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Halvorson confirms

Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

Senate Majority Leader debby Halvorson just confirmed that she’s running for Congress.

Halvorson added that the Kankakee Comm College President would drop out of the Dem primary.

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This just in… Politico: Sen. Halvorson to run for Congress *** House debates vetoes ***

Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

* 12:42 pm - From the Politico…

In a big recruiting coup for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Illinois Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halvorson (D) will be announcing that she is running for the seat held by the retiring Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill.).

“She sees this as a historic time in Washington and she wants to be a part of it,” said one Democratic operative familiar with her decision-making process. “She wants to bring the things she accomplished in Illinois to Washington.”

Halvorson met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this past weekend as part of her meetings with Democratic officials in Washington. She also met with EMILY’s List, which funds and supports Democratic candidates who support abortion rights.

Many operatives had speculated that she wanted to move up in the state legislative leadership, but the wooing by top Democrats helped convince her otherwise.

* 1:20 pm - The House is now debating the override motion of the governor’s vetoes. Listen here and live-blog it below if you want.

* 1:25 pm - Check out the banner ad just above this WREX story about the veto overrides. I wonder if the guv cut anything important to the Illinois Pork Producers….

* 2:03 pm - Yesterday, I told you about a hideous flier that was distributed across Illinois. Bernie Schoenburg attempted to get a response from the governor’s office about the flier, but didn’t receive or see the email before his deadline. Here is the statement from the guv’s office…

We had nothing to do with the flier you’re asking about and, in fact, hadn’t seen it until you sent it along. Our focus is on passing a $25 billion capital program to fund critical infrastructure projects around the state and launch a program to provide every single Illinois woman with access to live saving breast and cervical cancer screenings and treatment.

* 2:04 pm - A whopping 104 House members just voted to override the governor’s line-item vetoes of the budget. Just 4 voted “No.” Reduction veto overrides are next.

* 2:19 pm - The second veto override motion passed 105-4.

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Protected: SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - House PowerPoint presentation; Boland; Halvorson; Burzynski; Noland; Trucks (Use all caps in password)

Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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Question of the day

Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

* You’ve probably seen this quote already from Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who said it during yesterday’s Cub rally downtown…

“As the governor, I stopped asking myself first the question ‘Is it the right thing or the wrong thing?’ Now the first question I ask myself when I govern Illinois is, ‘What would Lou do?”

Question: Rod Blagojevich is to Lou Piniella as ___________ is to ___________.

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A closer look

Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

* GateHouse had a good summary of some of the people who testified at yesterday’s Committee of the Whole…

- Martin Rue, superintendent of the LaSalle County Veterans Assistance Commission. He used the word “devastating” to describe budget cuts exceeding $3 million for the LaSalle Veterans Home. The money was to be used for staff members and medical equipment at the home, which has a waiting list of 450 veterans, he said.

- Howard Peters, senior vice president for the Illinois Hospital Association. He said the governor’s plan to expand health-care access is a good idea, but Peters also called on lawmakers to reverse Blagojevich’s decision to trim from the state budget $40 million in Medicaid payments to hospitals.

- Greg Chance, a board member of the Illinois Rural Health Association. He told House members that the association is concerned about several gubernatorial vetoes. One of them, for example, would eliminate $3 million for school-based health centers in rural Illinois, said Chance, who also is public health administrator for the Knox County Health Department.

- Christine Becker, president of the Illinois Chiropractic Society. She criticized Blagojevich’s explanation of his budget cuts, saying: “To expand health care for the poor by cutting health care for the poor makes no common sense.”

* And the Daily Herald managed to pin down the governor’s office on some specific questions. For a while yesterday, the guv’s office was sticking by a boilerplate response to all queries about the House hearing. That apparently changed as the day wore on…

Q:How did you decide what to cut? Did politics play a role?

Governor’s office: “Some of the projects lawmakers included in the budget did not have anything to do with the mission of state government like constructing beach volleyball courts or paying for a dance festival. And while there were some worthwhile projects, we simply can’t fund the state’s top priorities — education and health care — as well as countless member initiatives because the General Assembly did not pass enough new revenues to pay for all the things we may care about.”

Reaction: “But what was the real motivation?” asked House Democrats’ budget director John Lowder. He pointed to a Wayne Township bridge project in which the governor cut half of the funding, but oddly left the other half. “Identical projects for nearly identical purposes for nearly identical amounts. The only difference is which caucus sponsored the project.”

Q:Where’s the money going?

Governor’s office: “There is a serious health care crisis that is impacting families throughout the state leaving many struggling to afford or have access to care. This crisis was completely ignored in the budget passed by legislators.”

Reaction: “He’s actually cutting health care to provide health care of his own choosing,” said state Rep. Lou Lang, a Skokie Democrat, citing cuts to several health care and community care groups.

Q:How do you define pork spending?

Governor’s office: “Member initiatives that didn’t go through the appropriations process, but instead were inserted into the budget at the last minute without any public discourse or hearings as a means for Speaker (Michael) Madigan to buy votes from his members for a budget bill that they hadn’t seen.”

Reaction: “Perhaps the governor needs to revisit the definition of pork,” said Cathy Ficker Terrill, chief executive of the Downers Grove-based Ray Graham Association, which lost a funding increase. “Pork is unnecessary and frivolous. Pork is not helping people with disabilities to live and work in the community.”

It’s kinda funny that the guv’s office is complaining about items “inserted into the budget at the last minute without any public discourse or hearings” when he’s proposing to use that money for programs that received no public hearings and no votes in either legislative chamber. But, hey, such is life with this governor.

* More…

* IL House tries to put face on governor’s budget cuts

* House hears fallout from Gov’s vetoes

* House discusses budget cuts

* Bipartisan effort likely won’t overturn Blagojevich’s veto

* Agency chiefs plead with House for funding

* House hears fallout from budget vetoes

* Bethany Jaegar: Can he do that?

* Blagojevich’s cuts called political

* Opinion: Communities expect elected officials to bring home to bacon

* Opinion: Lawmakers should override library funding veto

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Race to raise taxes

Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

* As expected, Todd Stroger didn’t have enough votes to pass his two-point sales tax hike yesterday…

A clearly frustrated Cook County Board President Todd Stroger failed Monday to cobble together the votes needed to hike the sales tax.

Stroger called commissioners who shot it down “part-time workers” who don’t appreciate the gravity of the situation and didn’t do the job that “should’ve been done.” He’s now headed back to the drawing board to fill a $307 million hole in the county’s $3 billion budget. […]

Rather than see the sales tax hike shot down, Commissioner Joan Murphy moved for it to be deferred until Oct. 16, allowing time for what Commissioner Forrest Claypool called “behind-the-scenes, closed-door arm-twisting.”

Stroger said he’ll engage in “the art of compromise.”

* And what will that compromise be? Perhaps a scaled-back sales tax increase, which is probably what he should’ve done all along. Stroger may have received bad advice on the whip count, which could have prompted him to go ahead with yesterday’s vote on the two-point increase.

But, the vote was 8-8, so Stroger could have cast the tiebreaking vote if he was serious about this tax increase. He didn’t, and instead said he would use that tiebreaker power if a smaller increase met the same fate.

* Mark Brown has more…

“I don’t think they’ll bring it back,” [Commissioner John Daley] said afterward when I asked what position he had taken. Stroger later explained that the rush is over now that the county missed Monday’s legal deadline that would have allowed it to begin collecting the sales tax Jan. 1, 2008.

Daley said he expects the Stroger administration will switch its focus to proposed new county utility taxes on natural gas, electricity and telecommunications, which he predicted will face court challenges.

“I told them they didn’t have the votes” on the sales tax, Daley said, which prompted me to again ask whether he was one of the votes “they” did or didn’t have. He still wouldn’t give me a direct answer.

“When it comes back, I think it’s going to be changed completely from what it is today,” he said instead.

* Meanwhile, Mayor Daley appears to be in a foot race with Stroger to get his tax hikes approved before the county does…

Mayor Daley on Monday served up a pick-your-poison menu of tax increases — including the largest property tax hike in Chicago history — and asked aldermen to choose enough of them to fill a $193 million budget gap.

The $108 million property tax increase would cost the owner of a $200,000 home roughly $57 more a year. […]

The entire menu would raise $319 million. The city needs $193 million to fill a gap now $24 million lower than initial estimates, officials said.

* More…

Options include increasing the city’s tax on a six-pack of beer by 4 cents and on wine by 2 cents a bottle; raising the city tax on gasoline by up to 10 cents a gallon; creating a 10-cent-a-bottle tax on bottled water; increasing the cost of vehicle stickers for sport-utility vehicles; quadrupling parking-meter rates in neighborhoods to $1 an hour; raising the sales tax on restaurant bills; making penalties heavier for parking-ticket scofflaws; and raising the 911 phone surcharge, according to City Hall sources.

Separately, water and sewer fee hikes also are a possibility.

* Related…

* Rampant patronage from city hall?

* City hiring cases flood court

* Tribune Editorial: If Stroger won’t lead…

* Zorn: Todd Stroger and the two percent solution

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Morning shorts

Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007 - Posted by Paul Richardson

* Illinois among several states suing Bush to block SCHIP growth

* Illinois in bind on health care

In Illinois, the issue is hitting home this week: On Monday, a federal agreement allowing the state to enroll adults in SCHIP expired. Most of these adults are parents who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid — the government’s health program for the very poor — but too little to buy insurance on their own or through employers.

Illinois has been more aggressive than any other state in signing up low-income parents for SCHIP. The program has become a crucial component of Family Care, Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s initiative to extend medical care to needy families. But this arrangement, which has pulled extra federal funds into the state, doesn’t look like it will continue.

* Rep. Rush’s son fired in IL prison sex scandal

Disclosure of Jeffrey Rush’s termination is prompting a call for Blagojevich to explain the circumstances behind his hiring. Federal authorities have been investigating Blagojevich’s hiring practices since 2005.

“This is unacceptable, especially in a position like this. Any time you’re dealing with a public-trust position or a more sensitive position like the Department of Corrections, you have to have people with the highest integrity,” said Sen. John Millner (R-Carol Stream). “There should be an investigation into the hiring of this individual.”

The Corrections Department vetted Jeffrey Rush the same as other hires, Schnapp said. All prison employees undergo criminal background checks.

Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff confirmed Rep. Rush persuaded the administration to hire his son, who had “both law enforcement and supervisory experience.”

Ottenhoff said the governor’s office gave Rep. Rush “a courtesy call to notify him that Jeffrey was being terminated” after an internal Corrections Department probe yielded its findings.

* Editorial: Illinois River, it’s sink or swim time

* GPS plan has some officers griping

Every Chicago police officer could have their movements electronically tracked by global positioning systems if a program being tested in the Chicago Lawn District wins approval.

The program, which requires officers to wear department-issued GPS cell phones on their belts while on duty, is intended as an officer-safety measure, bosses say, but also could be used to discipline officers.

Many officers are unhappy at what they see as an excessive intrusion upon their freedom to do their job. They say they already carry too much equipment, and they worry overzealous supervisors will use evidence from the phones to hound them.

* When and Where to watch the Cubs v. Dbacks

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Protected: SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Today’s edition of Capitol Fax (Use all caps in password)

Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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