The below link is to a music video featuring Assistant Secretary of the Senate Scott Kaiser. The band, Nick Bafino and the Innocents, opened for Boston at the PCCC and is playing this Friday at the Legacy of Giving music festival in Springfield. I somehow happened upon this and was surprised the video had not been more widely circulated.
Scott isn’t in the band, but he was in the video, which, by the way, was not filmed during state time. They did it on a Saturday. How he’s managed to keep this a secret for so long is beyond me.
* Anyway, it’s not really the sort of music I usually feature here, but we all love Scott Kaiser, so here you go…
WBEZ: So, speaking of social services, I want to talk a little bit about the Department of Children and Family Services, DCFS. Two and a half years ago, you brought in George Sheldon, who we had on this show. I believe you called him an all-star. He resigned this week amid controversy, some having to do with contracts benefitting associates, was he the wrong guy for this job?
GOVERNOR BRUCE RAUNER: Well, first of all, let me say we need to provide the proper support for our most vulnerable children. We have so many children growing up in abject poverty, it breaks my heart. And many of them come from broken families with abusive adults in the household. Very important that we do everything we can to support our vulnerable children. It’s very difficult work, very challenging and unfortunately our Department of Children and Family Services has been a failing bureaucracy with unmanageable work rules and contracts and restrictions in terms of law of what they can and can’t do that ties their hands, it’s a very broken system. George came in, he was a star in the Obama administration, he’s a Democrat, he was a star in the Florida government. I believe he did everything he could, he was heavily recruited, I did not ask him to leave or force him out, he accepted another position. He was extremely frustrated trying to make changes. There are investigations ongoing right now, I support those. We are trying to understand exactly what’s been happening down at the levels of the department of children and family services, we need to make all the improvements we can, we need to help our most vulnerable kids.
WBEZ: What about the reports that DCFS was giving gift cards to employees to close out cases, are you investigating what’s wrong with that?
RAUNER: We are investigating everything. Everything at every level.
WBEZ: So again, was he the wrong guy for the job?
RAUNER: Well, we’ve got to fix the system. George was here for two years, and he tried to fix it. And we just we can never give up. We’ve got to bring talented people in who are going to improve our systems to help our most vulnerable kids. It’s the most important work we can do.
That transcript was provided by the Democratic Governors Association.
* From the DGA…
On his appointment in 2015, Governor Bruce Rauner said George Sheldon was the “best of the best.” A year later, Rauner repeatedly praised Sheldon’s work for leading an “impressive transformation” at the agency.
But Sheldon’s record tells a different story. Sheldon’s agency came under investigation for crony hires and handing out contracts to friends, and most recently it was discovered that DCFS “awarded” $100 gift cards to DCFS investigators that “closed the most cases in a month.” In the case of Semaj Crosby, DCFS personnel had contact with her family 16 times last year but the state still allowed Crosby to remain in the home.
“Bruce Rauner needs to come clean on why the Department of Children and Family Services was mismanaged on his watch,” said DGA Illinois Communications Director Sam Salustro. “But today, Governor Rauner chose to bury his head in the sand and defend his hand-picked appointee, George Sheldon. Bruce Rauner has to own his administration’s failures, and explain why he did not act to remove George Sheldon or intervene in the department.”
Governor Bruce Rauner today vetoed Senate Bill 19 due to an agreement between the Department of Corrections and the Illinois Nurses Association. As a result of good faith negotiations, both sides reached an agreement on an alternative to subcontracting that was fair to taxpayers and state employees.
Governor Rauner wrote in his veto message:
“Since the passage of Senate Bill 19 by the General Assembly, our Administration has negotiated a new contract with the Illinois Nurses Association and addressed these concerns. The agreement allows the Department to achieve the necessary fiscal and operational objectives without resorting to contracting with outside vendors. The agreement represents what is possible when all parties work together.”
The governor was getting a lot of heat from Republican legislators to settle this matter with the prison nurse.
Senator Andy Manar, a Bunker Hill Democrat and supporter of collective bargaining rights, reacted this afternoon to word that Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed a measure that would have protected the jobs of unionized state prison nurses:
“Gov. Rauner went back to the table to with these nurses and renegotiated their contract because of pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Had it not been for that, he would have embraced this as yet another opportunity to thumb his nose at unions and working families,” Manar said.
“Since it was so easy for him to return to the table and reopen negotiations with the prison nurses, perhaps he can find it within himself to return to the table with AFSCME and do the same. As Gov. Rauner acknowledged in his veto message, an agreement is indeed possible when all parties work together.”
Illinois’ credit rating has fallen so low that the state is too risky an investment for even itself, Comptroller Susana Mendoza and Treasurer Michael Frerichs announced Friday.
Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s both lowered the state’s credit rating to one level above junk-bond status Thursday after the Governor and the legislature failed to reach agreement on a budget before the scheduled end of the session. This is the lowest Illinois’ bonds have been rated in the state’s 44-year history of bond ratings. The Fiscal Year ends June 30 and the agencies warn more downgrades could happen then if the impasse continues.
That means higher costs to taxpayers; more difficulty raising funds for Illinois’ most basic needs; and further cuts in services for the state’s educational institutions and its most vulnerable residents. Rating agencies and business groups are urging Governor Rauner to stop holding the budget hostage to his pet projects and negotiate a balanced budget in good faith with legislative leaders.
That point when the treasurer was supposed to stop buying Illinois bonds was actually reached a year ago in June of 2016 when S&P dropped Illinois’ rating to BBB-plus.
Gov. Bruce Rauner bears his share of the blame for this ridiculous impasse. He’s held up the budget process by demanding reforms that are only tangentially related to the business of determining how much our government costs and finding ways to pay for it. And the proposed fiscal 2018 budget he offered earlier this year was at least $4.6 billion out of whack, according to the Civic Federation’s math. When the time comes to ask whether Illinois is better off under four years of Rauner’s leadership, we know what the answer will be.
But let’s not mince words: The one person who could have passed a spending bill by May 31 and sent it to the governor’s desk is Madigan. The Democratic-controlled Senate, with President John Cullerton, did its job, passing a plan that included tax hikes that, while unpalatable, are a key part of the tough medicine that all sides—including the governor—acknowledge is necessary to bring Illinois back into fiscal health. And yet, the Democratic-controlled House, which Madigan runs like a Middle Eastern strongman, let the budget deadline come and go without doing anything.
Why? It’s simple: Madigan put his own interests before the interests of the state. A vote for a bill that would hike taxes could endanger some members of his delegation in the next election, especially downstate. And if enough of those House seats flip from blue to red, Madigan loses his spot as speaker of the House. The whole state suffers, in other words, so Madigan can keep his job.
This is the reality every Illinoisan must live with until Madigan is voted out of power. With our unpaid bills approaching $16 billion, a general funds deficit beyond $10 billion, borrowing costs skyrocketing as ratings agencies downgrade us to banana-republic levels, and unfunded pension obligations north of $130 billion, Madigan’s one-man job-security plan is too damned expensive.
I put Rauner first because, much as he wants to rail about how Illinois took a wrong turn under GOP predecessors Jim Thompson, Jim Edgar and George Ryan, Rauner has underperformed all of them.
Sure, Illinois needs structural reform. Chris Kennedy was right the other day in his theory about the tyranny of the property tax lawyers. But Rauner came in with an agenda as long as your leg: anti-union measures, tort reform, term limits, merit selection of judges, a property tax freeze, workers’ compensation changes, etc. In the last few weeks, he’s finally whittled that down to a manageable few. But the pattern of overreaching was set.
Rauner compounded that by highly personalizing his fight with Senate President John Cullerton and especially Madigan, throwing around terms like “corrupt.” That’s no way to get to a deal. Nor is running robocalls targeting Democratic lawmakers in the very days leading up to the May 31 budget deadline.
When Senate GOP leader Christine Radogno finally had enough earlier this year and tried to craft her own budget deal with Cullerton, she got sandbagged. Rauner pulled votes off their “grand bargain,” rather than trying to force Madigan’s hand and split the House Democratic caucus. The result: a potential “negative credit spiral,” as Standard & Poor’s put it yesterday, when it downgraded the state’s credit rating, again. Or as Civic Federation President Laurence Msall says, “As the chief executive, the governor has the prime responsibility for running the state.”
* Crain’s Chicago Business has again posted my column online early. Here’s an excerpt…
The impasse is the most intentionally vicious act ever committed by this state government on its own people. Period.
It is far worse than the damage done by decades of mismanagement that piled up gigantic pension debts because that wasn’t purposely malicious. It was just plain God-awful stupid, ignorant and short-sighted.
* A recent NY Magazine feature on Uber discusses the company’s ambition to become a monopoly, which the author concludes is unlikely…
To explain its massive losses, Uber and its investors have often cited Amazon, which didn’t turn a year-end profit for ten years as it built out an infrastructure that made the selling of more and more books — and eventually, of everything — cheaper and more efficient the larger it got. But Amazon’s biggest-ever loss was $1.4 billion, half of Uber’s 2016 deficit, and Jeff Bezos responded by cutting 15 percent of his workforce. Plus, Uber’s economics barely resemble Amazon’s. The taxi business doesn’t scale in the same way, and while Uber’s technology is sophisticated, the barriers to entry are relatively low, and Uber has had to fend off various competitors. So far as Horan could tell, there was only one possible path for Uber to meet that $68 billion valuation: eliminate competition.
Uber’s potential aspirations toward monopoly are a sensitive matter — in discussing how Uber Pool became more efficient the more people used it, McClendon referred to Uber’s ideal state as a “monopoly,” before correcting himself to call it “not a monopoly, but a heavily used service” — and while every company dreams of owning its entire market, the question of whether Uber can do so has become murky.
* Duncan Black, an economist by training and a frequent Uber critic from the left, sums it up this way…
Uber’s fortunes depend on it being a monopoly (multiple local monopolies), which it has no realistic path to achieving.
Which brings me back to my original point, made years ago, that whatever the problem with local cab regulation, there is a reason the market depends on rate regulation and supply restriction.
Chicago cabdrivers struggling to survive in the Uber era are fighting a losing battle, with 40 percent of all medallions “inactive” and hundreds more either in foreclosure or headed there, a new study shows.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2500 represents hundreds of cabdrivers and is continuing to organize the others.
To bolster its case, the union asked statistician James Bradach of Nonprofit Data and Applications to analyze countless pieces of information disjointedly made available in on the city’s data portal.
His report, “Run Off the Road: Chicago’s Taxi Medallion Foreclosure Crisis,” shows a surge in medallion foreclosures and a precipitous drop in both taxicab trips and driver income in the three years since City Hall created an unlevel regulatory playing field between taxis and ride-hailing.
The study’s findings include:
227,033 ride-hailing vehicles registered with the city as of April competing with 6,999 taxi medallions.
The number of “monthly taxi trips” on the streets of Chicago has dropped by 52 percent over the last three years — from 2.3 million to 1.1 million.
774 medallions have been “surrendered to the city at some point,” with 579 more receiving foreclosure notices and 107 lawsuits filed since October.
2,940 taxis or 42 percent of the city’s 6,999 taxi medallions were classified as “inactive” in March after having failed to pick up a single passenger in the previous month. That means those licenses face “imminent foreclosure in the coming months,” the study says. In March, 2014, 16 percent of medallions were inactive.
Average monthly gross income for every one of the city’s active taxicab medallions has fallen over the last three years — from $5,276 to $3,206.
Cabdrivers who were eking out a $19,000 annual living after expenses in 2013 are now operating $4,000 in the red. That’s because their $44,000 in annual expenses have remained the same while business has plummeted.
A former state senator from Elgin is suing for back pay, alleging the General Assembly violated the Illinois Constitution by forcing furloughs and eliminating cost-of-living adjustments for legislators.
Michael Noland, a Democrat who retired in January after losing a race for Congress, says in the lawsuit that the state constitution prohibits such mid-term salary adjustments.
The complaint, filed yesterday in Cook County, didn’t specify how much Noland lost as a result of eight bills passed between 2009 and 2016 that eliminated COLAs and five bills during the same period that mandated 36 furlough days.
Noland could not be immediately reached for comment. Michael Scotti, a private-practice attorney in Chicago representing Noland and a special assistant attorney general for the state, declined to comment. He said Noland would issue a statement later today.
I think he’s right on the constitutional issue, but I hope for his sake that he never plans on running for office ever again. But if he prevails, it sure wouldn’t hurt a lobbying career. I’m not at all saying he’s planning such a thing, mind you (he never registered with the state), I’m just sayin…
Noland in 2012 voted in favor of at least one of the bills to cut out pay raises. That measure passed the Senate without opposition, and Noland was quoted as supporting the legislation in a statement posed on the Illinois Senate Democrats website.
“We need structural tax reform to properly fund our most important priorities — like education, health care and the ongoing need for infrastructure,” Noland said at the time. “Until we do this, the least we can do is cut our own pay again. I know most working families in Illinois are not seeing raises this year, so we shouldn’t either.”
TONY SARABIA: OK, before I let you go, just a last question. And we hear a lot of this from listeners often when we have you on the show, that they’re hearing the same points and answers and I’m wondering what have you said today that was different than you have said in the past?
GOV. BRUCE RAUNER: Well Tony, when we’re on a path, a good path to change the system, there’s no reason for different answers.
You know, I have people come up to me every day, Democrats and Republicans who identify themselves as such, Democrats come to me and say ‘Governor, stay strong, you’re on the right track.’
I had an elderly woman come up to me recently, she grabbed me by the arm and she had a little, kind of teary eyed, and she looked at me and she said, ‘Please, governor, you’re our last hope. Don’t give up. Stay the course. We’ve got to change our system.’
* The Chicago Tribune gave Gov. Bruce Rauner’s campaign a gift today with this front page headline…
You can probably bet that headline will make an appearance in a Rauner TV ad if this impasse is never resolved. “He’s fightin’ those tax-hikin’ Democrats with everything he has!” or something.
As the final hours of the spring session ticked down, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner railed against Democrats for failing to send him a budget and for letting the state government stalemate spill into its 24th month.
The public scolding came after Rauner had spent time working to ensure that a Democrat-led attempt to pass a spending plan with multiple tax increases never made it to his desk. […]
That the governor made a point of getting out in front of the Democrats’ budget efforts illustrates the tricky politics at play in the stalemate. While Rauner’s reelection strategy hinges on branding Democrats as tax-happy, he might have had difficulty explaining to voters why he vetoed a budget that would raise taxes but also would have ended an impasse that’s diminished the state’s financial standing, decimated social services and starved universities. […]
Getting to that point in negotiations with Democrats has proved elusive, however. The governor already has put $50 million of his own money into his re-election bid and given millions more to the Illinois Republican Party, which has been plastering Democratic districts with attack ads.
Asked about those ads, which ran during the make-or-break final month of the session, Rauner said, “I don’t know, I mean, whatever. I spend no time thinking about the politics. That’s separate and I don’t spend time on it.”
…Adding… Wordslinger in comments…
Who’s making those spots and writing those checks? His stuntman?
I tell you what, when the Republicans in the House realize they’re going down with the ship, they should stand up, work with the speaker, work with us and the Republicans over in the Senate… Some of the worst criticisms of the governor I’ve heard have come from the Republicans.
That would require the House Speaker to actually want a deal. So far, it doesn’t look that way to me.
Cullerton says the key is Republicans in the House.
“You know what, if there’s enough people to stand up on their hind legs over there and say, you know what governor, you’re mismanaging the government, we’re having disastrous results here, we need to do a deal with the Democrats and we’ll get the compromises you had originally agreed to. We’ll pass your original budget with your original tax rate and then it doesn’t make any difference what the governor says because they could override him and we could override him,” Cullerton said.
The Illinois General Assembly voted to increase a fee on cell phone bills in order to fund 911 services. It was a rare example of Republican lawmakers defying the Rauner administration.
Negotiators involved in the legislation say the governor tried to pull Republican support because Rauner did not want Mayor Rahm Emanuel to get a win.
But GOP lawmakers ended up voting for the measure, which includes a cell phone fee increase in Chicago.
State Rep. Chad Hays, R-Catlin, says the attempt to fortify 911 service centers was going to fail because of “peripheral” reasons.
“And I suggested that I was not going to go home and tell the people in my community that when they dial 911, on the other end of the line it says, ‘Sorry this line has been disconnected,’ because the governor and the mayor of Chicago are in a wrestling match about something peripheral,” Hays said.
The governor simply did not want to give any more money to Chicago until the impasse was resolved and he had a hard brick on the legislation. But Republicans in both chambers ended up voting for the bill. 34 House Republicans voted for it and all but 3 Senators voted for the bill and Senate GOP Leader Radogno even added herself as a hyphenated co-sponsor on Wednesday.
* The lesson here is the governor can be beaten if the House Democrats decide to work with the House Republicans and come up with a real plan that individual Republicans can feel comfortable supporting.
180,000: Number of unpaid [state] bills in Illinois as of Wednesday.
$14.5 billion: Dollar damage of those unpaid bills. The backlog has tripled since 2015 and, at this pace, will reach $28 billion by 2021. At that time, it will consume 80 percent of the state’s budget.
7 months: Average wait for a bill to be paid by the state. Illinois is now paying bills for October 2016.
9 to 12 percent: The high interest rate Illinois must pay, by law, on overdue bills.
$800 million: Interest due on the state’s unpaid bills.
6: Number of credit rating downgrades Illinois has incurred since the budgeting impasse began. Illinois now has the worst credit rating of any state in the country. Illinois is in danger of plunging into junk bond status. [It’s now 8.]
$952 million: Money Illinois has promised but failed to pay to human service agencies over the last two years, short-changing care for the disabled, the poor and the elderly.
69: Percentage of social service agencies that have received no or only partial payment from the state in fiscal year 2017. This compares to 35 percent last fiscal year.
46: Percentage of agencies that have cut back on the number of clients they serve.
25: Percentage of agencies that have eliminated entire programs, such as for training for the unemployed and assistance to the elderly.
19: Percentage of agencies that have laid off staff because of delays and cuts in state funding.
57,000 cops: Their police training classes, across the state, were canceled.
$4. 6 billion: Amount the state is behind in paying health insurance claims for employees and retirees. Doctors and dentists, who say the delayed payments threaten to put them out of business, are demanding that patients pay upfront.
80 percent: Reduced funding, based on 2015 levels, that public universities have received under the last stop-gap state budget.
6: In April, S&P Global Ratings downgraded the creditworthiness of six state universities — The University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, Northeastern Illinois University, Eastern Illinois University, Southern Illinois University, Western Illinois University and Governor’s State University.
180 employees: Number Northeastern University announced it will lay off this summer because of a $10.8 million shortfall in state funding.
40 percent: Proportion of employees laid off at Chicago State University in 2016, to a significant degree because of reduced and inconsistent state funding.
16,461 students: They all left Illinois to go to college someplace else in 2015, while only 2,117 out-of-state students came to Illinois. University administrators say the exodus continues and can be blamed in part on university funding uncertainties, and the accompanying hit to the reputation of the state’s universities.
1,000 students: They failed to return to college for a second semester last year because grant funding for low-income students was frozen. Another 124,000 students stiffed by the state on their Monetary Assistance Program grants managed to remain in school only because the university or college fronted them the money, hoping the state would be good for it eventually.
4.7 percent: That’s the unemployment rate in Illinois, higher than in all its Midwestern neighbors except Kentucky. Business leaders have stressed to the Sun-Times Editorial Board repeatedly that while they’d love to see lower taxes and a loosening of regulations, what they require above all is governmental and taxation stability and predictability.
6: Number of Illinois small business development centers that closed for lack of funding in the last two years. Seven remain.
$850 million: This is what Illinois owes public schools across the state for “categorical” programs such as special education, transportation, bilingual services and early childhood education. The state did not make its September 2016 quarterly payment until April of this year. When will the December and March payments be made? Nobody knows.
$454.8 million: That’s what the state owes Chicago area’s Regional Transportation Authority, forcing the RTA to borrow to keep trains and buses running. The cost of this short-term borrowing is $950,919. Remember that when fares go up.
37,508 people: They all moved out of Illinois in 2016, the most residents lost by any state. It was Illinois’ third straight year of population decline. Leading the decline — for the third year in a row — was the City of Chicago, which lost 8,638 residents from 2015 to 2016. Of the 10 largest cities in the country, Chicago was the only one to see a drop in population.
To your post about the Pritzker ad. JB’s slogan at the end is “Fighting for what’s right, getting things done.” That’s eerily similar to Rod Blagojevich’s 2006 slogan, “Getting things done for people.”
Deerfield attorney Bob Morgan announced Thursday that he’s running as a Democrat for the Illinois House seat now held by State Rep. Scott Drury (D-Highwood). […]
“It’s been more than 700 days without a budget and it’s time for someone to stand up for the values of our community, make changes and begin fixing the problem,” said Morgan, a health care policy attorney.
Drury has claimed that he’s exploring a run for governor. He wouldn’t say whether he’d yet made up his mind.
“In a recent conversation with Bob Morgan, I was very disappointed to learn that he is open to voting for Mike Madigan to be the speaker of the House,” Drury said. “The last thing the 58th District needs is to go backwards.”
Morgan said he made no mention of Madigan during their brief conversation.
“I told him I would support a Democrat for speaker who shared my progressive values,” Morgan said.
A good Democrat bill got introduced in the Senate and a good Republican bill got introduced in the Senate. I support either of those bills. They were good bills.
The governor went on to call the House’s version, which ended up passing, a Chicago bailout.
* But let’s go back to when Democratic Sen. Andy Manar passed his own version out of the Senate…
The Rauner Administration released the following statement regarding the Senate’s passage of SB1. The following is attributable to Illinois Secretary of Education Beth Purvis
“This bill is not consistent with the framework of the bipartisan, bicameral School Funding Commission. Senator Manar abandoned our bipartisan process, departing from agreements already finalized in the commission and forcing a Chicago bailout at the expense of every other school district in the state, some of which are in worse financial straits than CPS.”
* Rauner also told WTTW yesterday that he could support Manar’s bill “with very minor tweaks.” But Purvis’s May 17th statement belies that comment.
He’s rewriting history and he’s getting away with it.
*** UPDATE *** From the governor’s office…
The governor was referring to Andy Manar’s SB 1, Senate Amendment 3 which he believes can be the basis to a compromise. The governor believes that there is a good place for compromise between Sen. Barickman’s SB 1124 and Sen. Manar’s SB1, Senate Amendment 3. The governor also believes that the conversations that were occurring between House Republicans and Will Davis just hours prior to floor Amendment 1 being filed could lead to a school funding formula with reforms that everyone could celebrate.
Just one day after Illinois lawmakers left Springfield without approving a budget, Rauner’s spirits are still up. But Illinois debt ratings are down – again.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more ratings downgrades, there should be, because the majority in the General assembly won’t get a balanced budget and they won’t get changes to keep it balanced,” the Republican governor says.
*** UPDATE *** Pritzker campaign response…
To be clear, further downgrades will lower the Illinois bond rating to junk status. This will do irrevocable harm to the state, which Rauner’s ‘wait and see’ approach is unlikely to fix.
This flippant response came in an interview with CBS Chicago, one of the many interviews Rauner sat for yesterday as part of his ‘I failed to pass a budget again’ media tour. The station noted that Rauner’s “spirits are still up” 702 days into a devastating crisis in the state he is supposed to lead.
“Illinoisans aren’t surprised that Bruce Rauner failed to pass a budget. They aren’t surprised he can’t figure out how to lead this state. And they aren’t surprised he can’t be bothered to do the job he was elected to do,” said Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh. “After 700 days of Bruce Rauner driving this state into the ground, this is sadly what Illinois families have come to expect. Bruce Rauner is a failed governor and he shouldn’t be surprised when he is voted out of office next November.”
