This year, the nation’s 16th President will be among the numerous items you can get on a stick at the Illinois State Fair.
Visitors to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency’s area in the air conditioned Illinois Building at the 2012 Illinois State Fair may pick up free fans bearing the famous Alexander Gardner portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The reverse side of the fan will include a list of central Illinois historic attractions, and by showing the fan at any of these places, visitors will receive special discounts on admission or merchandise from the sites’ gift shops.
* People try to sell their books. That’s no surprise at all. Reporters who write books often try to sell their books by disclosing never before heard “news.” That’s not new, either. But relying on Rod Blagojevich’s veracity about a rumor he’d heard about someone he despised is a new one on me…
An upcoming book about Rod Blagojevich says undercover recordings caught the former governor saying he had heard that convicted influence peddler Antoin “Tony” Rezko secretly channeled $25,000 in cash to Barack Obama, but federal authorities did not deem the claim credible.
The book, “Golden: How Rod Blagojevich Talked Himself Out of the Governor’s Office and Into Prison,” suggests Blagojevich was talking about an undisclosed payment to help Obama with his 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate.
The book says that federal investigators pursued the claim but ultimately gave it little credence. “Never was Blagojevich seen as a credible threat to the incoming president,” says the book, an outside project by two Chicago Tribune reporters. […]
The disclosure of Blagojevich’s comments comes as the president is locked in a tight re-election campaign with Republican Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who has sought to link Obama’s Chicago connections to the city’s culture of political corruption. […]
According to the book, Blagojevich was repeating “a story that (he) had heard that he believed” when he spoke of the $25,000 in cash from Rezko. Talking to his then-chief of staff John Harris shortly after Obama’s election, Blagojevich said he had heard that Rezko had given the cash to Bruce Washington, who has held jobs with the state, Cook County and the city school district.
Drudge linked to the Tribune’s story today and I’m sure it will gain traction on the blogs.
But, really, you use a recording of Rod Blagojevich repeating a rumor in order to sell books? Seriously? Rod Blagojevich? The most delusional man in America? You gotta be kidding me.
The meat of this story — that Blagojevich claimed to have heard a unflattering story about Obama that he believed — is an unsubstantiated, uncorroborated third-hand rumor. Anyone want to argue for the relevance?
* So far, at least, all the speculation about Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. stepping down has been just that. His staff is now trying to change the narrative…
In one move, Rick Bryant, Mr., Jackson’s chief of staff, phoned about 25 south suburban mayors to update them on the congressman’s condition.
In another, longtime Jackson campaign consultant Kevin Lampe told me that not only is Mr. Jackson running for a new term, but the congressman expects to hit the campaign trail soon.
Mr. Bryant said he made the calls in the past couple of days “at the congressman’s request.”
“I told them that the congressman was feeling much better and that he was looking for updates on several projects in the district,” Mr. Bryant told me in an email. “The congressman also said he expects to be home soon; he is looking forward to getting back to work; and he fully expects to be running for re-election in the fall.”
A similar message came from Mr. Lampe.
The congressman “is on the ballot. The campaign is moving forward,” Mr. Lampe said. “He is running for re-election.”
Mr. Jackson will get out to press the flesh with voters “as soon as he’s better,” Mr. Lampe added.
All those folks who whispered in reporters’ ears that Jackson would be leaving may live to regret their actions. And the folks who’ve floated their own names while Jackson has been down and out will have to rush back to his side if he does indeed return.
* Meawhile, Republican Congressman Bob Dold has a new TV ad that positions himself as a brand new candidate instead of an incumbent and highlights his independence…
As you can tell by the poor quality, this is an Internet ad.
Also, I think The Who might be a bit angry about the ILGOP stealing their stuff.
* But neither ad is the real story, says Greg Hinz…
But the real news was buried at the bottom of Mr. Dold’s press release.
And that’s not about this ad, which will run only on cable TV and will cost just $25,000 or so a week, but the “additional $1.88 million in Chicago network (broadcast) television” that the Dold campaign has purchased in October and November.
Though TV ad buys are a matter of public record, campaigns rarely announce their ad strategy, much less two months in advance. Team Dold clearly is trying to make a point here, and it does have money in the bank, a lot more than does Mr. Schneider. The implied message is that Dold can’t be beaten.
Of course, “reserved” time has not yet been paid for, only put on hold. But the Dold campaign will have to pay a financial penalty if it backs out.
I’ve noticed this year that lots of people are announcing their reserved TV time well in advance of the fall campaign. It helps fill up the news hole during slow periods, but as Greg points out we don’t really know yet whether any of it is real until it actually happens.
A brand new poll in Illinois’ newly redrawn 13th District shows Democrat David Gill continues to lead in the race for Congress. In a poll conducted August 4-7 for Gill’s campaign by Victoria Research and Consulting among 400 registered likely 2012 general election voters, the Bloomington emergency physician holds the lead in the initial trial heat with 36% for Gill to 30% for Republican Rodney Davis and 9% for Independent John Hartman with the remainder undecided. The poll’s margin of error is +/- 4.9%.
The poll’s results indicate that Davis has made no progress since an earlier April poll, in which the Republican got 31% of the vote against Dr. Gill. Gill’s lead continues to grow in additional ballot tests throughout the course of the poll. The poll reflected that Gill has a solid base of supporters in the Champaign/Bloomington area, whereas Davis is an unknown quantity, with 4 out of 5 voters in the district not recognizing his name at all.
The poll’s results also indicate, however, that Gill is losing ground and that the independent candidate may be taking away votes from the perennial Democratic candidate. That April poll taken by the Democrats had Gill leading Davis 41-31, before Davis was even a candidate.
* Also from the press release…
“The last thing voters in central or southwest Illinois want is a career political insider who has been on taxpayer payrolls or bankrolled by politicians since he was 23 years old,” commented campaign manager Mike Richards. “People in the new 13th District know they can’t trust Rodney Davis to clean things up. He was handpicked by Washington insiders who want to keep controlling Congress.”
In recent days, Gill’s campaign received the endorsement of US Senator Richard Durbin on Sunday
Um, I think Sen. Durbin also qualifies as a “career political insider.” Also, doesn’t running for Congress every two years for the past eight kinda make Gill a career wannabe insider?
U.S. Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, had a conference call Wednesday to announce the addition of 13 races nationally to what it calls “red-to-blue” status. There are now 51 races nationally they put in that category, and the two Illinois candidates newly named to the list are David GillL of Bloomington in the 13th, who is running against Republican Rodney Davis of Taylorville; and William Enyart, former adjutant general of the Illinois National Guard, who is taking on Republican Jason Plummer in the new 12th District in southwestern Illinois.
“It’s a district that gave President (Barack) Obama nearly 56 percent of the vote,” Israel said of the new 13th, which includes part of Springfield. He said Gill has “put together a … very impressive grass-roots campaign.”
U.S. Rep. Steve Isreal of New York is committee chairman. The (Champaign) News-Gazette reports that Israel says the committee will provide technical expertise to Gill in the 13th District race and what he called other support.
It isn’t clear what that other support is, and Gill spokesman Michael Richards says Gill isn’t yet sure.
Hartman said this morning that he wasn’t surprised by his showing.
“I think I’ve met about 8,000 people, when I was petitioning (to get on the election ballot) and I got very good feedback because I was an indepenedent. I was in Carrollton and I asked 20 people to sign my petition and 19 signed. In Litchfield I asked 26 people on the last day of my petition drive and all 26 signed it and wished me well. I know that this is a viable campaign.”
In the feedback he has received, Hartman said, “They just said ‘I’m going to vote for anybody who’s not in there.’
“In this case we don’t have an incumbent, but that’s the mood. I heard that over and over again. ‘We need fresh blood. You can’t be as bad as they are.’ That kind of stuff.”
* Related…
* Durbin calls Gill best choice for 13th District seat
State and union officials agreed Wednesday to postpone further transfer of inmates from prisons and other facilities slated for closure.
The decision is at least a temporary victory for the union representing the state’s correctional officers, who are opposed to Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close the facilities, including the Tamms “supermax” and Dwight prisons, and to consolidate inmates elsewhere.
* It helped, of course, that the union filed its lawsuit in Alexander County, one of the poorest counties in Illinois and home to the Tamms super max prison. You don’t have to possess a great imagination to figure out what went on behind closed doors yesterday…
Wednesday’s agreement came after about an hour of closed-door meetings between the state, AFSCME and First Judicial Circuit Judge Charles C. Cavaness on the day the union’s request for a temporary restraining order to halt closure-related transfers was to be heard. Inmate transfers not related to the closures can continue. […]
Quinn budget spokeswoman Kelly Kraft said the state remained committed to closures, and it agreed to interrupt the process because of an Aug. 17 court date in Alexander County at which time the sides will update Cavaness and the court on arbitration progress.
“We offered to properly hear AFSCME’s grievances on an expedited basis, and we now look forward to resolving this matter as quickly as possible through the arbitration process set out in the Collective Bargaining Agreement,” Kraft said in an email.
AFSCME has until Aug. 17 to respond to the state’s motion to dismiss the union’s lawsuit. The state has an Aug. 20 deadline to respond to the union’s arguments against dismissal.
“The conditions to which these men at Tamms are subjected are deplorable. Long-term isolated solitary confinement ruins prisoners psychologically and makes it more difficult for these men to re-integrate into society once they are released. There is empirical evidence that supermax prisons, such as Tamms, do not affect the level of violence within a prison system. On the contrary, once Mississippi reduced their supermax population there was a dramatic reduction in prison misconduct and violence.”
That dismissal wasn’t a good sign for the state’s case, either.
AFSCME has sued the state before over prison closings. The union launched three separate lawsuits against the state back in 2008 as a response to Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s planned closure of the Pontiac maximum-security prison.
Then, as now, the union accused the state of compromising employee and public safety. “Pontiac is an essential part of a safe prison system, and without it, all Illinois prisons, staff, inmates are at greater risk of violence and personal harms,” AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Henry Bayer said in 2008, according to the Peoria Journal-Star.
As the Blagojevich administration fell apart, the governor was impeached in January 2009, the Pontiac closing plan also unraveled. In March 2009, Quinn, who had been governor for all of two months, said Pontiac would stay open. Ironically, the governor gave greater fiscal responsibility as the reason, noting that the prison provides 600 jobs and $54.4 million in revenue for the Pontiac area.
The inmate advocacy group Tamms Year Ten will host a protest beginning noon today at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employee Council 31 headquarters in Chicago.
Entitled “Reject Torture, Stop the Lies and Remember the Real Story at Tamms,” the protest is a reaction to what Tamms Year Ten described as weeks of AFSCME “scare tactics” used against Gov. Pat Quinn’s planned Aug. 31 closure of the Tamms Correctional Center in Alexander County. Family members of inmates and human rights advocates will attend the protest.
* The guy floated his name in 2001 and 2009. I really doubt he’s gonna pull the trigger this time around, but whatever. It’s August…
Is former U.S. Commerce Secretary Bill Daley eyeing a future bid for governor?
It’s the latest rumble in the state’s political jumble — now that Dem insiders tell Sneed Gov. Pat Quinn’s poll numbers Downstate are heading lower than the equator on a cold day — specifically where close legislative races are being fought.
So Sneed called Bill Daley, whose political credentials also include a tenure as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, for a definitive answer.
◆ Quoth Daley … after a rather dramatic Irish sputter:
“What? The race is two and one half years away! This is no time for anyone to be thinking about entering that race now! This is the time to get President Obama re-elected!
“It’s a joke to be talking about that [gubernatorial] race when the focus should be on the presidential race and the problems we face in the country.”
“Right now I’m focusing on that and my family.”
◆ Translation: If Daley starts doing polling after the presidential election is over, the answer is a probable “yes.”
The attorney for George Ryan says the former governor has qualified for work release five months before his July 2013 parole.
Former Gov. Jim Thompson says Ryan’s new home will be a halfway house in the West Loop. The 78-year-old Ryan is serving a 6 1/2-year sentence at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., for a 2006 conviction on corruption charges.
Former Illinois Governor George Ryan lost a bid on Monday to cut short his 6-1/2 year prison sentence for corruption, with an appeals court rejecting arguments that prosecutors failed to prove he took bribes.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago affirmed the conviction and sentence, finding that Ryan failed to provide honest services to the people of Illinois who elected him, and that he violated this duty by giving state benefits to his friends. […]
On appeal, Ryan argued that the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in a case against former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling unsettled his conviction by changing the law that governs honest-services fraud. In that case, the high court found that honest-services fraud was limited to bribery and kickback schemes.
* This same appellate court upheld Ryan’s conviction a year ago, but the US Supreme Court wanted them to reconsider Ryan’s arguments…
“George Ryan, as a public official, had a duty to provide honest services to the people of the state of Illinois who elected him,” reads the opinoin by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook. ” And the evidence in this case has shown that he repeatedly violated that duty.
“The benefits included free vacations, loans, gifts, campaign contributions, as well as lobbying money that Ryan assigned or directed to his buddies. In short, Ryan sold his office. He might as well have put up a ‘for sale’ sign on the office.”
Defense attorneys had argued that gifts and vacations Ryan received from people who later got state business were based on friendship, weren’t an exchange for financial benefits and, therefore, weren’t bribes.
One of several examples cited in Monday’s ruling was a $3,185 check written by a lobbyist to pay for a band to play at the wedding of Ryan’s daughter.
“Ryan’s lawyers vigorously argued that these benefits were tokens of friendship, and that he did nothing in return for them,” the opinion said. But, it continues, prosecutors had fundamentally argued at trial that they were bribes and, “The verdict shows that the jury found in the prosecution’s favor.”
At an unrelated event, Quinn said that the court has spoken and Ryan had his day in court.
He says Ryan has to “do the time.”
* Meanwhile, Patti Blagojevich is upset that the transcripts still aren’t available from her husband’s trial. Rod Blagojevich’s attorneys can’t file an appeal until those transcripts are finished, but the court reporter has been on a personal leave of absence for over five months and now she’s facing a mountain of unfinished work and has asked for an extension…
In an exclusive interview, she told FOX Chicago News that the situation is “incredibly frustrating.”
“I mean, my girls miss their dad, he’s missing their birthday, my daughter had her sixteenth birthday just the other day,” Patti said.
Mrs. Blagojevich said it’s been bugging her for months. […]
“There sure was a rush to get my husband in jail,” Blagojevich wrote to friends on Facebook, “where he now sits waiting for the long overdue transcripts.”
It’s not like he has a chance on appeal, but I get the frustration.
* It’s probably no surprise that I use the Google News service to keep track of media reports. My “Pat Quinn” search used to flag stories about a former NHL coach of the same name.
Today, though, a different Pat Quinn surfaced. From a press release…
For many students, the new school year marks the start of the school sports season — where aspiring young athletes return to familiar sports or decide to try their hand at a new one. But the high cost of outfitting a child with equipment that he or she will almost certainly outgrow and may very well lose interest in makes many families think twice — and then some — about signing their children up.
“Parents are faced with a couple of reality checks when their child wants to join a school sport,” said Pat Quinn, brand director of Play It Again Sports. “If a child is successful in the sport and wants to continue, chances are he or she will need to replace outgrown equipment regularly. And, if the child doesn’t stick with the sport, then the initial investment in equipment may seem ‘wasted.’ Buying quality used sporting equipment can help parents support their child’s interest in a sport without breaking the family budget.”
Makes sense to me, and prompted me to think of this…
* The Question: What jobs do you think Gov. Pat Quinn is most qualified to do? Explain.
* As I told you yesterday, the Illinois State Police was down at the Tamms prison yesterday to apparently interrogate Department of Corrections workers about recent leaks to the media. After my story was published, other articles began to appear…
Two weeks after officials searched guards and other employees at various state prisons for contraband, the Illinois State Police is conducting an investigation at the Tamms Correctional Center.
The state police probe is the latest wrinkle in Gov. Pat Quinn’s attempt to close the state’s only supermax prison — a controversial move that has been challenged by state lawmakers and is the subject of a court hearing in Cairo today.
A state police spokeswoman confirmed the investigation Tuesday, but wouldn’t divulge its purpose.
“We are not at liberty to comment on a pending investigation,” spokeswoman Monique Bond said in a statement.
One of those interviewed told The Associated Press the encounter lasted a few minutes and said “they were trying to intimidate me.” Gov. Pat Quinn, who wants to close the high-security Tamms lockups, said through a spokeswoman he did not order the investigation. The union representing prison employees called on the Democrat to “renounce these heavy-handed tactics.” […]
A correctional counselor called before the investigators said a police special agent displayed her badge and explained it was a criminal investigation involving a leak of private health information. The employee, who described the scene as “very dramatic,” said the special agent briefly turned over a stack of papers but what it contained wasn’t visible.
The counselor, who was also questioned several weeks ago by the Corrections investigator after a news report based on internal data, submitted a written complaint Tuesday.
“I felt like I was being harassed, that they were trying to intimidate me,” said the counselor, whose job includes preparing Tamms inmates for transfer. “It creates a hostile work environment and a distraction, and I don’t feel like I can do my job.”
* Meanwhile, some Tamms inmates are attempting to get a lawsuit tossed…
(S)even inmates at the Tamms prison in far southern Illinois are trying to get a lawsuit thrown out of court. The correctional officers’ union last week filed the suit, which seeks to stop Quinn’s plan to close prison facilities throughout the state.
The inmates, in their response, argue conditions at Tamms are deplorable and that closing the facility will not cause an increase in violence in prisons throughout the state, as the correctional officers have asserted.
The Uptown People’s Law Center in Chicago, representing the inmates, filed motions to intervene in and dismiss the AFSCME suit. Slated for closure are prisons in Tamms and Dwight; adult transition centers in Carbondale, Chicago and Decatur; and youth centers in Joliet and Murphysboro.
AFSCME has requested a temporary restraining order to stop inmate transfers and other closure activities already in motion. A hearing before a circuit judge is scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday in Cairo at the southernmost tip of Illinois.
The facility closures were to be completed by Aug. 31. Quinn has said Illinois cannot afford all of the prison facilities that are open, arguing that Tamms, in particular, is only half full and costly to operate.
AFSCME argues that closing facilities and consolidating inmates will add undue pressure on an already crowded and understaffed system. Violence will increase, and lives are at stake, the union argues.
“The Quinn administration is failing its duty to ensure a safe workplace for its employees. Instead, it is sending men and women to work each day in prisons that the state’s own actions are making more dangerous,” said AFSCME executive director Henry Bayer.
Nicole Schult, an attorney with the law center, said the threat of going to a “super-max” prison does not deter inmate violence within prison systems.
“On the contrary, once Mississippi reduced (its) super-max population, there was a dramatic reduction in prison misconduct and violence,” she said.
State and local lawmakers have argued that the loss of jobs from the closures will be devastating, particularly in southern Illinois, where unemployment remains high.
Quinn said making the decision to shutter Tamms and 56 other small and large facilities “wasn’t easy.”
“We had to do that in order to have a budget that is balanced. I inherited a $10 billion budget deficit. I did not create it, but my job is to repair things,” he said. “I’m doing that.”
* And WBEZ reports that Quinn and his Department of Corrections have blocked their access to a minimum security prison…
Our initial efforts to get inside were denied with one-line emails. Spokeswoman Brooke Anderson eventually had one ten-minute telephone conversation with me explaining their stand. She said I couldn’t go in the prisons because it was a safety and security concern, and it would strain the department’s resources.
I was a little mystified as to how my visit would strain the resources of a billion dollar department, but Anderson said if I visited a prison then they’d have to let other reporters in too. Anderson refused to talk about this on tape. Over the course of weeks she said simply that she was too busy.
When Jerome Suggs was sentenced for driving on a revoked license he was sent to Vienna, a minimum security prison near the southernmost point in Illinois, about 350 miles from Chicago. Suggs was assigned to live on the third floor of a building but there was absolutely no view.
“When I moved up there there was boards up on the windows and I was just looking like, ‘Wow! What is this?” Suggs said. This was Building 19.
Suggs says there was not a single window letting in light and that he was put in a large room with several hundred other men. All of the men were crowded onto bunks with nothing to do. There are 600 inmates in the building and only seven showers and seven toilets, and the toilets often broke and overflowed, resulting in a strong sewage smell.
“The smell that came from the showers and it came into the living quarters and yeah, I used to go to sleep with my pillow over my face, the smell was horrible, man,” Suggs said.
When the weather turned hot the boards came off the windows but then bugs could easily get in through the broken windows. Suggs, who got out just last month, says the place was also overrun with cockroaches.
“Yes! On my bed! Oh yeah. Used to have to swat them off the bed,” he said.
“Okay, my name is Mayo and I was incarcerated for 29 and a half continuous years.” Mayo, who asked that we use just his first name, was convicted in the early ’80s for committing armed robbery. For the last three years of his sentence he was in Vienna and spent some of that time in the now notorious Building 19.
Mayo says, “I thought to myself this is supposed to be a minimum security institution, but this was more like a maximum security institution in that I couldn’t believe that they would actually expect people to live under those type of conditions. The place is infested with rats and the rats were so aggressive that we used to call them kangaroo rats ’cause while I was there quite a few guys had rats actually jump up in bed with them.”
* 3:09 pm - According to two sources, Illinois State Police officers are questioning guards at the Tamms “super max” prison today. The police officers are reportedly asking about leaked documents.
As you already know, the Department of Corrections and the governor have been upset that guards are apparently dishing internal DoC documents to the media.
I’ve asked the ISP and the governor’s office for a statement. I’ll let you know what they have to say. This is from AFSCME’s Anders Lindall…
“We’re very disturbed that Governor Quinn would use State Police resources to prevent rank-and-file employees from exercising their legal rights and stifle criticism of his dangerous rush to close state prisons. It fits a pattern of other recent attempts to frighten whistleblowers and intimidate journalists as well.
“Unlike Pat Quinn, we believe citizens should know what their government is doing behind the prison walls. He should renounce these heavy-handed tactics and put a stop to them at once.”
* 4:06 pm - I asked the governor’s press secretary if the governor or anyone in his office requested that the State Police investigate document leaks at Tamms. Here’s her response via text…
No- but if someone breaks the law it will be investigated. The Department of Corrections must enforce the law. Rules and regulations that are part of the law are in place to ensure the safety of guards, inmates and the public.
“We are encouraged by the Governor’s call for a special session on pension reform on August 17. As many people know, we have been and continue to be supportive of comprehensive pension reform that solves the major crisis facing us today. The time to act has been upon us. We are continuing to encourage Governor Quinn to take a leadership role to get a comprehensive pension bill passed in the General Assembly. We will continue to be available to discuss this very important matter in the coming weeks.”
* But now Leader Cross has changed his tone and made some additional demands above and beyond what was in the bill he sponsored back in May…
Cross, meanwhile, said ideas he’d like to see on the table include boosting employee contributions and keeping those under 67 from getting cost-of-living adjustments while leaving COLAs intact for younger retirees if their pensions are $30,000 or less. And perhaps new state hires should be offered only 401(k) types of plans, he said. […]
“I think it’s that important. I don’t run the place. I’m the minority leader. That’s all I am. I’m not daring anybody or challenging anybody, but I’m willing to hang around, to stay there ’til we get this done,” he said. “If I have to miss the Republican convention, then I miss the Republican convention. I haven’t missed one in a long time, but this is the issue of the day.”
* The Cross demand was partly in response to a study released by Gov. Quinn…
Cross said he remains opposed to requiring the state pension shift to suburban and downstate school systems, as Quinn and Democrats want, and that he wasn’t swayed by the governor’s latest offer to phase in those pension costs to school systems over 12 years.
On Sunday, Quinn showcased a report prepared by his budget office that asserted school districts, under the phase-in of that pension cost-shift, would wind up paying $49 million in new pension costs next year.
But without a reform package that would reduce the state’s outlay to pensions, those same downstate and suburban school districts could see their dollars from Springfield cut by $152 million — money that instead would have to be diverted to state pension costs, the administration contended.
* Cross was also responding to a decision by House Speaker Michael Madigan to hold a vote on the Senate-passed pension bill…
Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan has decided to allow a limited pension-reform bill to be considered when the General Assembly returns for a special session Aug. 17. […]
Whether HB1447 can muster the votes needed to pass is another question. As it passed the Senate, the bill takes effect immediately, which means the House would have to pass it with 71 votes instead of the usual 60. Cullerton suggested that if the House can’t meet the 71-vote threshold, the reforms could be tacked on to a different bill with a later effective date and passed with 60 votes. The Senate would then have to vote again on the bill.
Brown said the possibility of doing that is under discussion.
“The ideas in the bill are what we are talking about,” he said.
A spokesperson for Sen. Cullerton said in an email statement the Senate is being called back to deal with “unspecified pension legislation,” alluding to the fact that Quinn hasn’t pointed to any specific bill for legislators to vote on when they meet in Springfield.
* The governor just hasn’t handled this issue all that well yet. My statewide syndicated newspaper column is about his struggle…
Gov. Pat Quinn’s office flatly denies it, but it’s hard to see how his big announcement about calling a special legislative session on pension reform wasn’t at least partially related to a major Chicago TV station’s special report on the same subject a few hours after his proclamation.
WGN-TV broadcast a lengthy documentary, “Pension Games,” during its 9 p.m. news program, then hosted a live discussion afterward on its CLTV cable television station along with an interview with the governor.
The station hyped the program for days, and Quinn took clear advantage of the public relations opportunity to promote himself — even taking an opportunity to whack the General Assembly for cutting the schools budget after receiving a viewer call-in question about how pension reform would impact his property tax bill.
Many legislators, mostly Republicans but some Democrats, including Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago), have complained about Quinn calling a special session without having a plan in place or a bill to vote on. Cullerton has described the session as a waste of time and money because lawmakers are highly unlikely to vote on anything substantial until after the Nov. 6 election.
The governor’s office countered that the state can’t afford to wait that long and that Quinn would be happy with just about any plan currently on the table. His people pointed to his decision to push for a 12-year phase-in of the controversial “cost-shifting” plan, which would force suburban and downstate school districts to pick up their employees’ pension costs and is a major impediment to an agreement on pensions.
The Republicans have steadfastly opposed that proposal, saying it would greatly increase homeowners’ tax bills. The House Democrats months ago proposed a longer phase-in of the cost shift, and Quinn has now thrown his support behind that timetable.
“I did my mighty best to get it done by May 31,” Quinn claimed about comprehensive pension reform during the TV program after a caller complained about the cost of bringing legislators back to Springfield for a special session. He said the urgency in solving the state’s pension mess left him no choice but to call a special session for Aug. 17.
Cullerton asked Quinn to rescind his special session order, offering to call a session on his own, which would avoid the additional stipend pay to legislators (the session will cost about $40,000 per day). But the governor has refused to go along, possibly because doing so would mean he would look less like a champion of pension reform.
Quinn has an effective counter-argument to complaints about the cost of a special session. He claims that doing nothing on pensions inflates the five systems’ unfunded liability by $12.6 million every day. That number has been seized upon by the media, but it’s not exactly true.
No pension bill on the table would change benefit plans immediately, and the pension systems have asked that any new legislation not take effect until July 1, 2013. So that $12.6 million will continue to accrue no matter what happens during the special session.
But as long as the media buy fully into Quinn’s argument, then that cost of $40,000 per day will pale in comparison to his warning about pension debt rising $12.6 million every day.
Quinn obviously believes he has public opinion behind him on this one, although some Democrats have pointed to polls that show Quinn is very unpopular in many districts they’ve surveyed this summer. They also say pension reform proposals aren’t nearly as popular in politically targeted, Democratic-leaning districts as they may be statewide. There’s not much incentive for Democrats to go along with Quinn on this one, at least not yet.
But even if the public was totally with him, the public doesn’t vote in special sessions, legislators do. And members of his party aren’t exactly enamored with the guy. Quinn closed state facilities in Democratic districts and ignored pleas by the Black and Hispanic caucuses to keep the women’s prison at Dwight open so families in Cook County would remain relatively close to the inmates.
And in taking a page out of his predecessor’s playbook, Quinn has lately taken to bashing legislators for not toeing his line. On another TV program last week, he said legislators might have to cancel their golf games to attend his special session. Quinn was speaking, but I could clearly hear Rod Blagojevich talking.
Quinn issued the special-session proclamation less than three weeks before the session will be held. Apparently, in the interim, Quinn expects some resolution on a comprehensive pension reform package that has eluded lawmakers for seven months this year and a good amount of time before that.
Quinn’s critics immediately drew comparisons between him and ex-Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH. Blagojevich was big on special sessions. He’d call them and then largely disappear, expecting the legislature to do something just because he called them into session. It didn’t work.
It’s not at all clear that the General Assembly will do anything on pensions during the special session, let alone something comprehensive that includes a cost-shift. Hope Quinn’s thought about what he’s going to do next.
* Yeah, I know I said I’d be back today, but I’m going to extend my break by a day. I have lousy wifi where I am and there’s not a whole lot going on and I’m in a place that’s not exactly conducive to working anyway. So, here’s a video and I’ll post a pension story as soon as all the web pages load on this super-slow connection. Turn it up…
