Question of the day
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Tom Kacich…
Gov. Bruce Rauner didn’t spend much time in Urbana on Monday, but he did spend some money at Black Dog Smoke & Ale House before attending a fundraising event in Champaign. […]
At least two of the Black Dog customers said they were there because they had heard he was coming and wanted to deliver a message.
Julia Schmidt of Champaign said she wanted the governor “to hang in there” during his budget dispute with Democrats in the Legislature.
“I wanted to come down here and thank you for doing the good job you’re doing,” she said.
“That actually means a lot,” Rauner said. “I don’t hear that all the time.”
Wait, I thought that was a common thing…
“Everywhere I go in the state I’ve got people coming up to me by the hundreds [saying], ‘Stay strong, governor. Don’t back down, governor.’”
Either way, “Hang in there” seems to have supplanted “Don’t back down” as the new pro-Rauner slogan. Click here if you don’t believe me.
* The Question: What do you think the next pro-Rauner slogan will be?
Snark is heavily encouraged of course. Try to have fun with it. We could all use a little humor today.
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“Now is the time to prove that we care”
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The murder of 9 year old Tyshawn Lee in Chicago has garnered a lot of media coverage today. It has also prompted a press conference by Voices for Illinois Children and other groups…
This morning, the day after nine year old Tyshawn Lee was murdered in the Gresham neighborhood in Chicago, Voices for Illinois Children was joined by the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago and a community representative from the Local School Council of Scott Joplin Elementary in Chicago, IL, Tyshawn Lee’s school.
Voices for Illinois Children issued the following statement:
This morning we join Chicago in mourning the unnecessary, violent and traumatic death of nine year old Tyshawn Lee.
As advocates, Voices for Illinois Children and the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago fight alongside policymakers to invest in programs that our children and families need to succeed.
In communities, afterschool programs are symbols of hope, and the support youth receive can be life-changing. Afterschool programs like Teen REACH keep youth safe and get them on track for high school graduation, college and career success.
But since July 1, no state dollars have been spent on Teen Reach afterschool programs, including two programs in the neighborhood where Tyshawn lived. That means that many communities have been without afterschool programs that keep their children safe between the hours of three and six–the afterschool hours considered ‘prime time for juvenile crime’ by law enforcement.
The safety of children and families is not a partisan issue. Ultimately, it’s important to remember and understand that all of us, regardless of political persuasion, care deeply for the children and families of Illinois.
But now is the time to prove that we care. We have to put aside things we don’t agree on and move forward on what we do agree on—we all want families and communities in Illinois have the tools they need to succeed. It’s time for lawmakers and the Governor to work together to pass a budget with new revenue to invest in programs like afterschool in order to move Illinois forward.
They’re not blaming the child’s death on the lack of after school programs, but it is a powerful reminder that those programs help get kids out of harm’s way when classes end.
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#Winning
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* WJBC…
Illinois is now in its fifth month without a budget.
State Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington) told WJBC’s Scott Laughlin, he doesn’t see the Gov. Bruce Rauner backing down any time soon.
“The Democrats are literally scared for their lives when it comes to the next election cycle,” Brady said. “The ability Governor Rauner has to personal finance campaigns and to raise money from other interested parties has got them very much in dismay.”
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Dedication to People – The Credit Union Difference
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
Exactly what is the ‘Credit Union Difference’? Just ask Mae Powley, Manager of Pontiac-Dwight Prison Employees Credit Union.
“We really enjoy getting to know our members personally. We consider them part of our extended family. Members are friends, not just account numbers.”
From those who consider their credit union as a trusted place to help meet daily budgetary needs to those who are on the other side of the counter helping fellow members build strong financial futures, credit unions are all about “People Helping People”. So when Mae talks about the credit union as an extended family, she lives it. That’s because she is a member herself along with 1,100 other current and retired Illinois Department of Corrections employees and their family members – and has served alongside them as manager for the past 42 years.
Credit unions are able to better serve their communities because of their not-for-profit cooperative structure and leadership of a volunteer board elected by and from the local membership. Illinois credit unions: putting the “people” behind their fundamental philosophy.
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Get ‘er done
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* From the Illinois Policy Institute’s news service…
Illinois’ Governor wouldn’t say how many prospects there are to possibly buy a manufacturing plant in Bloomington-Normal but said one thing that’s keeping potential buyers away is Illinois poor business climate. During a stop with the McLean County Chamber of Commerce Governor Bruce Rauner said his administration is looking for a buyer to take over the plant being vacated by Mitsubishi. However, Rauner said finding one to seal the deal is difficult because of the cost of doing business in Illinois and somethings have to change.
“Our property taxes are too high. Our corporate income taxes are not competitive, but workers comp, tort system and just the regulatory burden and the red tape is punishing for businesses and especially for manufacturing firms.”
Our corporate income tax rate was slashed back in January, but he’s not wrong about the other stuff.
* More…
“I’ve been working my tail off trying to get a buyer for the Mitsubishi plant,” said Rauner. “We’ve got people interested, but they look at (the state’s) regulations and taxes and they think, ‘Oh, I don’t know …’”
After his talk, Rauner declined to give a specific number of potentially interested buyers or specific reasons causing their hesitation to proceed.
“I don’t know if it would be right for me to say why people are hesitant … so far we haven’t had success,” Rauner told reporters, noting there are fewer jobs today in the state than 16 years ago.
“We are bleeding our manufacturing base in Illinois at a fast pace,” he said. “It’s our regulations and our taxes. Our property taxes are too high. Our corporate income taxes are not competitive. Workers’ comp, our tort system and the regulatory burden and red tape are punishing for businesses, especially for manufacturing firms. That’s what we’ve got to change.”
Look, I know people in general don’t like corporate incentives. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t rule anything out, particularly for this plant. The governor has suspended the EDGE credit going forward. He might want to rethink that.
You go to war with the army you have, not the one you want to have or believe you ought to have. He has some weapons in his arsenal and he ought to use them, because we’re not a so-called “right to work” state so favored by international manufacturers these days, and we’re not gonna be.
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A county on the brink
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* AP…
The only public health clinic in Illinois’ poorest county is in a former synagogue off a largely abandoned main street, a bright spot with multicolored windows where seniors can get flu shots and moms get help feeding their kids. But today the lights are off and the doors locked. A sign on the door apologizes for the inconvenience: Because of the impasse over the state budget, we are only open on Wednesdays.
A few blocks away half the sheriff’s department has just gotten pink slips. Counselors at the only place to get mental health care in miles are working for free as the waiting list for help grows. And about 20 miles up the road from Cairo, Illinois’ southernmost tip, the man in charge of keeping highways clear this winter can’t afford to buy road salt, but figures he wouldn’t be able to pay drivers to spread it anyway.
For many people in Illinois, the five-month disagreement over a state budget has been barely a blip on the radar, a sideshow of political wills between a new Republican governor and a heavily Democratic legislature.
But for residents in the low-income counties tucked between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers - a mix of farmland and forest where Southern accents are more common than stop signs - it’s a far different story. Here people and private industry are scarce and getting scarcer, and residents rely on government for everything from health care to jobs and feel the impact severely when the public sector falters.
The problems in that county are not new. But the impasse is making them worse, not better. Go read the whole thing.
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Both sides are “top down”
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The Ottawa Times has been reporting lately about the “top down” process to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Frank Mautino. Turns out, however, as most of us who do or watch this process for a living know, it goes both ways…
State Republican officials say they’re asking state representative candidate Jacob Bramel to end his campaign to clear the way for a former candidate who announced months ago that he would not run in the 2016 election.
Bramel, though, vowed Monday to move forward.
He met with Republican Jerry Long, last year’s candidate for the 76th District House seat, and two GOP officials late Sunday afternoon near the pool tables at Shakers Lounge in Ottawa. They requested he abandon his campaign.
Reached by cellphone Monday, Long, a union truck driver and a small business owner, barely allowed a reporter to introduce himself before saying that he was declining to comment. In 2014, Mautino narrowly defeated Long by 336 votes.
Bramel said Long asked for the meeting at the bar, but Bramel didn’t know that two representatives of the House Republican Organization, Joe Woodward and Anthony Sarros, would be there as well.
You may disagree with it, but the chamber leaders have been picking candidates in targeted races for decades. It’s pretty universal.
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Edgar responds to critics
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Republicans loyal to Gov. Bruce Rauner, including legislators and the Tribune editorial board, have been lambasting former Gov. Jim Edgar lately for causing today’s budget problems by devising a pension payment ramp that pushed the solution into the future. Edgar responded on Rick Pearson’s Sunday radio show…
Edgar noted the pension law marked the first time that the state was required to pay the employer’s share of public pension costs for state workers, judges, teachers outside Chicago and elected officials.
“People are rewriting history a little bit on this,” Edgar said of the criticism he has received.
“We just came out of recession. We couldn’t put a whole lot of money in that — that down the road the payments were going to have to increase,” Edgar said. He added, “Everybody knew that and were on warning you have to prepare for that. Unfortunately, what happened was things I couldn’t control after I left office.”
Edgar noted pension holidays by his successors, a downturn in the stock market after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the Great Recession all combined to put Illinois in a hole with a nation’s worst unfunded public employee pension liability of more than $100 billion.
“You had to stay disciplined,” said Edgar, who noted the legislation passed with bipartisan support in his re-election year and led to support from credit-rating agencies and newspaper editorial boards.
One of those editorial boards was the Tribune’s, by the way.
The full interview is here.
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Tone it down, please
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Tribune…
Gov. Rauner laughed off an attack from Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, who called him a “sociopath” during a Friday fundraiser attended by House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton.
Asked about the comments during a Monday stop in Bloomington, Rauner laughed before revealing his coping mechanism for the name-calling.
“Uh, yeah. I don’t know how I can say … I’ve just tried to work hard to help people my whole life, and that’s what I’m doing as governor,” Rauner said. “And that’s what I did for years trying to help teachers in Chicago and principals in Chicago, and you know, in politics rhetoric sometimes gets overheated and impolite and all I can do is ignore it.”
Lewis is so tiresome.
Not to mention that constantly threatening a teachers strike and actively opposing a legislative funding plan during the city’s worst fiscal times since maybe the Great Depression might also be construed as perhaps at least ever so slightly off-kilter by some psychological observers. Also, this Lewis quote about coming budget cuts…
“You’re going to ruin everybody’s vacation”
Lovely.
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“How dare you?”
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Remember this recent Kurt Erickson story?…
The lack of a state budget hasn’t stopped Illinois lawmakers from ordering up thousands of taxpayer-paid copies of coloring books, brochures and other print-based promotional perks in recent months.
According to the results of a public records request, members of the General Assembly have placed 542 orders for printed material since the fiscal year started July 1 without a budget on the books.
The list of the 141 lawmakers participating in the program crosses party lines and includes many of the same Republicans who have been calling for cuts to state programs to help balance the budget.
State Rep. Jeanne Ives, for example, ordered 500 activity books and 13,000 cards to distribute in her suburban Chicago district.
* Rep. Ives no likey…
“This is just ridiculous. How dare you? You should be ashamed of yourself,” Ives told me in a phone conversation last week. “You are so misguided on what you’re focusing on. You’re incredible. Incredible.”
She says there are many other examples of waste in state government, including the current structure of the General Assembly, in which lawmakers who chair committees receive $10,000 annual stipends even if those committees rarely meet.
Nonetheless, I asked her if she thought it was hypocritical for her to charge taxpayers for promotional coloring books at a time when the state doesn’t have a budget.
“Not at all,” Ives said.
“Go back and rewrite your article, sir. Because you know where some of those coloring books ended up at? At my kids’ Catholic school. That’s right. I sent them to a Catholic school. The teachers were thrilled to have this book that portrayed Illinois and some facts about it in an interesting and engaging way. So why don’t you go and print that, too,” Ives said.
Actually, the revelation of how a legislator gave some taxpayer-funded materials to her kids’ private school was worth printing.
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* Illinois Radio Network…
If legislative leaders and Gov. Bruce Rauner are going to meet in public on the budget stalemate, who should set the agenda? The answers you get depend on which party you’re asking.
The same civic advocacy groups who asked for a public meeting to be held want a “bipartisan agenda” to guide it. State Sen. Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant (D-Shorewood) agrees that one person shouldn’t determine what’s going to be discussed.
“There’s a lot of issues, a lot of budgetary items, and I really hope that they’re each given an opportunity to submit what they would like to talk about,” Bertino-Tarrant said.
State Rep. Ron Sandack (R-Downers Grove) disagrees, saying it’s the proper role of the governor for Rauner to set the agenda for a meeting with legislative leaders.
“That’s just the way it is, whether it’s Gov. Rauner, Gov. Quinn, Gov. Blagojevich, et al, that’s the person who should set the agenda, call the meeting, and get things going,” Sandack said. “If we’re going to squabble over an agenda, man, we really have lost our bearings.”
OK, first of all, Rauner didn’t actually “call the meeting.” The goo-goos called it. If we had waited for the governor to call the meeting, it wouldn’t have been called.
And what’s the big deal about a bipartisan agenda? Does literally everything have to be set by the governor? Perhaps that’s been part of the problem here all along?
* Fox Springfield…
“Somebody said, let’s have a big group, let’s get all four of the leaders and you in a room and turn the TV cameras on. Oh, great. Talk about posturing. Now everybody’s going to posture. What human being likes to negotiate in front of a camera and make a compromise on TV? People don’t do that. Whatever. I don’t think it’s going to matter much,” said Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) Illinois.
OK, I don’t totally disagree, but then why did you even agree to the meeting? And why did you say back then that you were “happy” to host the public meeting, and why did you call the development “excellent news”?…
Over the last few weeks, I’ve met with each of you individually to try to move beyond this impasse. I believe it’s time for all of us to meet as a group, and thanks to the invitation of a few advocacy groups, I understand everyone has availability on Wednesday, November 18 from 9:30 AM to Noon and is interested in a public meeting. This is excellent news.
* Pantagraph editorial…
The key to ending the budget stalemate, at this meeting or any other time, is for Rauner and Madigan, primarily, to focus on what is possible.
Truer words were never written.
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Unclear on the concept
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Tribune…
“It’s frustrating to see the only folks who are being funded are due to court orders, but we really don’t want to do our business that way,” said ISU President Larry Dietz. “It’s very difficult to run any of the universities for essentially a third of the year not knowing what your budget is going to be. We often hear, ‘Why don’t you run the university like a business?’ Well, I don’t know any business that doesn’t know what its revenue stream will be.”
President Dietz has obviously never met a business owner facing some unexpectedly tough (or good) times.
Consumer tastes change, economic climates change, people make mistakes, and sometimes stuff just comes down out of the blue.
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Looking at Rauner’s ROI
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
For months now, Gov. Bruce Rauner has said he won’t negotiate a state budget unless his “Turnaround Agenda” demands are met.
In the meantime, he has slashed funding for the child care assistance program, homeless services have been decimated, mental health services are going without cash, universities are struggling and even the Meals on Wheels service for the elderly is cutting back deliveries.
But one of the most important things missing from the debate over that “Turnaround Agenda” is how much money the governor’s proposals will truly save state and local governments. Is it really worth all this pain?
There is simply no hard, reliable, trustworthy data out there because numbers from both sides of the debate on union-related subjects like the prevailing wage are so steeped in ideology.
Among other things, the governor is demanding that local governments, including school districts, be allowed to opt out of paying the prevailing wage on construction and other projects. The amount is set by county and all publicly financed projects must pay those wages. Unions say killing off the prevailing wage won’t save much if any money because productivity will drop when inexperienced, low-wage employees are used to replace trained construction and trades workers.
But, just for the sake of argument, let’s take the proponents at their word on this particular topic.
A June, 2014 study conducted by the Anderson Economic Group for the far-right Illinois Policy Institute, the Illinois Association of School Boards, the Illinois Chamber and the Illinois Black Chamber found that eliminating the prevailing wage would’ve saved local school districts $126.4 million in 2011 (that’s in 2013 dollars, by the way).
According to the state’s Commission on Governmental Forecasting and Accountability, local school districts extended (billed) $16.4 billion in property taxes in 2011. Adjust that 2011 amount to 2013 dollars to even it out with the Anderson study and we get $16.98 billion.
So, even if every single local school district throughout Illinois immediately stopped paying prevailing wage rates on construction projects (not gonna happen) and even if eliminating the prevailing wage does indeed save as much as the Anderson study projected (doubtful), school districts could’ve saved a grand total of 0.74 percent of their property tax budgets, which is not much more than a rounding error. Now figure, in reality, savings of at most half that amount and we’re looking at about a third of a percentage point. That’s not even a rounding error.
Not to mention that the total percentage saved from allowing local governments to opt-in to eliminate the prevailing wage in their actual operating budgets is quite a bit smaller because to get an accurate count you’d have to add in revenues from local sales taxes, state and federal money, etc. Charitably, are we talking maybe a quarter of a percentage point saved here? If that?
Whenever you make a huge investment of time and effort, you should always calculate what’s known as the Return on Investment, or ROI. As far as the prevailing wage goes, this doesn’t look to my eyes like a good enough ROI to continue refusing to negotiate on the budget.
I mean, really, you’re gonna shut down critical state services for months on end for a few million bucks—on a bill that the pro-union majority Democratic General Assembly will never support anyway?
Either change the proposal (perhaps to apply it to only smaller projects) or move along. The benefit is nowhere near worth the current pain.
And, by the way, I am not by any means saying that the governor has to be the only one who needs to start talking about a budget deal.
Legislative Democrats have completely eluded the topic of higher revenues all year. Yes, they say in general that they want a “mixture” of budget cuts and tax hikes. That’s nice and all, but if they truly support the programs they say they hold so dear, like child care assistance and need-based college grants, then they’re gonna have to pay for them.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, voting to fund these programs without voting for any revenue to pay for them is like the college student who can’t get it in his head that having checks in his checkbook doesn’t translate into having money in his bank account.
Somehow, some way, we need to get our leaders to start facing reality.
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Learning from the ABATE experience
Tuesday, Nov 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* My Crain’s Chicago Business column…
It took Illinois Senate President John Cullerton 20 years to learn a very valuable lesson: When your attacks are making the other side stronger, stop the attacks.
It’s a lesson Gov. Bruce Rauner should heed now.
Cullerton was the original sponsor of a mandatory child car-seat law. A few years later, he passed a mandatory seat belt law.
In 1986, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that his seat belt law was constitutional, and the court appeared to overturn a 1969 opinion striking down the state’s mandatory motorcycle helmet law. So Cullerton announced he would introduce a helmet bill as soon as he could. A motorcycle helmet law seemed to be just over the horizon.
Fast-forward almost 30 years and the North Side Democrat is one of the most powerful politicians in the Illinois General Assembly—but the state still doesn’t have a helmet law.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. The accomplished legislator introduced his helmet bill year after year.
“The more Cullerton kept poking the bear, the bigger we got,” lobbyist Todd Vandermyde recalls. Vandermyde was a bulldozer operator in the early 1990s when he started working with A Brotherhood Aimed Toward Education, a loosely organized group that opposed the helmet bill. ABATE leaders ironed out their regional differences and used Cullerton’s bill to recruit members who didn’t want the government telling them they had to wear helmets.
Membership peaked at 20,000 motorcycle riders in the early 2000s. Rauner should know this story. He’s a motorcycle enthusiast who attends ABATE meetings all the time.
Meanwhile, Cullerton’s helmet bill was becoming more unpopular with his fellow legislators every year. Local ABATE chapters were springing up all over the place, and its hardcore members were becoming very politically active.
“They used my bill to build up their membership,” Cullerton says. It got to the point where he couldn’t even pass a bicycle helmet bill.
So about a decade ago, Cullerton finally realized that his efforts were counterproductive and he stopped introducing helmet bills.
Vandermyde went on to work the statehouse halls for his union. A social conservative, Vandermyde, like many trade union members, never cared all that much for public employee unions. He no longer works for the union, and he has endured cuts to his own pension benefits to save the union fund. It sticks in his craw that the courts have ruled that government employee pensions can’t be touched.
But he says he has watched in amazement this year as Rauner “galvanized and coalesced the labor movement” like never before with constant attacks. Rauner started with a months-long push for a so-called right to work law and then refused to negotiate the state budget until local governments are allowed to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights and remove prevailing wage protections for construction workers.
In Vandermyde’s eyes, this is
Click here to read the rest before commenting please.
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