* Not sure really if this is news since we don’t even know if Sen. Warren will be in the race by next March…
Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorsed two House Democratic primary challengers Monday, backing two women taking on sitting lawmakers.
The Massachusetts Democrat is endorsing Marie Newman, who is taking on Rep. Dan Lipinski in Illinois’ 3rd District and immigration lawyer Jessica Cisneros, who is challenging Rep. Henry Cuellar in Texas’ 28th District, Justice Democrats announced in a news release. […]
“At a time when women’s reproductive rights are under attack daily from Republican lawmakers across America, Illinoisans deserve a leader with an unwavering commitment to fighting for women’s access to reproductive health care,” Warren said. “Marie Newman is that leader.”
* I was more interested in Lipinski’s response…
Lipinski, who fended off a Newman in a close primary race in 2018, opposes abortion rights and was the only Democrat in the Illinois congressional delegation to vote against President Obama’s signature health care law, because it required organizations to provide employees with contraception even if that clashed with a religious group’s beliefs.
“Warren has moved from independent fact-based thinking to ideological orthodoxy,” Lipinski said in response to the endorsement. “My opponent has always been an ideologue. She has never focused on how she might serve the people of IL3, but has only parroted the talking points of radicals who would take away everyone’s private health care, eliminate Medicare, and raise the taxes of hard working middle-class families by tens of thousands of dollars.”
Lipinski only won by 2.2 percentage points in 2018, and I kinda doubt that district has gotten more conservative. But we’ll see if Republicans cross over for him. That appears to be his goal here.
24 Comments  
|
Question of the day
Monday, Sep 9, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Uber Freight…
In three years since launch, Uber Freight has grown to a team of hundreds, with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, and Amsterdam. Now, Uber Freight will be solidifying its investment in Chicago with a new Freight headquarters at The Old Main Post Office, in Chicago’s historic downtown.
Globally, freight is a 3.8 trillion dollar industry ripe for change, and Uber Freight is leading the way towards a more efficient and collaborative freight future. We’ve built cutting-edge technology for both sides of the freight marketplace, unlocking opportunity for shippers, carriers, and their drivers so that they can focus on improving their bottom lines, growing their businesses, and keeping their eyes on the road ahead. We’ve pushed the entire industry towards transparency with features like facility ratings and real-time pricing. And this year, we brought these same values and logistics solutions abroad, expanding operations into Europe.
* Sun-Times…
Promising a more than $200 million annual investment in Chicago, the CEO of Uber Technologies said Monday the city will be central to the company’s bold plans to expand in freight.
Dara Khosrowshahi also said despite Uber’s billion-dollar losses, its balance sheet remains strong and the company will have a high profile in Chicago for years.
“While we are investing aggressively in growth and this Chicago investment is part of that, we are very, very confident that the balance sheet that we have, that the cash we have on our books, and our business, are going to be around for a long time. So I have no doubts in our ability to be here for the next five, 10 or the next 20 years,” he said at a news conference in the lobby of the Old Main Post Office, Uber Freight’s future home. […]
[Several politicians] were there to cheer Uber’s vow to hire 2,000 new employees here over the next three years. By early next year, it expects to occupy 463,000 square feet, covering two floors in the vast Old Main Post Office at 433 W. Van Buren St. Its lease covers 10 years.
* Reuters…
Uber’s full-year revenue for 2018 was $11.3 billion, up 43 percent from the prior year. Its losses before taxes, depreciation and other expenses were $1.8 billion, an improvement over the $2.2 billion loss posted in 2017.
* From the governor…
* The Question: Your thoughts on this?
35 Comments
|
Our sorry state
Monday, Sep 9, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Comptroller Susana Mendoza…
After adjusting for inflation and population growth, state funding for human services fell by $4.4 billion between 2002 and 2010. Between fiscal years 2009 and 2014, Illinois cut funding for the largest human service categories by 23%.
And then came the Rauner years.
24 Comments
|
Get it together, man
Monday, Sep 9, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The Tribune has a story up on more complaints about how the cannabis law is being rolled out by the state…
Companies are required to open their second store in the same designated area as their existing medical dispensary. They must show the state that they have at least applied for local zoning approval, and they can’t open within 1,500 feet of another licensed medical or recreational pot shop.
In guidance issued last month, the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation said that secondary site licenses will only be issued after a new store has passed a final state inspection, essentially setting up a first-come, first-served system.
Marijuana companies say this could create a system where businesses pour capital into a new retail store only to be beaten out by another business down the street or around the corner.
“Then you have to find a new site and you did all that work,” said Chris Stone, senior policy adviser and co-owner of Ascend Illinois, which operates medical dispensaries in Springfield and Collinsville. “One of the problems is you’re not going to know about who’s next to you until everybody files their secondary license.”
The state acknowledged the possibility of such conflicts in a memo last month and advised companies to keep an eye on the competition by methods that include filing open-records requests with local zoning boards.
The state can’t put that info online somewhere?
* From that aforementioned IDFPR memo…
We are aware that potential conflicts may arise between applicants for Early Approval Adult Use Dispensing Organization Licenses if they seek locations for their second site dispensaries that are within 1,500 feet of each other. In the event of such a conflict, the applicant who receives a license first will be the one permitted to operate. IDFPR will not grant a license for a secondary site until the applicant’s facility has passed final inspection by the CCS, which will occur after receipt of the necessary zoning approval. IDFPR will also not grant a license if it has granted another dispensing organization a license at a location within 1,500 feet of the applicant’s proposed location. In this situation, IDFPR will require the applicant to amend its application with a different location, and if the applicant does not do so, it will deny the application.
One way to minimize the possibility of such conflicts is for potential applicants to make themselves aware of the proposed locations of other applicants. Such information is typically publicly available as part of a municipality’s zoning approval process. For example, any zoning approval or permit requests filed with the City of Chicago can be obtained from the Department of Planning and Development or Department of Buildings via a FOIA request through the following website: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/narr/foia/foia contacts.html.
The CCS will strive to ensure a fair and transparent process for awarding Early Approval Adult Use Dispensing Organization Licenses. If you have questions for CCS related to applications for Early Approval Adult Use Dispensing Organization Licenses, please submit them via e‐mail to FPR.AdultUseCannabis@illinois.gov. The CCS will not be responding to individual questions at this time and, instead, will address questions by providing additional information about the application process to all eligible applicants at the same time.
By the way, there’s a lot more to this Tribune story, so click here to read the rest.
19 Comments
|
Marca Bristo
Monday, Sep 9, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* NY Times…
When she was 23, Marca Bristo, a nurse in Chicago, was sitting with a friend on the shore of Lake Michigan. Her friend’s dog accidentally knocked a prized pair of Ms. Bristo’s shoes into the water and, without a second thought, she dived in to retrieve them.
Striking her head, she broke her neck and was paralyzed from the chest down. In that instant, Ms. Bristo’s life changed forever in ways she could never have anticipated. She lost her job, her health insurance, could no longer use public transportation and had no access to many public places.
But rather than dwell on her misfortune, she became a powerful advocate for people with disabilities, spending her life working to change perceptions and the rules in a world that had traditionally ignored the needs of the disabled. She was a key player in the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which outlawed discrimination against the nearly 50 million Americans with disabilities.
After a long battle with cancer, Ms. Bristo died on Sunday at 66 in her home in Chicago. Her death was confirmed by her husband, J. Robert Kettlewell.
* CBS 2…
“I lost my home, because it had stairs. I lost my job. I lost my income. I lost my health insurance,” she said. “But I didn’t lose my friends or my family, and I didn’t lose that sort of fighting spirit.”
Bristo said she and her friends used to have to time their outings based on whether there was a bathroom available – since even when someone in a wheelchair could get into an establishment, the bathrooms often were not accessible.
“And it took me a while to really grasp that this was a matter of discrimination,” Bristo said. “It really took a while for me to let go of my belief that I just had to suck it up, basically, and accept my limitations.”
But as she put it, she came to realize that “my wheelchair wasn’t too wide for the doors; the doors were too narrow for my wheelchair.”
* Tribune…
Over the years, her activism took on many forms: She co-founded the National Council on Independent Living in 1982. President Bill Clinton appointed her as chair of the National Council on Disability. She served as the first person with a disability to hold the role from 1994 to 2002. She participated in the negotiation for the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the U.S. adopted in 2006 and was recently appointed n the Ford Foundation board of trustees in June.
Among other things, Bristo was pivotal in forming the first fair housing program to addressed disability discrimination, fought for the inclusion of disability issues in domestic violence law and helped implement the requirement for all televisions to have close-captioned decoders.
Bristo gave her whole self to advocacy, openly telling friends she had several disabilities, some invisible, including a struggle with addiction and alcoholism, Heumann said. She spoke of her life in totality and recognized discrimination within the disability community, fighting for inclusivity within the movement.
“That’s part of the disability experience: taking risks and having a tenacious sense of can-do-it-ness,” Bristo told Chicago Magazine in 2008. “The things we’ve been advocating are not just for a marginal group of people; they’re for the society as a whole. Disability affects all of us. It’s time that we normalize and accept it rather than perceive it to be at the margins of our society.”
* Tom McNamee at the Sun-Times…
Marca’s talent was in building bridges between the “abled” and the “disabled” by making us see there is no need for bridges at all. We’re all on the same side of the river. We all have strengths and limitations, capabilities and incapabilities. We’re all of equal value. We all deserve the same rights and opportunities, no more but no less.
There’s nothing controversial in that. It’s what almost everybody believes. But in our daily lives, we don’t always live it. I don’t, anyway, even when I think I do.
We have to be reminded. We have to be told. We have to be told off.
* From Access Living…
Near the end of her life, Marca said she had no bucket list — that she had done what she set out to do and seen what she wanted to see. She also shared her firm belief that the disability activism work she started was in good and capable hands to be carried on by the staff at Access Living.
14 Comments
|
* WJBC…
A freshman lawmaker from Central Illinois is seeking a second term after making his mark opposing Gov. JB Pritzker’s agenda.
101st District State Rep. Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur) sent out a news release late Sunday night saying far-left extremists who control the Democratic Party pushed through the most radical agenda in the state’s history.
Caulkins cited passage of a capital bill that doubled the state’s gas tax, 21 other tax increases, and a radical abortion bill.
Um, a whole lot of Rep. Caulkins’ Republican colleagues voted for that “far-left extremist” and “radical agenda” of raising the state’s Motor Fuel Tax. Caulkins is, of course, a member of the Eastern Bloc.
* After the session ended in June, WCIA’s Mark Maxwell interviewed Rep. Caulkins about issues surrounding the capital bill…
Maxwell: How would you describe, right now, in 2019, the condition of the roads and highways in your district?
Caulkins: They’re the same as they are throughout central Illinois. We’re no different.
Maxwell: OK, what is the condition in the state, of the roads, the bridges, the transit?
Caulkins: That depends where you live.
Maxwell: You just said two different things.
Caulkins: No, you asked about my district and then you asked about the state, other places in Illinois. And there are places in Illinois where the roads are in fairly decent shape. Take the bypass around Bloomington. Now you go north on Interstate 39 out of Bloomington and there’s some issues. I-55 once you get out of McLean County there’s some issues. But there are places, Champaign, the roads around Champaign, the highways and the interestates. In the townships, there are highways and bridges that need desperate attention.
Maxwell: One of your House Republican colleagues stood up on the floor in the final moments of debate, and said that Illinois is on the verge, if the roads and their conditions continue to deteriorate, Illinois is on the verge of getting the valve shut off of federal funding because we’re so far out of compliance with how safe the roads are supposed to be, that it was really that bad. Wasn’t there some discussion, weren’t you considering at some point staging some sort of protest about the safety of the roads in your district?
Let’s stop the tape for a second. First, notice how he plays down the problems with transportation infrastructure, likely to help justify his “No” vote. Secondly, Rep. Caulkins did at one point talk about holding a “sit-in” or some other demonstration on Interstate 72 to protest the conditions of that roadway. He would’ve been right to do so because parts of that road are in disgraceful condition.
* Now, back to the interview…
Caulkins: We were. To your point, I heard that said on the House floor, I have not seen anything to that effect, I don’t know…
Maxwell: Why didn’t you go through with that demonstration?
Caulkins: Pardon?
Maxwell: You were considering this demonstration, you didn’t do it. Why not?
Caulkins: Because the state came along and, this is between the rest stop on the interstate and the Cisco exit, they’ve gone out and they’ve done a lot of patching work and they’ve filled it in temporarily I hope. But at least it’s passable. So IDOT they must’ve heard me.
Maxwell: You were pretty upset about that.
Caulkins: Two, three weeks they came out and they sought out some bad spots and they filled them in with asphalt patches. And I presume that today, actually is a huge day in IDOT, they’re letting bids out for road contracts.
So, a temporary asphalt patch was all it took? What happens when the temporary fix no longer works?
* More…
Maxwell: You end up not voting for it. How did you get there?
Caulkins: There was no plan to spend that money, first of all.
Maxwell: You don’t trust the Department of Transportation to allocate those funds?
Caulkins: Do you? I don’t. I don’t trust this government, no.
Well, they went out and patched the interstate, so at least they have that going for them.
* More…
Maxwell: How do you then go about putting safeguards in place to make sure those monies are spent the right way? There is a lock box, after all.
Caulkins: With the lock box, but then how do you allocate the money that’s within the lock box. This is the issue that was never addressed, Mark. They’ve asked for $40 billion with no specific plan. If they’d have come out and said ‘We’re going to do the five-year plan,” IDOT has a five-year plan. If the governor and the administration had said, ‘Look, here’s the five-year plan, this is what we need, this is how we’re going to pay for it, let’s talk about it,’ would’ve been a different discussion.
Maxwell: Are you saying that if you had more time to consider all of what was in that $45 billion capital plan you might have voted for it?
Caulkins: Not at 19 cents a gallon, not raising the license fees, not raising the fees that are on the middle class.
Maxwell: Where does the extra money come from?
Caulkins: The money is how do we spend what we have first. Show me what the projects are, show me where the income is. I asked. I asked for three weeks for a meeting with IDOT to come in and talk about what their priorities are, where they intended to spend the money. They didn’t see fit to come and talk with me.
Gee, I wonder why.
* Related…
* Report finds Illinois’ roads deadlier in rural areas
32 Comments
|
Actually, the governor opposes the bill
Monday, Sep 9, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* WBEZ…
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzer is refusing to say if he would support a bill that would require transparency around prison deaths after a WBEZ investigation found prison staff ignored warning signs and falsified documents connected to three men who died on three consecutive days at Menard prison. An internal investigation by the Department of Corrections largely absolved staff of wrongdoing, and a correctional officer who admitted to falsifying documents remains employed.
Family members say they were given very little information about the deaths of their loved ones at Menard. A bill that would have required jails and prisons to provide family members and the Illinois attorney general with information about prison deaths recently failed to pass the state legislature, but lawmakers and advocates say they plan to try and pass a similar bill soon. […]
At least 166 people died while in Illinois prisons from January 2017 to September 2018, according to records obtained by WBEZ. In around half of those cases, IDOC’s research department had no cause of death listed. When WBEZ requested records on specific deaths, the department claimed that in some cases, it didn’t have even basic information like death certificates or death reports.
The bill is here.
* Scroll down…
The Illinois Department of Corrections and the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association both opposed the bill last session.
IDOC couldn’t oppose that bill without the consent of the governor’s office. That means the governor himself is opposed. It would be nice if his office could’ve outlined to WBEZ what it would like to see done about this.
8 Comments
|
Lightfoot statement rated “Mostly False”
Monday, Sep 9, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Setup from Politifact…
“We’ve got 600-plus police and fire pensions Downstate that are on the cusp of insolvency because they don’t have the revenues that they need to be able to keep those pensions going,” [Mayor Lori Lightfoot told the Chicago Sun-Times]. “They’ve done all the things that we have done historically: raised property taxes, sold assets, had their ratings reduced by rating agencies, and they’re out of levers to pull, so they need help just as we do. So this isn’t a Chicago-specific thing.”
Um, no.
* The backtrack…
“I think highlighting that there are lots of police and fire pension systems that are underfunded is accurate,” said Amanda Kass, associate director of the Government Finance Research Center at the University of Illinois-Chicago. “I don’t think it’s accurate to indicate that the majority are on the brink of insolvency.” […]
“The mayor’s point that municipalities throughout the state are struggling with their pension obligations is an important one,” spokeswoman Anel Ruiz wrote in an email. “Approximately 30% of the 632 public safety pension funds in the state are currently funded at ratios of under 50 percent, according to the Department of Insurance.”
That math tracks with the DOI data included in the commission’s report. For comparison, Chicago’s police and fire pensions are both funded at levels below 25%. Just 25 Downstate public safety funds have a ratio lower than that, records show.
It’s difficult to say your city’s pension funds are just like everyone else’s when only 4 percent of Downstate and suburban funds are worse off than your two biggest problems.
…Adding… From comments…
(W)hat has confused me about her “this is a solution for everyone” framing is that I don’t understand what she is proposing that will help downstate towns at the same time as Chicago. Is she suggesting that the real estate transfer tax be raised everywhere, not just Chicago?
* And then there’s this…
Peoria, for example, faced down a $20 million pension gap by cutting its city workforce by about 16 percent — eliminating 22 firefighter positions and 16 police jobs to close its $6 million budget hole.
Downstate, Carterville raised property taxes by 30 percent last year to help cover a shortfall created by a state mandate.
Kankakee increased its municipal sales tax to help pay off its pension tab.
And even little Alton (population: less than 30,000) had to take action: it sold off its water treatment plant for about $54 million to help pay down its unfunded pension liabilities.
Of course, Chicago is much larger and a central pillar of the state’s economy, but lawmakers up for re-election may not see it in purely economic terms. Helping the Windy City gives rhetorical ammunition to political opponents looking to needle incumbents who might approve any kind of a tax hike when so many others were left to fend for themselves.
“Little Alton” is about the same size as Kankakee and both are much larger than Carterville, but you get the drift.
* Also, the property taxes in, say, Rockford (a city mentioned more than once by Lightfoot) are significantly higher than they are in Chicago. Rockford didn’t wait for the state.
30 Comments
|
* Charles Selle at the News-Sun…
If more than 400 people came down with symptoms of E. coli bacteria from tainted vegetables, state health officials would be pulling products from store shelves. Surprisingly, they continue allowing e-cigarettes to damage the lungs of Illinoisans.
The latest person to be hospitalized with a respiratory illness after using electric cigarettes — aka, vaping — is an 18-year-old Gurnee resident, Adam Hergenreder. He might be released from the hospital by now, but his lungs are those of a 70-year-old, according to his doctors.
Granted, young Adam admitted in a front-page News-Sun story last week that he’s been vaping since he was 16, and partial to mint and mango flavors. Last year, he says he began smoking sold-on-the-street “dab sticks,” THC-filled devices made for e-cigs. […]
Which is why Gov. J.B. Pritzker needs to immediately ban the use of e-cigarettes in Illinois. There’s mounting scientific evidence these devices are, putting it mildly, unhealthful. […]
Michigan’s Democrat governor didn’t wait to convene a scientific panel to issue a ban on e-cigs in the Wolverine State. Last week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made her state the first to ban flavored electronic cigarettes, accusing companies of using candy flavors and deceptive advertising to “hook children on nicotine,” the AP reported.
* Pritzker administration statement…
The Governor has convened a working group of medical and legal experts to study the scientific evidence so they can develop long-term solutions to keep Illinoisans safe and healthy. So far, this administration has worked with the General Assembly to raise the smoking age to 21 and made e-cigarettes and vaping much more difficult for young people to get their hands on.
1) When e-coli cases pop up, the government can usually trace the outbreak to its origin and then act accordingly. That simply isn’t the case here, and that’s what is unnerving some folks.
2) That “more than 400 people” number cited is nationwide, not Illinois alone. Yes, one person has apparently died in Illinois from likely vape usage, but nobody yet knows what was in the fluid or vaping device that caused this.
3) Cigarettes kill more than 1,300 people a day in this country and more than 480,000 per year. In 2017, 7.6 percent of Illinois high school kids smoked cigarettes. There is perhaps no greater health emergency tied to a specific product than that.
4) The process is moving forward…
“The severity of illness people are experiencing is alarming and we must get the word out that using e-cigarettes and vaping can be dangerous,” said Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. “We requested a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to help us investigate these cases and they arrived in Illinois on Tuesday.”
A total of 22 people in Illinois, ranging in age from 17-38 years, have experienced respiratory illness after using e-cigarettes or vaping, the department said. The department is working with local health departments to investigate another 12 individuals.
5) As noted, vaping is now illegal in Illinois for anyone under 21.
6) Michigan’s governor got a lot of national press for ordering the halt of all flavored vape sales, but it’s not as simple as some are making it seem…
(T)he rule will likely face court challenges and review by the state legislature.
It’s also a temporary rule, so the state legislature will have to weigh in.
* Some suburban kids are getting sick and that’s sure to set off major political alarm bells and can easily lead to rash actions which enshrine bad policy into law.
Vaping additives are problematic because consumers simply don’t know what they are ingesting. Maybe start there first, although that still won’t solve the problem with the underground market.
21 Comments
|
* Willie Wilson press release…
Ogden & Fry, conducted a 3-question poll for Citizens for Willie Wilson on Wednesday, September 4, statewide regarding political preferences of candidates with 538 respondents. Respondents were selected by random sampling of likely 2020 General Election voters. The margin of error for this poll is +/- 4.31% at the 95% confidence interval.
* The first question was about voting likelihood. Here’s the second…
If the election for United States Senator was held today, for which candidate would you vote?
Democrat Dick Durbin 44.1%
Republican Candidate 33.6%
Independent Willie Wilson 4.0%
Undecided 18.3%
I guess you gotta start somewhere, but I’m not sure how releasing these numbers helps him.
The third question was a head-to-head between Durbin and Wilson, but that isn’t going to happen and Wilson was still trailing 44-25 among all voters and 72-8 among Democrats.
I’ve asked how many mobile phone users were contacted and whether this was a robopoll or a mixture of robocalls with live callers. It’s been known in the past as an automated outfit.
The firm released a poll two weeks before the Chicago mayoral election which showed Wilson placing second behind Toni Preckwinkle and getting 13.3 percent. He finished fourth with 10.6 percent. The firm also polled for Jeanne Ives in the 2018 primary.
16 Comments
|
Plummer plots his course
Monday, Sep 9, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Illinois Review…
State Senator Jason Plummer told Illinois Review Friday that he’s “taking a hard look” at running for the 15th CD seat that Congressman John Shimkus (IL-15) said last week he won’t be running for again in 2020.
“I’ve been out of town on business for the last several days, and Congressman Shimkus’ announcement was a surprise,” Plummer said via phone. “But I’ve been getting lots of encouragement from Republicans in the district to run for the seat. I’m taking a hard look at it.” […]
Being the member of a GOP Senate caucus that is in the super-minority and appears likely to remain so in the near future, the decision to try for the US Congress where Republicans currently hold the majority would be tempting for any Illinois Republican.
“I’m really thinking about what I could do that would help the state of Illinois the most,” Plummer said.
Um, Republicans currently aren’t in the majority in the US House, but it’s still probably a bit better than being in the super-minority in the Illinois Senate.
He’s not up for reelection next year, so he’d have a free shot at the seat. And these seats are only rarely this available. Yes, reapportionment could mean he’d wind up in a 2022 primary race with either Mike Bost or (if he wins reelection) Rodney Davis (assuming, that is, he defeats Erika Harold next year if she decides to run), but one election at a time. For all he knows, he could get mapped out of his current Senate district, although that job allows him to continue earning outside income from his family businesses and likely gives him the best shot at staying in elective office the longest.
Plummer has come a very long way from his stumbles on the 2010 statewide campaign trail (he simply wasn’t ready for prime time) and his 2012 loss to Bill Enyart (perhaps the last cycle for a long time that a Democrat could win what is now the Bost district). But it’s not a slam-dunk decision either way.
11 Comments
|
* Last month…
The state’s attorney general says two former lawmakers should not receive back pay for frozen cost-of-living increases and forced furlough days because they previously voted to approve the two laws and waited “for so long” to file a lawsuit challenging their constitutionality.
Those laws, a Cook County judge ruled last month, violated an article of the state’s governing document that dictates legislators’ wages cannot be changed during the terms for which they were elected.
Judge Franklin Valderrama’s ruling was a partial win for two former senators — Democrats Michael Noland, from Elgin, and James Clayborne Jr., from Belleville — who sued for lost wages.
* Last week…
Two former Democratic state senators are asking a Cook County judge to order Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza to pay back wages they and other lawmakers gave up when legislators voted repeatedly over a decade to freeze their salaries. […]
Noland, now a Kane County judge, originally filed the lawsuit in 2017, seeking back pay for himself and “all others impacted” by bills lawmakers passed to give up the annual cost-of-living raises they are automatically granted under state law. The lawsuit, which Clayborne joined as a plaintiff last year, also takes issue with unpaid furlough days lawmakers approved for themselves each year from 2009 through 2013.
Mendoza “has a clear, non-discretionary duty to pay the members of the General Assembly, including Plaintiffs, the salary unconstitutionally withheld for the furlough days and the (cost-of-living adjustments) for the relevant years,” Noland and Clayborne argue in their motion. […]
Clayborne, now an attorney in private practice, voted in favor of the measures each time. From 2009 to 2016, Noland only once voted against the legislation canceling cost-of-living raises and approving unpaid furlough days.
* From Comptroller Mendoza…
The judge has issued no order to pay any legislators raises they voted not to accept. I think the arguments have just begun over whether legislators can make big election-year speeches about voting to turn down a raise, issue re-election news releases touting their selflessness in turning down a raise; then years later, shamelessly file a lawsuit to force taxpayers to retroactively pay them $10 million for raises they turned down to get re-elected. These hypocrites don’t deserve a penny. How can it be more constitutional to hike salaries mid-term than to keep salaries the same?
18 Comments
|
Careful what you wish for
Monday, Sep 9, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
Rep. David McSweeney (R-Barrington Hills) announced last week that he will not seek reelection. Instead, he said he’ll likely be making a 2022 statewide bid for either US Senate against Sen. Tammy Duckworth or secretary of state if Jesse White retires.
He may not be a household name, but Rep. McSweeney has been a huge thorn in Republican leadership’s side since he first ran for the Illinois House in the 2012 primary.
He took on Rep. Kent Gaffney, who had been the House Republicans’ appropriations director for a decade and was appointed to the seat after the untimely 2011 death of Republican Rep. Mark Beaubien. McSweeney at one point during the campaign claimed House Republican staff had violated the law by doing political work on state time and tried hard to get Gaffney kicked off the ballot. He won a three-way primary and then went on to defeat Beaubien’s widow, who ran as an independent in the general election.
In other words, he did not arrive in Springfield well-liked by the people who ran his own party. And he hasn’t tried to ingratiate himself with them at any point since then.
He refused to attend House Republican caucus meetings and eventually became one of the most outspoken Republican critics of Gov. Bruce Rauner. McSweeney became a go-to person for reporters needing anti-Rauner quotes. He basically served the same purpose as former Democratic state Rep. Jack Franks, who built up his name recognition by regularly slamming Democratic governors and was beloved by political reporters and now chairs the McHenry County Board. McSweeney’s district includes part of McHenry County, and Franks and McSweeney have worked together over the years to pass various local government-related bills.
After Rauner lost, McSweeney turned his fire on his own House Republican Leader, Jim Durkin. He has called Durkin corrupt, said he was an anti-Trump “RINO” (Republican in name only) and called on him to resign. Durkin retaliated by yanking staff support on two separate occasions. McSweeney kept his name in the papers.
McSweeney is an information sponge. He is super-smart and makes it his business to constantly find out what is going on in this state’s politics and governance.
He immediately sought out many of Springfield’s old hands after taking office and pumped them for every bit of advice and insight he could get. Those relationships, combined with his outspoken critiques of his own party helped him pass a lot of bills through the Democratic-controlled House, and also probably helped keep him safe from any serious general election challenges.
Rep. McSweeney’s far northwest suburban district is somewhat odd. It was once represented by conservative firebrand and trial lawyer Al Salvi, who left to run for US Senate. Rep. Beaubien was a pro-choice liberal Republican. Gaffney was somewhat more conservative than his mentor Beaubien, but was definitely to the left of McSweeney, who is hard-right on taxation and social issues.
The 52nd District was long considered a Republican bastion, except for the usual Jesse White wins (the popular pol routinely wins most legislative districts and won every single county in 2002). Republican Mitt Romney defeated President Barack Obama by 10 points in the district during the 2012 election.
But President Donald Trump, who had problems everywhere in suburbia, only won McSweeney’s district by a mere 1.6 percentage points in 2016. And then Democratic Comptroller Susana Mendoza won it last year by 2 points. Trump isn’t doing much to improve his popularity in the suburbs, so 2020 could be even worse for Republicans in that part of the world.
McSweeney has sharply criticized Gov. JB Pritzker, so it’s possible that the Democrats might have tried to take him out if he ran again, but it seems unlikely since his dissension in the Republican ranks can be quite useful to their Statehouse purposes (every time the Democrats advanced one of McSweeney’s bills they drove the other side crazy). Even so, a warm Democratic body with little party support could’ve forced McSweeney to spend big bucks on his reelection just to be safe, and that money would be better spent on setting himself up for the 2022 statewide contest.
The House Republican operation was completely blindsided (and overjoyed) by McSweeney’s announcement, so they don’t yet have a list of possible candidates.
But McSweeney’s exit means it’s now quite possible that the district goes into play next year if the Democrats can find the right candidate. That could turn out to be McSweeney’s ultimate revenge on his party. Careful what you wish for.
9 Comments
|
|
Support CapitolFax.com
Visit our advertisers...
...............
...............
...............
...............
...............
...............
|
   
|
Hosted by MCS
SUBSCRIBE to Capitol Fax
Advertise Here
Mobile Version
Contact Rich Miller
|
