* My news feed provider is doing some maintenance which slowed my site to a crawl. So, the news feeds are temporarily removed until the provider goes back online.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.
*** UPDATE *** OK, so my web guys have adjusted the settings so that the feed provider’s lack of output won’t slow down my site. The feed titles are back, some feeds appear to be loading, but the delays should be gone for now. The newer feeds are still not back on this site (Twitter, Post-Dispatch, etc.) because they use a different system. Hopefully, everything will soon be right with the world.
*** UPDATE 2 *** The world is right with itself. All news feeds are now back in place. I’ve adjusted the Twitter feed to truncate some of the overly long posts and I’ve added several state legislators to the feed. Tweet Illinois is at the Statehouse today and they’ve signed up a bunch of new legislative tweeters.
* We have two new TV ads today from opposite sides of the budget debate. The first is from the Jobs Coalition. It makes a bit of fun of SEIU’s earlier ad which featured a hunk of raw meat…
* AFSCME’s new TV ad warns about the dire consequences of not raising state taxes…
* Since so many newspaper editorial boards are screaming for reform, should Illinois fund any enacted reforms (consolidated purchasing czar, publicly funded court elections, ramped-up Board of Elections and state’s attorney powers, etc.) by removing the state sales tax exemption on newsprint and ink?
* No surprise here, but Robin Kelly is announcing her bid [or just exploring her candidacy] for state treasurer today. Kelly is a former south suburban state Rep. This is from an e-mail to supporters sent today…
Dear Friend,
There’s been a lot of talk around the state about different people running for different offices. I wanted to take this opportunity to personally inform you that I am exploring a bid for the Illinois State Treasurer’s office.
I hope you’ll take a moment to visit www.robinfortreasurer.com. You can forward this message to your friends and make a contribution today!
I believe Illinois families need a leader they can count on to guard their tax dollars and help them during these difficult economic times.
As Chief of Staff in the Treasurer’s office, I helped lead a complete turnaround of the agency. We made great progress by improving transparency, demanding accountability, and establishing tough ethical guidelines. I am proud that this is the first Treasurer’s office in history to ban contributions from banks and contractors who do business with the office, a policy I will continue as Treasurer.
We invested Illinois tax dollars wisely, generating more revenue for the state, and protecting jobs by providing Illinois businesses with low-interest loans.
We have made protecting opportunities for college students a top priority. That’s why we transformed the Bright Start college savings program from one of the worst into one Money Magazine ranked in the top three nationally. We also created the Fallen Heroes Scholarship Fund, which gives a $2,500 deposit into a college savings fund to children whose parent made the ultimate sacrifice. In addition, aggressive legislation we championed to crack down on the overly aggressive marketing of credit cards to college students is on the Governor’s desk! …
Obviously, if Kelly and Giannoulias don’tt get that Bright Start problem straightened out soon, it will be an issue. Also, the SUV thing won’t help.
For now, at least, there aren’t any other Democrats talking about the treasurer’s office. That may change. We’ll know more soon after Lisa Madigan announces her own intentions - an event that will undoubtedly spur a gigantic domino effect.
* You certainly can’t blame all of our problems on Pat Quinn’s infamous “Cutback Amendment,” but it is a case study in why reformers can sometimes do more harm than good and should never be thought of as having all the answers…
The Illinois governor ultimately responsible for many of the state’s current ethics woes may not be Rod Blagojevich or even the imprisoned George Ryan. He may be Pat Quinn.
While Blagojevich’s rampant political corruption during six years as Illinois’ governor led to his arrest, ouster, indictment and now widespread calls for reform, some experts argue the structure of state government that has led to entrenched leadership and a lack of electoral competition has its origins during an earlier burst of state government reform, led by none other than Quinn.
In 1979 and 1980, Quinn was a good-government activist leading the charge for the “Cutback Amendment,” which reduced the size of the Illinois House by one-third and ended so-called cumulative voting in Illinois. Quinn and other proponents claimed cutting the size of the legislature would save the state money and lead to more competitive elections.
Most of our serious corruption problems in state government (as measured by federal action) have been at the executive level. Four disgraced former governors, Secretary of State Paul Powell’s shoe box, Attorney General Bill Scott’s slush fund. etc. You can’t blame any of that on the Cutback Amendment.
* The real problem with the Cutback Amendment is the consolidation of power by the House Speaker…
Filling a vacant U.S. Senate seat. Providing tax relief. Blocking legislative raises. Improving government efficiency. What do they have in common? A single lawmaker blocked every one of those ideas from being debated in the Illinois House.
Under the House’s strange rules, an objection from just one lawmaker will kill any effort to release legislation that has been bottled up in committee, no matter how many other people support the idea.
So Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie — the No. 2 Democrat in the House — is charged with standing up and objecting when Republicans file motions to release bills they feel should be debated.
The objection itself doesn’t kill the motion. The objection is usually voted on by the full chamber, almost always on a partisan roll call.
Still, it was the Senate Republicans who invented those rules when they were in charge, and the Cutback Amendment only dealt with the House. You can’t completely blame this problem totally on Quinn, either - although the SGOPs adopted the rules because they were proceeding to a “war footing” with Madigan’s tightly controlled House.
Gov. Pat Quinn appeared to take a page out of his predecessor’s playbook Monday. While state lawmakers were meeting in Springfield, Quinn unveiled what he called a “doomsday” budget to a civic club in Chicago. […]
Just as Blagojevich once threatened to lay off state police troopers during budget negotiations, Quinn warned that thousands of teachers and other state employees would be laid off if lawmakers don’t work to fill a gaping budget hole. […]
Quinn’s move was reminiscent of the ousted Blagojevich, who often traveled around the state or held events in Chicago to criticize lawmakers while they were at work hours away in the Capitol.
Quinn apparently learned nothing. He had a perfect opportunity to draw attention to the very real problems faced by his proposals, and instead he pulled a wildly goofy stunt in Chicago - just like Blagojevich would’ve done.
* Quinn is even talking sports like Blagojevich now…
Quinn declined to say who he’d like to have as his running mate when he runs for re-election, but joked, “If the Cubs win the World Series, then probably Lou Piniella.”
“I wish the governor would spend as much energy on finding efficiencies in state government, as putting together this document,” he said.
* The Tribune editorial board, however, apparently thinks the governor should get more strident…
If you want reform, Governor, fight for it. If you then want a tax increase, fight for it. If you want to look like a guy who’s just angling to make friends for the next election, keep letting the people who see you as a short-term placeholder set your agenda.
Here’s some perspective on the financial pickle. The state taps its main checkbook for more than $30 billion a year in spending, and more than half is dedicated to politically sensitive programs in education and health care. Both have proved impervious to significant cuts in the past, one reason why Quinn’s new threat was a gamble.
Factor out the cost of other must-have programs in human services, law enforcement, prisons and the like, and all but 5 percent of the budget is in practical terms immune to the chopping block, said Chrissy Mancini, analyst for the Chicago-based Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.
Bottom line? There’s no practical way to cobble together enough cuts to make ends meet.
An industry group said Illinois saw the country’s biggest percentage drop in gambling revenue in 2008, and it lays part of the blame on the state’s smoking ban.
In a report released Monday, the American Gaming Assn. said Illinois casinos collected $1.57 billion in 2008 revenue, a 20.9% drop from the previous year. The state’s ban on smoking in public places took effect Jan. 1, 2008.
Indiana saw a 1.6% increase to $2.67 billion in 2008.
* Chicago Magazine has a pretty darned good profile of Rod Blagojevich in its latest issue. Read the whole thing…
Axelrod also had serious doubts about Blagojevich’s readiness to be governor—his ethics, his maturity. “At one point, David asked Rod, ‘Why do you want to be governor?’” says Forrest Claypool, the Cook County commissioner and a longtime friend of Axelrod’s. “And the best that Blagojevich could come up with was, ‘It’ll be fun.’ There was no mission, no principles. It was just, sort of, a game to him.”
* This is classic Rod…
One summer day in 2001, Blagojevich went jogging around his Ravenswood Manor neighborhood. Afterward, he called a colleague. “Guess what?” Blagojevich asked him. “I just ran by Rahm Emanuel’s house. There he was, and we started talking. I told him I was definitely running for governor, and I said, ‘Rahm, you should run for my seat.’”
What Blagojevich didn’t tell Emanuel was that he had offered similar advice to several other prospects who lived in the district. Truth be told, Blagojevich didn’t really care if Emanuel succeeded him or not. (He didn’t much care if the Fifth Congressional District even existed after he gave up the seat, according to a former aide to Emanuel with knowledge of Blagojevich’s dealings. Blagojevich and Mell undertook a failed attempt to reapportion the seat out of existence in return for gubernatorial endorsements from the two downstate Democratic congressmen, whose seats would be spared.)
That’s very true. Blagojevich and Mell were completely open about that proposed deal to eliminate the district, which upset Mayor Daley to no end.
* A clear warning…
But when U.S. senator Dick Durbin met with the new governor in his office two months or so after the election, he says he didn’t exactly see a genuine change agent. “He was excited about filling jobs and contracts,” recalls Durbin. “That stopped me cold. I remember, he said to me, ‘It’s all good.’ He kept saying it over and over—‘It’s all good.’”
* Rod’s delusions and his Obama envy…
Blagojevich told some of the people around him that he was basically a lock to be on John Kerry’s vice presidential short list in 2004—a notion that Whitney Smith, a spokeswoman for Senator Kerry, flatly refutes. Later, the governor felt doubly snubbed by Kerry’s campaign when he wasn’t even asked to speak at the Democratic convention in Boston, according to several Blagojevich associates. Kerry, of course, plucked Obama from obscurity to deliver the keynote speech.
Blagojevich watched the speech from the floor of the Fleet Center. At a backstage reception afterwards, Blagojevich could barely conceal his envy. According to a Democratic insider who asked to remain unnamed, Blagojevich told Obama, “Great speech, Barack.” Then he added, backhandedly, “But, remember, this is as good as it gets.” Obama shot back, “We’ll see.”
An inmate who wants a new murder trial claims he was tortured so badly by Chicago police officers in the 1990s that he would have signed anything, including his murder confession.
* OK, let’s start a fresh “doomsday budget” thread, shall we? That other one was getting too long. This is the full explanation from the governor’s office. Have at it…
“Slash and Burn” Budget Consequences
Balancing the fiscal year 2010 budget by using only a “slash and burn” approach will take a significant toll on the people of Illinois. In this grim budget scenario, Illinois meets requirements to tap American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding and provides limited state money necessary to attract other federal matching funds.
What follows are some of the dire consequences should this scorched-earth, cuts-only, approach be used to close the deficit:
Education – $1.5 billion cut – Over 14,300 teachers laid off
• Cut school aid by $568 million, causing more than 9,300 teachers to lose their jobs.
• Eliminate preschool for 100,000 children, causing more than 5,000 teachers to lose their jobs.
Higher Education – $554 million cut – Over 400,000 students affected
• Eliminate all state scholarships, including MAP grants, making college less affordable for 400,000 students.
Healthcare – $1.2 billion cut – Over 650,000 people lose healthcare
• Eliminate healthcare for 300,000 children and 175,000 parents, and Rx assistance for 172,000 seniors.
• Eliminate all healthcare subsidies for 78,000 retired teachers, university and state employees.
Seniors – $368 million cut – Over 271,000 seniors affected
• Cut Community Care program in half - 26,000 seniors would not receive services to help remain in their homes.
• Eliminate Elder Abuse and Neglect program - 11,000 cases would not be investigated.
• Eliminate Circuit Breaker program, cutting property tax relief for 271,000 seniors.
Veterans – $27 million cut – Over 150,000 veterans affected and 1,000 kicked out of veterans’ homes
• Close all four Illinois veterans’ homes, leaving over 1,000 veterans without critical care.
• Eliminate Traumatic Brain Injury & Post Traumatic Stress Disorder counseling and assistance program.
Public Safety – $294 million cut – Nearly 1,000 State Troopers laid off and 6,000 inmates released early
• Lay off nearly 1,000 State Troopers -50 percent of the force - and eliminate the 2010 class of 100 cadets.
• Release over 6,000 inmates early and close the Sheridan and Southwestern Drug Treatment facilities.
• Close four Department of Juvenile Justice facilities and release over 500 juveniles early.
Human Services – $769 million cut – Over 100,000 people affected
• Eliminate home services for 5,000 people with disabilities.
• Eliminate addiction treatment and prevention for 45,000 people.
• Close one out of every five Illinois Department of Human Services offices.
• Eliminate child care for 1,000 kids and increase co-pays for remaining children.
Economic Development – $549 million cut – Every mass transit district affected
• Eliminate all state funding for public transit and AMTRAK.
Agriculture and Natural Resources – $98 million cut – 60 parks and every museum closed
• Shut down half of the state parks and lay off one-third of frontline park staff, and close state museums.
• Eliminate state funding for Springfield and Du Quoin state fairs, 4-H and county fairs.
Local Government – $1 billion cut
• Eliminate state funding for local governments, reducing their ability to fund core services like law enforcement, fire service and garbage collection and offices like public defenders, county treasurers and state’s attorneys.
Additional– $1.1 billion cut
• Require additional deep reductions in agency services, eliminate support for numerous specialized programs and eliminate dozens of state boards, offices, commissions and agencies.
————————
• The two-year deficit from fiscal years 2009 and 2010 is $11.6 billion.
• Of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds that Illinois is receiving, $4.1 billion can be applied towards closing the $11.6 billion deficit.
• In this “Slash and Burn” budget scenario, the remaining deficit is closed with $7.5 billion in cuts that hurt the citizens of Illinois and further damage the economy.
* Gov. Pat Quinn, speaking today about legislators who refuse to support budgetary revenue increases….
“I would say to legislators who think we have to cut,” Quinn said, “Maybe they can take some of those prisoners home to their own houses when they get out of jail.” An audience of more than 500 people at the City Club of Chicago luncheon laughed at that line.
The governor’s doomsday proposal would let 6,000 prisoners out of jail early.
* 12:11 pm - Subscribers already have details and I’ll update this post after the governor’s noontime speech (expecting a release around oneish). From Melissa Hahn’s Twitter page…
Gov’s “doomsday” budget may be released today… thousands of teacher layoffs, massive cuts to public trans, health care, and state fair.
* 12:55 pm - From a press release…
”The Governor’s doomsday budget should serve as a wake up call to members of the General Assembly. Failure to take action to raise revenue before the session adjourns would mean catastrophic cuts to education, health care, home care, child care and countless other vital public services that millions of Illinois families depend on. Legislators who oppose cuts to these vital services need to get off the fence and on record today that they will support a fair tax plan that raises enough revenue to prevent this doomsday plan from becoming reality.”
- Keith Kelleher, SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana President
* 1:00 pm - While the governor is speaking today about doomsday budgets (including eliminating all money for the Illinois State Fair, the Illinois State Fair is set to announce its grandstand lineup on Wednesday. From a press release…
ILLINOIS STATE FAIR TO ANNOUNCE 2009 GRANDSTAND LINE-UP MAY 20
DATE: Wednesday, May 20, 11 a.m.
LOCATION: Artisan’s Building on the Illinois State Fairgrounds
DESCRIPTION: Illinois Agriculture Director Tom Jennings and Illinois State Fair Manager Amy Bliefnick will announce the 2009 Illinois State Fair theme and Grandstand entertainment line-up.
Apparently, the agencies aren’t yet synched up with the guv’s message of the day. Bad move.
* 1:13 pm - Senate Democratic “budgeteer” Donne Trotter talked to the press a few minutes ago about the governor’s “doomsday” proposal…
He also touched on how passing a tax hike is more difficult in the House than the Senate…
*** 1:22 pm *** We have a few details of the doomsday plan from ABC7…
laying off 14,300 teachers
closing veterans homes
closing half Illinois’ parks
eliminating Illinois State Fair funding
The governor’s proposed cuts would slash about 37-percent of the state budget. [Emphasis added]
That almost looks like it was cribbed from the “Extra” I put out an hour or so ago. But, whatever.
* 1:25 pm - From AFSCME…
“These cuts would devastate education, health care, public safety, human services and transportation. Tens of thousands of public-service workers would be laid off.
“In a terrible recession, with millions unemployed and demand for public services skyrocketing, President Obama understands that government needs to invest in America, protect public services and put people back to work.
“Legislators in Springfield need to show the same leadership. They must raise revenue to prevent devastating cuts, save public services and pay the state’s bills.”
*** 1:34 pm *** From the AP, with emphasis added since this is a long post…
[Quinn] says without that money [from a tax hike], 14,300 teachers and half of state police troopers could be laid off. He says 650,000 people would lose health care and 400,000 college students could lose state grants and scholarships.
*** 1:45 pm *** From Crain’s. Again, with emphasis added…
* 14,300 public school teachers would be laid off, a $1.5-billion cut.
* 400,000 college students would lose scholarship aid in a $554-million reduction.
* 650,000 people would lose health care benefits in cuts totaling $1.2 billion. * 271,000 seniors would not be taken care of in the wake of $368 million worth of reductions, cutting things like the state Department on Aging’s Circuit Breaker program, and services to help seniors remain in their homes and fight elderly abuse. * 6,000 prisoners would be let out of jail early. * $769 million in human services cuts would mean 5,000 disabled people would lose home care services and 45,000 people would no longer get addiction treatment and prevention.
* Mass transit cuts of $549 million would eliminate all public funding for public transit and Amtrak.
* Local aid to state government would be cut $1 billion.
* Another $1 billion in cuts have yet to be determined. […]
The cuts he detailed in his speech total about $7 billion.
That would pretty much take care of the FY10 deficit, but doesn’t really address the current fiscal year’s shortfall. In other words, the state will still be trying to catch up on bills for at least another year, but probably longer.Error. With new federal Medicaid and education cash, this does close the hole. Sorry about that.
…Adding… By zeroing out local governments, slashing school aid and mass transit subsidies, you can guarantee local tax hikes.
This doomsday proposal is, of course, an exercise and not the actual thing. But it does give you an idea of the hole we’re in.
When someone is arrested for a serious crime, police automatically take a set of fingerprints and no one thinks twice about it.
In close to 20 states — but not Illinois — the cops go a step further: They take a DNA sample from everyone who has been arrested for a serious crime but not yet tried. The FBI recently started to do the same.
That’s a reflection of just how valuable DNA has become as a way to catch the guilty — and exonerate the innocent. Experience shows that such databases stop criminals and solve cases.
Five years ago, Illinois tried to follow suit. The House approved a similar law only to watch it die in the Senate. Critics said such testing was an invasion of privacy for people who may have done nothing wrong.
Provides that every person arrested for committing a felony shall have a sample of his or her saliva or tissue taken for DNA fingerprinting analysis, at the time of booking, for the purpose of determining identity and for certain other specified purposes.
* The Question: Should the police be allowed to take a DNA sample after arresting someone for a felony? Explain fully, please.
* While this story has an interesting premise - the sworn testimony of a witness in Al Sanchez’s trial that House Speaker Michael Madigan put so many employees into the city’s Bureau of Electricity that it was called “Madigan Electric” - the evidence presented is somewhat slim…
In all, 16 employees of the bureau have contributed a total of $45,200 since 1997 to the speaker’s 13th Ward Democratic Organization and to Citizens for Lisa Madigan, according to campaign records.
That works out to $235.42 per year per employee. Not much.
But this statement is more than a bit weird…
“Madigan doesn’t have anything to do with hiring in Chicago,'’ says his spokesman, Steve Brown.
What? Nothing at all? The Speaker, a ward committeeman for decades, has nothing to do with city hiring?
Gov. Quinn’s office took the unusual step late Friday of retracting a letter of support for a West Side hospital expansion after drawing bipartisan criticism for personally promoting the project.
Quinn’s office sent a letter bearing his signature to the scandal-plagued Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, touting Hartgrove Hospital’s bid to build an 88-bed mental health facility at 520 N. Ridgeway.
His letter, dated March 5, praised the hospital’s “commitment to once again provide services in this community.” But it sparked serious questions about why he would personally intervene on a matter before a board that was ground zero in the corruption scandals that knocked former Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office.
Late Friday, Quinn’s office said the letter was written without his backing and said it shouldn’t have been sent to the board. A new letter correcting the original one would be sent immediately to the hospital construction board.
There’s nothing in the piece about who wrote the letter and put the governor’s name on it or whether that person has been punished. Curious, that.
* And the Daily Herald takes a fairly honest, if brief, look at some of the pros and cons of various ethics reforms today…
PRO: District lines drawn by a computer would lead to more candidates competing in more competitive elections. Instead of always re-electing incumbents, voters would get to choose from many candidates in races for Congress and the state legislature. Term limits for leaders would get new people in control of the chamber much more often and make the leaders less powerful than they are today.
CON: More candidates running in more-competitive races will require candidates to spend more money in election races. Leader term limits could backfire. Madigan is the only leader who stood up to Blagojevich and stopped him from gaining control of nearly $30 billion in project spending. A new, less-experienced leader might not be so willing to say “no” to a governor.
It’s been clear from the beginning that Gov. Pat Quinn muffed his budget rollout.
Instead of stressing the billion dollars or so in cuts he made and the additional cuts he might be open to, Quinn has repeatedly stressed the need for a 50 percent increase in the income tax rate and has flatly rejected additional budget reductions.
Polling conducted for the Senate Democrats reportedly shows voters want the exact opposite approach. First, make the cuts, then increase taxes if and only if they are absolutely necessary.
So, Quinn hasn’t made it any easier to wrap up the General Assembly’s business by May 31 and balance a budget that has a hole somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 billion.
Senate President John Cullerton said last week he believed two of the three major issues facing the General Assembly were going quite well. You’d never know it by hanging out at the Statehouse, but he was more upbeat than I’ve seen him in weeks.
An ethics reform bill is beginning to take shape as Cullerton negotiates with the governor and the governor’s reform commission.
The public works “capital” bill is also moving forward, Cullerton said. The leaders have agreed to a basic outline of revenue sources, including increasing the sales tax on most alcohol; a sales tax expansion to include candy, iced tea and beauty products; privatizing lottery management and allowing Internet lottery ticket sales; raising various vehicle registration and licensing fees; legalizing video poker and using road fund money that is currently spent elsewhere.
The big problem, Cullerton said, is the budget. And he’s certainly right about that. I could tell you lots of stories, but I’ll just pass along one.
I spent some time last week with a liberal African-American state Senator from Chicago who has historically fought attempts to cut the budget, but has never been directly involved with the budget-making process. The legislator, who is virtually assured of reelection, stunned everyone in the room by announcing that the General Assembly ought to just pass a budget and go home without a tax increase, no matter what the deficit or damage might be. The legislator couldn’t be convinced otherwise, even by a highly respected Democratic budget expert who was also in the room.
When a liberal who represents a district chock full of people who depend on state government services starts talking like that, you wonder how they’ll ever solve this budget crisis.
The mushrooms, as rank and file legislators are often called, aren’t restless. They’re an apoplectic mess.
Legislators elect their leaders to protect them from the harsh realities of political life. Leaders raise most of the money, they run the campaigns, they help members write legislation to benefit their districts or make them more popular with the folks back home. And they protect members from tough votes.
Nobody has taken a truly tough vote in the General Assembly since maybe 1983, when taxes were raised during a terrible recession. They’ve been spoiled rotten, coddled and shielded at every turn by leaders who have ignored the state’s problems until everything finally exploded at once with a fury unmatched since the state government went bankrupt in the 19th century. Nothing has prepared legislators as a group for the horrific votes they face this month.
Cullerton says he sees the way forward. He believes he can cut a deal with the reform commission that will keep the good government types and the editorial boards off his members’ backs through the 2010 election, and iron out the details of a massive public works program to create jobs and mollify the unions. Easier said than done, I know, yet he thinks that’s all within reach right now.
But then, as Cullerton says, there’s that budget problem.
Quinn has made things even more difficult by caving in too quickly to unions representing teachers and state employees. He had demanded that the workers pay an extra 2 percent of their salary into their pension funds. The unions pushed back hard, so Quinn announced he was dropping the idea after being roundly booed and heckled during a raucous teachers union rally.
An experienced negotiator would’ve made the teachers and state workers sweat it out until the end of the legislative session, and then handed them the concession. Now, they want more out of Quinn and he has little to give.
* Related…
* It’s always the greedy vs. the needy: When people talk about cutting government budgets, they don’t think about businesses like hers or the people she serves. They think if budgets are cut the fat will be trimmed. The patronage workers will be fired. The slackers will be shown the door. And wouldn’t that be great? But the world doesn’t work like that, and we all know it.
As federal regulators hold fast to their claim that a chemical in baby bottles is safe, e-mails obtained by the Journal Sentinel show that they relied on chemical industry lobbyists to examine bisphenol A’s risks, track legislation to ban it and even monitor press coverage.
In one instance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s deputy director sought information from the BPA industry’s chief lobbyist to discredit a Japanese study that found it caused miscarriages in workers who were exposed to it. This was before government scientists even had a chance to review the study.
Almost a quarter of children in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood have asthma. That’s about twice the national average. A hospital in the neighborhood is taking a novel approach to the problem. It’s pressuring some landlords to clean up conditions that can trigger asthma.
“A lot of times you can simply run the tree limbs through a chipper and dispose of the debris quickly,” Land said. “There were 100-year-old oak trees that were uprooted, with root balls that would fill up a dump truck. I say that if we can get all of the debris cleaned up by December, it will be a pretty good Christmas present.”
The CTA will transfer almost $129 million in cash originally earmarked for station fixups and new buses to help fill $155 million budget hole this year.
The mural was a painting of three Chicago Police Department blue light camera’s that you see on light posts in high crime areas. The Chicago Police logo is on the cameras but then the artist also painted Jesus on one post, a deer head on another, and a skull on the third camera. What the mural is supposed to mean is anyone’s guess. Angeles agrees that it’s a rather inscrutable work of art but he liked it and he says he feels bad for the artist.
Teachers at three Chicago charter schools are on a course to become the first unionized charter teachers in the city. They still have legal hurdles to overcome. But if they get to negotiate a contract, it’s likely to look dramatically different than traditional teacher union contracts.
The department and UIC are promising that those who participate in the survey won’t be identified, although they will have to input a code to allow the department to measure responses by years of service and unit.
Though the FOP helped draft the survey, Dougherty said the union hasn’t endorsed the survey for its members because it wasn’t allowed to take part in the collection of the surveys.
As long as she lives, Patricia Fasula can never work for the City of Chicago.
That was her punishment for filing bogus documents to convince city officials that she — and not her husband — owned and operated Patricia Trucking, one of several “women-owned businesses” in the city’s scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program.
But Fasula is still a $58,816-a-year accountant for Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, where she was working when she and her husband set up their trucking company out of their Bridgeport home.
Similarly, Fasula’s husband, John Fasula — who had told the Chicago Sun-Times he helped run the trucking company — still works for the CTA, where he makes $89,705 a year as manager of grounds maintenance. He was working for the CTA when the Hired Truck scandal erupted five years ago, and officials of the transit agency seized his computer then to see if he was running the trucking company from his CTA office.
“That’s all over the country where you could sell [affordable] housing. We changed that,” he said. “Every [affordable housing] development, all developments did it in the country. That is not acceptable.”
Daley said the federal government should impose similar restrictions nationally.
The County Board recently voted 12-3 to kill the tax hike. Board President Todd Stroger vetoed that action. And on Tuesday the board is scheduled to decide whether to override his veto.
–That veto override is the Tuesday vote that matters most. Stroger’s allies on the board don’t want you to believe that. They want you to think they’re swell compromisers: As part of their ceaseless effort to confuse this discussion and confound the public will, they’re offering a slow-mo alternative that would phase out the tax gradually. Don’t fall for this. The moment the 2010 election is over and the heat from victimized taxpayers subsides, they’ll surely try to undo any phase-out. In the meantime, they won’t have to do the necessary streamlining of county government. Why? Because your tax dollars will still be washing through their door by the hundreds of millions.
Asked why he hadn’t set up a payment plan earlier, Stroger replied, “Sometimes things slip through your fingers.”
Although the lien filed by the IRS read “Area: Business/self-employed,” Stroger told Kelley his family has no other outside income or job other than his job with the county and his wife’s job at the Illinois secretary of state’s office.
Stroger said he would not release tax forms and said other officials who do, like Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, are doing more than they’re required.
“I think they’re making a mistake. It’s really none of your business,” said Stroger.
* My new favorite iPhone app by far is Vlingo. It’s not only a very accurate and effective voice dialer, but it’ll do voice-activated Google searches and I’ve been able to post updates at Twitter and FaceBook with my voice.
As Ron Popeil used to say: “Simply amazing.”
I’m hoping they’ll add texting and e-mailing capability and then it’ll be almost perfect.
Vlingo also apparently works with Blackberry and Nokia. Go check it out.
* Kudos to Mark Brown for pointing out something that desperately needs to be said over and over again. It takes more than a change in legislation or the process to clean up Illinois govenrment. Much more. As his prime example, Brown reexamines Mayor Daley’s widely ridiculed comment from the other day that the city is “leading by example” on ethics reform and doesn’t need to look to the governor’s reform commission for advice.
When it comes to enacting legal and procedural ethics reforms, Daley has been a step ahead of most government officials in Illinois, if always a step behind the scandal that prompted him to take action. Time and again, the mayor has been at the forefront, whether it was putting city contracting data online, imposing his own campaign contribution limits or requiring lobbyists disclosure.
Am I trying to tell you he has run an ethical government? Far from it.
But you would be hard-pressed to name anybody in Illinois more adept at papering over corruption scandals with reform measures, some of which have even been useful.
And in that regard, Daley’s reform example is a cautionary tale on the limitations of what we should expect to result from whatever reforms are enacted by the General Assembly in the next few weeks. […]
Over the past two decades, Daley has “reformed” the hell out of City Hall — on paper — and yet I’d guess there’s not many of you who believe Chicago government is any more honest below the surface than when he started.
Exactly. Should there be reforms? Yes. Should we expect that they’ll stop crooks like Rod Blagojevich? Heck no. Go read the whole thing.
* The Daily Herald surveyed all of its legislators in its readership area and found broad support for most of the reform commission’s report…
Responding to a Daily Herald survey, suburban lawmakers overwhelmingly support the bulk of the ideas put forth in a recent ethics reform report that good-government groups are trying to enact in the wake of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s arrest, impeachment and ouster from office. […]
The most contentious issue among those surveyed was the idea of giving county prosecutors greater powers to eavesdrop and wiretap in much the same way federal authorities go after corruption. Out of the 47 suburban lawmakers surveyed, a dozen said “no” to the idea and another 10 had serious questions or were unsure. […]
“How far will ‘big brother’ go?” asked state Sen. Carole Pankau, an Itasca Republican. […]
State Sen. Dan Cronin, an Elmhurst Republican, said a central contracting person is not a guarantee against abuse, noting that Gov. Blagojevich essentially tried to do the same thing with more sinister motivations.
You can see a larger version of this flash file by clicking here…
* Related…
* Ethics commission member expresses some reservations
* State Employee Salaries: This searchable database contains job and salary information for over 82,000 Illinois state employees in calendar year 2008, reflecting the amount each employee made that year
* Marin: Tell legislators what’s at stake: their jobs
* The possibility of a do-nothing budget takes front and center in two weekend columns from longtime Statehouse reporters. First, Kurt Erickson…
Could Illinois lawmakers leave Springfield on May 31 without approving an income tax hike to help bail the state out of its deficit-addled condition? With two weeks to go before lawmakers are scheduled to adjourn for the spring, that possibility seemed very real last week.
Here’s an example: State Rep. Frank Mautino, R-Spring Valley, entered a hearing room in the Capitol to present a bill to a House committee.
Before he sat down to present his proposal, he told a lobbyist that Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed 50 percent hike in the income tax hike was going nowhere.
Mautino’s alternative: Legalize video poker.
Video poker would raise maybe $500 million in time… maybe. An income tax hike, whether the 1.5 percent proposed by Quinn or the alternate 1 percent floated by Senate President John Cullerton, would bring in more than $3 billion. That’s a whole lot of extra cutting.
Given the amount of work still to do, you have to figure it’s even odds Cullerton will fail [to adjourn by May 29th]. All four legislative leaders met together (a rarity) Friday and apparently agreed to go full speed ahead on ethics reforms and a capital plan, and both of those may be close to agreement.
But from the way Cullerton and others talked, the basic state budget is another matter.
Lawmakers could always decide just to punt, slap together a budget they know isn’t balanced, drop it on the governor’s desk and let him work it out. We’ve all seen how well that idea worked when they did it in 2008.
The budget is, indeed, the big problem. My own syndicated column talks about this, and quotes Cullerton on that problem. We’ll get to that tomorrow.
* Progress Illinois recently pointed to this quote by a Chicago legislator which may be quite accurate…
[Rep. Greg] Harris estimates there are currently 42 state representatives in support of the income tax increases needed to avoid programming cuts. The measure would need 60 votes to pass in the State House this month or a supermajority of 71 votes to pass after May 31.
It’s definitely an uphill climb.
* This lede is exactly why the governor and others want to exclude beer from any sales tax increase and just hike the tax on wine and liquor…
Look out, Joe Sixpack. The taxman is looking for you.
Key legislative leaders contemplated hiking the state’s tax on beer by 2.6 cents per six pack for the first time in a decade to help underwrite a proposed multibillion-dollar statewide construction program.
Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) confirmed talk of a beer tax, which would be part of a trio of liquor tax increases under consideration. Taxes of 13 cents per bottle of wine and 80 cents per bottle of hard liquor have been on the table.
“The beer people feel left out so we’re considering adding them,” Cullerton quipped.
That’s a silly thing to say by Cullerton. All he’s gonna do is make the reaction even more heated.
* And Kristen McQueary takes a look at the vote against Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s pension reform bill last week, which is hotly opposed by AFSCME and the teachers unions. The Republicans were the ones voting “No”…
Funny, isn’t it? That the Democrats, supposedly moored to labor unions, are spearheading pension reform, and the Republicans on McCarthy’s committee were the ones voting against it?
The Republicans who voted “no” were Raymond Poe and Rich Brauer, of Springfield, Dan Brady, of Bloomington, and Michael McAuliffe, of Chicago’s Northwest Side.
Now that’s political ideology upside-down. Welcome to Springfield.
Actually, that’s not so odd. Poe and Brauer both represent Springfield. Brady represents a public university and most of its employees. McAuliffe has been regularly endorsed by the AFL-CIO.
* Here’s a video I shared with subscribers on Friday. It’s Senate GOP Leader Christine Radogno talking about what the leaders have decided so far on capital bill funding…
