* The SJ-R editorial board broke a bit of news this morning about the eavesdropping bill kerfuffle. As you may remember, Sen. Mike Noland refused to call a bill passed by the House that would’ve decriminalized the act of audio recording an on-duty police officer in a public place. The penalty for doing such a thing is currently a felony here, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. But there’s now a new bill…
The bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Mike Noland, D-Elgin, believed the House bill was deficient by not granting police officers the unfettered ability to make recordings of private citizens in public places. This despite Illinois law already giving law enforcement officers eight exemptions that allow them to do so. He said he would let the House version die in the Senate rather than allowing a vote. As sponsor, that’s his prerogative.
Here’s the civics lesson: Now the language of the stalled bill has been placed into another bill (House Bill 1237) with friendly sponsorship in the Senate. We urge the Senate to pass this version and send it back to the House, which we assume would reaffirm the 71-45 vote by which it approved the bill last week.
While the legislative maneuvering might make it look otherwise, this is not rocket science. It should not have become an occasion for law enforcement to try to gain even more freedom than it already has to listen in on private citizens. Good law enforcement officers know this bill will only benefit them. Good legislators know that amending a judicially invalidated and outdated law need not create a major expansion of domestic surveillance. End of civics lesson.
And I totally agree with the SJ-R here. Rep. Elaine Nekritz passed a good bill.
A person may record the conversation of a law enforcement officer who is performing a public duty in a public place and any other person who is having a conversation with that law enforcement officer if… the person notifies the parties that the conversation is being recorded.
* So, how, exactly was the person who took this video of a “Black Bloc” attack on Chicago police supposed to “notify” the parties that their conversation was being recorded? Could he have just yelled it out? Or would he have had to go up to each person and notify them beforehand? I’m not quite sure I get it…
The difficult process of revamping Illinois’ pension systems led to a dramatic confrontation Tuesday between the top two leaders in the House of Representatives.
House Republican Leader Tom Cross of Oswego angrily objected to a pension bill backed by Speaker Michael Madigan that was approved Tuesday morning in the House Personnel and Pensions Committee.
The GOP opposition stems from a provision that would gradually shift the state’s pension costs for teachers and university employees to local school districts and universities. […]
But Cross’s efforts to eliminate the provision failed on the floor of the House, leading him to lambaste Madigan personally for a litany of pension abuses.
“Maybe you need to take responsibility, Mr. Speaker, for your actions,” Cross told the House. “For the last 40 years, you’ve had your fingerprints on the mess we’ve had today.”
While the bill did not come up for a vote in the full House, some drama and shouting ensued on the House floor today as Republicans tried to push an amendment to the floor that would have taken the cost shift to schools out of the bill. House Minority Leader Tom Cross pointed to bipartisan efforts made in the House to pass Medicaid reform and work toward balancing the state’s budget. But Cross said that pension reform is a different story. “I had the false sense and hope that we were going to actually do something on pensions, a collaborative effort,” Cross said. Cross accused Madigan of inserting the “poison pill” of the cost shift in the bill to kill it because he says Madigan wants to stall on scaling pensions back for teachers until after the November election. “It became clear over the last couple of days that he was going to go down a route that reminded me of the old days of Mike Madigan. No more collaboration. No more bipartisanship,” Cross said. “And the biggest issue of the day, the biggest liability the state’s ever seen — we’re on the verge of getting it done, and he says: ‘No more. I’ve got a different idea. Take it or leave it.’”
Democrats used House rules to block Republicans efforts to have the amendment heard. “Total power in one person’s hands is not the American way,” shouted Rep. Mike Bost, a Murphysboro Republican.
Madigan said that most in the chamber recognize that the state’s pension system is “financially unsustainable” and has to be changed and characterized the situation as one of simple disagreement. He warned that lawmakers should not get “swept up in the emotion of the minute.” “There’s a lot of frustration here in the House of Representatives and the General Assembly. We experience it all the time on a whole variety of issues — frustration, tension, interaction with different personalities pursuing different agendas. That’s life in the General Assembly. That’s life in the House of Representatives,” Madigan said. “Many people have worked on the question of pension changes, pension reform, for several several weeks — I being one of them. I’ve adopted a certain position on pension changes. Some of you agree with me; some of you don’t. That’s what happens here legitimately, and that’s what should happen. That’s why we come here. That’s why we’re sent here.”
Madigan added: “But it doesn’t serve any purpose to let our frustration and our disappointment get away with us. It doesn’t help. We have several major issues to get resolved before we end the session. I plan to work deliberatively on all of those issues. I don’t plan to issue any threats.”
It’s tough to argue with at least some of what Cross said. This should’ve been a far more bipartisan bill. It clearly wasn’t.
* We also have video of Rep. Bost’s tirade. It contains profanity, so be careful if you’re at work. We don’t want to get you in trouble with the folks at OEIG, right? OK…
Here’s an idea: Elect more Republicans, get a majority and then you won’t have to complain so much. Also, most of the rules that Bost is complaining about were put in place by Republicans in 1995, and he voted for them.
But he does have a point that major legislation like this shouldn’t be unveiled at 7:50 in the morning and moved right away, unless, of course, both leaders agree to do it (like they did the last time pension reform was passed), then it’s OK I suppose. Or not. Whatever.
