Money managers who invest retirement savings for 649 local police and fire pension funds in cities and towns across the state are mounting a fundraising effort to try and defeat Governor J.B. Pritzker’s proposal to consolidate their smaller funds into two combined funds.
According to an email leaked to WCIA, a former board member at the Illinois Public Pension Fund Association (IPPFA) is working to raise nearly half a million dollars to hire lobbyists to kill the pension proposal during the fall veto session at the statehouse.
“The retention of two or three lobbyist (sic) would be beneficial,” the email said, adding that the estimated “costs for a 12-month engagement would be approximately $480,000.”
Retired Addison police detective Dave Wall sent the fundraising email out to other IPPFA members and investment fund managers with a deadline for them to respond with a commitment to spend on lobbying by this Friday.
Unless the leaders slow it down, I’m kinda thinking they may not need any lobsters after veto session ends in less than a month.
* We’ve talked about this NPR Illinois poll before. It’s an online poll and it produced some surprisingly strong (32 percent) job approval numbers from Republicans for Gov. Pritzker. But, even if it’s in the ballpark, these are pretty strong numbers…
The results show 92 percent of Illinoisans support making mental health background checks more stringent. That’s about the same number as a similar survey from last year. Another 74 percent back the idea of banning assault weapons, a big jump from 2018. While there is a partisan split on that question, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans are in favor.
Meanwhile, 88 percent support requiring fingerprints to get a Firearms Owner’s Identification (FOID) card, and three out of four Illinoisans favor banning high capacity magazines. […]
Of the more than 1,000 people polled for the NPR Illinois UIS survey, over a quarter of those identified as being gun owners, which is in line with Illinois census data, and even a majority of gun owners say they support all of the proposals. That includes those who are located downstate, where gun rights are often a campaign issue.
The “strongly support” numbers are also pretty high, according to the poll. 54 percent strongly support banning high capacity magazines (64 percent total with just 15 percent strongly opposed), 55 percent strongly support an assault weapons ban (72 percent total with just 19 percent strongly opposed), 73 percent strongly support mental health background checks before purchases (92 percent total with 3 percent strongly opposed) and 69 percent strongly support making FOID applicants submit fingerprints (88 percent total with 6 percent strongly opposed).
Conventional wisdom is that the state of Illinois is on an irreversible road to decline, burdened with an aging population, rising taxes, staggering pension debt and residents fleeing to the borders.
That ain’t necessarily so, says a DePaul University economist. In a wonderfully contrary blog post on the website New Geography, which focuses on socioeconomic changes in in cities and other areas, he concludes that, despite its very real warts, the Land of Lincoln in many ways is still holding its own.
In the piece, William Sander, professor emeritus at DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business and Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, confesses right up front to the state’s economic woes.
Specifically, he notes, both the state and the Chicago metropolitan area have lost population lately, state gross domestic product growth has been 0.2 percentage points below the national average since 2010 and high school students have tended to move out of state for their freshman year of college.
Regarding population growth, it is important to point out that there has actually been negative domestic migration (more people leaving than entering) for most of the past century. At the same time, the state’s population doubled in size and the economy continued to grow. […]
While there has, in fact, been a net loss of college freshmen from Illinois to other states, there has not been a net loss of college students overall. One reason for this is that Illinois has a higher percentage of students in graduate and professional schools.
* The Question: Your “Move to Illinois” campaign slogans?
A program that offers cybersecurity expertise to the state’s 108 local election authorities in an effort to ensure election security will continue “indefinitely,” according to Illinois’ top elections official.
Illinois State Board of Elections Director Steve Sandvoss said his agency, in tandem with the Department of Innovation and Technology, will keep nine cyber navigators on the payroll to travel the state to help local election authorities with upgrading their cybersecurity infrastructure and practices.
Sandvoss told The Daily Line that the cyber navigators have completed the first phase of a multi-stage process. That first phase included identifying vulnerabilities in the systems of each of the state’s local election authorities. Some local elections agencies need more help than others, Sandvoss said.
“It’s a matter of working with those election authorities to address those vulnerabilities,” Sandvoss said. “And if they need money to do it, we have grant money that we got from the federal government. There’s an application process they can take advantage of to get money to pay for security upgrades that are needed.”
That $13.2 million [for cyber navigator programs] was Illinois’ share of $380 million Congress appropriated nationwide for election security in 2018. But now, as the 2020 elections approach, the U.S. House and Senate have been at loggerheads over how much to spend for additional election security.
The Democrat-controlled House has authorized $600 million, while the Republican-controlled Senate has agreed to just $250 million. […]
But Elizabeth Howard of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, said even the $600 million contained in the House plan wouldn’t be enough. She estimated the cost of securing the entire country’s election system at $2.2 billion.
That would encompass $750 million to replace “antiquated paperless voting machines” throughout the country, including $175 million in Illinois alone; $100 million for post-election audits over the next five years; $500 million for voter registration cybersecurity improvements; and $830 million to extend cyber navigator programs like the one in Illinois nationwide.
* Bernie’s column includes a story about Republican US Senate hopeful and Springfield surgeon Tom Tarter and also has the money wrapup…
The other candidates are former Lake County Sheriff MARK CURRAN; PEGGY HUBBARD of Belleville, who served in the Navy and worked for the IRS; and perennial candidate ROBERT MARSHALL, a radiologist from Burr Ridge.
Federal Election Commission reports show that Tarter, in the three-month period ending Sept. 30, raised more than $32,000 on top of the [$50,000] loan to himself, and had more than $74,000 on hand at the close of the period. Hubbard had raised more than $43,000 and had about $21,000 on hand. Curran loaned himself $10,000, raised a total of nearly $20,000 more, and ended the period with more than $23,000. Marshall, at the end of June, had less than $22,000.
Whoever wins the GOP nomination in March is expecting to face Democrat U.S. Sen. DICK DURBIN, of Springfield, who is seeking another six-year term. From July through September, Durbin raised more than $1 million and ended the period with $3.8 million in his campaign fund.
Curran is supposed to be the frontrunner. That’s what he told us anyway.
Two months before a 66-year-old man went on a deadly shooting spree at a condo building in Dunning, police responded to the same complex when the accused gunman allegedly assaulted the son of one of the victims of Saturday’s rampage.
The suspect, identified as Krysztof Marek, was charged Monday with five counts of first-degree murder, according to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. He was denied bail during his initial court hearing.
Sergio Macias, who manages the building in the 6700 block of West Irving Park, said Marek allegedly punched Jolanta Topolska’s son in the face on Aug. 3. Macias noted that police were then summoned to the building. […]
Even before the incident in August, Marek’s strange behavior had unnerved some of his neighbors.
What can we do about a man who, according to a woman who lived nearby, was “always very friendly” until about six months ago “when he snapped”? A man who allegedly punched the son of one of the victims two and a half months ago, on Aug. 3?
Until recently, very little.
But Illinois now has a new “red flag” law, enacted in 2018, that gives neighbors and others a potentially effective tool. They can report the behavior to local police, who can check with state police to see if the person has a gun card. Then, based on further investigation, the police can petition to temporarily remove firearms from the home as long as that person is a danger to himself or herself — or to others. Family members also can petition to have guns temporarily removed.
Also under the new law, people who feel they have been unfairly targeted by others — and are really of no danger to themselves or anybody — can make their case to a judge that their firearms should not be taken from them.
Such an intervention, conceivably, could have prevented the shootings on Saturday.
Unfortunately, however, most people, including many police officers, are unaware of the new law. Illinois should amp up efforts to get the word out.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul is leading a statewide effort to do just that. Other agencies — local police departments, counseling organizations and others — should help.
* Buried near the very bottom of this Tribune story about the federal raid of the Lyons village hall is this little nugget…
The grand jury case number listed on the documents indicates the investigation began in early 2017.
…Adding… This could have been just a regular grand jury which began convening in 2017 and agreed to approve search warrants issued this year. It’s not clear what’s actually going on.
A Worth Township official who once served briefly as a state legislator and now moonlights as a sales consultant for a politically connected red-light camera contractor has been subpoenaed by federal authorities investigating the company’s activities.
John M. O’Sullivan, 51, of Oak Lawn, is Worth Township supervisor and previously served as the township’s Democratic committeeman.
O’Sullivan was chosen by Democratic party leaders in August 2010 to finish out the last four months of state Rep. Kevin Joyce’s unexpired term after Joyce resigned and moved to Florida. Sources said O’Sullivan is a close ally of the Joyce family, longtime political powerhouses in the 19th Ward.
At SafeSpeed, LLC, O’Sullivan’s job is finding municipalities that might want to hire the Chicago company to install and operate red light cameras in their communities – with the business and the towns splitting the revenues from tickets.
O’Sullivan went from being a driver and weekend disc jockey to state representative, township supervisor and Democratic committeeman, Cook County Forest Preserve District supervisor, and chief of staff to former Cook County Board member Ed Moody, now the recorder of deeds. O’Sullivan also is linked to a red-light camera company, SafeSpeed, that the feds are said to be eyeing.
O’Sullivan and Moody, along with Moody’s brother, Fred, have been the torque of Madigan’s political organization for decades. They were the guys standing on front stoops collecting signatures, bullying opponents, setting up political trades, electing Madigan’s House majority — putting in their time in exchange for perks down the road.
They got them. O’Sullivan replaced former state Rep. Kevin Joyce in 2010 in the Illinois House when Joyce moved to Florida. Conveniently, O’Sullivan was able to appoint himself to the seat with a weighted vote as a Democratic committeeman. This is Illinois, after all.
O’Sullivan later voted for the 2011 state income tax hike as a lame-duck representative. He then ended up, along with another short-term legislator, Michael Carberry, on Cook County’s payroll under President Toni Preckwinkle. […]
O’Sullivan has been around the block. He knows a lot. I’m guessing at this point, so do the feds. And now he’s been subpoenaed.
O’Sullivan is definitely in tight with the Moody brothers and worked a lot of Madigan campaigns through them, I’m told, but he’s most definitely on the outs with the 19th Ward these days. And, as far as his ties to Madigan, here’s what a longtime 19th Ward guy told me this week…
I’m guessing any communication between O’Sullivan and the Speaker goes through Marty Quinn first, and then through the Moodys. “The family has a lot of buffers.”
“My video gaming license was approved (in 2012) after a 24-month intensive investigation. All my business relationships were disclosed to investigators, and the relationships in question were explicitly discussed with multiple (Illinois Gaming Board) agents and investigators. As these business relationships were ongoing, they had been disclosed and further discussed at each annual review of my licenses over the last seven years,” Heidner testified. “I have no affiliation with the mafia at all.”
“I have never been arrested or indicted for any crime whatsoever. And no proof linking me to any criminal conspiracy, whether it’s called ‘Mafia,’ or ‘Cosa Nostra’ or whatever other name you wish to give, has ever been made public.”
I am absolutely not saying that Mr. Heidner was lying, mind you. I didn’t even know who the guy was until the other day. All I’m saying is there’s a reason why I made my interns watch Godfather 1 and 2 and Goodfellas.
New Berlin, a village with 1,500 people separated from the outskirts of Springfield by 12 miles of pale blue skies and sunlit cornstalks, still has many hallmarks of a small town. It hosts the county fair, with chili cookoffs, livestock exhibitions and country music stars drawing crowds during the long days of June. Tractors occasionally join traffic on the main thoroughfare, and freight trains rumble and screech along tracks that travel the length of town. And, of course, the people in New Berlin, like much of rural Illinois, are almost entirely white.
Unlike a lot of rural towns, though, New Berlin is growing, and its schools in particular, with nearly 5 percent annual growth, are booming. Its elementary school attendance has more than doubled since 2003. The growth in the higher grades has been slower, but still some of the highest in the metro area. […]
Students are surging into New Berlin schools, though, not because of the town’s rural charm, but because of its proximity to the suburban sprawl of southwest Springfield. As developers turn farmland into new homes, they are increasingly leaving the boundaries of Springfield’s core school district – District 186 – to do so. Even homes that are within the city limits of Springfield often don’t fall within the school district, because those boundaries aren’t the same. The decade-old, half-million-dollar houses in Springfield’s Centennial Park Place neighborhood, for example, barely fall inside the New Berlin school district.
The same thing is happening on nearly every side of Springfield; city residents, in fact, now go to seven school districts other than District 186. In the Chatham school district, more than a third of students have Springfield addresses.
We hope the mayor appreciates that by striking, any workforce declares a reset: A walkout liberates Lightfoot from proposals she already has made but which her employees have rejected. As any strike continues, the mayor is free to withdraw those proposals and offer a different package.
My unsolicited advice is don’t listen to the Tribune. Nobody’s gonna break the CTU and nobody wants a long walkout. The Tribune formula requires both.
Also, teachers aren’t the mayor’s employees. They work for the public school system.
Veteran statehouse journalist Charles Wheeler III read aloud an account Wednesday evening of state officials being concerned about Illinois underfunding its pension obligations.
That concern is a commonly voiced today in Springfield, but many in Wheeler’s audience at Eastern Illinois University were audibly surprised to learn that the account he read was from 1917.
“It’s not something new. It’s been a problem forever,” Wheeler said. […]
The guest speaker indicated that pensions were a major topic of discussion at the constitutional convention in 1970 that resulted in a new Illinois Constitution. […]
“[The delegates to the convention] knew what they were doing. The voters knew what they were doing, it was clearly explained,” Wheeler said of the pension protection clause. He added that this clause has since maintained that, “Benefits that are earned cannot be taken away.”
…Adding… Wow…
A 1916 committee was put together to study the public safety funds. one member noted that there were too many small funds writing that, "the insecurity of such small funds is so obvious as to require no comment“ https://t.co/hEdb2sl5oP