Along with mayors, many Republican politicians down the ballot in state and federal offices have been avoiding Trump. Republicans in endangered seats, like Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson or Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, have been particularly hesitant to endorse him, and in some cases have outright rebuked him. Struggling with a divisive nominee, The New York Times reported some GOP senators have even received fundraising help from an unusual source: former President George W. Bush.
Former President George W. Bush is lending a hand to vulnerable Republicans in competitive Senate races across the country this summer, CNN reported Friday, but Illinois U.S. Senator Mark Kirk is not among them.
Either Kirk is viewed as not vulnerable or not competitive, no explanation was offered.
Bush has attended fundraisers for Arizona Sen. John McCain and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, and will attend upcoming events for Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, according to The New York Times.
Well, we know he’s vulnerable, so that’s not a good explanation. Maybe it’s as simple as no events are scheduled yet.
But another reason might be that W was (and likely remains) hugely unpopular here. He got clobbered by John Kerry in 2004, while a certain Chicago state legislator launched his national career by running a largely anti-Bush campaign for US Senate.
Bush’s second midterm in 2006 was an unmitigated disaster here, and wound up handing the state Senate Democrats a super-majority. Also, people tend to believe the “polka” footage of George Ryan dancing with Judy Baar Topinka tanked her campaign. But the people I know in the Rod Blagojevich campaign swore that the video they used of her appearing with Bush at a Chicago event did far more damage. Whatever it was, RRB won by ten points. The trend was most definitely his friend.
Dropping previous objections, Friends of the Parks now appears ready to negotiate with the city on a grand bargain that could bring the proposed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art to the South Side lakefront. […]
1 “A legally enforceable agreement to protect the lakefront from development (other than park recreation-related uses) for the next 100 years.
2 Unspecified changes in Lucas’ ground lease on the publicly owned site “to conform to that of the other public museums in Chicago.”
3 Development of DuSable Park, near the once-proposed Chicago Spire project just north of where the Chicago River enters Lake Michigan.
4 Creation of a “neighborhood parks fund” that would get 5 percent of museum revenues and be used to pay for capital improvements “in disinvested neighborhoods.”
5 Agreement on a community benefits deal in which “a significant number” of the jobs at the Lucas Museum will go to low-income and minority residents.
6 Conversion of that parking lot which was to turn the original proposed site of the museum into “a green event space” suitable for tailgating by Chicago Bears fans, among other uses.
The Chicago Park District on Sunday accused Friends of the Parks of issuing an “outrageous” list of demands that is “nothing short of extortion” and will likely be the “final nail in the coffin” of efforts to keep movie mogul George Lucas’ museum in Chicago. […]
The demands stunned City Hall for their audacity. The list was leaked to the press and has yet to be shared with either the Park District or Emanuel, who met privately with Irizarry, Board Chairman Lauren Moltz and key board members last month. […]
First and foremost is the demand that Emanuel abandon the Soldier Field site and return to his costly and controversial plan to tear down McCormick Place East.
That plan is clearly going nowhere in Springfield because it relies on $1.2 billion in new borrowing and extending the life of five tourism taxes to replace the lost convention center space. […]
Ruiz branded the demand for 5 percent of Lucas Museum revenue “completely outrageous and totally unrelated” to the “stated opposition” that prompted Friends of the Parks to file a federal lawsuit challenging the mayor’s original site on Soldier Field’s south parking lot.
* The governor flip-flopped last week on his budget proposal, which completely zeroed-out money for ag education programs…
When Governor Bruce Rauner’s advance team met with FFA leadership last week prior to his speech at the 88th annual Illinois FFA Convention, they discussed potential talking points, including eliminating smaller budget line items and raising the general education budget.
Mindy Bunselmeyer, Illinois FFA executive director, told them that would cause a “great deal of concern from the audience” – some 5,000 passionate agricultural education students.
“I didn’t want anything to happen that would be disrespectful of him and of the office,” she recalls.
Within a couple hours, the Governor had arrived and was escorted to the convention floor by FFA members. Bunselmeyer sat in the front row with him and they chatted about the motivational speaker and the talent act. He asked questions about FFA members and programs.
Then he took the stage, talked about his background and made an announcement.
“I listened to you and I told our budget guys, ‘We are going to put more money in our school system and we’re going to restore the special line item for agriculture education here in Illinois,’” Rauner told the convention audience, to rousing cheers.
“I’m all in for your success and it’s a privilege to be here with you all,” he added.
“Rather than invest in our state’s future, Governor Rauner seems hellbent on driving schools to the point of financial ruin – whether it’s CPS, Chicago State, Eastern Illinois, or dozens of local school districts around the state. The governor should represent all of Illinois, and equitably fund the needs of every child, regardless of where they live or the color of their skin.
* The Tribune editorialized against a stopgap budget over the weekend…
What’s also ridiculous is that the taxpayers of Illinois, along with the schools, businesses and nonprofits, could get stuck with a temporary budget until after the election. A stopgap budget does nothing to bring desperately needed stability or reform to this state.
Worse, the state could end up with no budget at all. Again.
* The Question: Do you support a stopgap budget, or do you think the governor and legislators should wait until they forge a “grand compromise” and do a full-year budget? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
Startups love disrupting old industries. But it can get messy and expensive when old industries fight back.
Opternative, a startup that developed an online eye exam, already has seen laws passed in three states looking to prevent it from doing business; two others created new regulations. The four-year-old Chicago tech company operates in 33 states.
Opternative’s 13th employee was a head of government affairs—brought on before it made a more routine hire like a controller, says CEO and co-founder Aaron Dallek. The company hired its first outside lobbyist last year and now has eight.
“They don’t teach you this in business school. There are very few startups who need to learn this stuff this early on,” says Dallek, 32, who has become familiar with state capitals such as Albany, Tallahassee, Lincoln and Sacramento.
As we’ve seen with Uber, Airbnb and fantasy sports games, professions that have had the playing field all to themselves will fight back hard against these “disruptors.” But, over time, it’s probably a losing battle.
* Uber and Lyft now have 90,000 drivers in Chicago, which would normally make them such a major player in the local economy that nobody would want to mess with them. Not so…
A Chicago City Council committee on June 17 approved regulations for ridesharing that would likely end the service as residents know it – and quite possibly drive Uber and Lyft out of town.
The proposed ordinance requires rideshare drivers, who already undergo company-required background checks, to submit to city-overseen fingerprinting and vehicle inspections and acquire a chauffeur’s license. Uber and Lyft warned aldermen that passing the ordinance would force them to cease operations in Chicago. The full City Council is expected to vote on the ordinance as early as June 22, mere weeks after the ridesharing platforms shut down in Austin, Texas, due to similar restrictions.
Beyond providing millions of safe rides for residents, the services have provided job opportunities for many Chicagoans struggling in a stagnant Chicago economy.
What the city should do is re-think its entire regulatory scheme for everybody. In the age of GPS, for instance, is it really necessary that drivers know all the intricacies of Chicago landmarks? And considering the fact that the Orlando terrorist passed two background checks, do they even work as advertised?…
Ald. Susan Sadlowski-Garza (10th) said the fingerprint checks were valid for ride-hailing drivers, just as for cabbies. “If Chicagoans are going to put themselves or their family members in the cars of strangers, they should be able to rest assured in knowing that driver has undergone a background check and that they will be safe as they travel,” she said.
Expect the heat to increase on the city council, now that a committee has forwarded a proposed ordinance.
* Along those lines, Vanity Fair published a glowing interview of Bradley Tusk over the weekend. Tusk was a higher-up in the Blagojevich administration who left for New York as fast as he could and wound up working for Mayor Bloomberg. He now runs “campaigns” for disruptive startups like Uber and FanDuel…
We’re campaign managers. So we do three basic things. We figure out how a business goal is going to be achieved, whether it’s fending off a piece of bad regulation, or selling your product into government, or being able to just write new regulations that will enable your product to exist or get licensed so that you can exist.
We figure out strategy to get from point A to point B. If necessary, we’ll build a team on the ground. That might mean lobbyists, that might mean P.R., it might mean polling, it might mean ads.
And then we run a campaign. During the 2009 mayoral campaign, I would send Mike Bloomberg an e-mail at five A.M. that said, “Here’s who’s endorsing you today. Here’s what we have on the air, and here’s what the polls say.” Whatever information he needed to know. And he then went about his day as mayor. And my view was, “Why can’t you run everything like this?” So every day at seven A.M., every company we work with, every client we have, gets an e-mail from us saying, “Here’s exactly what’s happening on every front, every issue, today.”
Our view is the more you run something like a high-stakes political campaign, the greater your chances of success.
* Related…
* ADDED: Emanuel wants to let precincts opt out of Airbnb
* Rep. John Bradley’s Republican opponent David Severin…
Severin supports Gov. Bruce Rauner’s reform agenda, including term limits for politicians. But Democrats argue making them part of budget talks has caused Illinois’ unprecedented stalemate to drag on. It’s a battle Severin describes as “worth it.”
“If we don’t fight, pretty soon we’re going to have nothing to fight for,” Severin said. […]
Severin remains critical of working groups, which Bradley is part of. Republicans and Democrats have held meetings via video conference in an effort to agree on a short-term budget deal. Severin argues they should be in person instead.
“So if you’re working together that means you’re going to sit down and look at each other face to face across the table, maybe even next to each other,” Severin said.
Severin said, if elected, he’d bring that negotiation style to Springfield.
Illinois is a very big state, and the governor shut down the air shuttle service last year, which doesn’t make it easier to attend face-to-face meetings. Plus, it’s 2016. Video conferencing is pretty widely used tool in business and governing.
I just don’t see that as a big dealio.
* Plus, with stark differences like these, does it really matter if they meet in person or via video?…
Legislative working groups have been trying to reach compromises, and [Sen. Don Harmon] said he participated in “procurement reforms which are largely buttoned up but waiting for whatever agreements have to be reached on other topics.”
But he said compromise comes when “nobody gets everything they wanted,” and he hasn’t seen “any real evidence of that” from the governor.
“I know that the governor likes to point to the things he is no longer pursuing, but he hasn’t compromised on the core issues before us,” including weakening prevailing wage and collective bargaining laws, Harmon said.
“These are just things a Democratic legislature is not going to approve in the form he would like them approved,” Harmon said.
Harmon told me today that while Republican legislators seem to agree that procurement reform is a mostly done deal, “The governor might not think they’re done.”
The House Republican Organization is continuing its cable TV ad buy for another week with a $95,389 purchase of time in several areas where the Rauner-funded GOP is going after House Democrats.
Based on the location of the buys, 3,197 spots appear once again to be aiming at such Democrats as Reps. Michelle Mussman of Schaumburg, Sam Yingling of Grayslake, Kate Cloonen of Kankakee and Andy Skoog of LaSalle. Skoog was appointed to fill the spot of Frank Mautino when he became auditor general.
The ads started Saturday and are to run through Friday. The continued ad barrage comes as Rauner’s Republicans are locked in a yearlong stalemate with Madigan’s Democrats over a state budget and the governor’s economic agenda.
* As we’ve already discussed, St. Sabina’s Fr. Pfleger went way over the top last week with his verbal attacks on Gov. Rauner. Pfleger also questioned why the Dusable Museum would allow Rauner to hold a Juneteenth event there. Yesterday, the governor canceled the event…
“It is unfortunate that special interests politicized what was supposed to be a celebratory event,” a Rauner spokesperson said in an e-mail. “Out of an abundance of caution and respect for the safety of visitors and the museum, we have regretfully cancelled the planned Juneteenth event at the DuSable Museum.”
A representative for DuSable said the museum was not affiliated with the event, claiming the governor merely rented the space for an hour Monday afternoon to host a Juneteenth celebration. The holiday commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery. […]
“Rauner should have never been allowed,” Pfleger told NBC 5 Sunday following the cancellation. “A person whose policies are keeping whole communities in bondage should not be allowed anywhere in the community unless he’s coming to say he’s sorry and sign a budget.”
Additionally, a coalition of 20 community activist groups, including Freedom First International, planned a protest of the event Monday “to send a clear message to the governor that a political narrative was not welcome on Juneteenth at the DuSable nor anywhere else in our community.”
“This is the guy who is crippling our community,” Pfleger said. As part of the state budget impasse, he added, “We’re watching social service organizations close up. We’re watching violence-prevention programs gone. We’re watching the South and the West sides dying. They’ve already been on life support. And under this governor they’re on hospice now.
“And then we’re gonna let him come speak in the pulpit? On Juneteenth weekend at the DuSable Museum?” Pfleger said. “It’s an insult. So I was glad that he canceled.”
June 19, 2016
Governor Bruce Rauner
Office of the Governor
207 State House Springfield, IL 62706
Dear Governor Rauner,
We are mayors who believe that our children’s future should be determined by their hard work and talents – not by their zip codes.
Unfortunately, our current school-funding system penalizes the children from our communities. Many of them come from families in poverty. This is both morally indefensible and a threat to the future of Illinois.
At a time of growing economic inequality in our nation, a strong public education is the great equalizer. It is the best means of providing each child in our state with the chance for a promising, productive future. Yet, for years Illinois has languished near the bottom of the 50 states in financial support for its schools and students. Our school districts must rely on local property taxes for the majority of their funding. The result for many children is that their zip code becomes their destiny. None of us as elected representatives can accept this reality.
We recognize that this school-funding situation is not of your making. It has been in place for decades, affecting generations of Illinoisans. But we cannot allow these terrible inequities to continue. Now is the time, and this is the session, to provide all of our children with the chance for a brighter future – no matter where they live or their family’s economic status.
Many of our school districts across the state have reached a tipping-point. Hard-won academic progress is endangered by a lack of state support and the resulting over-reliance on property taxes. Maintaining the current funding formula for another year will only exacerbate this crisis. Now is the time to put our schools and students on a new course – one that enables students to reach their full potential as individuals and as citizens.
From all corners of our state and from many diverse communities, we have joined together in urging you to address the school-funding inequities that threaten so many Illinois public schools and their students. Your full support for fair and equitable school funding in this session is necessary to offer hope and opportunity to millions of children while helping to secure a more prosperous future for our state.
Sincerely,
Mayor Rahm Emanuel City of Chicago
Mayor Tom Weisner City of Aurora
Mayor Barbara Piltaver Villlage of Schiller Park
Mayor Wayne Motley City of Waukegan
Mayor Jerry Bennett Village of Palos Hills
Mayor Dan McLaughlin Village of Orland Park
Mayor Eugene Williams City of Lynwood
Mayor Charles E. Tokar Village of Chicago Ridge
Mayor John A. Ostenburg Village of Park Forest
President Robert Kolosh Village of Thornton
Mayor Rod Craig Village of Hanover Park
Mayor Don A. De Graff Village of South Holland
President Sam Pulia Village of Westchester
Mayor Domingo F. Vargas Mayor of Blue Island
Mayor Beniamino Mazzulla Village of Stone Park
President Vernard Alsberry Jr. Village of Hazel Crest
President Stephan K. Pickett Village of Sleepy Hollow
The [group allied against the remap proposal] People’s Map has alleged, among other issues, that the [group pushing the remap reform] Independent Map proposal does not meet the narrow window for petition-driven initiatives, which is limited to making “structural and procedural” changes in the legislature.
In its response, the Independent Map group contended that since the court allowed the 1980 Pat Quinn-led effort to reduce the size of the Illinois House by one-third and create single-member House districts, its new redistricting amendment proposal also should be constitutional.
“If changes to the number and size of districts are ‘structural’ changes, then it necessarily follows that changes to the criteria for drawing those very same districts every 10 years would also be structural,” the Independent Map group said.
“Similarly, if a proposal to convert from multiple- to single-member districts addresses a procedural subject … then so too does a proposal to fundamentally alter the process by which redistricting is accomplished every 10 years,” the group said.
ICYMI: “Redistricting reform heads to court as Madigan forces try to block it from ballot”
Double-Talking Democrats Silent on Madigan’s Attack on Voters
“Illinois Democrats have a peculiar habit of saying one thing in their districts and doing another in Springfield. Now, they have turned to silence on Madigan’s effort to prevent fair legislative maps. Democrats cannot credibly claim to support redistricting reform when Mike Madigan, the chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois, is sponsoring a lawsuit to get the Independent Map Amendment thrown off the November ballot. Until this shameful lawsuit is dropped, Democratic candidates should refuse financial support from the Madigan-controlled Democratic party. Otherwise, it is clear that Democrats who claim to support redistricting reform are simply paying lip-service to get elected.” – Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Steven Yaffe
Reps. Mike Smiddy, Sam Yingling, Michelle Mussman and Kate Cloonen claim to be supporters of redistricting reform, but they have all refused to condemn Mike Madigan’s lawsuit to get the Independent Map amendment thrown off the ballot.
“We’re asking police officers to respond to failed public policy,” [Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th)] said.
The defunding of social services has in many instances turned officers into social workers, he said.
“We’re asking them to provide mental health care and medical care,” Pawar said. “We’re asking them to respond and be reactive to poverty.”
Either equip officers with the skills and tools to deal with more than crime, or elect representatives who prioritize funding social services, he said.
“If people want real change … the people we elect is a reflection of what we believe,” Pawar said.
Since civilization began, demagogues have used division to gain or keep power. It’s one of the ugliest aspects of human nature. And it’s why we collectively cherish historical figures like Abraham Lincoln, who spoke of the “better angels of our nature” and, almost exactly 158 years ago, said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
After George Wallace lost an Alabama election in 1958 because his opponent promised to be tougher than him on black people, Wallace vowed to never let that happen again and went on to become governor and the nation’s leading proponent of segregation.
As Donald Trump proved over and over during the Republican presidential primary, this division stuff works. The presumptive GOP nominee launched his presidential campaign by deriding Mexican immigrants as disease-carrying, violent rapists. He infamously wants to ban all Muslims from traveling here, insisting that allowing them in will result in the demise of America.
Divisiveness is a useful tool because it distracts those who are led from the mistakes or willful wantonness of their leaders. When the populace is angry over declining incomes, blame the immigrants. Worried about crime? Blame the blacks. Declining morality? Blame the gays. People would rather blame anyone other than themselves or their tribal bosses. They eat this stuff up.
But race, national origin and religion are far from the only things politicians use to divide us.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever thought that Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration could ever keep state operations running for a year without an actual state budget.
State and federal courts have ordered about 90 percent of state spending since the General Assembly’s Democrats and the Republican governor deadlocked on a budget last year because they couldn’t come to terms on the governor’s pro-business/anti-union Turnaround Agenda. Because of those court orders, employees are getting paid and Medicaid payments are being made, among other things.
When Gov. Rauner put aside his demands for things like workers’ comp reform before he’d do a budget deal, he and legislators were able to agree on releasing funds for local governments and federal programs and they appropriated some money for universities and colleges.
But state government operations have been hammered. If the air conditioning goes out in a state building and it can’t be fixed in-house, too bad. Lack of money for postage and printing costs forced the Secretary of State to suspend sending out reminder notices for license plate renewals. Enormous overdue utility bills have been piling up. The Department of Corrections uses private contractors to provide things like food for prisoners, and none of them have been paid since last year.
Rauner bragged last week to reporters that keeping the state functioning is a result of “an extraordinary performance by the leaders in our team.”
“We’re doing heroic things,” Rauner claimed.
Ever since Rauner asked legislative Democratic leaders for a temporary “stopgap” budget for bureaucratic operations in April, the Democrats have viewed the request as a sign of potential weakness and have so far refused to comply. Rauner has claimed the Democrats are attempting to force a crisis via a state shutdown. The Democrats counter that Rauner, himself, has been trying to create a crisis to leverage passage of his Turnaround Agenda.
So, how is the administration managing to—literally—keep the lights on?
The Rauner administration has a team of people that works on these issues and has developed all sorts of contingency plans. One of the departments they really have to watch all the time is Corrections. Some little state board might go under and almost nobody would notice. But if the state can’t feed prisoners, well, that could be really bad.
The administration has been using a special loan fund to help some prison contractors get through this rough patch. The vendors can sell their debt to a company for most of what they’re owed, which can keep them limping along.
Every now and then, the governor’s office will get calls from mayors of Downstate prison towns, who sometimes seem to have been ginned up by the Democrats. A water shutoff or some such thing is threatened unless the towns receive payment on their overdue bills. The mayors are asked to please be patient while the leaders work on a budget.
If kindness doesn’t work, the mayors are sternly warned that the state won’t be able to operate a prison without water, so prisoners will have to be moved to other facilities. And once they leave, they won’t ever be coming back. Rauner, the mayors are told, believes we have too many people behind bars anyway. And, besides, once the facility is abandoned, the state would have to comply with much stricter building and safety rules if it wanted to reopen the prison. That would cost lots of money that the state simply doesn’t have.
And, of course, if the prison permanently goes away, so will all those local jobs and the facilities’ huge economic impacts. So, a mayor can shut off the water over a past-due bill, but that’ll turn out to be the most costly utility shutoff in the history of that town. So far, it’s worked.
As I write this, Mt. Sterling is facing this very dilemma. The tiny town of less than 2,000 people is owed $300,000 to $400,000 (depending on whom you talk to) for water service to the 2,000 inmates at Western Illinois Correctional Center. They’re desperate for the money, but they also, obviously, don’t want to lose those jobs.
We could be reaching a turning point. The Department of Corrections director predicted in an early June newspaper op-ed that prison vendors will eventually have to pull their services, which could, he warned, “cripple the department in a matter of days.”
The administration will have to get even more “heroic” if that happens.
Governor Bruce Rauner announced today a number of staff transitions and appointments.
As of June 30, Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) Director Rocco Claps will transition out of the Administration. Janice Glenn, the Director of Diversity and Recruitment in the Office of the Governor, will take over as the Director of IDHR.
Governor Rauner also made appointments to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, the Illinois Lottery Control Board, the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees and the Northeastern Illinois Board of Trustees.
In addition, Mitch Holzrichter has been named Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative Affairs and Special Counsel to the Governor. Legislative Director Jim Kaitschuk has been named to the enhanced role of Director of Legislative Affairs.
Name: Janice Glenn
Position: Director – Illinois Department of Human Rights
Governor Bruce Rauner has appointed Janice Glenn as the Director of the Illinois Department of Human Rights. She will bring years of experience in government relations, leadership development and employee development to the position.
Currently, Glenn is the Director of Diversity and Recruitment in the Office of the Governor. She has spent the last year and a half recruiting and retaining diverse talent for state agencies, boards, and commissions. She also serves as the agency’s Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Officer.
Previously, she served as Director of Leadership Greater Chicago (LGC), which is a non-profit civic leadership organization. She worked very closely with the LGC’s class of fellows including recruitment. She also worked in public and government affairs with Amoco Corporation.
In addition, Glenn currently serves as Co-Chair of the Illinois Commission to End Hunger, the Illinois Commission on the Elimination of Poverty, and the Illinois Human Services Commission. She is Vice Chair of the Rising Leaders Council for Christ The King Jesuit Preparatory High School in Chicago’s Austin community. She is also an Honorary Fellow of LGC.
Glenn earned her bachelor’s degree from Roosevelt University. She lives in Homewood. […]
Name: Jim Kaitschuk
Position: Director of Legislative Affairs
Jim Kaitschuk, who is currently Legislative Director, has been named to the enhanced role of Director of Legislative Affairs. He will continue to oversee day-to-day legislative operations for the Governor and manage State agency legislative programs. His expanded role will include further cultivating relationships with members of the General Assembly and working to achieve the Governor’s legislative agenda.
Kaitschuk brings years of public and private experience to the role. He served as the Executive Director of the Illinois Pork Producers Association for 12 years prior to joining the Administration. He also served as House Liaison for Governor George Ryan and as a legislative liaison for a number of State agencies.
Kaitschuk is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana and resides in New Berlin with his family.
Women make up nearly two-thirds of the recipients of a low-income college tuition grant program that’s been underfunded. Women are also the ones seeking help through programs that have lost state funding entirely, including intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities, home visits for teen parents, and prenatal and family care management for at-risk mothers. The funding crunch has gotten so bad that low-income women seeking breast and ovarian cancer screenings are being told to wait in a long line, unless they’re already displaying symptoms. […]
Normally, the state sets aside roughly $13 million to provide breast and ovarian cancer screenings for low-income women, a program primarily administered by local health departments or other women’s service agencies. But without a budget, the only money flowing to the program is about $6 million in federal funds. […]
Illinois’ network of 29 rape crisis centers are “operating at bare bones,” said Polly Poskin, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault. Without money to pay employees, the centers have had to lay off 16 workers while delaying hiring and furloughing some workers at centers across the state. Volunteers are chipping in to keep the 24-hour rape crisis hotlines operating, but the waiting list of people who need counseling services has grown to 175 statewide, Poskin said. […]
The social services bill on Rauner’s desk, which includes about $2.76 million for sexual assault programs, “would be a godsend,” Poskin said. With it, “we could limp along until November. And without it, we’re facing the dreadful closure of some centers. It’s needed, and it’s needed now.” […]
The uncertainty over higher education funding looms especially large for women. Caught in the middle is a state scholarship grant for low-income students known as the Monetary Award Program. According to the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, which oversees the program, roughly 80,000 of the 128,000 students who received the grants last year were women.
Thumbs down to the thus-far unoriginal, uninspiring campaigns of Republican statehouse challengers Jason Kasiar and Dave Severin. Kasiar, of Eldorado, is challenging Rep. Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg; and Severin is challenging Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion. It’s not uncommon for the newspaper to receive back-to-back emailed statements from challenges Kasiar and Severin slamming their opponents for something going on in Springfield, and tying their opponents to House Speaker Mike Madigan. The problem is the messages sound so canned, and so unlike the way the candidates actually speak, that it’s hard to take them seriously. And they come from the same email address, one belonging to Aaron DeGroot, whose LinkedIn account says he is the downstate press secretary for the Illinois Republican Party. So much for our hope for independent voices of reason on the campaign trail.
Can’t understand why the DuSable Museum [of African American History] will Allow Gov. Rauner to speak there on Monday….this is disrespectful…and insult to be invited to speak at this jewel in the African-American Community. This man has abandoned and raped the community of resources
Whoa.
Apparently, the meek will not inherit St. Sabina’s Parish.
People who’ve waited more than a year for Illinois leaders to finish a state budget might start to feel like the prospects of a compromise are similar to the odds of winning the lottery.
Now, Illinois Lottery winners might — again — face the prospects of not being paid their jackpots in a timely manner if no spending deal is struck by the end of the month.
Last year, lottery winners sued the state to get their payouts and eventually did after Gov. Bruce Rauner and lawmakers agreed on a patchwork budget plan.
That plan, though, expires with the budget year on June 30. Attorney Thomas A. Zimmerman Jr., who represented about three dozen lottery winners in that lawsuit, said he’s prepared to act quickly again. […]
“Lottery prizes will continue to be paid to all winners prior to the end of the fiscal year, June 30,” spokesman Stephen Rossi said. “We encourage the majority party in the General Assembly to pass the governor’s stopgap budget proposal.”
I have had the profound privilege and honor to serve as Director of the Illinois Department of Human Rights for over thirteen years. It is, I readily admit, bittersweet, as I announce today that I will be leaving IDHR on June 30th.
Working together we have had many, many achievements in those thirteen years. I have been most heartened by the depth of kindness and support you have all shown me as Director–and I hope that you have felt the same in return. I have said it dozens of times in the past—I am deeply proud of your collective work, professionalism and ability to help people—people who come to our Agency for assistance when they need it the most.
I hope that you will continue to support the next Director, who will be announced later this afternoon, as the new Director undertakes this important role. I can think of no one better suited for this job and to lead the agency that I, honestly, very much love.
I wish you all the very best—and please know my kind thoughts and prayers are with each of you!
Sincerely,
Rocco Claps
Claps was a Quinn holdover, but I’m told this was a mutual decision. No ill will.
*** UPDATE *** Claps just confirmed that he’s heading to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
And, I am not a fan of taxes. I am an anti-tax, limited government person. I have said I am willing to raise taxes. I will support a tax hike. I don’t like it. It’s hard to do. But, I am willing to do it as a compromise- to get truly balanced budgets. So, anyone who would say, “Well, the Governor just won’t compromise.” They’re not, that’s a little disingenuous.
Higher taxation is not part of a compromise. Higher taxation is a given. It’s basic arithmetic. If it wasn’t, the governor would’ve already submitted two budget proposals that were completely balanced with cuts. He’s never come close to doing that. Why? Math, baby. Math.
And if anybody thinks that Democrats are falling all over themselves to raise taxes, well, they should think again. While many are willing to do it (because math), most aren’t looking forward to it, even in Chicago. After a county sales tax hike and huge city property tax hikes and coming local tax increases for CPS, no Chicago Democrat in their right mind would vote to sharply curtail union and worker rights and benefits in exchange for simply being allowed to pass a big state tax increase.
* The governor wants some things that I support, like workers’ comp reform (also, giving school districts the same latitude on union contracts that CPS has ain’t exactly revolutionary, either).
But in exchange, all he’s basically offering is continuing most of the same programs that existed before he was elected along with the privilege of passing a tax hike.
May we offer one more solution once all of the members are seated in the chamber in Springfield next Wednesday? Lock the door from the outside, and the legislative body is not allowed to leave without a balanced budget that keeps schools and social service agencies open.
If that sounds uncomfortable, too bad. If it sounds like it’s too hard, tough.
It doesn’t sound “uncomfortable,” it sounds like a massive felony.
Look, we’re all frustrated, but I’ve seen this silly suggestion all over the place. Any idea how this could be accomplished? It would probably take something as extreme as a military coup d’etat to pull this off and I’m just not a big fan of that sort of thing.
So, if it wasn’t a serious idea, label it as such. If it is serious, then… well… that’s just plain scary.
“It’s clear from today’s bond sale that investors realize Illinois now has a governor that is trying to turn the state around and right its fiscal ship,” Kelly said in a statement.
* But…
New analysis by the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs demonstrates the consequences of the state’s poor credit rating.
On June 16 the state of Illinois sold $550 million in General Obligation Bonds. This was the first bond issue since the state’s recent credit rating downgrades by Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s. The sale also occurred as Illinois ends FY16 without a budget, and failed to pass a budget for FY17.
The analysis shows that the state received $70 million less for this bond sale than it would have received ten years ago, and $12 million less than it would have received six months ago.
Illinois paid a steeper penalty to borrow Thursday after a fresh round of downgrades but a municipal market offering historically low yields helped disguise the spreads.
A market flush with buyers and a dearth of yield staved off more severe damage for the $550 million competitive general obligation offering from a state gushing red ink after almost a year without a budget in place.
Municipal professionals said the outcome indicates that the state of the bond market and belief in the strength of Illinois’ GO bond statutes outweighed its morass of fiscal woes and political gridlock. […]
Illinois paid the highest yield penalty over the triple-A curve imposed on a sovereign state, one that’s risen since it last sold bonds in January.
* Related…
* Wall Street sends flowers and candy to Toni Preckwinkle: The bond folks clearly liked Preckwinkle’s highly controversial move a year ago to bump the county’s sales tax up a penny on the dollar, an action that raised the combined sales tax in Chicago to 10.25 percent and will net $470 million a year, most of which will go toward pensions.
* The Illinois Policy Institute is ramping up its rhetoric in support of remap reform and tronc has published two of its recent op-eds, including this one entitled “How Madigan became king”…
Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan’s first political splash had nothing to do with policy. It wasn’t a blueprint for a better state. It wasn’t middle-class jobs growth. It wasn’t a successful welfare program.
It was cartography.
Political mapmaking is how Madigan first took hold of a position he’s held for 31 of the past 33 years: speaker of the House. For comparison’s sake, the median age in the Land of Lincoln is 36, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
While Madigan has endured a few legislative embarrassments over the years, he’s never lost the vote he desires most from House Democrats. His caucus has elected him speaker 16 times in a row.
It’s not that I disagree with the premise or the history, it’s just that the rhetoric at tronc is really getting over the top, including today’s “king” reference.
Last week, they ran a cartoon describing the play “Hamilton” as “Powerful Democrats scheme and plot. Some people get shot.” Another person in the cartoon asks “Then shouldn’t it be called ‘Illinois’?”
* Anyway, on to the second remap reform piece written by an Illinois Policy Institute staffer[Sorry, it just looked like an Illinois Policy Institute piece. It’s actually a tronc guy. All apologies.] and published by tronc…
The current legal challenge to the Independent Map Amendment claims having an independent commission decide redistricting would be unconstitutional.
To me, calling this citizen-led reform effort unconstitutional is like saying voting is undemocratic or flying the flag is unpatriotic.
Amendment supporters are only asking for the chance to put the question to voters. If opponents can muster enough support to defeat the question at polls, then so be it. But it’s only fair to give voters a chance to decide.
If the state’s Constitution didn’t have such strict ballot access requirements for popular referenda, I’d fully agree. But it does. And I’m sure they must know this.
Mike Madigan’s Re-Education Has Taken Its Toll On John Bradley
Bradley speaks of consistently voting for “cuts,” but voted for the largest spending plan in Illinois history
In a radio interview with WJPF, State Rep. John Bradley performed verbal gymnastics in an attempt to cover up his record of voting for the largest spending plan in Illinois history. Bradley said, “Everybody knows there’s got to be cuts. I’ve voted for cuts. I’ll continue to vote for cuts. I’ve forced cuts through the Revenue [& Finance] Committee over the years. That’s not a problem, so let’s just figure out to what extent we’ve got to cut and do it in a fair way and get on down the road.”
Unfortunately, John Bradley’s words do not match his record in Springfield. Last month, Bradley voted not once but twice for Mike Madigan’s reckless, wildly unbalanced budget (SB 2048). The Madigan-Bradley budget, $7 billion out-of-balance, is the largest spending plan in state history and also contains the largest budget deficit in state history. The budget deficit is so large, it would require a $1,000 tax hike on every Illinois family to balance.
“Illinoisans are tired of double-talking politicians like John Bradley who say one thing in their districts and do another in Springfield. As long as Bradley refuses to break with Mike Madigan, southern Illinois schools, prisons, and social service providers risk closing. Bradley’s record is clear - he chose Madigan over southern Illinois and voted for the largest, most unbalanced spending plan in state history.” - Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Aaron DeGroot
* This isn’t the first time the ILGOP has used the term “re-education”…
Madigan Re-Education Sessions Bar Outside Help
Madigan Bans Republicans from Participating in Meetings to Discuss Reforms
Multiple news outlets are reporting that Republican members of the General Assembly were denied from attending House Democratic meetings on reforms to ensure that the information being presented by the Democratic leadership was factual.
Kirk’s new bill, sponsored with Florida Democrat Ben Nelson, is aimed at making it easier for the FBI to keep tabs when people on terror watchlists buy guns.
Under the legislation, the name of anyone who the FBI or another Justice Department unit investigates for possible terrorist links would go into the same data base used to perform background checks for those buying a gun. The bill would not ban the sale, but would require the FBI be notified if a gun seller queried the federal data base for a background check.
“This commonsense legislation equips the FBI with a new [tool] to stop threats on American lives,” Kirk said in a statement.
I’d go even further and let gun sellers know that they’re about to transact business with somebody on the watch list. The airlines already have this info, so why not gun sellers? Let them decide if they want to actually sell the guns, but make sure they have this basic information. But, whatevs.
* The Question: Do you support this Kirk idea? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
Richard Goldberg has accused Democrats of not being able to count, blasted their questions as “hypocritical” and their hearings as “shams” — and he was once booted out of a committee hearing by Democratic legislators.
But Gov. Bruce Rauner insisted Wednesday that his newly promoted chief of staff does not have a “toxic” relationship with the opposition party. […]
A year ago, Democrats kicked Goldberg — then Rauner’s deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs — out of a Committee of the Whole meeting. House Speaker Mike Madigan later told reporters that his members were just enforcing an “established rule” that barred aides to the governor from circulating with representative during committee hearings. […]
Goldberg also butted heads with Democrats last year when they called him before a House committee to testify about why Rauner’s education secretary’s $250,000 annual salary was being paid out of the Department of Human Resources, whose budget is designed to help the state’s most vulnerable.
What’s missing is anything from the past couple of months.
Goldberg has deliberately toned things down. He’s even received some high marks for civility from Democratic legislators. Subscribers know more on this topic, but I think his appointment announcement has been a catalyst to maybe getting something done by the end of the fiscal year.
* Nobody, but nobody, covered Goldberg’s antics more than I did here. This blog published every memo, every comment, every whatever from him when most other political sites barely mentioned his name.
So, I say give the guy a chance to prove himself in a new position before we burn him in effigy. As chief, he’ll no longer be “run” by anyone else. Nobody will be pushing him out there to say or do things because he’ll be the big dog.
* This was a widely reported belief until today, so I’m not trying to pick on just one guy…
Illinois paid about 4 percent on its last issue, compared with a median rate of 2.34 percent for AAA-rated state bonds, according to Richard Ciccarone, CEO of Merritt Research Services, a provider of research and data on municipal bonds.
But a couple of developments last week suggest the price of profligacy is about to rise. Credit rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s cut Illinois’ ratings again, with Moody’s parking the state just two levels above junk status. More ominously, an influential bond investor openly questioned the market’s willingness to indulge a borrower incapable of basic fiscal discipline.
Bank of American Merrill Lynch won the deal in competitive bidding, pricing bonds due in 2026 with a 5 percent coupon to yield 3.32 percent, which is 185 basis points over Municipal Market Data’s triple-A yield scale. The spread was 175 basis points ahead of the bond sale, according to MMD, a unit of Thomson Reuters. […]
Muni yields have been hitting new record lows on MMD’s scale in recent days, driven by cash-heavy investors chasing low supply of debt. The true interest cost for Illinois’ bonds, which carry maturities from 2017 to 2041, was 3.74 percent.
With Illinois poised to be the only U.S. state since at least the 1930s to end a fiscal year without a complete budget, some market participants thought the spread should be even wider.
“It’s odd to me,” said Nicholos Venditti, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management. “Illinois has proven time and time again they can’t get anything done.”
The worldwide rally has pushed Illinois’s 10-year yields down over the past three months by more than a quarter percentage point to 3.3 percent, despite a record-long budget impasse that caused Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings to downgrade it last week to the lowest level for a state in over a decade. BlackRock Inc.’s Peter Hayes, who oversees $119 billion of municipal bonds for the world’s largest money manager, suggested investors consider not buying Illinois’s debt to pressure elected officials, a call that didn’t keep the state from returning to the market.
“Clearly the political inaction has soured the taste for many investors,” said Gabe Diederich, a portfolio manager in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin at Wells Fargo Asset Management, which manages about $39 billion of munis, including Illinois debt. “Investors will lend them money again at a very steep penalty relative to the rest of the market, but with the expectation that ultimately the state will take the appropriate steps to fix their issues.”
…Adding More… Interesting…
Rauner admin comment: 3.7425% true interest cost is lowest TIC the state has ever received for a GO bond sale with a similar final maturity.
Edgar said budgets were accomplished in the ‘90s, despite many hardships, “because we compromised.” He called negotiations with Madigan during his tenure as governor during a budget impasse tense, but civil in the end because “we both tried to watch our rhetoric.”
“We might have thought about the other guy, but we didn’t go out and say it,” Edgar said.
The former governor usually has a pretty good memory. It’s truly amazing the number of details he can recall when you sit down and talk with him, as I have.
But when I read that above remark, something in the back of my mind clicked and I went hunting for a long-ago quote.
* Back in July of 1994, three and a half years into his first term, the General Assembly was embroiled in yet another overtime session and couldn’t agree on a budget…
For his part, Madigan opened the overtime session by questioning the governor’s emotional state.
“It would be very desirable if the chief executive of the state of Illinois would operate on a little more emotional stability,” Madigan said.
Edgar said he was “surprised” that Madigan would take that tone.
“I wouldn’t question his stability at all,” Edgar said. “I might question his political motives.”
Before the House adjourned, Madigan led approval of a two-week emergency spending authorization for the state. Edgar, however, vowed to veto it.
No state services, benefits or paychecks are in jeopardy, although Edgar said that the prospect of a payless payday for state employees in mid-July might be needed to leverage a final session-ending budget deal.
“I think it’s obvious today that (Democrats) are doing this for political reasons,” Edgar said. “I don’t know how long the speaker’s going to figure there’s some political reason to draw this out.”
* Much of this was forgotten because of what happened next…
Gov. Jim Edgar signed the $33.3 billion state budget bill into law Wednesday afternoon from the hospital where he is recuperating from emergency heart surgery, said an Edgar spokeswoman. The bill was a get-well greeting from the General Assembly.
* We talked a bit yesterday about House Speaker Michael Madigan’s memo to the UIUC faculty senate regarding the lack of a state budget. Madigan, of course, blamed Gov. Rauner and the Republicans. But he also wrote this…
You will even find the few times when Governor Rauner has set aside his agenda that hurts middle-class families throughout the state, we were able to compromise and move our state forward.
Madigan has said this several times, referring to things like the FY15 patch, the federal-only approp bill, the special funds approps for local government and higher education, etc.
* Well, the governor has once again “set aside his agenda” in order to reach a deal on a stopgap budget for next fiscal year, plus a full-year K-12 appropriation. So far, though, there hasn’t been much progress at the budgeteer level.
Get it done, already. “Move our state forward.” We could all use a break from this impasse madness for a few months.
Thousand of Illinois students apparently don’t want to risk the state’s MAP grant delays and disappointments.
New numbers from the Illinois Student Assistance Commission show a 13 percent drop in Monetary Assistance Program applications this year.
“It’s unprecedented,” said Jim Applegate, executive director of the Illinois State Board of Higher Education. “That’s thousands and thousands fewer MAP students who’ll be going to our two-year colleges, four-year public (universities), and private colleges as well.”
New applications are down about 13-percent down from the 320-thousand students that the Illinois Student Assistance Commission said were eligible for a MAP grant last year.
The real question here is how many of those kids from poverty-stricken families have given up and decided not to attend any college now.
To identify “distressed homeowners and renters,” [John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation] researchers used a housing rule of thumb that requires affordable housing to cost no more than 30 percent of a household’s gross income. In Chicago, 48 percent of people said they were devoting more than 30 percent of their income to rent or a mortgage. In the suburbs, 40 percent were stretching beyond the manageable 30 percent limit. […]
While the problem of finding affordable housing is most acute among people ages 18 to 34, African-Americans and households with incomes under $40,000, 49 percent of those in households with incomes over $75,000 said “it’s challenging to find affordable housing in my area.” Sixty-six percent of people with incomes under $40,000 noted the challenge.
Renters are feeling the pressure much more than homeowners. About 73 percent of renters said they have had to make trade-offs in order to pay for their housing. That compares to 47 percent of homeowners who report trade-offs including building up credit card debt, moving to less safe areas, eliminating their savings for retirement or cutting back on health care.
Lots more better-paying jobs could help, too. Just sayin…
* The AP takes a look at minority representation in state legislatures, including Illinois…
Whites comprise 62.2 percent of Illinois’ population, but hold nearly three-fourths of the 177 seats in the state Legislature. Just over 7 percent of the Legislature is Hispanic, even though Latinos make up nearly 17 percent of the state’s population.
Illinois also has two of the top five state House districts in the U.S. with Hispanic majorities but white representatives. Chicago Democratic Rep. Daniel Burke’s district, which ranks fourth in that category, has a Hispanic population of 75 percent. In House Speaker Michael Madigan’s Chicago district, which ranks fifth, Hispanics make up 68 percent of it.
The AP analyzed the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Congress and the National Conference of State Legislatures to determine the extent to which the nation’s thousands of lawmakers match the demographics of its hundreds of millions of residents. The result: Non-Hispanic whites make up a little over 60 percent of the U.S. population, but still hold more than 80 percent of all congressional and state legislative seats. […]
But several factors have contributed to the underrepresentation of Hispanics and Asians in state legislatures throughout the state and the U.S., including low naturalization rates which prevent them voting, said Rob Paral, a Chicago-area demographer. In addition to that, he said some are in the country illegally while others who are U.S. citizens are simply too young to vote or don’t participate.
* The AP chose to lead their Illinois story with a brief profile of Theresa Mah, who won a House Democratic primary in March and will be the state’s first Asian-American legislator when she’s sworn in next January, despite the state having an Asian-American population of 5 percent.
Not mentioned, for whatever reason, is that Mah’s district is majority Latino and she defeated a Latino opponent. That omission is pretty darned weird, particularly in this context.
Also not mentioned is that while African-Americans make up 14.7 percent of Illinois’ population, they comprise 18 percent of General Assembly membership.
Chris Kennedy’s longtime management of the Merchandise Mart may have earned him respect in Chicago’s business community — but his habit of declining to run for a political office after his name has been floated means he has a reputation in the political world as something of a serial tease. […]
Referring to the luxury 46-story apartment building, which was built on land owned by the Kennedy family and bankrolled by the AFL-CIO’s Building Investment Trust, as the “fulfillment of the American Dream,” he employed soaring rhetoric about the founding fathers, and took what seemed to be a swipe at Donald Trump and Bruce Rauner. […]
“We are living in a time when some national leaders and some state leaders are held up as examples to our children, teaching them a new and ugly form of economics, that what you get should not be determined by what you need, but instead that what you get should be determined by what you take,” he said, referring to that as “a lesson that no generation in our country has been taught since the age of the robber barons.”
“America was supposed to be a place free from the oppression of political leaders acting like kings, imposing their views on everyone else, dismissing the pain and the hardship that they cause as nothing more than the collateral damage necessary to pursue some selfish agenda,” added Kennedy, who sold the Merchandise Mart in 2012 and now spends his time running a grocery non-profit, Top Box Foods.
I dunno. It’s just so early. It’s not even time to cover spring training, or even pitchers and catchers reporting. Heck, it’s even too early for hot stove league. They’re barely chopping the wood to heat the stoves, for crying out loud.
Oh, well. Something to do, I suppose. The Democrats really do not love this governor, so they’re desperate to find a replacement. Kennedy seems to understand this and is feeding that hunger. Whether he’ll stick around long enough to file this time is another question.
* And as far as the praise he heaped on organized labor yesterday, Kennedy held a significant stake in Vornado Realty Trust when it attempted to open New York City’s first ever WalMart. The project faced strong opposition from unions, small businesses and local activists and was abandoned. Vornado has also been hit for ties to an anti-union contractor which used undocumented immigrant labor.
Gov. Bruce Rauner on Wednesday tried to up the pressure on lawmakers to pass a stopgap budget, this time warning that state road projects will grind to a halt next month without one.
At a Statehouse news conference, Rauner’s transportation secretary, Randy Blankenhorn, said work will have to stop on the projects after July 1, the start of the fiscal year, if lawmakers don’t approve spending authority to keep them going.
“We’re on the brink of what was once unthinkable, the suspension of the Illinois Department of Transportation’s construction program,” Blankenhorn said. “Without stopgap funding proposed by the governor, we are on a collision course with having to shut down road projects throughout the state in a few short weeks.”
Blankenhorn said the state has more than 800 active projects at this time worth about $2 billion. He said about 25,000 workers are employed on the projects, which this summer include work on Interstate 55 both north and south of Springfield, as well as on Interstate 72 west of town. Improvements underway on North Grand Avenue and from Moffat Street to Koke Mill Road would also be halted.
* But John Penn, the Vice President and Midwest Regional Manager of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, begs to differ…
“Governor Rauner’s call for a temporary budget to keep vital road and bridge construction projects funded is misleading. We must keep in mind that the only reason there is talk of a ‘stopgap’ budget today is because Governor Rauner will not sign a fully-funded, yearlong budget unless legislators agree to cut the pay of the very construction workers he claims to want to keep employed, among other anti-worker, anti-middle class proposals on his agenda.
“If the Governor were to drop his insistence on cutting the pay and rights of hard working Illinoisans before passing a full budget, a stopgap budget would be completely unnecessary.”
OK, I get that, but a stopgap is better than nothing, and that’s what we’ll get if we wait for the governor to drop his Turnaround Agenda demands.
Illinois will sell $550 million of bonds on Thursday but lacks authority from the state legislature to spend all of the proceeds due to an ongoing budget impasse.
“The General Assembly needs to grant appropriation authority to fully expend the proceeds from the bond sale, although existing FY16 appropriations could be used to expend a portion of them,” Catherine Kelly, a spokeswoman for Governor Bruce Rauner, said on Wednesday.
Her statement followed a news conference earlier on Wednesday with the Republican governor and his transportation department head, who warned of the imminent shutdown of hundreds of construction projects if the Democrat-controlled legislature does not approve Rauner’s temporary budget plan. […]
The odd timing of the announcement on the eve of the state bond sale handed Rauner’s Democratic rivals in the state legislature fodder to question the first-term governor’s actions.
“We’re hoping none of his activities or staff work is going to drive up borrowing costs like it did for the Chicago Public Schools in February,” said Steve Brown, spokesman for Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan.
I don’t think the timing is really that odd. It’s June 16th. The end of the fiscal year is in two weeks. Without appropriations and re-appropriations, much of the money can’t be spent. That’s not odd. It’s the Constitution.
* As you already know, the budgeteers are using the governor’s stopgap budget proposal as the basis for their attempt to reach a compromise. And the governor has criticized Democratic leaders for “slow-walking” the working groups’ progress, including on the budget.
But the governor has now signaled twice, including yesterday, that he wants the General Assembly to approve his own proposal…
Rauner says he wants his budget proposals passed as is. The governor’s two-part solution includes short-term funding for government operations and social services, as well as an education spending measure that would ensure no school district receives less state aid than it was granted last year.
Ruling Democrats in the General Assembly have other ideas. They want to funnel extra money to Chicago Public Schools to help the district start to dig out of its financial hole, an idea Rauner repeatedly has dismissed as a “bailout.”
On Wednesday, Rauner said he wants lawmakers to return to the Capitol and vote on his two bills, and he warned them not to “fatten” the bills up with extra spending.
“We’re calling on the General Assembly, come back here to Springfield, vote on these two bills, let’s get them passed,” Rauner said. “And don’t play games with them, don’t delay, don’t come up with excuses why action can’t be taken. And don’t lard these bills up with a lot of additional spending that we can’t afford in an effort to force an income tax hike next January.”
Subscribers know more about the budgeteers’ process. It hasn’t been easy, mainly because there’s no extra money just laying around.
So, how about we let them try to do their jobs for a while without repeatedly insisting that they compromise by giving in?
* Gov. Rauner is still taking heat for saying some Chicago schools resemble “crumbling prisons”…
Speaking at Crain’s Future of Chicago conference, [Mayor Rahm Emanuel] said Rauner is “tearing down” school kids and teachers who have made remarkable progress turning around CPS. He went on to accuse the GOP governor of “running down” the city’s economy.
In a phone call later to emphasize the point, Emanuel expressed amazement that Rauner recently likened many city schools to “crumbling prisons.” Said the mayor rhetorically, “Would you refer to schools as prison?” Schools are “the city’s future,” Emanuel replied to his own question.
A new political ad from Illinois Republicans is using a photo of an abandoned building to portray Chicago Public Schools to a downstate Illinois audience.
In fact, it’s on the stock photo website shutterstock.
“It’s up to the individual viewer to decide how they interpret that,” said Steven Yoffe, a spokesman for the Illinois Republican Party. “But the message is that these representatives and the senator say one thing when they’re in their district and they do another thing in Springfield.”
Yaffe said he’s not sure if it’s a photo of a CPS school, and classified the ad as a “substantial TV ad buy, network buy” in Southern Illinois.
Click here to see the original image, which is described as “Low-angle perspective of an abandoned office or school building with broken windows, graffiti, and debris.”
* Emily Bittner at CPS…
“It’s disgraceful that Governor Rauner’s allies are spreading ugly distortions about Chicago Public Schools, where students are improving faster than their peers in Illinois and the nation. Schools all over Illinois need a funding system that treats students with dignity and equality, which is why so many downstate superintendents are opposed to the governor’s status quo education budget. The Governor needs to unite the state to pass a budget, not divide us.”
* Ah, but it gets better. Click here for another angle of the same building. Notice the mountains in the background? Last I checked, Chicago had no mountains.
During the past campaign, Rauner was criticized for using a stock photo of a mountain range in a TV ad about Illinois.
The Illinois State Museum in Springfield is on track to reopen in early July after a legislative panel Tuesday approved a proposal to allow it to charge an admission fee.
The bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules voted to allow the Department of Natural Resources to go ahead with the admission fee that Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration said is necessary for the museum to reopen. The panel did not discuss the issue before voting on it.
DNR said it will charge a $5-per-person entrance fee to the museum, which previously was open free to the public. Children under age 18, seniors and veterans would still get in for free.
DNR previously said that if JCAR allowed it to begin charging the admission fee, the museum would reopen July 2.
I’ve never quite understood why the Rauner administration felt the need to shut down the museum and effectively shoo off so many knowledgeable employees. All over the right to impose a $5 entrance fee?
A new spot that’s hitting TV and radio this week attacks three out of the four gubernatorial primary candidates, sparing only Winnetka venture capitalist Bruce Rauner.
A source with knowledge of the buy said the group — Mid-America Fund — spent roughly $180,000 on broadcast, cable, and radio for this week.
And they kept spending.
One of Mid-America Fund’s 2014 contributors was the Republican Governor’s Association, which claims to have recruited Rauner into the Illinois race.
More pay for them, higher taxes for you. That’s what career politicians do. Career politicians like Bill Brady, Dan Rutherford and Kirk Dillard. Together, they’ve spent over 60 years in Springfield. They voted to increase their own pay and supported millions in pork barrel spending. And to pay for it all, they stuck Illinois families with higher taxes. Call career politicians Brady, Rutherford and Dillard. Tell them we can’t afford high taxes and wasteful spending.
* Well, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint with the IRS about Mid-America Fund and nine other “dark money” groups. From its summary…
[Mid-America Fund] acknowledged on its 2014 tax return that it spent $874,920 on political activity that year. MAF also spent hundreds of thousands of additional dollars on television and radio advertisements attacking three candidates for the Illinois Republican gubernatorial nomination weeks before the primary election. Those ads also were political, but MAF failed to report the spending as political activity. It is not clear exactly how much MAF spent on them, but estimates range from $244,600 to $705,000, which means political expenditures accounted for between 56% and 79% of MAF’s overall spending in 2014. As a result, politics appears to have been MAF’s primary activity. In addition, by failing to report its spending on the Illinois primary election as political activity, it appears MAF and its president, Dexter Vaughn, made false representations to the IRS. […]
It is unclear exactly how much MAF spent on the campaign, but the organization asserted on its tax return that it spent $705,000 for “production and media” to the company that purchased the broadcast television air time for the Illinois ads.
These groups can’t “primarily” be involved in campaign work, so if they spend more than half of their money on politics they can lose their not-for-profit status. Also, allegedly deceiving the IRS is kinda frowned upon. Mid-America Fund was dissolved in 2016, according to CREW.
* If you read the complaint, CREW acknowledges that these ads might be seen as non-political, but dismisses that contention by pointing to an IRS revenue ruling which takes into consideration a number of factors, including whether candidates are identified, whether the message approves or disapproves of the candidate, the proximity to the election, whether it makes reference to voting or an election, whether the issue distinguishes the candidates, whether it’s an ongoing series of communications, etc. It concludes…
(T)he ads were not issue ads, but were intended to effect the election.
Including the Illinois ads push Mid-America Fund’s campaign percentage to at least 56 percent of its 2014 total, up to as much as 79 percent, according to CREW.
* This was an Ohio group, by the way. Another Ohio group, Jobs and Progress Fund, was also hit with a CREW complaint…
JPF first made a name for itself in politics in early 2013 when it ran ads and sent mailers critical of then-Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL), who was believed to be considering a run for Illinois governor
* I am in dire need of a haircut, kids. Plus, I have to run a couple of errands. I’ll be back this afternoon, hopefully by 1:30, when the governor is scheduled to speak to reporters.
So, instead of a question, let’s make this an Illinois-only open thread. Be respectful of each other. Thanks.
* The biggest potential flaw with Gov. Rauner’s Turnaround Agenda is in this story…
An attempt to support Gov. Bruce Rauner’s turnaround agenda in Kane County failed Tuesday in a vote that ultimately supported Illinois’ prevailing wage law.
Drew Frasz tried to rally fellow board members to reject the annual prevailing wage ordinance the county must pass to comply with state law. Frasz, a nonunion contractor from Elburn, said the prevailing wage only makes government construction projects more expensive for taxpayers. He wants state lawmakers to repeal the prevailing wage and support Rauner. […]
Frasz, who is also vice chairman of the county board, made a similar attempt to reject the prevailing wage law in a board vote about a year ago. Tuesday’s vote received the same total of “no” votes as last year’s attempt. Six of the board’s 14 Republicans voted “no”: Frasz, Maggie Auger, Doug Scheflow, T.R. Smith, Susan Starrett and Barb Wojnicki.
The majority of the board, including all 10 Democrats, voted in favor of the prevailing wage law. As Kane County Democratic Party Chairman Mark Guethle watched from the audience, board member Brian Dahl spoke in support of the prevailing wage as key to keeping people out of poverty and in good-paying jobs.
As we all know, Rauner wants to give local governments the right to opt out of union collective bargaining items and at least part of the prevailing wage.
But he can’t even count on a majority of a GOP-dominated suburban county board to vote for what amounts to a fantasy resolution.
* The only local governments which would conceivably adopt Rauner’s local opt-outs are run by very conservative Republicans. And there aren’t enough of those to make a difference in this state’s $775 billion gross state product. And many of them (particularly in the suburbs) also have enough cash coming in that they probably don’t need the money savings all that much anyway.
Hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe other governments would adopt the reforms over time. But from my position, this is just a whole lot of stalemate over what likely wouldn’t amount to much “progress” anyway.
To his credit, Rauner has scaled back his list of reforms to make them more palatable and tried to move forward. He probably has a longer distance to travel, however. Get the nose under the tent first. Change is almost always incremental.
House Republican Organization Releases TV Ad
Network buy targets Reps. John Bradley, Brandon Phelps and Sen. Gary Forby for doing Mike Madigan’s Bidding
“John Bradley, Brandon Phelps and Gary Forby are career politicians that have spent a collective 39 years in Springfield. What they say to voters in Southern Illinois bears no resemblance to their actions in Springfield. Bradley, Phelps and Forby all voted for Mike Madigan’s reckless, $7 billion out-of-balance budget that would require a $1,000 tax hike on Illinois families to balance. That same spending plan also provides a massive bailout to mismanaged Chicago Public Schools. Bradley, Phelps and Forby have done Madigan’s bidding for too long.” – Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Aaron DeGroot
Today the House Republican Organization released a TV ad in Southern Illinois to highlight Reps. John Bradley, Brandon Phelps and Sen. Gary Forby’s history of saying one thing in their district and doing another in Springfield.
* The response from Sen. Durbin is expected, but the news here is that Chris Kennedy met with Durbin about a possible gubernatorial bid. He’s held a lot of similar meetings lately…
Among the Democrats who might be interested are former governor Pat Quinn. He lost all but one of Illinois’ 102 counties to Rauner two years ago, but has lately made a public push to get back into politics.
Another possibility: Christopher Kennedy, son of Bobby Kennedy and former chairman of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. Kennedy met recently with U.S. Senator Dick Durbin. Durbin says he told Kennedy to “move around the state” to get to know people. But he also says Democrats ought to keep their focus on Illinois’ immediate crisis.
“The only thing I’ve said is all this speculation about who’s going to run for governor in 30 months — for goodness’ sake, cool it. We’ve got a budget crisis that needs to be solved today.”
Durbin himself has been mentioned as a potential challenger to Gov. Rauner. He says he’s got a “great job” representing Illinois in Washington and that his “plans do not include running for any other office.”
Kennedy does need to eventually start moving around the state. Chicagoans tend not to realize just how large Illinois is. Waukegan to Cairo is a more than six-hour drive - and it’s way more than that with traffic. Cairo is actually closer to Jackson, Mississippi than it is to Waukegan - in more ways than one.
A legislative candidate once used a song in his radio ads about how there’s a “whole lot of Illinois below 13,” referring to Route 13, which runs from St. Louis to the Kentucky state line. The first time I ever drove to Anna, I was amazed at how far south it was from Carbondale. And, by the way, Carbondale is actually south of Louisville, Kentucky.
And the state is wide, too. Ever drive from Quincy to Danville? It’s three and a half hours.
So, Kennedy really needs to get out and explore. And that goes for everyone else wanting to run statewide. This is a big, very diverse state. Go experience it.
[Treasurer Michael Frerichs] argued that the budget situation should be resolved before the administration goes back to the bond market, as it plans to do Thursday. The state is seeking to sell $550 million in bonds to fund mass transit, road construction and general construction projects. Frerichs said the state will end up paying “inordinate interest rates.”
Rauner defended the move, saying it’s “the appropriate way” to invest in infrastructure.
Gov. Bruce Rauner says many bond buyers support the pro-business changes he’s pushing and want to invest in Illinois despite its worst-in-the-nation credit rating.
The Republican said Tuesday that taking on more debt is appropriate because the money is for improvements to roads and bridges, not daily operating expenses.
Illinois will go to market Thursday to sell $550 million in bonds.
Rauner says Illinois has strengths including its location and the city of Chicago. Rauner says many bond buyers “have indicated confidence in what we’re trying to do.”
(F)rom a bondholder’s perspective, risk of a payment default appears low, explains Moody’s senior credit officer Ted Hampton.
Despite its fiscal chaos, Illinois still brings in plenty of revenue to cover debt service on bonds. What’s more, state law gives bondholders first crack at those revenues, meaning they’ll likely get paid before any money goes to struggling social services agencies stiffed by the state. “We don’t think the state of Illinois is likely to default on its (bond) debt anytime soon,” Hampton says.
What Hayes’ comments do suggest, however, is that skepticism toward Illinois is growing among bond investors. Ciccarone notes that some have begun to back away from Illinois bonds, relegating the state to a costlier corner of the market. “With conservative investors you’re seeing resistance,” he says. “The investors that are stretching for yield are interested.”
As demand for Illinois paper shrinks, its borrowing costs will rise. How high? Possibly a lot higher, if paralysis endures in Springfield and Illinois’ credit rating keeps falling. Moody’s has a negative outlook on Illinois, a sign that at least one more downgrade may be coming. A drop into junk territory would be extremely expensive—junk-rated Chicago Public Schools bonds carry a rate of 8.5 percent.
A far-fetched scenario, perhaps, but Illinois’ current fiscal predicament seemed unimaginable not so long ago. As Hampton says, “We’re sort of in uncharted territory here with Illinois.”
Illinois has never missed a bond payment, but the state for the first time is addressing that doomsday scenario in a document filed ahead of a scheduled $550 million bond sale this week.
In the prospectus for its June 16 sale of $550 million of bonds, dated June 6, Illinois warned that if it were to miss a payment, bondholders’ ability to collect their money could be delayed by court proceedings or other actions out of the state’s control. This is the first time the state has highlighted such a warning, though its lawyers have given similar notice in opinions appended to prior offering documents.
“It’s a pretty cautious, if alarming, statement,” said Richard Ciccarone, who heads Merritt Research Services, which analyzes municipal bond issuer data. The warning should increase investor anxiety over buying the bonds, he added.
Standard & Poor’s last week also questioned whether the state could “maintain adequate debt-paying capacity” because of deteriorating finances and political gridlock.
Highly unusual for sure, but probably not without cause in the wake of Puerto Rico’s troubles, etc.
* From the Illinois Policy Institute’s radio network…
A $700 million bipartisan stopgap measure that would fund a variety of human services has been on the governor’s desk for nearly a month now.
While the state finishes the current fiscal year without a full budget, Senate Bill 2038 would spend nearly $700 million from special funds for various human services that have gone all year without funding.
State Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, said SB 2038 is an imperfect bill that highlights the state’s broken financial situation. “We haven’t budgeted as a whole. We’ve budgeted by emergency. We’ve budgeted because of court orders and consent decrees. This whole process is dysfunctional.”
McCarter said Gov. Bruce Rauner should sign the measure or at least line-item veto what the governor thinks isn’t a priority.
Rauner criticized the measure for not funding executive agency operations but stopped short of saying he’d veto the bill.
When you’ve lost Kyle McCarter on a stopgap spending fight, you’ve lost the fight.
A [UIUC] campus resolution urging state lawmakers to settle a year-long budget impasse prompted a two-page response from House Speaker Michael Madigan but it was mostly political finger-pointing, exasperated University of Illinois faculty say.
Given the lack of budget progress, leaders of the Academic Senate now plan to forward the resolution to the entire General Assembly to “stand on principle and ask for what is right,” said Professor Gay Miller, chair of the Senate Executive Committee. […]
Miller said she was disappointed in the letter.
“In my way of thinking, there’s too much politics wrapped up in the response, and too much finger-pointing,” she said at this week’s Senate Executive Committee meeting.
“It’s pretty much a rehash of what’s been said,” agreed entomology Professor Bettina Francis.
Gov. Bruce Rauner said he won’t be calling the General Assembly back to Springfield this week for a special session, saying it would be a “waste of time” so long as the Democrats in the Legislature are not ready to vote on a GOP-backed proposal for an emergency budget.
“Calling special sessions has happened in the past, and it has a tendency to alienate people, make them frustrated and angry, and has not had success when it’s been done in the past,” Rauner said Tuesday, after Democratic Speaker Michael Madigan canceled a planned Wednesday session in the House.
“To have them come when they’re not ready to vote is a waste,” Rauner told reporters after addressing the annual meeting of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce at the Palmer House Hilton. “It’s a waste of time, and it just gets everybody’s emotions ragged. We don’t need that. Emotions are already running a little bit too high.”
The tone was a mild departure from Rauner’s combative statements as he’s toured the state in recent weeks, which have done little to ratchet down emotions among Democratic lawmakers he has blamed for the state’s year-long budget impasse.
I agree on all points. Special sessions are a waste of time if nobody wants to do anything. Plus, the governor gets the stage all to himself when the GA isn’t in session. He has to share that stage, however, when legislators are all together and have easy access to reporters.
Also, it’s good that he finally realized that emotions were running too high around here. And subscribers know more about the new mood. We’ll see if it lasts when he speaks to reporters again at 1:30 this afternoon. You can watch or listen to that event by clicking here.
Attached you will find a summary report of all our polls over the past 9 years. “The Climate of Opinion in Illinois 2008-2016: Roots of Gridlock” charts the ebb and flow of opinion on a variety of issues.
As the state budget stalemate continues, the report and the graphics may prove to be a useful resource in your coverage of budget and other issues facing the state.
In the narrative and conclusion, the authors of the report say voters themselves “bear significant responsibility” for some of the stalemate. Many voters do that by supporting spending programs and opposing cuts to programs while opposing revenue increases.
Some of the political scientists at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute have a theory about the roots of the current gridlock in Illinois government. […]
“Our data support the argument that the voters themselves bear significant responsibility for the current debt crisis and gridlocked government,” states the report authored by John Jackson, Charles Leonard and Shiloh Deitz.
“Not only did they elect the leaders responsible for this state of affairs, but their steadfast insistence on the untenable high-service/low-tax status quo gave the politicians permission to drive the vehicle of state to the edge of the cliff, where it teeters today on the brink.” […]
Jackson agreed with my own thesis to explain why voters don’t see a disconnect between their opposition to cutting services at the same time they’re opposed to raising taxes.
It’s because they also believe government is so corrupt that we wouldn’t need to pay more in taxes if we just had proper management that weeds out the waste and fraud.
Our leadership defects and deficits are matched by—and in fact enabled by—a “followership deficit” as well. We the people must have the good sense to govern ourselves if mass democracy is going to work. If we do not live in a fact-based world—in which the voters take an interest in government and acquire basic knowledge about the issues and the candidates—then only emotion, fear, and prejudice will prevail in our elections. There is ample evidence of such motivations dominating the voting of many millions of Americans in the current election cycle.
Our data support the argument that the voters themselves bear significant responsibility for the current debt crisis and gridlocked government. Not only did they elect the leaders responsible for this state of affairs, but their steadfast insistence on the untenable high-service/low-tax status quo gave the politicians permission to drive the vehicle of state to the edge of the cliff, where it teeters today on the brink.
