JUST IN: Federal judge orders the arrest of two operatives of House Speaker Michael Madigan's political organization, saying they're in contempt for failing to appear for depositions in a civil lawsuit over an alleged sham candidate scheme.
* One of those being sought is Joe Nasella, who circulated petitions for the alleged put-up candidate Grasiela Rodriguez in the 2016 Democratic primary. Jason Gonzales finished second in that primary and he’s now suing Madigan’s organization.
Nasella has proved to be elusive. From last month…
Two of the people named on nominating petitions as gathering signatures for Rodriguez, Frank Glass and Joseph Nasella, have been paid by Madigan-controlled political funds, state records show. […]
Gonzales’ attorneys have sought Nasella’s deposition, according to court records. So far, he has not sat for questioning, though Peraica told the Tribune that Nasella was served with a request after several months of failed attempts.
* The other person being sought is Mike Kuba, who also apparently circulated petitions for Rodriguez. From the order of contempt and body attachment…
To effectuate this order, the United States Marshal is authorized to use necessary and reasonable force in entering and searching the premises in which Michael Kuba may be found.
Upon the arrest of Michael Kuba, the United States Marshal shall provide him with a copy of this order and bring him immediately before a United States district or magistrate judge in the district or districts in which he has been taken into custody. If Michael Kuba is found within the Northern District of Illinois he is to be brought before this court. The United States Marshal finally shall, to the extent feasible, notify the attorneys for the Plaintiff of the time and place that the Michael Kuba will be brought before the district or magistrate judge. Upon receipt of said notice, Plaintiff’s counsel is directed to immediately notify counsel for all Defendants by email.
Harsh.
Neither are apparently current members of the 13th Ward Organization. Nasella was a member, but was “dismissed” a “year or so ago,” I’m told by the Madigan camp.
Some potholes on Interstate 255 in Cahokia are so bad, drivers got flat tires Monday morning.
Illinois Department of Transportation crews are on the scene to make a fix. They’ve closed the far right lane of northbound I-255 just south of Illinois 157.
The road has crumbled away so much, the metal grid is visible in one of the largest potholes, and you can look down into the hole.
IDOT called it a ‘full-depth failure of the roadway.’ The agency said it’s not known how long they’ll need to keep the lane closed to fix the problem.
As state comptroller, I warned Governor Blagojevich about overspending, but he wouldn’t listen. That governor’s gone, but our problems aren’t. Pat Quinn thinks the answer is to pass a 50 percent tax increase on every Illinois family. I’m running for governor because I have a better plan. We can balance the budget by cutting waste line by line and only raising income taxes on people making more than $200,000. We can fix this mess and protect the middle class.
Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes launched his campaign for governor Wednesday by proposing a ‘progressive’ income tax that would more than double the rate paid by millionaires. Hynes’ plan would change the state’s income tax from a flat 3 percent to one that tops out at 7 percent. … Hynes laid out a six-step plan to fix Illinois’ finances. The first leg raises the income tax on only 3 percent of the state’s residents, those making more than $200,000 a year, he said.
So, 97 percent wouldn’t get a tax hike, eh? Sound familiar? Hynes is now JB Pritzker’s deputy governor and Pritzker has proposed that very same framework, although the governor’s new plan starts out at $250,000 and rates top out at 7.95 percent.
Hynes said he’s proposing to cut the state budget back to 2005 levels.
Considering the state of the economy at that time, I seriously doubt he could’ve pulled that off. Still, maybe Hynes could go back to his old notes and give the new governor some advice.
Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s office on Monday launched its Public Accountability Report, which houses 15 years worth of spending data on various categories and state agencies.
For the category “Human Services,” the state spent $21 billion in Fiscal Year 2007. For all spending, including federal dollars, the state spent $52.4 billion in ‘07. In Fiscal Year 2017, the state spent $26 billion in “Human Services.” For all spending, including federal funds, the state spent $73.9 billion.
For the category “Higher Education,” the state spent $2.4 billion in 2007. It spent about $100 million less ten years later, or a total of $2.3 billion.
That Human Services category includes Medicaid and medical costs always outpace inflation. Also, if you factor in CPI, level spending on $2.4 billion for higher education in 2007 would be $2.82 billion in 2017 - half a billion less than what it got.
* We’ve already discussed the TRS statement in question, but this is a new story from the Illinois News Network…
In a statement, the entire board of the Teachers Retirement System of Illinois, which manages the retirement funds for all public teachers except those in Chicago, condemned Pritzker’s proposal to short the accounts by hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming fiscal year.
“The system is at a growing risk of insolvency in the event of an economic downturn,” it read. “This danger is the direct result of eight decades of state contributions that always have fallen far short of actuarially based funding. TRS long-term investment returns consistently exceed the system’s expectations; but investment income alone will not be enough to prevent insolvency.”
State Rep. Steve Reick, R-Woodstock, told lawmakers on the House Floor that they’re ignoring the problem and need to begin examining where state money is sent in lieu of properly funding pensions.
“This is the first time any of our pension systems have ever used that word,” he said, referring to the use of the term “insolvency” by TRS. “Where are the audits of outside vendors to show that the money that we’re giving them is actually being spent wisely? Before we raise one dime in taxes, we owe the people of Illinois the privilege of knowing how we spend their money.”
Some lawmakers applauded. No official action was taken.
* A search of the TRS website shows the pension fund has actually been using a version of the word “insolvent” for over 6 years…
December 19, 2012
Dear TRS Members:
This report summarizes the financial condition, investments, actuarial conclusions and statistical information about members, school districts, revenues and benefits for TRS during the past fiscal year. […]
Our members and Illinois taxpayers deserve a solution that puts TRS on permanently sound financial footing. There are no magic answers awaiting discovery, only tough choices. In response to this situation, the TRS Board of Trustees in 2012 approved a resolution that acknowledged the threat of insolvency due to these fiscal challenges.
“The changes enacted this year in the pension funding formula move TRS further away from financial stability and continue to kick the can down the road. Period,” said Dick Ingram, executive director of TRS. “Cutting the state’s contribution only increases our concern that TRS will eventually become insolvent.”
The TRS unfunded liability in FY 2012 was 40.6 percent. It was 40.2 percent in Fiscal Year 2017.
And now you may see why some folks say using the word “crisis” when talking about the pension issue can be counter-productive and force the General Assembly to take hasty action that doesn’t really do much. Also, crying “Wolf!” might do more harm than good. It certainly hasn’t done much good so far.
* To be clear here, this is a very real and truly vexing problem. And skipping almost $900 million in pension payments for seven years, as the governor proposes doing, is only gonna make it worse.
What we need to do is pay into the freaking system and stop the gimmicks and the scare tactics. Neither are getting us anywhere. You wanna help? Find $2 billion a year. Auditing state contractors ain’t gonna do that.
With just a week to go until voters head to the polls, former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot holds a commanding lead in the race for mayor, according to results of a Temkin/Harris poll, conducted in partnership with Crain’s and WTTW.
But there’s trouble ahead for whoever is elected on one of the top issues they’ll have to face: fiscal pressures. An eyebrow-raising 40 percent of those surveyed say they oppose raising taxes to pay for pensions for city workers and Chicago Public School teachers—something that the new mayor almost certainly will have to do. […]
The survey asked voters which programs they would be willing to support with higher taxes. Better roads and other infrastructure fixes got the highest support, 71 percent, followed by mental health and public schools at 69 percent each and more police at 60 percent. Taxes for pensions got the lowest support, 57 percent. It also got the highest “disagree” figure, with 29 percent of voters saying they strongly disagree with more taxes for pensions and another 11 percent indicating they somewhat disagree.
After all the screaming over lo these many years by the pundits about the high cost of public pensions, the fact that 57 percent of Chicagoans say funding the pensions of city workers and public school teachers is “something you personally would be willing to pay higher taxes to get” strikes me as pretty darned good, particularly if a popular mayor is behind the push.
Also, infrastructure, mental health treatment and schools always score high. Everybody wants that stuff. Nobody supposedly wants to make pension payments. That’s usually seen as forcing an unwillling populace to ingest bitter medicine. The fact that 57 percent said they could stomach that medicine is, in this context, surprising to me.
* What also jumped out at me was that, after a decade of wall-to-wall reporting about Chicago’s crime problem, fewer Chicagoans, 29 percent, said they “strongly” support higher taxes for “more police officers patrolling city neighborhoods” than the 31 percent who said the same about pensions. Seems counter-intuitive, but numbers is numbers.
In the end, though, the 57 percent who backed higher taxes for pensions was within the +/- 4.4 percent margin of error of the 60 percent overall who supported more money for cops. Same goes for the strongly support and strongly oppose numbers for both categories, and for the overall opposition (40 percent for pensions, 38 percent for more police).
Gov. Bruce Rauner said Wednesday the state is taking “aggressive action” to keep residents safe at the Quincy Veterans’ Home, but declined to say if he bears any moral responsibility after more cases of Legionnaires’ disease were found at the facility following a 2015 outbreak that left a dozen people dead. […]
On Wednesday, Rauner said the state is following all recommended procedures from the CDC and that it was due to increased testing for the bacteria that new cases have been identified, not necessarily because of remediation failures involving some pipes at the facility that are more than a century old.
In December 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended point-of-use filter installation on all fixtures fed from the potable hot-water system. Filters were not installed on all fixtures other than the showers until after the February 2018 outbreak, in April 2018.
That would be four months after Rauner claimed that the state was doing everything the CDC said it should do.
9:52 AM 1st confirmed case of legionellosis from the Quincy Veterans’ Home (IVHQ).
Hot water tank number 2 has been out of service since the beginning of July due to a valve issue. The tank is unheated and was cycled back into service on this day.
That’s the hot water tank which pumped a “broth of Legionella” into the facility, but nobody realized it at the time.
A second legionellosis case was identified on August 21st. Officials determined the following day that the two cases weren’t related and they appeared to relax a little…
IDPH Director emails the IDVA Director stating: “While this situation is serious because it involves lives, it is not unprecedented or atypical. Legionella is a risk in any situation of this sort. You may have seen that the City of New York has been grappling with a major outbreak. Even in Illinois, we are dealing with another set of cases at a prison facility. Fortunately, Legionella is a disease we know how to diagnose and treat. And from an epidemiology standpoint, we know how to track it down.”
The next day, however, 3 more residents tested positive. And 3 more tested positive the following day. By the morning off August 25th, 10 residents were in the hospital. By early afternoon, 11 residents were in the hospital, with 3 of those in ICU. On August 26th, they finally began to suspect the water heater, with 18 people now in the hospital. But no conclusive evidence is found until September 2nd. By then, 7 people had died and 45 confirmed cases had been identified.
IDPH did not go on-site at Quincy Veterans’ Home until midday on Monday, August 24. That was nearly 3 days (approximately 67 hours) after the 2nd case was confirmed late in the afternoon on August 21st. […]
Based on our review of communications between IDPH and the Quincy Veterans’ Home, auditors determined that there was limited communication between IDPH management and the Quincy Veterans’ Home staff. As identified in our timeline in Chapter 2, IDPH officials often did not know the seriousness of the problem at the Quincy Veterans’ Home
Additionally, more than a week after multiple Legionnaires’ cases were confirmed, former state Public Health Director Nirav Shah concluded that he did not “think it’s necessary right now” to call in the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assist in the 2015 outbreak, according to the audit.
At that point, Aug. 28, 2015, two people had died from Legionnaires’, and 29 residents and staff had tested positive for Legionella. By the end of the next day, Shah reversed course and recommended that the CDC be brought in to assist the state, the report said.
Since 2015, 66 residents and eight staff members were sickened in rolling Legionnaires’ outbreaks at the facility, with 13 deaths directly attributable to the pneumonia-like illness tied to Legionnaires’. Another resident died in 2018, several months after being sickened by Legionnaires’.
* Gov. JB Pritzker has used variations on the word “stability” a lot since taking office, and he has often cited his graduated income tax proposal as part of that road to what I would concur is much-needed stability for the state…
Pritzker is expecting the state to take in $3.4 billion in additional revenue through this system and says it will provide a climate of stability for skittish business owners.
“The most important thing we are accomplishing is stabilizing the finances of the state,” Pritzker said.
But does his graduated income tax proposal do that? Revenues from the flat tax, some contend, are more stable and predictable. But why?
* Well, the Civic Federation took a look at the latest information released by Gov. Pritzker’s office and found that it contains a “heavy reliance on volatile high incomes.” From the report…
While the top income band [$500,001 or more] had the highest growth [8.45 percent average annual growth], it also swung from a maximum of over 39% in 2012 to loss of almost 18% the following year. The reason for this volatility is that upper incomes depend more on investment and business income, which varies with stock market performance and the business cycle. Lower income ranges, which rely more heavily on labor income, are more stable from year to year. In a recent analysis of Illinois’ economic outlook, Moody’s Analytics pointed to the State’s current above-average reliance on non-wage income such as dividends and interest and its vulnerability to a downturn in the stock market.
Upper-income volatility has important implications for the Governor’s plan, which concentrates its tax increases on the highest earners. While a top-heavy tax structure will lead to higher revenues on average, it will also increase their variance, as explained in a 2014 study by the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. As the General Assembly weighs the Governor’s proposal it should consider the impact on revenue volatility and make appropriate plans, such as building up a rainy day fund.
* I woke up Sunday morning, logged on to the Twitter machine and saw this…
Police were called to a loud party in the 4500 block of N. Damen at 10:50 p.m. last night. Officers were informed that @JBPritzker and other politicians were present and their party WILL continue until 2 a.m. #Chicago#PartyClout
Chicago police officers responded late Saturday to a call of a loud residential party with city officials in attendance.
Officers were called about 10:32 p.m. to the residence in the 4500 block of North Damen Avenue, Chicago police said. City officials were confirmed to be present at the gathering, but police declined to confirm their identities.
Officers coded the call after responding, police said, meaning that no paperwork was submitted to document the incident. City ordinances state that officers can’t issue citations for noise complaints before 11 p.m. on weekends, police said.
Officers later responded to two more calls of a loud party at a different address in the same block, and those responses were also coded, police said. When police arrived at the location they found no one there, police said.
Not even sure why the coppers showed up the first time if they couldn’t issue a citation. Better safe than sorry, I suppose. Anyway, at that point I moved on to deal with more newsworthy issues.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker officiated the wedding of friends Ron Huberman and Darren DeJong on Saturday. The small, intimate gathering included the couple’s children and close friends.
Huberman is the former chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley and held jobs at Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Transit Authority before making the leap into the private sector. He’s now CEO of Benchmark Analytics, a company that provides analytics software to police departments.
He and DeJong have been partners for about 15 years and have been talking about tying the knot ever since Illinois passed the marriage equality law back in 2013.
Small as it was, the wedding party was boisterous enough to prompt a complaint to police about noise. That was at about 10:30 p.m. — after Pritzker had departed. Officers didn’t file paperwork on the call given they’re not required to issue citations about noise before 11 p.m. Besides — it was a wedding!
During his first six weeks in office, Pritzker’s appointment calendar includes 70 “attire” recommendations for events as varied as bill signings, a state police officer’s funeral, a White House dinner, surveying flood damage, and cocktails with legislators at the Illinois Governor’s Mansion.
Pritzker, among the nation’s 400 richest people, needs sartorial suggestions?
He’s not alone. Joseph Rosenfeld, a fashion and personal style strategist in New York who’s from the Illinois city of Buffalo Grove, maps out wardrobes with all his C-Suite executives. “It comes back to one basic premise: relatability,” he said.
Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said staff members get suggestions from organizers of the governor’s events, but the governor ultimately decides what to wear.
Fifty-five of the recommendations on the calendar, disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, were simply, “Business: suit and tie.” Khakis, “button-down and pullover,” and “polo with Columbia jacket” also make the mix. The Democrat was advised to forgo neckwear when he hosted dinner for union leaders, but “Bring extra tie options” was the note on Feb. 9, the day of his official portrait.
Despite his girth, Pritzker keeps his ties at a proper length, avoiding the long necktie look that President Donald Trump favors.
Despite his girth?
* I checked with a pal who worked for Gov. Rauner to see if they ever recommended attire…
Yes, we had a dress code… so we would just put business casual, formal, no tie, casual, and if there was a specific thing like a color for an ethnic event, we would note that too.
He also ignored it half the time.
I mean, do you honestly think our team would have told him to wear some of that God-awful [stuff] he wore?
Heh. True. The dude was often inappropriately attired. And he occasionally caught heck for it.
* This may be a revelation to the average person, but all advance teams do a version of this. Advance teams, by definition, make sure that their principals are as prepared for an event as much as an event is prepared for their principals. It’s pretty simple and basic, really. Normal, even.
But, this’ll probably stick because it’s an easy way to make fun of the governor. He actually has to be told what to wear? Really?!
Such is life. He wanted the job. And when you put these suggestions into a FOIA-able document, this can happen.
* Former Sen. Rickey Hendon will tell you until his dying day that he did more to elect Pat Quinn governor in 2010 than anything or anyone else. You may recall that Hendon called Quinn’s Republican opponent Sen. Bill Brady an “idiotic racist” while introducing Gov. Quinn at a campaign event.
The resulting uproar was huge and Hendon claims it broke through the clutter and allowed black folks to hear it loud and clear.
Much of Chicago’s African-American political establishment united around mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle at a raucous South Side campaign rally Saturday that aimed to convince the city’s black voters that her opponent, Lori Lightfoot, wouldn’t look out for their best interests. […]
The most fiery speech of the day came from [Congressman Bobby Rush], the 72-year-old South Side congressman and former Black Panther leader. He repeatedly dismissed Lightfoot’s campaign for change, referring to her as “symbolic change,” “counterfeit change” and “chump change” in comparison with Preckwinkle, who he said represented “real change.”
Rush said he considered Lightfoot “chump change,” because she has the backing of 19th Ward Ald. Matt O’Shea and, by extension, the city’s police officers, many of whom live in those predominantly white Southwest Side neighborhoods. Rush also told the crowd that Lightfoot wouldn’t demand strong changes as part of the federal consent decree, in which a federal judge will oversee reforms in the Chicago Police Department following a civil rights investigation that found widespread excessive force and misconduct by officers against the city’s minority residents. […]
“The opposing candidate is representing the FOP,” Rush said as the crowd booed. “If you want the FOP, then you’ll vote for Lori.”
Contact: Rev Emma Lozano, 773/xxx-xxxx, Sara Walker 773/xxx-xxxx
TONI PRECKWINKLE: CANDIDATE OF AN HISTORIC MOVEMENT
Congressman Bobbly Rush and Congressman Danny K Davis will join Rev Emma Lozano to endorse Toni Preckwinkle for mayor in the upcoming election. “We are here in front of the Rudy Lozano Library,” said Rev Lozano, to remember and to revive the historic coalition my brother, Rodolfo Lozano, began with now Congressman Danny K Davis to launch the Harold Washington Campaign.
That Black/Latino Coalition turned the City back towards its neighborhoods – and towards our Latino community. It began the policies that have made Chicago a sanctuary city and brought new respect to the Latino community.
Toni Preckwinkle is the right person to lead that movement back to City Hall. She is a fighter, a machine buster – and a consistent friend of our community.
Lozano concluded, “Politics sometimes get people confused. Don’t worry, Toni. WE ARE ALL COMING HOME!
So, they’re gonna do it again.
* Preckwinkle is not spending a dime on TV ads and Lightfoot’s lead looks insurmountable…
Half of Chicagoans believe the city is “on the wrong track,” according to a new poll of registered voters, which also indicates that Lori Lightfoot will win the charge of getting the city on the right track as Chicago’s next mayor.
Lightfoot leads Toni Preckwinkle by a whopping margin of 53 percent to 17 percent, according to the results of a WTTW/Crain’s Temkin/Harris poll, released Monday.
But with another 29 percent still undecided in the runoff race for mayor, Preckwinkle stands to gain ground enough that Lightfoot won’t necessarily cruise to a 36-point victory.
“The 29 percent of voters who say they are undecided are more likely to be black or under age 50,” pollster Jill Normington said via email. “Both of those groups are stronger supporters of Preckwinkle than the overall electorate indicating that she has more room to grow among the votes that are left.”
Should proponents of legalizing cannabis in Illinois be worried about Rep. Marty Moylan’s, D-Des Plaines, House resolution?
The resolution, HR157, urges legislators “to slow the process of legalizing recreational marijuana in Illinois.”
Moylan’s resolution now has 60 sponsors and co-sponsors, which is a majority of the House’s 118 members. In theory, anyway, it has enough votes to pass.
One of Moylan’s newest co-sponsors is Rep. Carol Ammons, D-Urbana, who has her own, very liberal legalization bill (HB902). Ammons noted last week that her own legislation hasn’t moved (she currently has no co-sponsors) and wants assurances that some concerns are addressed before the main bill starts to advance. Those concerns include a social justice component that would do things like expunge criminal records.
The Chicago chapter of NORML is arguing for things like “social consumption without police harassment.” But public consumption seems somewhat unlikely at this point because of heavy opposition from the police, among others. Without that, however, tourists will have no way of legally smoking or vaping the product because most hotels will likely (if Colorado is any guide) ban its usage.
Frankly, my own opinion is we should be treating cannabis somewhat the same way that we treat other legal and regulated substances. We allow cigar bars, so we should allow at least some licensed weed-smoking establishments. Everybody’s always talking about how we don’t have enough jobs in this state, so create some jobs, already.
Left-leaning groups are also legitimately concerned that the industry will be overrun by rich people and huge corporations, crowding out people who live in poor areas and minorities in general. Big companies are dumping huge amounts of money into this industry. I’m all for people making money, but the wealth needs to be spread around on this one, particularly since the folks living in those neighborhoods have borne the brunt of the misguided and over-zealous “war” on drugs.
Moylan’s resolution has been assigned to the House Judiciary-Criminal Committee. Just one of Moylan’s Democratic co-sponsors (Rockford Rep. Maurice West) sits on that committee. So, it seems unlikely to pass. However, Moylan could press to have the resolution discharged from committee to the House floor, which will require 60 signatures.
Would it pass if it did get to the floor? Well, I do know that at least some Republicans signed on as co-sponsors to send a message to Gov. Pritzker. They didn’t like how the governor steamrolled his minimum wage increase bill through the General Assembly and they want to make extra sure he knows he shouldn’t try to do it again with cannabis. It’s a good point, and one I would echo.
While legalization should not ever be considered any sort of be-all, end-all state fiscal solution, it is an integral part of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s budget proposal, so you can probably expect Democratic legislative leadership to weigh in on this eventually and quietly slow down the slow-downers.
After years of remaining coy, House Speaker Michael Madigan finally came out for legalization shortly after Pritzker was elected last year. Some even believe that Pritzker’s election convinced Madigan to get with the program.
Rep. Moylan has never made any bones about being a Madigan guy. Well, except for that time during last year’s campaign when he denied taking Madigan’s money when he had. The opposition ran a TV ad last year that included video of Moylan joyfully leading cheers for Madigan at a Springfield event.
Because of that, folks have been wondering ever since Moylan started this quest whether he was “really” doing Madigan some sort of favor. Is he trying, for instance, to force the governor into bending to Madigan somehow?
It’s more likely that Moylan is simply doing what he always likes to do: Get publicity for himself. The man, like many folks in Springfield, is a bit of a media hound. He works very hard at that. And keep in mind that both Chicago newspapers have published editorials this year asking that the process be slowed down, so that’s perfect for him during endorsement time if he picks up another challenger next year. We’ll just have to wait and see if and/or when Madigan ever yanks his chain.
But the whole idea that this process has moved too fast is just ridiculous on its face. Negotiations between legislators and stakeholders began about two years ago. And the governor’s office only began convening meetings a couple of weeks ago.
If people want their issues addressed, they should get themselves to the bargaining table.
Though State Rep. Marty Moylan (D-Des Plaines) last week received enough co-sponsors to pass a resolution to urge a “slowdown” on the legalization effort, support for the issue is stronger than opposition to it
