* 10:46 am - Mayor Daley just said during his budget address that if “Springfield” doesn’t pass the property tax assessment cap, it would be “difficult” to raise property taxes in Chicago. In other words, taxpayers are gonna get hit either way. Listen live at this link.
* 10:52 am - Governor ready to compromise on his formerly hardlie “Plan B” position?
Through a proposed new option, pharmacies would be allowed to work by phone or fax with an off-site pharmacist — one without moral objections to emergency contraception — to process a patient’s prescription. The settlement says a pharmacy technician or store manager would be allowed to sell the patient the medicine so she wouldn’t have to go elsewhere.
Pharmacies still would be required to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception, commonly sold under the name Plan B, if the medicine is in stock.
But the settlement, filed this week in Springfield’s U.S. District Court, would give pharmacies another way to avoid fines or the loss of operating licenses even if they employ pharmacists who believe that Plan B is a form of abortion and would refuse to dispense the drug.
* 10:56 am - The Tribune has a brief bit on Mayor Daley’s budget address…
Daley said his budget avoids substantial layoffs or services. But, having exhausted other options, Daley said, “We must ask taxpayers for more.”
The mayor blamed state lawmakers for failing to enact funding reforms for education and mass transit, which he said further pressures city taxpayers. He also called on lawmakers to approve an extension of a property tax break for homeowners.
“For their inaction, Chicagoans pay the price,” Daley said.
* 11:00 am - Future Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell on the sale of the Chicago Cubs…
“I have no idea who is going to end up with the Cubs, but it ain’t gonna be me.”
Zell isn’t the standard button-down Tribune type. From the same article…
Zell’s colorful talk on the workings of mergers and acquisitions included several expletives and a joke involving a male body part.
* 11:59 am - The Reader reports that the Daily Southtown will no longer cover professional sports.
* 12:01 pm - The Senate is scheduled to convene at noon. Listen here. The House will attempt to convene at one o’clock. Listen here.
* 12:03 pm - From Crain’s, which promises to update this story later…
Blaming bad economic times and Springfield infighting, Mayor Richard M. Daley on Wednesday rolled out more than a quarter of a billion dollars in proposed tax hikes and fee increases to balance his 2008 operations budget.
Leading the list is a requested $108-million increase in the city’s property tax levy — an item that is already stirring stiff opposition among aldermen and may require all of Mayor Daley’s legendary political muscle to pass.
* 12:21 pm - New Lenox Mayor Tim Baldermann is definitely in the race to replace Congressman Jerry Weller. Both men are Republicans and Weller is with Baldermann. The Herald News has his campaign co-chair list..
Jack Partelow, chairman of the Will County Republican Party; Don Green, the mayor of Kankakee; Keith Cain, the mayor of Princeton; and Tom Templeton, the LaSalle County sheriff.
*** 12:52 pm *** Tim Baldermann is already on the attack. From his campaign kickoff press release…
“Debbie Halvorson has been the number two leader in the state Senate for the past four years and if anyone has followed the news to any degree at all, they know our state government is as badly managed as is conceivable,” said Baldermann. “Our federal government has problems, but the last thing we need is to have the proven dysfunction of Springfield infect Washington.”
* 1:33 pm - Interesting…
Among Baldermann’s biggest contributors were the campaign committees of William Beavers, a Democratic Cook County board member…
*** 1:38 pm *** The master of understatement strikes again. The guv wants lawmakers to uphold his veto of a bill that would allow trucks to drive 65 mph on the interstates…
Blagojevich says lawmakers who vote to overturn his veto will effectively be voting to kill people.
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Question of the day
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller
If you could ask each of these people a question during a press conference, what would it be?
* Gov. Blagojevich
* House Speaker Madigan
* Senate President Jones
* Mayor Daley
* Cook Co. Board President Stroger
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Taxes, taxes everywhere
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller
* This line was buried way down deep in today’s Sun-Times story on Mayor Daley’s new budget proposal, but it should have been the lede…
Chicago taxpayers almost always take it on the chin in the city budget that follows a mayoral election.
* Details…
Mayor Daley is expected today to unveil a 2008 city budget balanced with nearly $200 million in higher taxes and fees. They include a $40.8 million water and sewer rate increase and the largest property tax increase in Chicago history to build and maintain libraries. […]
Chicagoans will pay more for everything from gasoline, liquor, parking, restaurant meals and telephone service to bottled and tap water, city stickers and Taste of Chicago tickets. The mayor even wants us to pay more for renting movies and leasing vehicles.
* As we’ve discussed before, the race is on between the city, the county, mass transit and the state to see who can raise taxes first. Daley’s hand will be played today.
Cook County Board President Todd Stroger’s tax hike route was apparently detoured again…
This week, it’s a backlash by frustrated commissioners who said they were working with Stroger to find an acceptable tax plan when they learned from the Sun-Times that Stroger had hired the girlfriend of his ally, Commissioner William Beavers — and then reversed himself when the paper began questioning it.
“At this point, we’re in a total war,” said Commissioner Larry Suffredin, calling the hiring of Patty Young “a real slap in the face” that makes some commissioners “unsure [Stroger] deserves any more revenues.”
Stroger’s plan to raise the sales tax was on life support a week ago and, on Tuesday, Suffredin delivered what could be the death knell.
* Daley, meanwhile, is planning yet another trip abroad when he ought to be here helping negotiate a deal with the state, county, etc…
Sneed hears Daley is heading to China and Korea at the end of the month.
So, no leadership from Daley, bolloxed leadership from Stroger and we all know what’s happening with the Statehouse crew. It’s a perfect storm of incompetence.
More budget stuff, compiled by Paul…
* Budget deadlock grips numerous key issues
* Editorial: Want to bet on this plan
* Professor: Gambling not the best way to raise money
* Editorial: Capital program critical to the state
* Tax cap dispute threatens schools’ funding
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No leadership, but what else is new?
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Gov. Blagojevich’s trial balloon on mass transit funding went over like a lead balloon yesterday…
Among the options aired before a legislative panel in Chicago were proposals to levy a tax on commercial parking spaces […]
The alternative tax proposals, however, elicited no apparent support from lawmakers or civic groups at the hearing. No sooner was the parking-space tax proposal raised than it drew withering fire from civic groups and organizations representing retail merchants and manufacturers, who labeled it a levy on jobs and an extension of the property tax.
Skeptical lawmakers also raised numerous questions, such as who should pay the tax — owners or users of property — and how it would be collected. The questions remained unanswered, largely because such a tax has never been enacted elsewhere, officials said.
Needless to say, it’s way past time that the governor propose a solid alternative to the agreement worked out by mass transit unions, officials and legisltors. So far, all he’s officially offered up are veto threats. His failure to lead speaks volumes and his goofy parking tax proposal shows that he’s not serious about getting into this game.
* Meanwhile, the RTA says it won’t accept another short-term bailout offer…
Transit officials postponed “Doomsday One” fare hikes, service cuts and layoffs last month, when Gov. Blagojevich let them borrow against next year’s state aid. Top transit executives now say that only worsened their financial crisis, increasing the odds that the cuts will take place next month.
The region’s top transit executive delivered a harsh message that a short-term bailout is not an option, meaning service cuts and fare increases may become a reality soon.
“We will not accept a short-term fix again,” said Regional Transit Authority Executive Director Steve Schlickman.
* And even some suburbs are worried…
Ridership on Pace buses significantly increased in Naperville after a summer ad campaign, but now looming service cuts have officials fearing the effort may have been in vain.
“Naperville would be hit real hard” unless the transit agency gets additional money from the Regional Transportation Authority, said Patrick Wilmot, a Pace spokesman.
Service could be cut as of Nov. 4, with an estimated 700 or more commuters left without a bus to ride, officials fear. […]
There is a two-year waiting list for a parking permit at the Illinois Highway 59 Metra station, a five-year waiting list for a permit at the Kroehler lot near downtown Naperville and an eight-year waiting list for a permit to park at the downtown station.
Those numbers played a role in Naperville launching its $35,000 ad campaign to persuade more people to ride the bus.
* But at least one suburban legislator says she’s not convinced that the promised “doomsdays” are real…
A leading suburban Republican, though, suggested that budgetary doomsday might actually be good for the CTA.
“We should see what doomsday looks like. And I’m not sure that the populace in general is totally convinced that our transit system is as efficient as it could be,” State Sen. Christine Radogno (R-Lemont) said.
Radogno does make a good point, which is too often missed by people who prefer to complain about the lack of “state funding” for mass transit. The negotiated agreement on the transit bailout is a pretty good bill, and it’s probably the best we’re gonna see, but Radogno is right that it doesn’t do enough to force the transit systems to prioritize their spending and improve service.
Discuss.
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Job numbers, tax receipts look bad
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller
* I wrote about this development in this morning’s Capitol Fax, but now I see that the Tribune blog also covered it, so here it is…
It’s not usually a good sign when the words “disturbing” and “unemployment” are linked together in a report about Illinois, but there they are in a legislative commission’s review of the state’s economy.
“Particularly disturbing is the sharp deterioration in Illinois’ unemployment situation in recent months,” according to the state’s bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. “After recording a lower unemployment rate than that of the nation during the second half of 2006, Illinois’ unemployment rate has jumped up and now well exceeds the national rate.”
Citing a U.S. Department of Labor report released last month, the commission notes nine states registered “significant” unemployment rate increases from a year earlier. The largest of these occurred in Illinois, where unemployment rose from 4.4 percent in August 2006 to 5.4 percent last August. The national rate stayed basically the same, dropping from 4.7 percent to 4.6 percent during the same time frame.
The report says if the employment trends in Illinois continue, that’s not a good sign for the state’s treasury. At least that’s the drift from the commission’s viewpoint; or in economist speak, the state’s sales and income tax revenues will be “undoubtedly negatively” affected.
There’s more to be concerned about in that report than just the unemployment numbers. You can download the entire report by clicking here.
* Meanwhile, we linked to Bernie’s Sunday column yesterday, but it deserves another visit in light of the above report. It’s a bit confusing, but Bernie appears to be saying that the Blagojevich administration is vastly overinflating both the number of jobs that the capital projects bill will create and the quality of those jobs. Here are a few excerpts, with all emphasis added…
(E)conomists who use multipliers for job estimates say it’s better to talk about supporting jobs, not creating them, because some people who will work on those projects already have jobs. And job totals can’t be limited to a single state, because materials bought for projects can come from other states or countries. The governor also talked about “good-paying” jobs, but economists said low-wage spin-off jobs are included in their estimates. […]
On Chicago radio station WBBM-AM’s “At Issue” show Sept. 30, Blagojevich described the proposal as a “public works program that will create 700,000 good-paying jobs. …” Later in the show, taking a shot at House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, Blagojevich said, “I can’t imagine why he would oppose a publicly owned Chicago casino that would do all of these things, like build schools and create 700,000 jobs.”
Even I don’t think the governor meant to say one casino would do all that. But he was saying the casino expansion plan would do that, and he shouldn’t be using the term “create.”
The casino plan projects road spending of $15.625 billion, and the multiplier of that gets to 625,000 jobs.
Expect the Blagojevich administration to spin the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability’s jobs report to his advantage. He’ll be right that Illinois certainly needs the employment (the actual number of jobs created in the past year has not grown at all), but if the recent and distant past are any guides, he’ll likely greatly overdo the rhetoric.
* And on a somewhat related front…
A Republican state senator Tuesday accused Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich of holding up health-care projects in Illinois because he hasn’t appointed members to an oversight board.
Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, said the Health Facilities Planning Board has been unable to meet because two seats are vacant and one member has been ill. The result is that dozens of potential medical construction projects and equipment purchases have been unable to move forward.
The five-member board is appointed by the governor. Three members must be present for it to conduct business.
“He’s neglected to deal with a system that would have allowed tens of millions of dollars to be invested in health-care facilities throughout the state by not filling the vacancies on the planning board,” said Brady, considered a possible candidate for governor in 2010. […]
But because of the lack of a quorum, the board hasn’t been able to meet since late July. Spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said 60 projects are awaiting action.
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Morning shorts
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2007 - Posted by Paul Richardson
* Pennsylvania governor backs IL power plant
* John Kass: Public’s trust hinges on two big appeals
In the separate cases of two convicted and corrupt politicians, Republican George Ryan and Democrat Robert Sorich, the federal judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have to decide where they stand.
Do they throw out the convictions and stand with the boss hogs that run the bipartisan Illinois political combine, the same combine that brags publicly that it put some of the justices on the federal bench?
Or do they uphold the convictions, and stand with you, the taxpayers of Illinois, the folks who work hard and make sacrifices, only to get hammered, year after year with tax increase after tax increase, as the combine and its soldiers feed from the public trough?
* Mark Brown: “Free poker” vets at odds with state
In an effort to stay within the bounds of Illinois’ gambling laws, organizers of the poker league charge no fee to play in their tournaments, ban wagering and offer only nominal prizes to the winners such as gift certificates from the host establishment.
And that’s why Signore can’t understand why the Illinois Liquor Control Commission has effectively shut down the “free poker” league by cracking down on liquor licenseholders that host the games.
“We should have a right to play as long as we’re not gambling,” says an angry Signore, who lives in West Beverly and owns a catering business.
State officials don’t quite see it that way.
* Tribune Editorial: Fast trucks, stop right there
Maybe some legislators bought that argument. But safety experts sure don’t. “There’s no way you can argue that letting large trucks go faster makes the roads safer,” said Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “Study after study shows that, in general, when you increase travel speeds, you increase deaths on those roads.”
Illinois last year logged the lowest fatality rate on its roads since 1924. That’s impressive.
So why would anyone want to put that success at risk?
Why would the House vote to kill people?
* Editorial: Big rigs should drive 55
* Tax day is every day in Chicago
“This is a growing list,” said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a tax watchdog group. “The city and some of the other units of government in northeastern Illinois have sought out new sources of revenue. Those are appropriate use taxes if you are able to make the case you are providing services related to the tax. In the case of the tire tax, the cost of recycling or servicing local roads can be connected.
“[But] I don’t think most Chicagoans are cognizant of who is responsible for which of the government services they receive, and there is little opportunity for citizens to get a comprehensive list” of what they pay.
* 19 new Chicago public schools wanted in next two years
These are part of Renaissance 2010, a plan to create 100 new schools by 2010. About 55 have opened so far. Fifteen of the 19 schools hope to open next fall if approved by the Chicago Board of Education Oct. 24.
The proposed Chicago High School for the Arts would put Chicago on par with New York, Los Angeles and most other large cities that have public performing arts high schools.
* Some Chicago teachers file unfair labor charge
* City fire unions battle over leadership
* Russ Stewart: 2008 U.S. Senate race analysis
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