man is Bruce Rauner. Over and over, he has made it clear he opposes the freedom to marry and has chosen the side of bigotry and intolerance,” said Art Johnston, the co-founder of Equality Illinois. […]
On the very day marriage equality passed in Springfield – November 5, 2013 – Rauner was the keynote speaker at a Tea Party meeting in Quincy. He was asked whether he would sign the legislation if he were governor, and Rauner said: “If I were governor, I would veto it.” Listen to the full audio here.
“Last year, Rauner said he would have vetoed marriage equality if he was governor. A few weeks ago, he said he favored repealing it if that’s what the voters asked for in a popular referendum. This is the Rauner Social Agenda – that basic fairness and protections for Illinois families should be vetoed or repealed. That is wrong,” said State Representative Greg Harris, the lead sponsor of the Illinois marriage equality bill.
* They linked to my website. Here’s what I posted last December…
If Bruce Rauner wins the Republican nomination for governor, he’s gonna have a little trouble running to the center because he’s on tape saying things like he would’ve vetoed the gay marriage bill.
Rauner was asked about his position at a Quincy tea party event not long ago. He explained that he wanted a statewide referendum on gay marriage before a legislative vote, so he would’ve vetoed the bill. Of course, an ad could simply use his “If I were governor I would veto” line to make him look like a winger. Listen to the exchange…
That wasn’t exactly difficult to predict, and, as we’re seeing, it has now come true.
* Rauner is trying to remain cagey on the issue to avoid upsetting his GOP base. So, a surrogate was dispatched to do a bit of damage control. Sun-Times…
Former state GOP Chairman Pat Brady, a staunch Rauner supporter, said the banner’s veto statement was “taken out of context.” He called Rauner a social moderate and a fiscal conservative who has no “social agenda.”
“He has said all along he was for a referendum, meaning the people should decide the issue. But there are bigger issues. This issue has been decided. Bruce Rauner is not an enemy of this issue. He’s comfortable with it. Nothing’s going to change. A year from now marriage equality is probably going to be federal law. It’s a non-issue,” Brady said.
Brady said he would attend the parade. A Rauner spokesman confirmed the gubernatorial candidate will not attend the parade due to a scheduling conflict.
A “scheduling conflict”?
Heh.
*** UPDATE 1 *** Quinn’s campaign points out that governors don’t get to “check a referendum button.” You either sign a bill or you veto it. And Rauner did, in fact, say he’d veto it.
Rauner’s position is, at its core, a highly contrived dodge. And he has used it to pander to GOP audiences. For instance…
At a meeting of the Northern Illinois Patriots on Nov. 12, 2013, an audience member asked Rauner, who is now the Republican nominee for governor, “Bruce, would you have vetoed the gay marriage bill?”
Rauner replied, “I would have. As I’ve said, as I’ve said from day one: I have not supported gay marriage, and I have not advocated for it. And I don’t advocate for or against it.”
The candidate continued, saying the matter should be left up to voters, and not the legislature — where it received final approval by the Illinois House Nov. 5. Rauner’s opponent, incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn, pushed for the bill’s passage and later signed it into law Nov. 20.
“I’ve said that voters should decide it directly in a referendum, and I’ve said that if it hasn’t gone to a referendum — if it came to my desk — I would have to veto it because it hasn’t been in a referendum yet,” Rauner said. “The voters should decide. I don’t think that politicians should force it on voters if they don’t want it and I don’t think that politicians should block it from voters if they do want it. I’m a limited government, let people decide what they want to do with their lives. That’s my view of things.”
Watch the accompanying video and you’ll see that the tea partiers applauded the way he talked about the issue.
* Related…
* Chicago Pride Parade: Which Politicians Will Appear, Which Won’t?
*** UPDATE 2 *** Rauner does have something else on his schedule Sunday…
Sunday Fun-Day in Support of Congressman Rodney Davis
Sunday, June 29, 2014
The Southern (map)
1840 W North Ave
Chicago, IL, 60622
United States
Host: Friends of Rodney
Special Guests: Senator Mark Kirk & Bruce Rauner Republican Nominee for Governor
Time: 4:00p.m. - 6:00p.m.
Cost: $250 per person, Sponsorships Available
Congressman Davis opposes gay marriage.
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