Bob Pritchard, a Republican state rep from Hinckley, serves on five different education committees, and was on Gov. Bruce Rauner’s school funding reform commission. You could say education is one of his key issues. But on the state’s 700th day without a budget, he called on schools to close.
“We have to create a crisis. And it is going to be a crisis,” he said. “I don’t want the schools not to open. But we’ve tried everything else. There’s been all kinds of lobbying groups down here, talking about higher education, talking about mental health, talking about elderly services and child care services, and it doesn’t move the needle.”
Pritchard helped develop the school funding plan (he was chief co-sponsor of the major school funding initiative that passed the House), but when it came time to vote, he didn’t. Republicans called the plan a Chicago bailout, and most voted no. But Pritchard says the plan just needs work, and there’s no way he’d vote against it.
No funding for local school district by the end of the summer might finally be enough to bring an end to a state budget impasse entering its third year, a local lawmaker suggested Friday.
“I think that’s the pressure point,” state Sen. Dave Koehler said during a news conference at his Labor Temple office. “… I think that if it takes closing the schools down in September to get this crisis resolved, then that’s what it takes.”
I’m pretty sure Koehler said the same thing last year at around this same time.
Sen. Steve Stadelman, D-Rockford, said what is likely to happen is passage of a stopgap spending bill that keeps state services running for six months or a year.
“We’re going to have to find a way to make sure schools open and universities get funding. The governor agreed to a stopgap-spending bill last year, and if we can’t get a full budget passed then our focus has to be on that,” Stadelman said.
We now need 71 votes for a budget so it’s harder, but I not giving up. I’m not going to blame the Democrats, the Republicans or the Governor. I’m simply going to keep moving forward to push for a deal.
One pressure point is funding for our schools. If our schools don’t open due to funding, the people will, I hope, rise up like never before. All people from all areas of the state need to rise up and demand a budget. And if that happens, the legislative branch and the executive branch will have to bow to that pressure and we will get a deal.
As such, I will not support a stopgap measure to fund the schools. We either get a full balanced budget now or the schools should not open.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley said Monday that Russian operatives hacked into the State Board of Elections last year to view voter database files, a potential move toward trying to make voters distrust the state and federal election system.
“The Russians hacked into the Illinois State Board of Elections,” Quigley said after a meeting with the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board.
“They got into the database,” he said. “I believe they’re on the doorstep to hacking into our voting systems. That is my educated guess.”
“I’m not saying I know they’ll do this, (but) think about what you could do. You could check and say, ‘Oh no, all these people already voted, or these people voted absentee.’ Once you get into that, then there’s all kind of mischief,” Quigley said. […]
[Ken Menzel, the general counsel of the State Board of Elections] said the state elections board does not tabulate votes, something that occurs in each of the state’s 102 counties and seven special local elections boards. Any toughening of tabulation would involve those local election officials. Menzel said that the manipulation Quigley theorized about would have minimal effect on balloting compared to normal human error at local precincts.
Menzel is right. The primary security focus should be on local elections boards, particularly the big ones like Chicago and Cook County.
* Should the Illinois AFL-CIO endorse a candidate for governor this week or wait a while? Click here to take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
* I’m told by the Pritzker campaign that there will be additional calls into Senate districts later this week. Press release…
Today, the Pritzker campaign released new robo calls targeting Republican and Democratic districts across the state. They aim to make it clear that Bruce Rauner is holding the state budget hostage while corporations line their pockets and working families suffer. The robo calls are part of the multimedia Crisis Creatin’ Rauner campaign, holding Rauner accountable for this crisis of his own making and the families, schools, and social service agencies that continue to pay the price.
The statewide robo calls will target all of the same Democratic districts that the Illinois GOP hit in their latest robo call and will also target the following Republican districts: HD-41 [Wehrli], HD-42 [Ives], HD-45 [Winger], HD-61 [Jesiel], HD-68 [Cabello], HD-71 [McCombie], HD-76 [Long], HD-79 [Parkhurst], HD-81 [Olsen], HD-95 [Bourne], HD-97 [Batinick], HD-99 [Wojcicki Jimenez], HD-115 [Bryant], HD-117 [Severin].
“The ILGOP has run unchecked distraction campaigns for years to hide Bruce Rauner’s staggering failures, but not anymore. Illinois families deserve to know why Bruce Rauner has failed to pass a budget for three years in a row as he drives this state into the ground,” said Pritzker campaign communications director Galia Slayen. “Bruce Rauner continues to blame everyone but himself for this manufactured crisis, but the truth is this has been his plan all along. While Rauner holds this state hostage for his special interest agenda, we will continue to hold Rauner accountable for the damage he inflicts every day.”
We’re the only state that has gone this long without a budget… over 700 days.
For the third year in a row, Bruce Rauner is holding this state hostage and Republicans in the legislature are blindly following. They aren’t serving us. They’re letting corporations, insurance companies and wealthy CEOs line their pockets while the rest of us pay the price.
Tell Republicans it’s past time to do their job and negotiate. Illinois deserves a budget.
For over 700 days, Bruce Rauner has failed to do his job and pass a budget for the people of Illinois.
Schools are scraping by, domestic violence shelters are closing, and Illinois is over $14 billion in debt. But Bruce Rauner continues to hold the state hostage for his right wing agenda.
Democrats have tried to reach across the aisle to get a state budget passed while also protecting the services so many families rely on, but Bruce Rauner continues to stand up for corporations and the wealthy, even while Illinois families pay the price.
Call the governor at 217-782-0244 and tell him enough is enough. It is time for him to do his job and negotiate a fair budget for Illinois.
Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford, said the fundamental problem is the increased power of fringe elements of both parties, on the left and the right.
“It’s not impossible to reach an agreement, but it must have bipartisan support. For the last two to three weeks, the kooks on the far right and far left have been banging on legislators, trying to convince them there’s a painless solution,” Syverson said. On the right, lobby groups are saying all that’s needed are spending cuts, and the left’s lobby groups are saying just raise taxes. The middle ground that always controlled the debate and governed near the political center has weakened, he believes.
That’s not the whole story, of course. Republicans were indeed spooked by the hardliners. And the only way the Republicans “in the middle” were going to be able to successfully fend off those “kooks” was if Gov. Rauner got on board. But, as we all know by now, the governor either wasn’t able or willing to close the deal and he pulled his party out.
The Democrats also had their issues with unions and the trial lawyers, but they still managed to pass a fairly decent package of legislation over to the House. If Speaker Madigan had been finally put on the spot by a unified, bipartisan front and a package was signed into law, most would be forgiven.
[Rep. Litesa Wallace, D-Rockford] said the House attempted to pass some of Rauner’s reform plans as a measure of good faith, such as a property tax freeze, “but he changes the goal posts every time. I personally have voted 14 times for property tax freezes.”
And every one of those freeze bills was phony. The Senate Democrats, who were actually trying to work out a deal, never picked up a single one of those House bills, which should tell you something.
The House did pass a bipartisan permanent freeze bill, but that was in the lame duck session and too late for the Senate to take action. The House didn’t pass that bill again in the spring, when it could’ve mattered.
With a desire to start a serious discussion about the many large issues facing the State of Illinois, State Representative Tim Butler (R-Springfield) has introduced House Joint Resolution 68 which would allow the question of calling a state Constitutional Convention to be on the 2018 Illinois General Election ballot.
“We have now gone over 700 days without a real budget in our State, and last week we once again ignored our mandated deadline to get something done for the people of Illinois,” Rep. Butler said. “I have heard so many of my colleagues, as well as citizens around the State, say that we need changes to our Constitution to truly move forward, and that is the main reason why I have introduced this call for an Illinois Constitutional Convention.
“Next year will represent a half century since Illinois’ last Constitutional Convention was called and our State faces challenges today not envisioned by convention delegates 50 years ago. I believe it is time the citizens of our State once again have the ability to provide their say on if they want to change our Constitution through a comprehensive convention.
“Since 2008, the last time the Constitutional Convention question was on the ballot, legislators have introduced over 400 resolutions to amend the Constitution. These proposed amendments run the political gamut. Legislators elected on behalf of the people, spanning the spectrum of ideology, believe our Constitution needs changes. Whether it is a graduated income tax or pension reform, term limits or drawing legislative districts, home rule or school funding, I believe a Convention is the best way to hash out these concerns.
“2018 is the bicentennial of Illinois statehood. Over our state’s history, six Constitutional Conventions have been called, including on our 50th, 100th, and 150th anniversaries of statehood. As we put 200 years of statehood behind us, I can think of no better time to examine our state’s governing document and enable a discussion about the constitutional solutions we need for moving this state forward into our third century,” Rep. Butler said.
Butler’s legislation is House Joint Resolution 68 (in honor of 1968 being the last time a Constitutional Convention was called). According to the Illinois Constitution, and as stated in HJR 68: “Whenever three-fifths of the members elected to each house of the General Assembly so direct, the question of whether a Constitutional Convention should be called shall be submitted to the electors at the general election next occurring at least six months after such legislative direction”. Butler’s resolution, if approved, calls for that proposition to be placed on the ballot.
The Illinois Senate moved on that monumental question this session, but with such a transparently cynical move to turn it into an unjustified windfall for Chicago that it is sure to be vetoed by Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Chicago Democrats used the issue as a means to maneuver a bailout of the mismanaged Chicago Public Schools system that for years has wildly overspent while overpromising its powerful unions.
Unfortunately, many Democratic legislators from the suburbs shamefully went along.
* Media advisory…
Lawmakers and members of the Just Democracy Illinois coalition of civic and voting rights groups will gather on Tuesday for a press conference to celebrate the passage of Senate Bill 1933 to create automatic voter registration (AVR) in Illinois. Gov. Rauner has pledged to sign the bill in the coming weeks.
SB1933 reforms current registration laws so that whenever an eligible Illinois resident applies for, updates or renews a driver’s license or state ID, he or she will be automatically registered to vote or have their registration updated, unless they opt out. It also creates a similar program for other state agencies, such as the Department of Human Services and the Department of Natural Resources.
The achievement of bipartisan agreement on legislation dealing with elections is remarkable in the midst of partisan tension in Springfield. The legislation passed the Senate on May 5 with a 48-0 vote, with 22 Republicans and 26 Democrats voting in favor. In the House, the AVR bill was cosponsored by members of both parties, and passed 115-0, with 66 Democrats and 49 Republicans voting in favor. Representative Mike Fortner (R-West Chicago) was a chief co-sponsor and sponsored the final amendment to the bill.
Just Democracy Illinois is led by a steering committee that includes Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago, CHANGE Illinois, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Chicago Votes, Common Cause Illinois, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and Illinois PIRG.
“We are a disaster,” declares Rauner, who rattles off Illinois’ shortcomings at each campaign event: four of the last seven governors sent to prison, about $5 billion in overdue bills, one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S. and the worst credit rating of any state.
Past due bills now stand at $14.655 billion, about triple the “disaster” level from 2014. And we still have one of the highest unemployment rates in the US and we still have the worst credit rating of any state.
Hoping to thwart Chicago Tribune owner tronc, a former Chicago alderman and a suburban hedge fund manager are expected to step up with competing bids for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Reader, according to multiple sources.
Monday is the last day prospective bidders may provide an initial offer, according to an agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and Wrapports Holdings LLC, parent company of the two publications. If an acceptable offer is not received by 5 p.m., the daily Sun-Times and the weekly Reader are on track to be sold to tronc, which signed a letter of intent last month.
Sources have confirmed at least two groups — one led by the former alderman [Edwin Eisendrath] and the other led by the hedge fund manager [Thane Ritchie, CEO of Ritchie Capital Management] — have made their interest known to the Justice Department and Wrapports. Others also may come forward. […]
Eisendrath’s partners in the group expected to bid for the papers, sources said, include the Chicago Federation of Labor, an umbrella organization for about 320 unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO in Cook County.
“The Chicago Federation of Labor, SEIU and other labor unions are very concerned and interested in ensuring that Chicago remains a two-newspaper town and other progressives are interested in this as well,” a source with knowledge of the bid involving labor told POLITICO. The coalition has “great interest that the Chicago Sun-Times remains an independent, free-standing institution. We have no faith the Chicago Tribune will do that.” […]
The Department of Justice’s Antitrust division is telling potential bidders there could be a scenario in which the highest bid doesn’t necessarily prevail, according to a separate source who is exploring a bid apart from the two cited above. That source said Monday’s deadline could be extended. The antitrust division is overseeing the Sun-Times sale.
Chicago billionaire Neil Bluhm’s family is interested in buying the Chicago Sun-Times in a face-off that could pit the real estate magnate against Chicago Tribune parent Tronc, according to sources familiar with the discussions. […]
Bluhm ranked 204th on Forbes’ list last year of the wealthiest people in the country and is third-richest in Illinois.
In addition to being a co-founder and chairman of Chicago-based Rush Street Gaming, he is a co-founder and managing principal of real estate investment firm Walton Street Capital and a co-founder and president of JMB Realty, according to a biography on the Rush Street website. […]
Bluhm has been a big contributor to Democrats, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and may believe his ownership would better preserve the historically left-leaning bent of the Sun-Times.
The Chicago News Guild, the union representing newsroom workers at the Sun-Times and Reader, has been opposed to a Tronc-Wrapports deal. The union has launched a “#NoNewsMonopoly” Facebook page and Twitter hashtag campaign.
The page gives folks the ability to choose one of 3 agencies in the state for the profits from the T-Shirts to go to. They are $12, which will make the profit on the shirts about $7 each.
Just trying to make some lemonade out of lemons.
BTW, on the back the shirt says…
“Profits from the sale of this shirt supports The Women’s Center in Carbondale, Rape Advocacy Counseling and Education Services (RACES) in Urbana, and The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.”
I didn’t want to take any other stance on the back of the shirt, because the point is to raise money for the Services Providers and if I make it too partisan, I might eliminate half my customer base.
* Sen. Bill Brady doesn’t want the governor to call a special session. Instead, he thinks the Democratic leaders should order members back to town…
“Because the legislature failed to do its job, (House Speaker) Mike Madigan and (Senate President) John Cullerton should call us back at our own expense and force us as leaders of their chambers to sit down and pass a package that rebuilds this state and that includes a balanced budget,” Brady said.
The Bloomington Republican told WJBC’s Scott Laughlin and Patti Penn the state would have to pay for lawmakers travel, housing and meals if a special session was called. He said that’s not necessary to continue budget talks.
“One of the reasons is (Rauner) thinks it’s the legislature’s authority to do their job,” Brady said. “If he calls a special session there are per diem checks that are issued. It shouldn’t be the taxpayers responsibility for the legislature to do its job.”
Brady added if Democrats had agreed to a longer-term property tax freeze, the Grand Bargain might have succeeded and he said it still might before the next budget year begins July 1.
This essentially boiled down to a disagreement over a two-year freeze bill sponsored by the Senate GOP Leader and the governor’s four-year freeze bill. So, two years of a property tax freeze was the difference between getting a real budget and continued chaos. Let that sink in a bit.
* The governor said last week that he could’ve signed Sen. Andy Manar’s education funding reform bill, but that’s not how pretty much everyone else saw it when Manar finally pulled the plug in disgust with the pace of negotiations and ran a different bill.
He should’ve taken the deal on workers’ comp when he had the chance.
He should’ve taken the deal on the budget and stopped complaining about how it didn’t quite balance two years from now. Sheesh, man, do your own job for a change.
* This will never get resolved until the governor cuts a deal with the Senate. All the special sessions in the world will accomplish little more than allow the two sides to score political points.
Nothing has changed since January. Do a deal with the Senate and then put extreme and unrelenting pressure on Madigan or this ship of fools state sinks to the bottom.
The governor crows about being persistent in his quest for meaningful reforms. But his doggedness has done real, lasting damage. Has this businessman-turned-politician not noticed that his budget-less state has a credit rating about to scrape bottom? That talented young people are avoiding Illinois colleges? That we’re losing population?
It’s time for Rauner to seize anything that even hints of a step toward his legislative agenda, label it as progress and then offer up a real budget plan that has a chance of proceeding — with or without Madigan. Lawmakers are ready. They’re feeling the heat.
The AFL-CIO may call on members to take an endorsement vote in the Democratic gubernatorial primary on Tuesday… After we reported last month that the AFL-CIO was poised to back J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire was hit with a series of negative reports, including revelations that he had taken property tax reductions on his Chicago mansion and, most recently, that he had asked imprisoned Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2008 to name him to a state post.
Given these revelations, we asked around whether key backers were nervous. The answer we received was a resounding “no.” Pritzker invested heavily in opposition research on himself before he launched his bid for governor and he and top supporters had an idea of what could be coming at him, according to one high-ranking Illinois Democrat.
So will the AFL-CIO back Pritzker? On Sunday, the Tribune’s Rick Pearson reported that SEIU’s Tom Balanoff called for the AFL-CIO to remain neutral in the primary. However, one of our sources remained confident of the AFL-CIO backing regardless, putting it this way: With all the intensity and pressure wrapped up with endorsing in June for a 2018 election, a union leader isn’t going to call a member vote for Pritzker — unless he has the votes for Pritzker.
As of now, two sources tell us the vote is Tuesday.
* JB Pritzker is the gift that keeps on giving for opposition researchers and reporters. Just click here for a taste of what the ILGOP has already made public about Pritzkter’s ties to Rod Blagojevich. Here’s one of them…
Patti Blagojevich met with J.B., looking for job, just as Rod Blagojevich was trying to sell Illinois’ US Senate Seat.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported, “On Oct. 6, Blagojevich met with officials of the Pritzker Family Foundation, which has $65 million in assets. Among those at the meeting was foundation president J.B. Pritzker, one of several candidates the Chicago-Sun Times has reported the governor was considering to fill President-elect Barack Obama’s seat in the U.S. Senate.”
As you also already know, the following month Pritzker’s conversations with Blagojevich were caught on FBI surveillance. Some of those conversations have already been divulged by the Tribune.
Superior was one of the first banks in the 1990s to turn to the emerging practice of subprime lending, where loans are targeted to high-risk borrowers at higher interest rates. Recipients of those loans often have loan delinquency or default histories, bankruptcies or limited debt experience, and by the middle of this decade, they began defaulting on their new mortgages. A dramatic rise in those defaults and foreclosures is blamed, in part, for the recent financial crisis.
* And then there’s the Pritzker family’s enthusiastic use of offshore trusts to lower their tax liabilities…
While many wealthy families go to great lengths to avoid taxes, the Pritzker family (most famous for it’s ownership of the Hyatt hotel chain) is unique in its role as “pioneers” in the use of offshore tax shelters. Many of its existing offshore trusts were set up as long as five decades ago, and some have allowed the family to continue benefitting from tax loopholes that have long since been closed.
As the graphic below from a 2003 Forbes story details, one of the primary ways the Pritzker family uses offshore trusts to avoid taxes is by having income from their businesses funneled into offshore trusts. Those trusts then pay debt service to a bank, owned by the family trust, that loans that money right back to the business. The upshot is that all the taxable profits disappear and the family wealth accumulates unabated. A more recent Forbes article looking at the Pritzker family fortune notes that these trusts were not at the margin but rather “played a substantial role in the growth of the Pritzker fortune.” The same article notes that this fortune makes up the vast majority of [Penny] Pritzker’s $1.85 billion empire and has allowed 10 members of the Pritzker family to earn a spot on the list of Forbes 400 richest people in America.
The I.R.S. called the trusts sham and insisted that the Pritzkers owed the government $53.2 million in taxes. In 1994, however, the government settled with the family, which paid a mere $9.5 million plus interest. At the time, the I.R.S. had been unable to discover exactly how much was in the trusts—the family had made sure they were protected from outside scrutiny.
Their wealth is almost incalculable, because according to Forbes magazine, they are the only family in America to have off shore tax-free trusts because they were grandfathered in. Their off shore trust can ship money back to their family tax-free. It was grandfathered in because their grandfather got it through Congress – he was smart to see the future and got it done. Congress closed the loophole and grandfathered him in. Forbes magazine wrote about the Pritzker’s off shore trust, they emphasized that there are over 1000 separate trusts.
One only knows what that road will eventually lead to.
* And, of course, there’s the scandal which erupted when Pritzker’s young cousin Liesel sued the family for a billion dollars…
The first hint of trouble came last November [in 2002]. Just before Thanksgiving, Robert’s 19-year-old daughter, and Jay’s niece, Liesel Pritzker—a Columbia College freshman and an actress who starred alongside Harrison Ford as the president’s daughter in the 1997 movie Air Force One and who is currently appearing in the Broadway play Vincent in Brixton—filed a lawsuit in Chicago against her father and all the Pritzker cousins. Setting off an explosion of publicity, she accused her family of looting her trust funds and those of her 20-year-old brother, Matthew, in a way that was “so heinous, obnoxious and offensive as to constitute a fraud.”
The amount of money which Liesel claimed was taken from her was staggering—$1 billion—and she not only demanded it be returned, but asked the court to award her $5 billion in punitive damages. It was a stunning lawsuit, not just because of the money involved, but also for the questions it raised about the Pritzkers.
Emphasis added because that could be a heckuva TV ad. The lawsuit was eventually settled.
I found all that stuff - and more - after just a couple of hours idly surfing the Internet one recent Saturday morning. Just imagine what a determined opposition researcher with a hefty budget could find.
* Gov. Rauner on a bill for an elected Chicago school board while speaking last week to WBEZ…
Despite veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate, Rauner said Friday on WBEZ’s “Morning Shift” that he doesn’t believe HB 1774 will reach his desk. This comes a day after he told Chicago Tonight that even if the bill does make it out of the General Assembly, he would likely be unwilling to sign it as is.
“My sense is that’s more for political spin. I don’t think that’s coming to my desk,” Rauner told “Moring Shift” host Tony Sarabia. “We’ll see what passes the General Assembly and deal with it at the time.”
When asked by Sarabia if that means he is opposed, in general, to an elected school board in Chicago, Rauner answered: “I wouldn’t say that. I think the devil is in the details.” […]
[Rep. Rob Martwick, who authored the initial bill] said he’s worked to include legislators from both sides of the aisle in discussions while drafting the bill, and included about half of the six suggestions House Republicans offered to help tighten up the legislation.
“So for (Rauner) to say that sort of stuff, he’s either playing politics himself or he’s just never followed the bill or the bill process,” he said. “I think it’s a good bill, it’s going to wind up on his desk. Political spin is ridiculous.”
The governor also says he would veto a plan approved on Wednesday that would take away the mayor’s authority to appoint the CPS board, and instead letting voters choose leaders for the state’s largest school district, as it’s done everywhere else in the state.
Rauner, a frequent advocate of “local control” and just as frequent critic of unions, says he can’t sign the legislation because it doesn’t have “safeguards to make sure that special interest groups who make their money from the schools don’t control the elections and control the board.”
Observers predict that if CPS were to have an elected board, the powerful Chicago Teachers Union would make a strong play for seats.
“Well I’d like to see that restriction about special interest groups everywhere. But that already exists. Chicago, Chicago needs to have a truly … freedom away from the special interest groups.”
* The Senate once again revised the House bill, but this time Speaker Madigan’s spokesman says those were agreed changes…
Steve Brown, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s spokesman, said Friday that leaders in both chambers had discussed them and appear to be on the same page.
“I expect it to be supported when we reconvene,” Brown said of the elected school board legislation. […]
[Sen. Kwame Raoul], who sponsored the bill in the Senate, noted the bipartisan support in both chambers as a sign the governor will actually support it.
“I think if the governor wasn’t going to support it, it probably wouldn’t have happened, “Raoul said. “The things he’s not going to support don’t get that much support from the Republicans.”
The Senate’s version passed 53-2, with Republican Sens. McConnaughay and Rezin opposed.
Tio Hardiman, Democratic Candidate for Governor 2018
Dear Members of the Media,
After securing 125,500 votes, winning 30 counties downstate, and 28.1 percent of the statewide vote in the March 2014 Democratic Primary,
Tio Hardiman has decided to run for Governor in the 2018 Democratic Primary. “The 2018 Democratic Primary is wide open for a regular candidate like Tio Hardiman. We must say no to billionaires like Chris Kennedy, JB Pritzker, and Bruce Rauner. Bruce Rauner is one of the worst Governors in the history of Illinois. Anybody can beat Rauner in the General Election. “- Tio Hardiman
Hardiman for Illinois Platform Issues will include:
• Supporting Legal Gun Owners
• Increased Funding for Domestic Violence Shelters, Mental Health Facilities, HIV Awareness Programs, and Violence Prevention Services
• Create Jobs
• Reduce Gun Violence Statewide
• Increased Funding for Public Schools
• Unify Democrats and Republicans on Key Issues
“Anybody can beat Rauner in the General Election”? Hubris always comes before the fall.
Hardiman, the former director of a Chicago-based anti-violence organization, didn’t come close to beating Quinn in 2014. Still, after Hardiman survived a ballot challenge, he didn’t have an awful showing against the incumbent.
Hardiman won 28 percent of the Democratic-primary vote. According to Hardiman’s news release, he won 30 of the state’s 102 counties. But Hardiman’s showing in a relatively low-profile campaign might have been more a statement about Quinn’s lack of popularity than anything else. […]
Hardiman also considered a run in 2016 as a Democrat against then-incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican.
“I plan to give Mark Kirk the biggest run of his life,” Hardiman told WMAQ-TV (5) in Chicago.
That didn’t happen. Then-U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth won a three-way primary that didn’t include Hardiman. Duckworth went on to defeat Kirk handily in the general election.
May 31st is supposed to be the last day of the legislative session, but that deadline has been meaningless for the last two years. This year is no exception. I am beyond disappointed in our failure to find a solution yet again. Once again, we have failed to pass a budget and the carnage of this standoff shows more clearly every day. Our human services system has been nearly destroyed, our higher education institutions are hemorrhaging money and staff, and those least able to afford it are enduring most of the pain.
It is easy to get bogged down in the confusing daily minutiae of this historic failure, so I will try to provide a thousand-foot view for the sake of perspective. When Governor Rauner took office two years ago, he demanded we pass a series of union-busting, non-budgetary reforms before he would agree to any budget deal. A former executive in the private sector, he has never seemed willing or able to grasp the fact that because lawmaking is a system of checks and balances he must negotiate with Democrats, who control both legislative chambers. I personally negotiated two bills with Governor Rauner’s administration in his first year in office (HB218 & HB494), passed them, and watched him veto both after moving the goalposts.
He has demonstrated a callous willingness to crush the state’s social services, using poor folks and children in the public school system as fiscal hostages to leverage “reforms” that would by his own accounting save us only a small fraction of the state’s expenditures. Our bill backlog has nearly tripled since Governor Rauner has taken office, and the payment cycle has ballooned from around 30 days to around 6 months.
The Governor isn’t wrong that we need reforms, and Democrats are certainly not blameless in this awful ordeal. That is why the Senate worked for months on bipartisan reforms to education funding, local government consolidation, worker’s compensation, pensions, and more. These talks intentionally excluded both the Governor and Speaker Madigan, as all previous discussions including the two of them have produced nothing but shameless political posturing and wasted time. Eventually, despite reaching negotiated bills with their Republican colleagues, the Governor killed the talks by convincing Republican Senators to vote in opposition because he didn’t get everything he wanted. Though the bills contained many of the provisions sought by the Republicans, including painful spending cuts and significant reforms, Senate Democrats were forced to pass the bills themselves.
As a House appropriations chair and a member of the budget negotiating team for the House Democrats, I advocated for our caucus to send that package back to the Senate with some progressive changes even if we could not count on Republican support. There is plenty to dislike about the package sent over by the Senate and I heard from many constituents concerned about specific cuts and policy changes, but ultimately we need a fully funded budget. We have gone as far as we can go on patchwork solutions. With every “lifeline” and “stopgap” we pass, someone is left out or underfunded and the source of those funds simply cannot sustain the whole state.
On May 30th, a group of deeply passionate advocates ended a weeks-long march to Springfield from Chicago to protest this injustice. They conducted a sit-in outside the Governor’s office, demanding that he and Speaker Madigan put aside their posturing and remember that what we do, or fail to do, has massive impact on the everyday lives of Illinoisans. I stayed late into the night to stand witness with three colleagues as they were dragged away, one by one, arrested for trespassing. It was a deeply emotional scene, and one that reinforced my resolve that these political games must end.
As work wound down on May 31st, Speaker Madigan announced that we would schedule public hearings of all the House Appropriations committees and keep the House in session in June to seek a resolution before the end of the State’s fiscal year on June 30. I would not have chosen this path. I forcefully advocated for my colleagues to take the politically risky but morally correct vote and send a balanced budget to the Governor. But passing a bill requires 60 votes, and there were not 60 members of either party willing to take that vote. Now that we are beyond the May 31st deadline, the rules require that anything we pass must get a super-majority to take effect immediately. This means that any budget we pass will require participation by the Republicans to get 71 votes.
I expect that the hearing schedule will be finalized shortly and will provide an update as soon as it is available. I want to believe that the Governor and Speaker Madigan understand that we cannot continue to destroy our state, piece by piece. I absolutely agree with a member of House Republican leadership who recently publicly stated that we have already done more damage to the state than any “reforms” can fix.
I will continue to advocate as forcefully as possible that it is past time to simply do the right thing and pass a budget, politics be damned.
* From a letter to the editor by Rep. Barbara Wheeler (R-Crystal Lake) and posted to her website…
Today, another spring legislative session ended, and with it ended another opportunity to stop the financial death spiral gripping Illinois. Despite the efforts of many rank-and-file members to create a balanced budget compromise, Illinois’ rigged political system has once again superseded good governance.
Over the past year, I took part in working groups and special commissions to address the budget crisis and the pressing need to reform Illinois’ school funding formula. These good faith discussions and negotiations were more productive than I expected and I was optimistic about the legislation we began to put together. Staying positive in Springfield these days isn’t easy, but it seemed like a ray of hope was finally beginning to shine.
Sadly, Speaker Madigan once again wielded his power to pull the rug out from under these efforts at the last minute. It’s clear that even though the methods of the past aren’t working anymore, the Speaker is more interested in keeping control of the process, whatever the cost. His own leadership team has suggested on multiple occasions that there won’t be a full budget during Governor Rauner’s term. This is not how our Republic is supposed to work. Meanwhile, taxpayers, job creators and those in need of certainty for social services will continue lose out.
We can still pass a balanced budget before the current fiscal year ends on June 30, albeit through a more restrictive process now. Failure to do so will cause even more services to stop. We must stop the political games and do what’s right to pass a balanced budget built on reasonable reform before it is too late.
Webster-Cantrell Hall’s emergency shelter care program for homeless teens is closing at the end of the month after the state ended funding for three of the eight available beds.
The shelter, at 1220 Underwood Court, just north of Mound Road, served youths ages 12 to 18 who didn’t have a place to stay. With a lack of similar shelters in the region, those teens will have to be taken to Chicago, said Holly Newbon, Webster-Cantrell director of development.
“They’re (Department of Child and Family Services) wards who have been kicked out of foster care, run away from another residential program or they were just on the streets,” Newbon said. “DCFS could call day or night and place a youth there. “We would bring them in and provide case management and therapy. We’d work with them to find appropriate placement.” […]
“The majority of the youth there were from Central Illinois,” Newbon said. “Now they’re going to be taking them to Chicago, where the per diem rates are higher and the cost of service is higher, not to mention the travel. It’s very sad.”
Newbon said Webster-Cantrell will try to place most of the staff from the shelter in new jobs but between eight and 10 employees would lose their job.
House Speaker Michael Madigan was his usual self during the final week of the General Assembly’s spring session, passing bills to make one point or another, but not actually accomplishing anything.
Bills are routinely moved in the House for the sole purpose of creating TV ads, or direct mail pieces or newspaper headlines. Madigan’s only real ideology is maintaining his majority, and he doesn’t consider that to be a bad thing. And maintaining that majority has been inextricably tied for two long years to stopping Gov. Bruce Rauner at every turn, despite Madigan’s repeated claims that he’s cooperating and that Rauner should just accept a win and move on.
But whatever else you can say about Madigan, he’s not wrong about that last part. The governor could’ve accepted a two-year property tax freeze proposed by both Senate Democrats and Republicans as a down payment on reform. That freeze would’ve gotten him through the 2018 election and he could’ve warned voters that the Democrats would never pass another freeze if he was defeated.
The Senate’s freeze proposal even included provisions for local referendums in 2018 to let voters decide whether or not to keep their freezes. That would’ve helped the governor gin up turnout among his Republican base next year.
But Rauner wouldn’t compromise with the Senate and here we are with nothing.
Gov. Rauner constantly derides the “headline” bills which Madigan loves. But Rep. Steve Andersson (R-Geneva) was totally right when he told Chicago Magazine’s Whet Moser: “At this point, there’s not enough reform to counter the damage we’ve done to the state in the past two years.”
Rauner’s own four-year property tax freeze coupled with workers’ compensation insurance reform that would’ve saved maybe $120 million in Illinois’ $700 billion economy could’ve done some good two years ago. But now, the reforms are little more than political cover.
Those reforms won’t come close to making up for the damage already caused by running a government on court-ordered autopilot and then compounding the problem by signing state contracts that can’t be paid. We as a state have starved our universities nearly to death, devastated the social safety net and, in the process, piled up billions of dollars in unpaid bills, including the $1.1 billion currently owed to K-12 schools that the state has no way to pay anytime soon.
Rauner’s reforms also won’t do much of anything to ease the damage from the much-needed “cure.” The longer Illinois waits, the higher the taxes will have to rise and the deeper the cuts will have to go.
In other words, this whole thing on both sides is a grotesquely fake Kabuki dance.
Madigan’s reforms are lip service at best and Rauner’s “real” reforms won’t come within a solar system of his overly promised “booming” economy.
So, now what? The attorney general’s attempt to overturn a judicial order that state workers be paid without a legal appropriation appears hopelessly stuck in the courts. University layoffs have exceeded 1,500 and lasting damage has been inflicted upon their reputations, but that hasn’t moved the Statehouse needle an inch. Thousands upon thousands of the poorest and most vulnerable among us have been kicked to the curb and nobody seems to care. Our bond ratings are ridiculously low and are going lower, but it’s being shrugged off.
The only thing that literally everyone is deathly afraid of is a K-12 school shutdown. There’s a reason why Gov. Rauner vetoed everything out of the budget passed in 2015 except K-12 funding. The same goes for including K-12 in the last-minute 2016 stopgap funding deal.
As long as they can “contain” the damage, the warring parties can continue their bizarre dispute. But a school shutdown would literally bring out the torches and pitchforks.
The governor has said repeatedly that he won’t sign a partial budget without permanent property tax relief and term limits, which puts him in a horrible box. But a flip-flop would likely go mostly unnoticed if schools open on time.
Will the Democrats pass a partial budget for schools? I assume the House would. Speaker Madigan seems to prefer this war.
The Senate Democrats might be another story. They could impose the terms of surrender during an extreme crisis because their chamber has already courageously approved those terms – a budget, revenues and reforms. They may have to step up again and refuse to do a stopgap and finally bring this thing to an end.
…Adding… Mark Brown on what the final agreement may look like…
I think the difference is that the eventual budget will more closely resemble a version Cullerton had been prepared to put to a vote earlier that better reflected Republican preferences.
When it became apparent Republicans were not going to vote for that version, which included more spending cuts and a slightly different tax mix, Democrats tweaked it to make it more to their own liking.
If they ever come to an actual compromise that includes Rauner and Madigan, I would expect they would return to the more Republican-friendly version.
