FULL COURT PRESS. Today’s Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times readers are being hit with splashy full-paid ads courting public support for a resolution in the stalemate between CTU and CPS. Behind the ads: Illinoisans for Growth and Opportunity, a nonprofit organization that says it “is driven by a fundamental belief, grounded in progressive principles, that if government is to be an agent for change and equal opportunity, it must operate effectively and efficiently to maintain public trust and confidence.” In a statement to Illinois Playbook, the group blames the CTU bargaining committee for rejecting a contract offer that it says “met every major demand - guaranteed raises, job security, and pension payments - while avoiding cuts.”
– CLAYPOOL AGREES: In op-ed in the Sun-Times, CPS CEO Forrest Claypool hit the same points: Under the headline “A message to Chicago Teachers Union: Trust is a two-way street,” he writes: “I understand the frustration of teachers. They work hard and give their hearts and souls to their students and in return they expect a fair salary and a dignified retirement. I truly believe that our proposal met those goals.” http://bit.ly/1mmBSGO
– CTU DOES NOT: The union sent a letter to parents late last week, accusing the district of promoting “lies” regarding the district’s economic woes. From DNAinfo’s David Matthews, the letter “is authored by top CPS executives and says the rejected contract would have “raised teachers’ pay, prevented teacher layoffs for economic reasons, and provided for autonomy for teachers in their classrooms.’ ‘It was an agreement worked out with CTU leadership and that was good for teachers, good for parents and most importantly, good for students,’ the letter states.” http://dnain.fo/1L9HZVg
I don’t know what a “full-paid ad” is, but I will be billing them.
President Barack Obama’s speech in the Illinois House chamber at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday will not be open to the public, officials confirmed on Monday.
The only people allowed inside the chamber will be elected officials, people with credentials and invited guests, said Steve Brown, a spokesman for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. […]
White House officials said Monday that after the speech Obama “will visit with a crowd of supporters, stakeholders, and volunteers gathered to watch his remarks at a local viewing location. The president will thank this group for their support, from the beginning of his political career to today.” The officials did not specify the location of that viewing location.
* The “local viewing location” is the Hoogland, according to a friend of mine who offered me his ticket. I declined.
So far, anyway, it looks like local media will be confined to a Senate hearing room, so I doubt I’ll be going to that, either.
I just don’t see the point in going through all that hassle unless I can get onto the House floor, and I really doubt I can do that.
Your thoughts?
…Adding… A few “press pool” reporters will be allowed access to the House floor, but I have zero interest in that and likely no shot of getting in even if I wanted to assume that role, which I don’t.
Karen Lewis: Time to replace 26th District “Rauner” Democrat
CTU president to join congressman, local electeds, grassroots activists in call for ouster of 26th District incumbent in favor of challenger Jay Travis.
CHICAGO, February 8, 2016: With Illinois’ Republican governor ratcheting up his attacks on teachers, public workers, retirees and the state’s most vulnerable, a growing chorus of local voices are calling on voters to reject “Rauner” Democrats who represent Chicago neighborhoods in Springfield — including the 26th District incumbent.
CTU President Karen Lewis will join U.S. Congressman Danny Davis, 10th Ward Alderman Sue Garza, 42nd Ward Alderman Brenden Reilly, and parents, community organizers and local residents of the 26th District TODAY at 12:30 PM, Monday, February 8 at the 42nd Ward’s iconic Billy Goat Tavern, located on the lower level of Michigan and Hubbard at 430 N. Michigan, to lay out their reasons for opposing incumbent Christian Mitchell. The incumbent has been branded a “Rauner” Democrat for sharing elite donors and a political agenda with the Republican governor that they say hurts retirees, schoolchildren, parents, educators and working families.
The 26th District includes some of the city’s most affluent and most economically challenged neighborhoods — from the northern tip of South Chicago all the way north to Streeterville and the Gold Coast.
Travis’ endorsers’ include four aldermen whose wards are included in the district: 2nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins, 5th Ward Alderwoman Leslie Hairston, 10th Ward Alderwoman Sue Garza and 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly. Along with Congressman Davis, Travis has also been endorsed by Citizen Action/Illinois; United Working Families; the Network for Public Education Action; ATU Local 308, the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents CTA rail workers; the Illinois Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 80,000 teachers and paraprofessionals in the state; BATs — The Badass Teachers Association (BATs), a national education activist organization with over 50,000 members; PUA — People United for Action; and the Chicago Teachers Union.
Travis has worked as a community organizer and non-profit professional for over 20 years, most recently as national coordinator of the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, a national community labor alliance that works for equitable public education. Before that, she worked as a program officer for the Wood Foundation, and before that for 12 years as the executive director of KOCO — the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization. She currently work as a consultant for groups that include the Midwest Academy, with a focus on coaching and training organizers and grassroots activists.
She’s running against a two-term incumbent who’s taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from school privatization groups, anti-labor groups and hedge fund billionaires, supporting a series of anti-labor, pro-privatization bills Travis’ supporters say undermine workers’ rights, neighborhood public schools and the long-term economic health of working families.
Karen Lewis lives in Mitchell’s district. She’s been trying to install her own candidate there for years. Hey, that’s her right. But most of the rest of organized labor has clearly moved on. Lewis won’t, which may be why the aldercreatures have folded.
State Rep. Christian Mitchell announced this week that his bid for reelection has been endorsed by the Illinois Education Association, a statewide teachers union, comprised of over 130,000 elementary and secondary education teachers, professors, educational support professionals and retired teachers from across Illinois.
“We are proud to endorse Christian Mitchell for reelection to the Illinois House of Representatives,” said Cinda Klickna, President of the Illinois Education Association. “Christian has stood up against Governor Rauner’s attempts to destroy unions and has fought to protect our ability to collectively bargain. He supports more funding for our schools. Christian is the right choice for our students and our teachers.”
“I’m grateful for their support, and I look forward to continuing our work together in Springfield, particularly our fight against Governor Rauner’s attacks on organized labor,” said Mitchell.
* Last week, the Rauner administration sent an e-mail to employees outlining its contract offers and AFSCME’s “bad faith” negotiations. Here’s AFSCME’s response…
Fact Check – Setting the Record Straight (AGAIN)
“Luxury” Health Plans?
Rauner Administration Claim: The average actuarial plan value (what federal regulations and insurance companies use to assess how rich a health plan is) for the State’s current plans is 92%… “Platinum” under the Affordable Care Act is defined as plans that are between 88 % and 92%. Platinum is the highest level under the Affordable Care Act-above Gold, Silver, and Bronze. And as mentioned, the State’s average plan value is 92%-the high end of Platinum…Moreover, to be clear: under the State’s proposal, employees will have the option to continue this rich coverage at higher premiums, should they so choose. Alternatively, employees would have the option to have less-rich coverage and maintain current premiums. Employees will not have to both pay higher premiums and receive less-rich coverage.
AFSCME Accurate: As AFSCME has consistently stated, the state’s current health plan is on par with the health benefits of other state workforces across the nation. The typical state government employee in this country is enrolled in a health plan with an actuarial value of 92%—the same plan value as Illinois currently has. Our health plan is simply not too rich as the Administration would like you to believe. (The “actuarial value” is based on plan design and reflects what employees pay in co-pays and deductibles, but does not take into account the amount employees pay in premium contributions.)
Terranova acknowledges that under the Administration’s proposal, in order to keep your current health care coverage you will have “higher” premiums. What he doesn’t say is that, in fact, your premiums will increase by 100%. Yes, as he points out, rather than paying those exceedingly high new premiums, you could choose to have less-generous coverage at your current premium level. But then your co-pays and deductibles would drastically increase, by an average of 250%.
Further, under the Administration’s proposal, employee premiums could increase by up to 10% more in both FY 18 and FY 19, no matter which option you choose. So even if you opted for what the Administration calls “less-rich coverage”, you would almost certainly pay both higher premium contributions and higher out-of-pocket costs over the term of the new contract than under the current plan.
Health Care Comparisons
Rauner Administration Claim: With retiree coverage included, Illinois pays nearly 3/4 of the total cost of coverage for its workers. In comparison, Indiana pays less than 45% of the total cost of coverage …. Even if we only look at coverage for active employees—where the State is proposing to pay 60% of costs—the State’s proposal is still better than many other States and on par with the private sector.
AFSCME Accurate: First, for retirees, the state contributes 5% of the premium cost for each full year of creditable service up to 100%. In FY 15, retirees and retiree dependents paid 12% of their total health care costs. Moreover, when John Terranova states that the proposal to pay 60% of health care costs is still “better than many other states”- he means better than just 4 states. The Administration’s proposal would move Illinois from average to bottom tier when it comes to the health benefits offered to employees.
Reduced Layoff Rights
Rauner Administration Claim: Myth: The State’s proposal would wipe out all job security rights. Fact: The State’s offer does not eliminate these rights. Layoffs would still happen in reverse seniority order. Employees would still have the opportunity to “bump” less senior individuals in the same position and qualifications. Employees would also still have the opportunity to transfer to other vacancies for which they are qualified.
AFSCME Accurate: In fact, the Administration’s original proposal would have completely eliminated bumping rights. Since it modified that proposal, what the Union is saying—and what Terranova conveniently fails to mention –is completely accurate: That under Management’s current proposal, employees would lose several bumping options, particularly the ability to bump into a lower classification, even one previously held.
Maximum Out-of-Pocket Limits
Rauner Administration Claim: Myth: If I have a major medical issue under the new insurance, there is no limit on what I could pay. I could go bankrupt! Fact: The Affordable Care Act has an annual out-of-pocket maximum of $6,850 for an individual. While that’s a lot of money, it prevents people from being financially ruined due to a medical issue. You can go here to fact-check this for yourself: http://obamacarefacts.com/health-insurance/out-of-pocket-maximum. The bottom line is no matter what coverage level employees select, there will be strict limits on how much each employee is going to be asked to pay in any given year.
AFSCME Accurate: This is a made-up myth. The Union isn’t saying there will be no limits—we’re saying that the limits will be unaffordable for many employees. Management never told the AFSCME Bargaining Committee what the new insurance plan would look like other than that it would be comparable to a ‘silver plan’ per the ACA. On the Illinois ACA exchange, the average ‘silver’ plan has out-of-pocket maximums of $6,400 for an individual and $12,800 for a family. Many employees facing serious medical problems could not afford that kind of expense in one year—and then the clock starts ticking all over again and they could have to pay those same amounts in the next year (and the year after, etc.) if their health problem persisted or new ones arose.
Merit Pay
Rauner Administration Claim: Myth: Merit pay is just political pay. Fact: Politics has nothing to do with it. In fact, the State would prohibit any Governor’s staff and appointees from being eligible for performance bonuses.
AFSCME Accurate: This misstates the issue. The Union doesn’t say merit pay is fundamentally political pay because it will only go to the governor’s staff and appointees. Rather, “political pay” refers to the fact that the Rauner Administration alone would determine what constitutes “exceptional performance standards,” and which employees qualify. We all know the kind of cronyism, favoritism, and pure politics that will enter into those judgments.
Not “substantially similar”
Rauner Administration Claim: Myth: The Governor is “now seeking to impose on state employees” his contract…. Fact: It is critical to mention that the last offer made by the State to AFSCME is substantially similar to the agreements signed by 17 other unions. These agreements were ratified in many cases by over 80% of state employees in those unions. This is not a radical or extreme contract as AFSCME has portrayed, but one that is fair, reasonable, and overwhelming accepted by several thousand State employees already.
AFSCME Accurate: Again, the contracts ratified by other unions were NOT “substantially similar.” They were far more generous than what is being offered to AFSCME and other unions still in negotiations with the Rauner Administration. AFSCME specifically asked across the bargaining table if the Administration would agree to the same employer health insurance contribution as that made to the Teamsters, and the answer from Management was absolutely not.
Labor Board
Rauner Administration Claim: By submitting this dispute to the Labor Board, the Governor did nothing more than invoke the very process to which both parties voluntarily agreed.
AFSCME Accurate: In reality, rather than merely “submitting” the matter to the Labor Board, the governor filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the Union on the grounds that AFSCME refuses to agree that negotiations are at impasse. In other words, he is objecting to the fact that the Union wants to continue negotiating to reach an agreement that is fair to all!
Refusal to Negotiate
Rauner Administration Claim: What the Governor is seeking, and AFSCME is refusing, is for AFSCME to submit the Governor’s actual proposal to employees for a vote. What better way is there to determine whether the proposal is deemed fair and reasonable by the very people whose work will be governed by that proposed contract?
AFSCME Truth: John Terranova attached Management’s proposal to the Union to his letter to employees and labeled it “for Tentative Agreement”. This is an attempt to mislead or confuse union members. AFSCME has NOT reached a Tentative Agreement with the Rauner Administration. In fact, the Administration is refusing to continue to negotiate to try to reach a Tentative Agreement. When one is reached, it will be presented to the full membership for a vote—as has been done in every set of contract negotiations over many decades. This is just a ploy by the governor to avoid returning to the bargaining table.
Teamster Comparison
Rauner Administration Claim: Myth: The Teamsters’ agreements provide “far more generous health insurance terms.” Fact: Comparing Teamsters’ health insurance to AFSCME’s is like comparing apples and platypuses. AFSCME employees’ health insurance is provided by the State, where the State charges premiums. Teamsters’ health insurance is provided by Teamsters’ own health and welfare funds. The State contributes to those funds but does not get to decide the level of coverage or premiums.
AFSCME Accurate: The issue is how much the Employer contributes toward each employee’s health care coverage, not who administers or designs the plan. In the proposal the Administration is trying to impose on AFSCME members, it would contribute only $967 per employee per month—a steep cut from the $1224 per employee per month the State currently contributes. In the Teamsters agreement, the Administration has already agreed to contribute $1,600 per employee per month—a big increase over the current $1224 contribution. This is a gross inequity.
Building Trades Comparison
Rauner Administration Claim: AFSCME claims the distinguishing feature is that the trades’ agreements do not include a wage freeze. But what AFSCME fails to mention is the trades get compensated on a wholly different metric, known as the prevailing wage.
AFSCME Accurate: Far from failing to mention the “prevailing wage”, AFSCME has put out a number of fact sheets and bulletins explaining that the building trades agreements are based on the prevailing wage.
Prevailing Wage
Rauner Administration Claim: That wage is determined through a certification process administered by the Department of Labor and is not guaranteed to increase during the course of the contract. In fact, the prevailing wage could go down over the life of the contract.
AFSCME Accurate: In recent years, the prevailing wage has gone up and very rarely gone down. AFSCME members, on the other hand, would have no possibility whatsoever of getting any wage or step increases for all four years under the Administration’s proposal.
Other Unions Haven’t Settled
Rauner Administration Claim: AFSCME stands alone in demanding guaranteed wage increases and luxury health insurance coverage.
AFSCME Accurate: AFSCME does not ‘stand alone’. There are six other unions that have not reached settlements with the state—and all of them are seeking wage increases and rejecting the Administration’s demand for huge health care cost hikes. Together, these seven unions represent more than 10 times the number of state employees represented by the unions that have settled.
Wage Comparison
Rauner Administration Claim: State employees in Illinois make more than their counterparts in other Midwestern States. For example, Illinois state workers made, on average, over $20,000 more per year in 2014 than state workers in Indiana or Missouri. In absolute dollars, Illinois state worker pay was third-highest.
AFSCME Accurate: Illinois ranks 9th nationally, not 3rd, for state employee pay. Illinois is in the top tier because, generally speaking, it is a high-wage state. Overall, Illinois wages rank 10th in the nation—putting state employees right on a par with their fellow citizens.
Bad Note-Taking
Rauner Administration Claim: Fact: Here’s what AFSCME’s Executive Director Roberta Lynch said during bargaining: “People who came up with this [merit pay proposal] ought to go to f**king prison . . . fact that you want to give measly 25% to some who are doing the job already . . . 75% of people not doing their best - that’s a f**king lie. I think it’s an insult to every single person who works for the State of Illinois.” Here’s how AFSCME interprets the above quote: “it wasn’t fair to leave out 75% of employees from getting a bonus, given the difficult jobs that employees do-and that whoever came up with that idea should try going and actually working in a prison so they’d know how hard the job is.” We appreciate that AFSCME’s Executive Director regrets her choice of words when she reads those words on paper. Nonetheless, she does not get to rewrite the history of negotiations based on what she wishes she has said.
AFSCME Accurate: The “history of negotiations”? Only if we want to let the Rauner Administration write our history for us. In reality, that supposed ‘quote’ is nothing more than what someone on Management’s team wrote down. He or she may have deliberately misrepresented the facts or was just a very poor note-taker. The whole AFSCME Bargaining Committee heard Roberta’s argument and knows that what the Union reported is what she was saying. In any event, AFSCME has no interest in getting into a prolonged argument over this—though it’s not accurate, the purported ‘quote’ shows Roberta standing up for union members.
Fair Arbitration Bill
Rauner Administration Claim: SB1229 was AFSCME’s attempt to … saddle the State’s taxpayers with a multi-billion dollar cost of AFSCME’s unreasonable contract proposal that it knew, under the existing laws, it could never get the State to agree to at the bargaining table.
AFSCME Accurate: The Union’s contract proposal is not “unreasonable” and does not cost “multi-billion” more dollars. The health care coverage and pay increases—averaging little more than 2% per year—that the Union proposed are comparable to those negotiated in union contracts with other states, cities and counties all across this country. The most recent US DOL data shows that the average pay raise for all U.S. workers last year was 2.5%.
Moreover, AFSCME has indicated time and again that the proposal the Union has on the table is not our final proposal. In fact, the Union has already modified our wage proposal and had done so again just last month, right before Management broke off negotiations. It is the governor who is refusing to negotiate, thus making clear that the Union is correct to press for passage of legislation that would require arbitration. If the Rauner Administration truly believed it had a reasonable and fair contract proposal, it wouldn’t hesitate to submit it to an independent arbitrator for consideration.
Passing HB 580
Rauner Administration Claim: HB580—another version of the same failed bill, which would strip the Governor of his constitutional authority—is as unaffordable and damaging now as it was then.
AFSCME Accurate: Under current labor law arbitration procedures have been in place for decades for law enforcement and fire safety employees all across Illinois. Neither the governor nor any other employer has a “constitutional authority” to control negotiations. The same law already requires him to submit to arbitration for security employees. If he thinks arbitration is unconstitutional, why hasn’t he challenged that provision in court? Because it’s not, of course. What the governor doesn’t like about arbitration is it allows an impartial third party to decide on a reasonable settlement, instead of letting the governor do an end run around the collective bargaining process and impose his own terms.
Rauner Administration Claim: This is as clear a signal as any that AFSCME is not interested in negotiating… AFSCME is only interested in imposing its will through an unelected, unaccountable arbitrator. This is bad faith in spades, and why the matter is now before the Labor Board.
AFSCME Accurate: An Administration that walks away from the bargaining table and flatly refuses to return says the Union doesn’t want to negotiate? That doesn’t pass the laugh test. In fact, our Union has clearly and consistently stated our willingness to continue to negotiate, while the Rauner Administration is trying to persuade the Labor Board to allow it to force its extreme demands on employees—or force the disruption that a strike would cause. In the end, we’ve come full circle—nearly three years ago, as a candidate, the governor said he wanted a strike—and he’s still doing his very best to try to provoke one now.
The first meeting between Gov. Bruce Rauner and legislative leaders since mid-December is set to take place later this week.
Since meeting three times in December to discuss ways to end the budget stalemate, no formal discussions have taken place. Rauner said staff members have been in “almost daily communication,” and is promising to offer new proposals in this week’s negotiations.
“We’re going to offer more compromises and creative solutions and hopefully, we’ll come up with some bipartisan answers, so we can have true long-term balanced budgets where the interests of taxpayers are protected along with the interests of those inside the government. We’re working hard on it and I think we’ll get there,” Rauner said.
Rauner declined to offer specifics on what new compromises he’ll offer.
* There was a big rally at Eastern Illinois University the other day, but the area’s Republican legislators weren’t invited to speak…
Less than two hours before the event held in the face of coming layoffs and furlough forced by the state budget impasse, [Sen Dale Righter] said he was prevented from speaking at the event.
He issued the following statement in response to being barred from publicly speaking at the event on campus:
“I am deeply disappointed in the decision made by the organizer of this rally to not allow me to address the rally.”
Both Righter and [Rep. Reggie Phillips] said they appreciated the strong support shown for Eastern at the rally but would have liked to have been given the opportunity to speak there. […]
Organizer Kate Klipp told the JG-TC that the event was focused on the university’s students…. “It’s not designed to be a campaign stomping ground,” Klipp said.
Democratic Sen. Scott Bennett was invited to speak, even though he doesn’t represent the university. Klipp works for Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 149, which could be the reason for the GOP omission.
The state senator’s office has reported that under Righter’s legislation, four year colleges/universities would be funded at 80 percent of 2015 funding levels, two-year community colleges would be funded at 90 percent, and MAP grants would be funded at 100 percent. […]
After the rally, state Rep. Reggie Phillips, R-Charleston, said he has spoken with Rauner multiple times about the need to allocate higher education funding and he has proposed legislation to accomplish this goal. He said Eastern has done everything it can to cut its budget while carrying out its education mission and should not be penalized by the state.
Phillips said he will not support legislation that reduces funding for Eastern and other schools by more than 10 percent, adding that he would prefer an even less of a reduction. Phillips said he also will not support higher education funding legislation that does not have existing funding sources available to pay for it.
Rural Toledo businessman Jonathan Kaye, who is running against Phillips for the Republican nomination in the 110th District, said after the rally that he would support higher education funding that is not tied to any unrelated issues in the budget negotiations.
* Pennsylvania also doesn’t have a budget yet. They have a Democratic governor with a Republican GA, the mirror opposite of Illinois…
Similarly, in Pennsylvania, court orders have kept some money flowing to social services and helped ease pressure. This is much different from budget stalemates past, said McLaughlin.
“It used to be, when you didn’t have a budget, nobody got paid, no checks went out. It was ugly, but also an enormous amount of pressure,” he said.
On Thursday, Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger said spending mandated by consent decrees and court orders on social services could cost Illinois up to $1.2 billion more than the previous year by July.
But, in both states, observers say the lawmakers will likely not do anything too controversial to resolve the crisis until after the primary elections. For Pennsylvania, that’s not until April 26. In Illinois, it’s March 15.
* Illinois GO has a new TV ad supporting Rep. Ken Dunkin. Rate it…
I’m expecting a response from SEIU pretty soon about this ad.
*** UPDATE *** As expected…
A leader from the union that represents state child care providers on Monday called on Illinoisans for Growth and Opportunity (Illinois GO), widely considered a Republican front group, to withdraw a television ad running on behalf of Bruce Rauner ally Rep. Ken Dunkin because of massive misrepresentations regarding damage the couple has caused to the Child Care Assistance Program—and ignoring the state’s own figures showing 48,000 fewer children in the program.
The ad from the deep-pocketed Republican group, which apparently began running this weekend, includes the outrageous claim by Dunkin that he “restored childcare funding” to 100,000 Illinois children. In fact, CCAP has NOT been restored and is reportedly down tens of thousands of children (citations below), the consequence of unilateral action by Bruce Rauner that was enabled by Ken Dunkin’s refusal to back legislation protecting eligibility.
Illinois GO is citing Ken Dunkin’s made-up numbers in an ad praising Ken Dunkin’s made-up numbers, and ignoring the fact that Rauner has said that he will make new cuts to the program thanks to the enabling Dunkin “deal.”
In a letter to Illinois GO (attached), Brynn Seibert, SEIU Healthcare Illinois vice president for child care, called on Illinois GO to tell the truth about child care in Illinois and withdraw the deceptive new ad:
“The cuts put in place by Bruce Rauner, and enabled by Ken Dunkin now and forever, have done permanent damage to a program that has served as a bipartisan model for helping working families enter the middle class. Not only is the 100,000 kids figure entirely made up out of whole cloth and without any basis in fact, it is a reminder of the cynicism of politicians like Ken Dunkin and Bruce Rauner, who are using vulnerable people as pawns in a political game that is harming the welfare of Illinois….
“On behalf of the tens of thousands of kids and working families who have been harmed by Ken Dunkin’s and Bruce Rauner’s cuts to child care in Illinois and who remain in their crosshairs, we ask that you cease and desist and withdraw this deceptive ad.”
On one side of the room, Broncos defensive coordinator Wade Phillips was telling reporters he believed his defense needs to be considered among the all-time greats after Sunday’s dominant performance against the Panthers in Super Bowl 50.
On the other, Danny Trevathan took things a little further. The Broncos linebacker believes the unit’s season-long dominance — which included suffocating performances against Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady and Cam Newton in the final three weeks — moves Denver into rarified air.
“You’re going to ask me? No. 1. No. 1 in my opinion, over ‘85 Bears,” he said. “If not No. 1, No. 2. I feel like we did a good job playing our games. It wasn’t ever pretty, but when you put it in our defense’s hand we always come up with that win.”
Not enough can be said about what Denver pulled off at Levi’s Stadium. Newton came into the game as the league’s MVP, playing the game at a uniquely dominant level. That the once-swaggering Newton left the building a hollowed-out shell speaks volumes.
Not to mention that Newton was so rattled he avoided contact at a crucial moment…
Congrats to Denver…great Defense and a great season.
But this is ABSURD!
Not even close.
‘85 #Bears:
46-10 in SB
Only five of the teams they faced scored more than 10 points all season
Hall of famers everywhere
* The Question: Which team had the better defense, the ‘85 Bears or this season’s Broncos? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
…Adding… I changed the headline to reflect a bit of a misreading by me here. They’re going to reopen the museum, but if the GA doesn’t agree with the amendatory veto, then it’ll take longer to get it reopened with the administrative rules process.
Hope that clears things up.
* The catch is that House Speaker Michael Madigan usually refuses to advance these sorts of dramatic gubernatorial rewrites. So, we’ll see what happens…
Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) Director Wayne A. Rosenthal announced today that an agreement has been reached to reopen the Illinois State Museum to the public. IDNR has worked closely with Governor Bruce Rauner’s office to develop a new, more sustainable model for operating the museum that will save about $1 million per year by closing two museum branches, consolidating human resources and accounting functions within IDNR, and by development of a new management and organizational structure. The museum will also seek to improve revenue by charging an admission fee, and increase fundraising efforts through an improved partnership with the Illinois State Museum Society.
The timeframe for reopening will depend upon the Illinois General Assembly taking up the amendatory veto (AV) of SB 317 and implementing the suggested changes. Governor Bruce Rauner’s AV asks that the authority to charge an admission fee be placed in statute so it can be implemented immediately upon the acceptance of the amendatory veto.
“If the General Assembly acts quickly on the Governor’s amendatory veto, we believe we could reopen the museum in a matter of weeks,” said IDNR Director Wayne Rosenthal. “Without the General Assembly’s support, it could take months to get the museum reopened.”
Michael Wiant will become interim director of the Illinois State Museum immediately. Rosenthal will ask the Illinois State Museum Board to begin the search for a new director. Rosenthal also will ask the Museum and Society boards to call emergency meetings so work to reopen the museum can begin immediately.
“With challenge comes great opportunity, and the museum staff is grateful for this tremendous opportunity to continue to share the art, history and culture of Illinois with its citizens,” said Dr. Michael Wiant, Interim Director of the Illinois State Museum.
“I applaud the Governor’s action as it creates a realistic path forward to reopening the Illinois State Museum,” said State Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield). “Reopening the museum is vital to our community and the plan announced today will provide for the long-term viability and growth of the museum system. I look forward to working with the community, legislators, and the Governor as we again open the doors on a wonderful asset of our State.”
“I am encouraged that the Governor took careful steps in adjusting this legislation while maintaining the ultimate goal of allowing our State Museum to resume its important work. We all want to see those doors open to the public once again, and this compromise could make that happen,” said State Rep. Sara Wojcicki Jimenez (R-Springfield).
“The Illinois State Museum Society is looking forward to the challenge of becoming a stronger partner and playing a greater role in the success of the Illinois State Museum,” said Karen Westbrook of the Illinois State Museum Society.
Munger encouraged “all parties” to “get together in a room and start … talking about this and focus on solutions.” For her part, she said, one area she could see for compromise is lowering workers’ compensation rates to be more competitive.
“I cannot understand why union members would not love that,” she said, because it would free up money so more skilled workers could get jobs.
Former State Representative Raymond Poe, R-Springfield, has announced his endorsement of Bryce Benton, Republican candidate for State Senate in the 50th District.
“I had the honor of serving Sangamon County in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1995-2015,” said Poe. “I believe that we deserve a State Senator who calls Sangamon County home and will represent us with integrity. Sam McCann has put his interests above the interests of Central Illinois. I endorsed Sam McCann’s primary opponent in 2012, and I am happy to endorse his opponent this year. Sangamon County deserves better than Sam McCann.”
“I know Bryce Benton well, and he’s a strong public servant who will always put the interests of Central Illinois above his own,” said Poe. “The 50th Senate District is home to many current and retired state employees, and as a state employee himself, Bryce will be a strong voice for them in state government. Illinois will be well served with Bryce Benton in the Senate.”
“I’m incredibly humbled to receive the support of Representative Poe,” said Benton. “Raymond is a Sangamon County institution who has honorably served Illinois for decades, and he, more than anyone, knows what makes a good public servant - and what doesn’t. Raymond Poe has endorsed me because he knows that I have the integrity to serve the voters of Sangamon County and the 50th Senate District.”
Poe joined other prominent Sangamon County Republicans backing McCann’s GOP primary opponent in 2012 — GRAY NOLL, who is now Morgan County state’s attorney. This year, the Sangamon County GOP is backing McCann.
That fight was mainly about Sangamon County not having its own Senator. But that wasn’t a good enough argument for voters. Noll won the county, but got clobbered everywhere else.
Last fall, when Northrop Grumman beat out a joint Boeing-Lockheed Martin bid to engineer a bomber for the U.S. Air Force, it felt like a big loss for Chicago. With orders for other military aircraft winding down, the defense unit at Chicago-based Boeing desperately needed the $79.40 billion deal—so much so that executives formally protested the decision. A ruling due Feb. 16 from the Government Accountability Office will determine whether the Air Force has to rebid the contract.
But Boeing’s loss appears to be the region’s gain. While Boeing is the most prominent defense contractor based here, with about 560 employees downtown, Northrop operates the most significant military-focused factory in metro Chicago, with 2,100 people at a campus in Rolling Meadows. For those engineers, technicians and production workers, the bomber win likely adds a measure of job security at a time when military spending has fallen off because of automatic federal budget cuts known as sequestration.
The bomber business could trickle down, too, to smaller manufacturers nearby linked to Northrop’s facility. It’s the rare example of how the Chicago area, which isn’t known for defense manufacturing, could catch a tail wind from a big-ticket military procurement effort.
Would a Boeing win have helped the region? Probably not much, because the company doesn’t employ anyone other than HQ workers here.
* Crain’s recently published a story entitled “The incredible shrinking corporate headquarters.” It’s a good read…
Corporations moving their headquarters to Chicago arrive with only a handful of employees and a modest economic impact
Even Boeing, the largest company to come to Chicago from out of state, brought just 400 employees here in 2001, compared with the 1,000 it employed at its headquarters in Seattle. Fifteen years later, its Chicago headcount is up to roughly 560. […]
Boeing’s Seattle location was identified with its commercial airplane unit at a time when the company was still digesting its merger with St. Louis-based defense contractor McDonnell Douglas and it needed a “neutral location” for its headquarters.
Since that Boeing relocation, it’s becoming obvious that some (not all) of these big companies are trying to get away from their employees by moving to the Chicago region. And that means the region has little to no shot at any manufacturing or other expansion gains. The bomber contract is a good example of this. A win for Boeing doesn’t really do much for the region.
* The big brains need to start thinking about this. Snatching a corporate HQ is a great PR win, but if it puts the region out of the running for “real” jobs, is it worth anything at all?
Peabody Energy, one of the state’s largest coal mine operators, soon could be in bankruptcy, but regulators are allowing it to meet future cleanup obligations with a promise rather than a bond.
The state permits certain companies to “self-bond”—effectively to pledge, backed by audited financial statements, that the money will be there to clean up the mine sites after they’ve been tapped out. That practice is under fire from environmentalists now that plummeting commodity prices are putting intense financial pressure on the industry.
In Illinois, just one of the state’s top five operators, St. Louis-based Peabody, self-bonds. The projected cost of cleaning up three large Peabody mine sites in southern Illinois is $92 million, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. That’s 22 percent of the $412 million the state estimates is needed to reclaim all of Illinois’ mines.
The state risks having to shoulder at least some of that cost if Peabody files for bankruptcy protection, as five publicly traded U.S. coal companies have done in the past two years.
* The Sun-Times notes a change in FOIA tactics by the governor…
For the past year, Gov. Bruce Rauner has resisted efforts by news organizations to obtain copies of his daily schedule, blacking out big swaths of the documents, mounting a legal fight to keep them under wraps and — after those efforts failed — using abbreviations and code to hide the names of those the governor met with or called.
After losing the fight to black out portions of his schedule, Rauner and his staff began concealing his activities by just leaving information off his schedule to begin with.
On Oct. 7, for example, the governor’s schedule listed four afternoon meetings — with “MH,” “EB,” “JM,” “MW,” “JC” and “AP.” There’s no identification beyond initials. […]
Two weeks later, on Oct. 27, Rauner set aside 30 minutes for a call with “EM.” Ed Murphy is his director of research.
The rest of that day’s schedule was blank — not unusual for Rauner. The governor held no public events the next day either, when his schedule showed only that he would videotape a short message and make phone calls to “JS” and “SK.”
More than two years after federal researchers found high levels of lead in homes where water mains had been replaced or new meters installed, city officials still do little to caution Chicagoans about potential health risks posed by work that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is speeding up across the city.
In a peer-reviewed study, researchers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found alarming levels of the brain-damaging metal can flow out of household faucets for years after construction work disrupts service lines that connect buildings to the city’s water system. Nearly 80 percent of the properties in Chicago are hooked up to service lines made of lead.
The study also found the city’s testing protocols — based on federal rules — are likely to miss high concentrations of lead in drinking water. […]
Most older cities, including Chicago, add corrosion-fighting chemicals to the water supply that form a protective coating inside pipes. Officials in Flint stopped the treatment in an ill-advised attempt to cut costs. The EPA study and other research shows the anti-corrosion treatment also can be thwarted when street work, plumbing repairs or changes in water chemistry disrupts the coating, causing alarming levels of lead to leach from service lines.
“I am taking this opportunity to set the record straight,” Thomas Powers, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Water Management, wrote in a October 2013 letter to aldermen in response to Del Toral’s EPA study. “Chicago water is absolutely safe to drink and meets or exceeds all standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois EPA.”
* We already know that Laquan McDonald was a ward of the state when he was shot by police. So, his family (immediate and extended) obviously failed him. And so did the government at all levels, according to the BGA…
* The city schools McDonald attended had some of the lowest academic ratings, and two were later closed because they were so bad.
* The psychiatric hospital he was sent to by child welfare officials was the subject of a scathing report detailing physical and sexual abuse there.
* The Chicago Public Schools system placed him in a small, private school for children with emotional disturbances, but the district failed to collect any performance measures on the facility and others like it for years.
* The last school McDonald attended is highly rated but child advocates believe it didn’t have the resources needed to help students with complex behavioral issues.
* The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which was responsible for McDonald’s well-being when he was a foster child, was “nonexistent” when it came to ensuring McDonald was adequately placed in schools.
Ben Wolf, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which has pushed for greater accountability at DCFS, said too many foster children wind up in the worst schools and eventually drop out.
“In general, most schools don’t know what to do with foster children,” Wolf said.
One CPS social worker who reviewed McDonald’s school records said she was appalled at the lack of involvement by DCFS, saying, “It was nonexistent.”
As has been reported, McDonald was sexually and physically abused while in foster care — while living with people he was not related to — under the supervision of DCFS.
President Barack Obama returns to Springfield this month for a speech to the Illinois General Assembly about “what we can do, together, to build a better politics—one that reflects our better selves.”
Obama served in the Illinois Senate during a long overtime session in 2004, which only came to an end because he had been picked to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention and state party leaders didn’t want to embarrass him. Leadership also didn’t want to miss the partying and fundraising opportunities at the convention.
So if he was partly responsible for “solving” one impasse, could he break the current gridlock that has paralyzed Illinois since May?
* Apart from the obvious here, Springfield could really use those construction jobs…
Springfield’s two largest hospitals are owed a total of $76 million for the care of state workers, retirees and dependents — a record amount that continues to grow during the state budget impasse and threatens to stifle growth in the local medical industry.
Memorial Medical Center, which is owed $46.3 million from the State Employees’ Group Health Insurance Program, is delaying plans to construct an $80 million medical office building for exclusive rental to doctors at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine because of the impasse, the leader of Memorial’s parent organization said Friday. […]
Springfield Clinic doesn’t plan to ask patients to pay more up front, either, said Mark Kuhn, chief administrative officer, though the clinic is owned about $35 million — a record amount — from the state employee insurance plan.
Much of that money gets recirculated through the local economy, so this is just nuts. And every dollar a local bank has to lend the providers to keep them afloat is a dollar they can’t lend to grow the economy.
Then again, if they’re owed this much money and are still humming along, perhaps it’s time to renegotiate?
* Gov. Bruce Rauner has endorsed former Rep. Brad Halbrook in this race, so today’s endorsement sets up a proxy battle of sorts between the former governor and the current governor. Acklin has also been endorsed by the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Champaign County GOP is all in for him, making this three-way primary race one to watch…
Former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar has announced his endorsement of Jim Acklin for the Republican nomination for State Representative in the 102nd District.
“Illinois needs dedicated and experienced people to get this state moving again. Jim Acklin’s experience speaks for itself,” said Edgar. “If you look at his time as a teacher, coach, and school superintendent, Jim Acklin has the kind of experience and judgement we need at the State Capitol. That’s why I’m happy to support him for State Representative.”
The 102nd District includes portions of Champaign, Douglas, Edgar, Macon, Moultrie, Shelby, and Vermilion Counties. Acklin has lived in Champaign County for over 35 years and was a longtime Superintendent at St. Joseph-Ogden High School and the Shiloh School District in Douglas and Edgar Counties. He grew up in Paris.
Acklin says Edgar was a “wonderful Governor and a man who is revered in east central Illinois” and thanked him for his support.
“Governor Edgar is a man who served Illinois with tremendous integrity is a model of what public service should look like,” said Acklin. “Governor Edgar served our area as Governor, Secretary of State, and as a State Representative. He has great respect and admiration for the people here, because he is one of us. To have the endorsement of a man whose legacy of saying “no” to spending we couldn’t afford, combined with an enduring reputation of being honest and forthright, is truly special. I’m honored to have his friendship and support.”
Acklin lives in Ogden with his wife, Cindy, and has three children. To learn more about Jim’s campaign, visit www.jimacklin.com or www.facebook.com/acklin102.
Lindall provided detailed notes one member provided the union of the call the member received on the survey. According to the member, the interviewer wanted to know if the worker had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Rauner, AFSCME and AFSCME executive director Roberta Lynch.
Other questions included whether the employee was a full union member or a fair-share member, if the worker would accept a pay freeze, would the worker participate in a work stoppage, how long the worker was willing to go without pay while participating in a work stoppage, how the worker felt about Rauner’s plan to award bonuses to employers and whether the worker was aware the state was in a financial crisis.
“In essence, state employees are being asked to do one of two untenable things,” Lindall said. “Either they make statements critical of their employer to an unknown person who knows their identity, or they agree with leading statements that are designed to say things that are critical of their own union.”
Lindall said union members reported that their caller IDs showed the calls coming from SSI, which stands for Survey Sampling International. A representative of SSI said the work was commissioned by Fabrizio, Lee and Associates of Alexandria, Va. A call to Fabrizio, Lee on Friday afternoon was not returned.
“Don’t Shoot” is an aggressive multi-strategy anti-gang and anti-gun violence program designed to save lives and reduce the number of people impacted by gun crimes. It is modeled after a concept found in the book, “Don’t Shoot. One Man, A Street Fellowship, and The End of Violence in Inner-City America,” by David M. Kennedy.
Led by Mayor Jim Ardis, the initiative creates partnerships among federal, state and local prosecutors; law enforcement; outreach specialists; community leaders; and media.
* Emphasis added because the mayor’s pet program apparently went awry…
A Peoria man sentenced in December to 15 years in prison for running an underage prostitution operation plied his illegal trade out of an apartment obtained with the help of the Peoria Police Department, according to documents procured under the Freedom of Information Act.
Peoria police arrested Matthew Petrakis, 44, on prostitution-related charges on May 21, 2015, and he has been incarcerated since then. He opted for a bench trial in the first week of November, and Judge Kevin Lyons found him guilty on one count of involuntary sexual servitude of a minor and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. […]
Petrakis had been in close contact with the Peoria Police Department for months before his May 2015 arrest. At one point the department helped him obtain the apartment where up to six men a day paid to have sex with a 16-year-old girl, according to documents released by the department following a public records request by the Journal Star.
The department, under the umbrella of the Don’t Shoot anti-gun violence initiative, also arranged for Matthew Petrakis to meet U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk and sought to have his unpaid fines for traffic tickets waived so he could obtain a valid driver’s license, according to a contact log with the department’s community services coordinator, Krista Coleman.
* Greg Hinz on whether Gov. Bruce Rauner’s Turnaround Agenda is worth the price being paid…
In recent days, he has gleefully tried to torpedo a big Chicago Public Schools bond issue, failing in his effort but driving up the already prohibitive cost to city taxpayers.
He has said little about a report from his handpicked state comptroller, Leslie Geissler Munger, that Illinois debt soon may blow by the level reached by Gov. Pat Quinn, the guy who took over from Rod Blagojevich amid the worst U.S. economic downturn since Herbert Hoover was president.
He mostly has just watched as thousands of Illinois college students consider dropping out because their financial aid is gone, some of them never to return. He also lost General Electric’s headquarters when the company chose Boston over Chicago.
I could go on. But here’s the cold, hard fact: This war Rauner is in with House Speaker Michael Madigan is of increasingly questionable value relative to the costs. Though our GOP governor is right that Illinois’ economy is too weak and public-sector unions too strong, is the payoff of his turnaround agenda worth it? […]
Rauner is right that CPS finances have been a mess for way too long. Piling on more debt is a bad idea. But his plan to fix CPS by forcing it into bankruptcy comes out of the same fairy-dust factory as the proposal by Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis to maintain the status quo by taxing commodities trades and rich people and emptying tax-increment-financing districts for the dough.
More real was Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan: to finally bargain hard with the CTU, cut some jobs, get more money from the state and buy more time via borrowing. But Rauner (who actually agrees that CPS needs more state money) turned thumbs down on a deal that would have forced every teacher to take what amounts to a 7 percent pay cut because the deal also would have left CTU alive and capped the number of charter schools.
Potter said while CPS offered teachers a 2.75 percent pay raise that would take effect in the second year of their four-year contract offer, those raises would have been negated by teachers’ increased pension and health insurance contributions. Factoring in those costs, Potter said teachers would actually lose 1.55 percent of their pay if they accepted the contract Monday.
Last week, a reporter said to Gov. Bruce Rauner that Secretary of State Jesse White had suggested that Rauner bring in former governors, including George Ryan, to help break the long governmental impasse which has prevented the state from having a budget for over seven months.
Rauner laughed and said, “Uh, wow.”
The governor clearly did not take the suggestion seriously.
“I’m not gonna talk about the failures of the past that created this mess,” Gov. Rauner said through chuckles.
“I focus on the future. I don’t live in the past. We’ve had failure in our elected government for decades. This mess didn’t happen over night. And what we’re not gonna do is reproduce the dynamic that created it.” The governor laughed throughout most of that last sentence.
Bringing in graybeards has been tried before without success. Gov. Rod Blagojevich asked former US House Speaker Dennis Hastert and then-Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard to town to help him pass his massive construction proposal that Speaker Madigan refused to agree to. It didn’t work. The two men left town as soon as they realized how hardened Madigan’s position had become against Blagojevich.
While former governors have been through similar troubles, nothing really compares to today’s self-inflicted disaster. Madigan and Blagojevich played hardball, but the game is exponentially meaner now.
And, besides, what would the former governors say or do that could make a difference? They’d probably advise Rauner to cut a deal which doesn’t bash unions. But our governor seems wholly uninterested in doing such a thing.
The simple fact is that nothing – nothing – will change until Madigan and Rauner decide it will.
Madigan’s long history clearly shows he forces the other side to negotiate against itself until he believes they’re close enough to his position. Rauner has clearly not moved far enough away from anti-union proposals and things like term limits for Madigan’s taste.
And Rauner, for his part, seems fed up with the whole process and has taken to issuing repeated dire warnings of political consequences to Madigan’s Democratic members if they continue backing the Speaker.
But as we saw not long ago, when rank and file Senate Democrats rejected the pension reform compromise negotiated by Senate President John Cullerton (even though a majority of that caucus had voted for a very similar bill a couple of years earlier), most Democratic legislators are in no mood to work out a deal, either, and continue to insist that the governor come to the table and finally agree to a budget instead.
Late last Thursday, Chicago State University officially declared a “financial exigency,” which could lead to the reduction of tenured faculty and drastic reductions in programs in order to save the school from closure. The state’s only majority black university had already announced last month that it would run out of money to pay salaries in early March.
CSU gets more than a third of its funding from the state, more than all but one other 4-year public university in Illinois. But the governor has publicly complained that taxpayers have been throwing Chicago State’s money “down the toilet” and wants drastic reforms. For now, anyway, the Democrats are staying on the sidelines and loudly pointing fingers at Rauner.
The governor has been talking about his grand plan for years, long before he was elected.
He never made it a major campaign issue, but it’s clear from looking at his past statements that he believes Democrats will eventually side against the unions and with social service agencies (and places like the CSU campus and the Chicago Public Schools) if he can, in his own words, “drive a wedge” into the party. The object is to make the Democrats choose between money for their pet causes or union rights. He’s shut off the money, but he hasn’t yet driven that wedge.
That’s probably why Rauner looked like he was attempting to tank the Chicago Public School’s bond sale last week with loud demands that it should go bankrupt and be taken over by the state. Without that bond sale, the school system would’ve been in danger of shutting down.
The object here appears to be to create so much chaos that the Democrats finally start negotiating in order to save all the programs and institutions they’ve been building for decades.
So far, that isn’t happening, but the real chaos is yet to come. We’ve seen smaller social service agencies close, we’ve seen larger agencies shut down vital programs, but so far nothing huge has happened.
It’ll probably take the “death” of something very important and very large to test this theory.
* Related…
* Durbin to Rauner: “It’s time to govern”: “What is happening to this state, the state I love and am honored to represent is devastating, devastating,” said Durbin.
Monday, Feb 8, 2016 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
Chicago’s public school system is facing financial meltdown. Chicago Public Schools is facing a $1 billion budget shortfall, $10 billion in debt and a “junk” credit rating. Just last year, Chicago Public Schools spent 13 months of revenues in just 12 months. Despite this, the school system was able to reach an agreement with leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union on a contract that met every major union demand, including:
· Guaranteed pay raises for teachers – every year
· Guaranteed job security and no teacher layoffs
· A commitment to prevent cuts to classrooms
· Fully funding the employer portion of teachers’ pensions
In exchange, members were only asked to pay their full share of employee pensions.
The Chicago Teachers Union unanimously rejected the proposal.
Chicago families can’t afford more classroom cuts and another teachers’ strike that closes schools.
Our elected officials must take a stand: Do you support the Chicago Teachers Union’s action?
* I suppose this happens when the President travels, but, man, the lack of any information about his speech this week has been frustrating…
Five days ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to Springfield, residents were awaiting to hear details of when exactly he’ll address the Illinois General Assembly and what else he might do during his stop in the capital city. […]
The only activity [White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest] listed for Wednesday is the appearance before the legislature in Springfield.
“Now in the final year of his second term, the president looks forward to addressing the Illinois General Assembly about what we can do together to build a better politics, one that reflects our better selves,” Earnest said.
On Wednesday evening, Obama is scheduled to fly to the San Jose, California, area, where he’ll spend the night.
* I was able to get some information this afternoon, however.
The Capitol Building will be closed from 7:30 am until 10 am. But don’t even think about trying to get in early. They want an empty building.
The tunnels in the Capitol Complex will be closed from 7:30 until President Obama leaves.
The President will speak in the House chambers. There’s word that Obama might - might - do some sort of thing in the Senate afterward.
*** UPDATE *** The House Speaker’s office just sent out some more information…
* The Illinois State Museum closed last fall. The GA passed a bill to reopen it, but didn’t provide revenue. The governor rewrote the bill and announced he was all for it opening, but with private funding.
Press release…
Governor Bruce Rauner issued an amendatory veto today on SB 317 to reopen the Illinois State Museum while developing a model for funding that does not rely solely on state support.
The current bill as written is an unfunded mandate with no appropriations to support the Museum or its branch sites. The Governor’s amendatory veto instructs the Museum to partner with public and private third-parties to invest in the Museum’s mission.
In addition, the Governor’s changes to the bill authorizes the Director of Illinois Department of Natural Resources to establish entrance fees. Many of Illinois’ neighboring states charge admission at their respective museums.
I hereby return Senate Bill 317 with specific recommendations for change to develop a sustainable fiscal model for the continued operation of the Illinois State Museum.
The Illinois State Museum preserves and showcases the proud history of Illinois. The Museum helps educate Illinoisans of all ages on their unique heritage. As a research institution, the Museum is a leader in the advancement of not only Illinois, but U.S. and natural history. I support Senate Bill 317’s fundamental purpose of opening the Museum to the public again.
However, despite the good the Museum does, its operations are not fiscally sustainable. The State invests more than $6 million per year, despite attendance of only 200,000 visitors per year. When the General Assembly failed to pass a balanced budget for Fiscal Year 2016, our Administration was required by the Illinois Constitution and our responsibility to taxpayers to take whatever steps we could to cut non-essential costs. While the State is in the midst of a crisis caused by decades of fiscal mismanagement, as long as this bill fails to offer any plan to help the Museum become self-supporting, it is just an empty and broken promise to the taxpayers of Illinois.
But there is a path to sustainability. I propose not merely re-opening the Museum while continuing its status quo, but re-energizing its operations and partnering it with other public and private entities to make it truly self-supporting and to relieve the fiscal burden to taxpayers.
* Decades of fiscal neglect did far more damage than Gov. Rauner did, but his comments sure didn’t help…
The Chicago Public Schools paid more to borrow less because of Gov. Rauner’s continued talk of bankruptcy — and if that was the governor’s intention, it’s “shameful,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Friday.
“The governor is well-versed in finance, coming out of private equity and the financial world. His comments weren’t helpful. … It affected certain things. … If it was intentional, it’s shameful. Only he can answer whether that was the purpose,” Emanuel said, two days after CPS was forced to pay an 8.5 percent interest rate. […]
“The state under his leadership … is now up to $7 billion in unpaid bills and growing. That’s not exactly who you would turn to for financial stewardship and leadership,” Emanuel said of the governor’s threat to take over Chicago Public Schools.
Emanuel defended the costly borrowing — and the $100 million in budget cuts that helped reassure skittish investors — as essential to keeping the school doors open until the state school aid formula can be rewritten, as state Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) has promised to do with Rauner’s help.
* Meanwhile, in related news, I received this e-mail the other day…
Rich, hope you’re well. Wanted to run something by you that might be of interest for the blog. We were researching some of Sheriff Dart’s advocacy during his days in the General Assembly and stumbled upon his floor speech from the 1995 CPS battle, which of course resulted in reforms that many believe to be responsible for today’s CPS fiscal crisis.
Starting on Page 89, it was interesting to see how prophetic Dart was about the ramifications about the bill. Looks like a few others had similar messages as well. But below are a few choice quotes from him during the floor debate. We found it particularly interesting since history is sort of repeating itself, with Republican legislators outside of Cook County introducing a sweeping bill meant to “save” CPS.
“That is one of the hollowest, lamest definitions of collaboration I have ever heard in my life. This is what was…should be called was foisted on people. There was not one, absolutely one, not one elected official from the City of Chicago invited to one of these closed door meetings. Not one. Our children are at stake here, not yours.”
“You’ve set up a system that’s going to fail and you know it.”
“I am so terribly touched by all of your concerns. This is outrageous. You know it, I know it. You are forcing this on the people of the City of Chicago so you know, what do we have here? We have a plan, a very flawed one, that was drafted by you, not us. Drafted by Republicans. There was not one Chicago elected official invited or present during any of these meetings, This was drafted behind closed doors.”
“I have been so sick and tired of hearing you and your garbage over there about the Chicago public schools. Well guess what, the years of that are over. The years of hearing about the dropout rate and the reading scores, they aren’t our problem anymore. The years of hearing people making such irresponsible statements about this being a sewer are over because guess what Representative, it’s your sewer now. You’re the one that drafted this plan. This is your plan, not ours and so the problems are sitting at your doorstep, not ours, so get used to it. We are giving you time, you’ll have your four years, but don’t come to us and complain about our schools now because this is your plan and your sewer as you like to call it. So enjoy living in it.”
Spread the word. Folks should refuse to take this phony poll. Below is a sample of a phone call received from a Local 31 member:
Call from a local leader re phone survey she believed came from the Governor’s Office:
just received a call from I believe Rauners office asking me about the union informing me about contract negotiations. He wanted to know my stance on paying dues, am I for unions and will I strike. He wanted to know how do I feel abou medical & merit comp. He asked a lot of personal questions and wanted to know my name which he already knew and asked to speak to me by my full name.
He asked me how much of my salary was I willing to go without.
It is recommended that you do not answer these questions.
In Solidarity
Lori Gladson
President, Local 51
* A reader forwarded me that e-mail and said he had also received the call. I asked for details…
Received a call at 6:13 pm yesterday from a [redacted] number. I’m in [redacted], so I answered. They confirmed my name, that I was a state employee, and represented by AFSCME. I assumed it was a poll commissioned by AFSCME, since they had all this information. I agreed to answer their questions believing it was an AFSCME poll (dumb, I know). The first few questions regarded opinion of the Governor (very unfavorable), opinion of AFSCME (favorable), opinion of state finances (very dire), etc. They then asked about my willingness to strike (refused to answer), how much money I would be willing to give up for a strike (refused to answer), how often do I hear updates from the union (once a week), do I believe the union is representing me well (yes). They then confirmed my name, which I found odd because they stated my name at the beginning of the call. They asked my “position”.
When I started getting suspicious (around the time of the strike questions), I asked who the poll was for. The poller stated that he didn’t even know who it was for. I confirmed that my name would not be used with my answers, and he agreed. The call lasted 9 minutes. Needless to say, I became more and more uncomfortable as the night wore on and wish I had refused to answer any of the questions.
I convinced myself that the Governor’s office wouldn’t share my personal information (phone number) with a polling agency for political reasons. Now I’m not so sure.
Shortly after receiving the call, I started going through the comments on yesterday’s AFSCME posts on the blog looking for anybody mentioning something similar, but found none.
Then I received the forwarded email this morning. Crap… Hopefully we’re just paranoid….
PHONY POLL: Company tied to the Raunerites is using a phony “poll” to pressure state employees to make negative statements about our union. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE THIS CALL. If you get it, you can just hang up immediately.
Anyone else get this call?
*** UPDATE *** From the governor’s office…
Hi, Rich:
The administration is not aware of this survey and has nothing to do with it.
Best,
ck
* From a reader…
Rich-
This may or may not be a coincidence. I am a county official, and received this FOIA request at the end of January.
The e-mail…
From: Research Policy [mailto:research@illinoispolicy.org]
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2016 3:19 PM
Subject: Illinois Policy FOIA 1.27.2016
To whom it may concern,
This is a request for information under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (5 ILCS 140).
I am seeking documents related to the number of and names of (redacted) employees who are union members with the name of their affiliated union and residential zip codes.
As I am a researcher acting in the public interest, I ask that you waive any fees. Please notify me by telephone at 217.528.8800 or by email if you have any questions regarding my request. If possible, please forward the requested document(s) by e-mail.
I will expect to receive your response within five business days, as required by the statute (5 ILCS 140/3(d)).
Thank you very much for your assistance.
Chris Andriesen
Illinois Policy Institute
I’ve asked the Illinois Policy Institute about this. Stay tuned.
After delaying the sale when some investors balked, the district issued 7 percent debt for as little as 84 cents on the dollar, signaling that investors have doubts they’ll be repaid in full. No municipal borrower — not even cash-strapped Puerto Rico — has had to offer such a steep discount on a bond deal of that magnitude since at least the 2008 financial crisis, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“The only time you’re going to see this big of a discount is when it’s a distressed situation,” said Burt Mulford, a manager of tax-exempt funds in St. Petersburg, Florida, at Eagle Asset Management, which oversees $2.5 billion of munis. He said he didn’t buy the bonds. “The ultimate buyers want to minimize the pain if it stops paying interest, so if they have the bonds at a discount, that would help offset that.” […]
The discounted price on the securities increased the yields — which measure the return after interest payments based on the full face value — to as much as 8.5 percent, about 5.8 percentage points more than top-rated securities. That gap was half a percentage point more than Puerto Rico paid in March 2014, when it sold $3.5 billion of bonds in a last-ditch attempt to stave off insolvency. The island’s bonds have since slipped from 93 cents on the dollar to about 70 cents as it edges closer toward defaulting on the government-guaranteed debt.
With distressed debt, buyers tend to focus more prices because of the risk that interest or principal payments won’t be made.
Juliana Stratton, who’s challenging state Rep. Ken Dunkin of Chicago in the Democratic primary, announced support from Secretary of State Jesse White, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Stratton is the union-backed challenger to Dunkin, who has created controversy by siding with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on several initiatives that have denied Democrats their 71-member veto-proof majority in the House.
Allies of Rauner are helping to fund Dunkin’s re-election. But Democratic opposition to Dunkin is coalescing. Stratton also is getting the backing of several aldermen, including Brian Hopkins, 2nd; Pat Dowell, 3rd; Leslie Hairston, 5th; Rod Sawyer, 6th; Michelle Harris, 8th; and Brendan Reilly, 42nd. The Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Catholic Church also is backing Stratton.
Subcribers have video of the event as well as other stuff.
In announcing his support for Stratton, White said Dunkin has failed to represent his district by opting not to vote for a bill to restore funding for childcare for low-income families. […]
“I always say when you take on a job, you take on the responsibility for everybody,” White said. “In the case of Ken Dunkin, he has been a big disappointment to me and to his constituents, to the people of the state of Illinois and to the people of the 5th District. The message is they can no longer afford Ken Dunkin.” […]
“When Juliana saw Rep. Ken Dunkin continuously side with Republican Bruce Rauner, she knew she had to stand up to speak for all of us,” [Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle] said.
Others questioned whether Dunkin is still a Democrat: “We did not elect Ken to go and represent the Republicans,” said Ald. Michelle Harris, the 8th Ward alderman who is running for Cook County Circuit Court Clerk. “Now if he wants to wear the shirt, I think he needs to change his seat.”
Others at the event to endorse Stratton included Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th), Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), the Rev. Father Pfleger and representatives from AFSCME Local Council 31 and SEIU Healthcare.
Today, I watched one of my political patrons join the political mob to lynch one of his own political children to make Madigan happy. The same Madigan that ran a Republican (McCarthy) against him when he first ran for office. Funny how time flies, but I guess with time and age we start to forget things.
So for all the years that I never said anything about the fact that there is not one Black contractor at the Secretary of State’s office, for all the years I wondered why a Black person could never get a supervisor’s job on the 5th floor besides being clerical, for all the years I defended him in the Black community from people who attacked him…
To see him stand up and participate in this attempted lynching one of our own, one that he raised, one that was a loyal member of the organization, one that helped put his kids through school! I am thoroughly disappointed and heartbroken. Whether he agreed or disagreed to allow Madigan to make you stick a knife in the back of one of our own organization members in unconscionable! And then he won’t even stand with you!
Did the Speaker ever say anything bad about John Bills? Then why you running to the front?
The State’s first-ever Employee Engagement Survey was a huge success, with 19,386 employees responding. State workers not only evaluated the State’s performance on workplace issues, but also provided suggestions on how we might improve training opportunities, the work environment, and other areas.
The Department of Financial and Professional Regulation had the highest response rate, with 73% of their employees providing input.
Over the next few weeks and months, we will be reviewing those ideas and implementing them where feasible. It is our hope that the results of this first survey will provide a baseline that we can improve upon in future years.
Thank you to all participating employees for making our first survey a resounding success.
The Tribune gives Ferro a bigger base from which to build the digital platform that would allow content creators to make more money for their efforts, something he’s long talked about, and tried, without success, to create at the Sun-Times.
But nearly everyone else wonders whether Ferro’s 16.5 percent stake in Tribune lays the groundwork for a final chapter in the consolidation of the daily newspaper market that has occurred elsewhere but left Chicago among a handful of two-paper towns.
“My hunch is these (papers) are soon to be consolidated—it’s just a matter of time,” says Chris Geier, partner-in-charge of Chicago-based Sikich Investment Banking. “They always tell everyone they’re going to operate autonomously. At the end of the day, though, they’ve got to capture the economies.”
– A costly newspaper app was ordered up that for months sucked time and talent into its making. It was quickly dismantled once it was discovered it couldn’t make money.
– Launched Grid, a business publication, insisting it was produced in print format as well as online. It was quickly dismantled.
– In a soul-crushing move, the entire photo staff was suddenly fired with management citing budgetary issues and movement into a new era of digital content. Small but talented video staff remained on board.
– Small but talented video staff laid off.
– Suddenly reversed a policy of no political endorsements in the middle of the gubernatorial campaign to endorse just one person in one race — a former investor.
– Sun-Times launched Early & Often, a political website which had sponsors, new ad content, sold-out political events and … it was dismantled. New sports and breaking news portals were also dismantled just weeks after cost was put into their development.
Ferro said the Sun-Times is in a “very healthy position now,” and discounted the idea that his dual ownership signaled Chicago would soon be a one-newspaper town.
“They’re different products,” Ferro said. “I see both products being around for a very long time.”
“As nutty and crazy as he is, Ferro has kept the Sun-Times alive,” said a source close to both companies. “You have to give him credit for that.”
* And Neil Steinberg is very upbeat about the future after meeting his company’s new top dog…
In the wake of Sun-Times owner Michael Ferro’s purchase of the largest single share of the Chicago Tribune’s parent company for $44.4 million, the Sun-Times’ staff gathered in the lunchroom and met the new chairman of our board, Bruce Sagan, who explained what the purchase means for us.
“The people involved in the last Sun-Times purchase believe in two newspapers,” he said. “There it is, a second voice.” […]
The Tribune is $400 million in debt, Sagan said. The Sun-Times has no debt.
“They took the deal because they needed the money,” said Sagan, the longtime publisher of the Hyde Park Herald, who used the money he made there to invest in the Financial Times, the New York Times, where he started the Chicago News Cooperative, and the Sun-Times. “If you are going to bet on something, better bet on us. They’re in disarray. He left us a growing institution.” […]
Someone asked about our web site. Sagan said it was terrible. Publisher Jim Kirk said it would be fixed soon. Someone asked about the Sun-Times’ future.
“If I have my way you’ll be here forever,” Sagan said.
Thank goodness that somebody over there has finally admitted the CS-T website is an abomination. Yes, it’s gotten a bit easier to navigate, but if you’re a content provider and you only display a few stories on each page, you’re not providing content. Stuff just disappears into the ether on that site. And years of stories are no longer available.
Addressing Tribune Publishing employees during a webcast Thursday, Ferro gushed over his new investment and outlined his vision for helping Tribune Publishing reverse years of industrywide revenue declines.
“It’s not as simple as one may think,” Ferro said. “It’s not about digital subscribers or print. Some of the biggest companies in the world are using our data and making billions of dollars on it, and we need to find a way how we tap into that so that our journalism remains stronger than ever.
Democratic lawmakers and Springfield insiders try to spread the blame for the state’s condition. Complacent Republicans are to blame. The Great Recession that ended in June 2009 is to blame. Rauner is to blame. It’s not the longtime speaker’s fault, they say.
But that’s malarkey. It’s in writing.
I don’t know any Democratic lawmakers or insiders who say the Speaker is not at fault and bears zero blame for any of this state’s past or current problems.
OK, except maybe Steve Brown.
Are Democrats defensive these days? Heck, yes they are. Do they not blame Madigan enough? Some do, but many are so angry at the governor right now that they’ve retreated to a very tight partisan corner and aren’t thinking clearly. Not making excuses, just passing along observations. I don’t at all think they’re right, I’m just sayin’.
* I have heard other folks try to blame everything on Madigan, and those same people do not want to admit that the governor has some fault here, too.
He’s been governor over a year, after all. He’s the state’s top elected official, not just some innocent bystander. And he made no bones about what he planned to do years before he was elected - and what we see all around us right now is pretty much what he said he was going to do.
It’s also been my experience that if you counter their “Blame it all on Madigan” argument with some basic facts you’re accused of somehow holding Madigan blameless, which is completely ridiculous and if it wasn’t such a childish retort would almost be McCarthyesque.
* Also, y’all really need to tone down the personal stuff in comments, particularly when it comes to the author of the above piece. You can disagree without being so darned disagreeable. Stick to the issues and the facts, please. Thanks!
The Illinois Republican Party is releasing a TV ad to support Rep. Avery Bourne. The ad will begin to air tomorrow morning, so feel free to post in on the blog.
The ad is attached.
Thanks,
Nick Klitzing
Executive Director
Illinois Republican Party
* Expect lots and lots and lots of lines like this in the coming months…
“She’s fighting to bust Mike Madigan’s Chicago machine and hold Springfield accountable.”
* Bourne is up against two GOP candidates, the former Libertarian Christopher Hicks and union backed candidate Dennis Scobbie, whose only reported contribution so far is $53,900 from the IEA.
The Board of Trustees at Chicago State University took steps at a special meeting today to officially declare financial exigency and prepare the University to continue operating in the absence of state funding. Like all public universities, CSU enters its eighth month with no funding due to the historic state budget impasse.
“The actions taken by the Board today are meant to give the administration of the University some additional flexibility as it works through this unprecedented situation,” Anthony Young, Chairman of the Board of Trustees said. “Over the past year, this University has made significant cuts to personnel and spending but has reached a tipping point where the ability to function is threatened. I want to be very clear, this action may help the administration manage this crisis in the short term, but exigency is by no means a solution to our budget woes. The only real solution is for the Governor and the leaders to come together and provide the necessary funding to avoid further damage to our universities.”
In declaring financial exigency, the Board is officially recognizing that the unforeseen fiscal situation compels CSU to reevaluate all programs, services and organizational structures in order to fulfill its core mission and to complete the current semester. In addition to declaring exigency, the Board established a Management Action Committee, which is chaired by the President of the University and includes senior members of the administration, who will continue the ongoing task of thoroughly reviewing all aspects of University spending and make recommendations on where additional cost saving measurers can be found. Lastly, the Board created an Advisory Committee, which will have faculty, staff and student representation and will give input to the Management Action Committee.
“We find ourselves in this unprecedented situation because, while the state has not honored its commitment to our students, we still intend to do so,” Thomas Calhoun Jr., CSU President said. “We are committed to finishing this semester and to graduating our seniors, and in order to accomplish that goal in the absence of state dollars or MAP grant funding, we are forced to take these extraordinary measures. I would hope the necessary but unfortunate steps we are taking here today will help all elected officials who represent public universities and care about higher education recognize that this is not just a Chicago State problem, it can and will affect the entire public university system. On behalf of our students who have bravely and proudly stood at the front lines of this crisis and fought for their university, I once again call on the Governor and the leaders of Illinois to put aside your political differences and take necessary action to prevent students from being the victims of this catastrophe.”
* Meanwhile…
February 4, 2016
To: The Honorable Governor Rauner
Senate President Cullerton
Senate Minority Leader Radogno
House Speaker Madigan
House Minority Leader Durkin
Members of the General Assembly
I am writing on behalf of the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the regional accrediting agency for nineteen states, including Illinois. HLC is recognized by the United States Department of Education to assure quality in higher education and to serve as the gatekeeper to federal financial aid for students in our region.
As your role in Illinois includes consequential decisions regarding the governance and funding for colleges and universities, I am notifying you of the potential accreditation outcomes that may result from not approving a budget that will provide funding to Illinois colleges and universities and their students.
A criterion for accreditation is demonstration of the availability of financial, physical, and human resources necessary to provide quality higher education. HLC is aware that the colleges and universities in Illinois may need to suspend operations because financial resources from the state are not available. HLC is obligated to move swiftly to protect Illinois students and to ensure the quality of the colleges and universities they attend.
Following federal regulations, HLC has notified all Illinois colleges and universities that if they believe they will have to suspend operations or close in the next several months, they must provide HLC with a plan for how students can continue at another college or university to avoid eliminating their access to higher education. For students to continue at another institution, it could mean having to transfer to private universities or leave the state. It is also probable some students may drop out of college. The plan also must explain how students will be informed about this urgent situation, including how they access transcripts if operations have been suspended due to lack of state funding.
HLC’s analysis of that plan about the college or university’s viability in the weeks ahead could result in 1) a review of the college or university’s compliance with HLC’s Criteria for Accreditation, 2) a sanction – in which the college or university would have two years or fewer to demonstrate corrective action, or 3) withdrawal of accreditation. After such a withdrawal, there is a multi-year process for institutions to regain status with an accrediting agency. Students attending institutions that do not have status with an accrediting agency recognized by the federal government cannot access federal financial aid.
I served as a college president at two institutions in Ohio and know it is critical for state leadership to have every fact and potential outcome available. The lack of state funding is putting Illinois colleges and universities at serious risk and jeopardizing the future of students. I recognize the pain of budget shortfalls, especially in our home state of Illinois. The economic challenges the state faces are significant, and difficult decisions undoubtedly must be made. I am writing because I believe it is important for you to have all the relevant information before making the tough decisions that fall to your positions.
As you struggle with these difficult and life-changing decisions, if you have questions about the role of accreditation, please contact me.
Sincerely,
Barbara Gellman-Danley, Ph.D.
President, Higher Learning Commission
Emphasis in original.
…Adding… From the IBHE…
Statement from Dr. James Applegate, Executive Director
“The IBHE has been informed by Chicago State University that the Board of Trustees have declared financial exigency. They are taking steps to mitigate the financial situation on their campus in order to address the needs of their students, faculty, and staff.
The Board of Higher Education is keenly aware of the uncertainty the lack of a Fiscal Year 2016 budget is creating for Illinois college students, professors and staff at all of Illinois’ 48 community colleges and twelve public universities.
While IBHE has no direct role or authority in overseeing the actions of the CSU Trustees, we extend our support to the campus leaders as they seek to minimize the impact on their students’ academic progress.”
* Jonathan Kaye is a Republican candidate for the Illinois House running against incumbent GOP Rep. Reggie Phillips. Kaye hammered Phillips the other day for missing a vote on higher education funding, but that’s not what this post is about.
What I’d like you to do is read something that Kaye wrote about himself. Yes, it’s long, but it’s utterly fascinating. Kaye has lived a remarkably interesting life. And he wrote his story at a time when he was apparently being attacked by Rep. Phillips for his arrest record, which he explains as well.
I doubt that he has much of a shot in this campaign. He hasn’t raised much money. And he’s up against a super-conservative incumbent in a super-conservative area.
* Earlier this week, Democratic state Sen. Daniel Biss wrote an op-ed for Crain’s…
We need to look to economically successful states—Massachusetts, Minnesota and others—that have similar values and political traditions as ours in Illinois… If we sit down, work together and study these examples, I am confident the General Assembly and Gov. Rauner can come together to craft a reform agenda that puts Illinois on a path to fiscal stability and enhanced economic vitality.
I found these words very enlightening, as the governor and Republicans in Illinois agree with Massachusetts and the reforms they have made. I am left wondering why Democrats in Illinois cannot agree with Democrats in Massachusetts.
In 2011, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation that gave cities in his state greater collective bargaining flexibility in crafting more affordable health insurance packages for government workers. More than $200 million has been saved by this act—an act taken by a Democratic governor in a Democratic state.
Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposal seeks to also give units of local government in Illinois the same abilities that Democrats in Massachusetts gave to their towns. Republicans in the General Assembly agree; Democrats in the General Assembly refuse to consider it.
Massachusetts property owners currently pay half the taxes that Illinois property owners pay. The governor’s proposal to deliver a property tax freeze with tools to control costs at the local level will help bend the curve toward lower property taxes across the state. Republicans in the General Assembly agree; Democrats refuse to consider it.
Finally, Massachusetts has the fourth lowest workers’ compensation costs in the nation. Even in such a liberal state, their workers’ compensation system is more competitive—in part because they have adopted reforms that ensure employers don’t have to pay for injuries that aren’t primarily work related. Gov. Rauner has proposed similar reforms in his workers’ compensation proposals. Republicans in the General Assembly agree; Democrats refuse to consider it.
Sen. Biss and members of his party refuse to negotiate on reforms that could save Illinois taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Yet they continue to defend the failed status quo that has held Illinois back from making the same achievements that deep blue Massachusetts has achieved. As you read this, do you know what the Democrats’ plan is to turn Illinois around, other than raising taxes again?
The part about collective bargaining at the local level is only a fraction of what Gov. Rauner is pushing. If it was the only thing, it might’ve had a chance.
Also, we looked at the Massachusetts workers’ comp system yesterday.
The Rauner Administration’s latest misleading missive is full of falsehoods and clearly intended to divide and distract state employees at the same time the members of AFSCME’s rank-and-file bargaining committee are holding informational meetings with their co-workers statewide. Already thousands of union members have attended those meetings to get the true facts from their representatives on the bargaining committee, not Bruce Rauner’s political spin.
A year later, the governor is still demanding that public-service workers in state government such as child protection investigators, disability caregivers and emergency responders get zero pay increase for four years while paying double their current costs to keep their health care. No other union has agreed to these demands for both a pay freeze and a huge hike in employee health costs.
Rauner’s also pushing a program of selective bonuses where bosses could reward a chosen few employees based on unknown criteria, opening the door to cronyism and favoritism. He wants a blank check to contract out public services for private profit, insisting on eliminating basic safeguards that prevent irresponsible privatization. And rather than do the hard work of finding compromise, he’s walked away from the table and asked for the power to impose his own demands. That’s a recipe for the kind of conflict that candidate Rauner boasted he would cause.
State workers want a compromise that’s fair to all, and we believe that’s what the people of Illinois deserve—not a governor unwilling to modify his my-way-or-no-way demands.
* From an e-mail that was forwarded to me by a labor lobbyist…
Wanted to make sure everyone has this as we prepare to testify in the capitol and speak before other groups this year. Governor Rauner and his friends like to say that businesses are leaving Illinois.
I ran this report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics web site. It tracks the number of employers (both public and private sector) in Illinois. As you can see, the number of employers in Illinois has grown in every quarter since the first quarter of 2003.
Thank you.
Jason Keller
Illinois AFL-CIO
Legislative Director
That’s a 33 percent increase in employers since the first quarter of 2003.
* But what about other states? I asked the lobster to see if he could get Keller to run more numbers and was forwarded this e-mail today…
After I sent the email yesterday regarding the number of employers in Illinois, I was asked by several people how Illinois compares to other states in terms of growth of businesses. I updated the chart (see attached) with the number of business establishments in every state from 2001-2015. Since the first quarter of 2003, when Governor Blagojevich took office and Senate President Emil Jones, Jr. gained control of the State Senate (which is when we first heard the complaint that Illinois was a bad place to do business). I specifically looked at growth in each quarter. This is what I found:
Illinois has seen growth in the number of businesses in the state for approximately 49 consecutive quarters (and hopefully will still continue to increase). 2003-2015. NO OTHER STATE CAN MATCH THAT STEADY AND SUSTAINED GROWTH. None. This means that since 2003, Illinois has not lost one net business (contrary to what we hear from Republicans). Other people may play with the numbers and see other states have a larger percentage growth, but no one can point to such a long term sustained growth of businesses. Illinois weathered the Great Recession without losing growth. North Dakota and Texas come close with the oil and fracking growth – but they still saw a drop in businesses in several quarters. As a reminder, during these years, Illinois labor was successful in passing:
· Minimum wage increases that became effective in 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 – and still businesses grew.
· Numerous times prevailing wage laws were strengthened – and still businesses grew.
· Effective in 2008, employee misclassification law was passed – and still businesses grew.
· Three times in the past 11 years, the workers’ compensation law has been changed – and businesses grew.
· The unemployment insurance law was changed multiple times, through the agreed bill process – and businesses grew.
· Card check for public employees organizing passed in 2003 (PA 93-444) – and businesses still grew.
· Equal Pay Act passed in 2003 (PA 93-0006) – and businesses grew.
· Corporate Accountability passed (PA 93-552) – and businesses still grew.
There were other laws passed, but this gives you a snap shot.
For background, I spoke with an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics – the measure of “number of establishments” is the most accurate way to count the number of businesses in the state.
Thank you.
Jason Keller
Illinois AFL-CIO
Legislative Director
The number of Texas business establishments grew by about 27 percent since that first quarter of 2003. Indiana’s grew by just 4 percent.
* Keep in mind that these numbers include both public and private sector establishments. Even so, it’s something that deserves more attention and investigation.
*** UPDATE *** From the Illinois Policy Institute…
Rich,
We took a quick look at the same survey (QCEW) and same timeline (Q1 2003 - Q2 2015) as in the study you posted. Attached are the rankings.
For 2003-2015 growth, Illinois’ growth ranks 4th for establishments, 43rd for jobs, and 42nd for average weekly wage (AWW).
It’s important to note that the combined weak jobs growth and weak average weekly wage growth is a double whammy. Imagine adding 500,000 new jobs, all paying at the average weekly wage. Great news, right? That would bump up the jobs number and even though it wouldn’t bump up the wage number, we’d all cheer it.
In Illinois’ case, both job growth and average wage growth were bad. So not only is job growth weak, the average wage has grown slowly on that slow-growing job base.
The 2003-2015 timeline included the recession right in the middle. So we also looked at the same data set on the recession recovery timeline, starting from Q1 2010 when everyone had basically bottomed out (after various degrees of collapse, Illinois’ fall ranked among the worst).
For growth over that recovery time period, Illinois’ ranked 4th for establishments, 32nd for jobs, and 45th for average weekly wage (AWW).
* The Tribune writes about Gov. Rauner’s executive order yesterday forming a new privatized economic development agency. Rauner opposed legislation last year which would’ve sunsetted his agency in three years…
“The biggest difference is this isn’t going to die in three years,” Rauner said. “It can’t be subject to the political games the legislature is attempting to play with this.”
That’s not necessarily true. Because Rauner established the arrangement by executive order, the next governor could reverse it. Rauner is up for re-election in 2018.
* The governor also claimed that the executive order made sure the agency would be subjected to FOIA…
In his remarks, Rauner said ILBEDC would be subject to same Freedom of Information Act requirements to turn over documents and records when requested. But DCEO director Jim Schultz seemed to contradict Rauner’s statements after the speech.
“The executive order does not require that,” Schultz said when asked if the corporation was subject to FOIA requests. “We’re going to post all of our board minutes. Any grants or tax incentives that we negotiate will be posted online. So effectively, addressing the FOIA would be subject to audit. We’re going to post all the…donations and what they’ve made to corporations, so it’s effectively going to be the equivalent of FOIA without the requirements of FOIA.”
Transparency with this kind of public-private partnership has been an issue with Democratic state lawmakers.
“Our main concern has been that public accountability follow public dollars,” said John Patterson, spokesman for Senate President John Cullerton. “We hope the governor shares that as a priority if he is moving forward on his own.”
“President Obama has come out strongly in favor of both term limits and redistricting reform,” Rauner said, seemingly without equivocation — which raised some eyebrows. […]
But back to Rauner’s claim that he and President Barack Obama are of like mind when it comes to redistricting. It’s not like Obama endorsed the governor’s plan. Still, the President’s sentiment on the topic, at least, was pretty clear.
When though, I wondered, did Obama talk about term limits? Nothing came to mind, and a Google search didn’t easily come up with anything definitive. […]
[The governor’s press staff] pointed me to a speech the President gave last June, before a conference of African nations.
Rauner’s office points out that during it, Obama said “nobody should be president for life,” and “your country is better off if you have new blood and new ideas. I’m still a pretty young man, but I know that somebody with new energy and new insights will be good for my country. It will be good for yours, too, in some cases.
“Yes, in our world, old thinking can be a stubborn thing,” Obama said before the African Union. “That’s one of the reasons why we need term limits — old people think old ways.” […]
Say what you will about Madigan’s power, he’s no dictator. Obama was speaking about the need for presidential term limits in a continent whose people have suffered under brutal dictatorships — regimes ruled by blood and war.
* The News-Gazette editorializes about President Obama’s upcoming address to the General Assembly…
In his recent State of the Union address, Obama called for an end to partisan map-drawing in congressional races. Why not the same prescription for legislative races in his home state?
Rauner has been pushing legislators for redistricting reform. But Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan is adamantly opposed so the proposal is a nonstarter in the Legislature.
Still, Obama’s support could boost efforts by groups that are working to put the independent maps issue on the November 2016 ballot in the form of a state constitutional amendment.
The presidential bully pulpit is an imposing platform. Obama should use it to, among other things, help restore electoral energy to the state’s now-fraudulent process of electing the people’s representatives to the General Assembly.
* The Question: What should President Obama say during his speech?
This is a serous question, so no snark and keep your drive-by national political talking points to yourself. Thanks.
* Look past Rep. Kelly Cassidy’s rhetoric here for the actual news…
Nearly five months ago, House Leadership provided members with a survey asking for us to prioritize items that remain unfunded. I released a survey reflecting the choices, and set the rankings to reflect the responses. Since then, we have passed a handful of bills funding portions of programs but have made no progress towards a comprehensive solution. We have seen numerous non-profit organizations go under, and services for tens of thousands have ended. The unfunded line items represent hostages in this budget standoff, and they are beginning to fall. Meanwhile, in spite of making significant progress on unpaid bills since 2012, from $6.8 billion to $4.3 billion, we are now seeing that pile of bills growing to record levels, projected to reach $10-$12 billion.
We have once again been asked to identify priorities for unfunded items, choosing 10 out of a total of 58, many of which are matters of life and death. Pitting critically needed services and programs against each other in a budgetary “hunger games” is repulsive.
There is only one rational and moral choice: getting the revenue needed to stabilize government and provide services that are fundamental to the well being of tens of thousands of Illinoisans. There is no correct order of priorities, because there are life and death consequences. Any choice but appropriate revenue is morally reprehensible and will continue to lead to suffering.
I reject the notion that we can only prioritize a small number of these programs, and instead invite my colleagues to join me in demanding we stop talking about what essential line items to fund, and instead talk about how we are going to fund them.
The fact that we are having this discussion represents the utter lack of morality of our budget situation. Putting aside the fact that our outlined priorities may very well not be funded in the near future, the choices given are hardly choices at all. How does one decide which order to prioritize funding for sexual assault victim services or the developmentally disabled? All sides of the budget standoff agree that revenue is an absolutely necessary part of the solution. With billions of dollars in unpaid bills and the collapse of our social safety net, the harm is unacceptable. I strongly support returning the tax rate to the previous levels, and working towards a progressive income tax. Until then, we are tasked with trying to prioritize a few of the many services that impact the lives of tens of thousands in in our state.
That said, if there is to be another stopgap funding initiative in the near future, there is an opportunity to offer input. Once again, I am asking my constituents to share their priorities, and their experiences, to help drive us towards a more comprehensive solution. I recognize that, like me, many of you will choose to rank revenue as priorities 1-10. For those of you specifically impacted by program cuts, please use the narrative area of the survey to share your story so that I can better illustrate the real world impact of this impasse. I have met with and spoken to so many people either already feeling the loss of services or living in fear of losing their independence as a result of looming cuts. Know that I will continue to push forward towards a solution that protects working families and the most vulnerable people we serve.
Due to the timeframe given by leadership, we need your responses by 3pm on Friday, February 5th.
I saw that you posted the newest priority ranking list given to members. It is notable that there are items left off the list, as one commenter said.
More notable, though, is how much this list has changed and grown from previous member polls.
Items like Teen Reach (which the Governor completely eliminated in his budget proposal last year) were not even included in previous member polls. But children, families and communities have made it so clear how vital afterschool programs are that it has emerged as a priority.
Programs don’t show up on a list by accident. These are obviously issues members across the state are hearing a lot about from constituents, advocates and the local press. It goes to reason that, in turn, the Governor’s office is getting a fair amount of grief from lawmakers who know the anger present in their communities, and want to be able to deliver some good news ASAP.
We’ll see in a few weeks during his budget address if, given the clear support these services have from families across Illinois, the governor will directly address how he’d like to see these services get funded now and in the future.
Emily Miller
Policy and Advocacy Director, Voices for Illinois Children
Co-Coordinator, Responsible Budget Coalition
* As we’ve already discussed, Gov. Bruce Rauner’s Turnaround Illinois PAC transferred $1.818 million to Dan Proft’s Liberty Princples PAC last month. Proft then spent hundreds of thousands on TV ads to bolster Sen. Sam McCann’s Republican primary opponent. McCann voted against Rauner on AFSCME’s “no strike” bill and even contemplated running for governor against Rauner as an independent in 2014.
Anyway, Bernie writes today about an endorsement of McCann’s GOP opponent Bryce Benton by the staunchly pro-life Family PAC…
McCann is also very conservative on social issues, including abortion. Caprio, in his group’s full endorsement statement, commended McCann for such views, but added that “we are deeply concerned with the extensive support which he is receiving from many public employee unions” that are “standing in the way of true reform in Illinois state government.”
Caprio’s Family PAC had less than $1,400 on hand as Dec. 31. It did catch my eye that RICHARD UIHLEIN of Lake Forest donated $10,000 to the committee on Jan. 13. Uihlein has also contributed more than $2.6 million to Rauner and more than $5 million to Chicago radio personality DAN PROFT’s Liberty Principles PAC since 2012, and Proft’s group is backing Benton with TV ads and other help all worth more than $325,000 so far.
Caprio said Uihlein has been a consistent support of Family PAC, and the recent donation had nothing to do with the group’s decision to back Benton. A quick check showed the Uihlein did give the group more than $10,000 each of the past two Februaries.
Bourne’s campaign manager is CASEY CONSTANT, 25, of Sherman, who worked on the Rauner campaign and is on leave from his $70,000 state job as intergovernmental affairs manager for the governor. His state job was paid for by the Department of Children and Family Services.
* Adding highway lanes doesn’t usually reduce congestion. Instead, adding capacity tends to attract more traffic, but that’s good for creating business opportunities, especially in a congested trucking corridor like this one.
Press release…
Gov. Bruce Rauner today was joined by legislative leaders and local elected officials to announce a legislative resolution that would allow the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to pursue adding managed lanes to Interstate 55 under a private-public partnership. By seeking out a P3 agreement, the state could deliver the project benefits more quickly and at a reduced cost.
“By using existing resources to leverage private investment, we can build the type of infrastructure that allows Illinois to better compete in the 21st century,” Gov. Rauner said. “This is an innovative project that will create jobs, improve the region’s quality of life and show that Illinois is open for business.”
The I-55 managed lanes project would add at least one lane in each direction to a critical travel corridor between Interstate 355 (Veterans Memorial Tollway) and Interstate 90/94 (Dan Ryan Expressway). The 25-mile section accommodates 170,000 vehicles a day, but suffers from long, unreliable travel times, resulting in frustrating commutes for workers and increased costs for the delivery of goods and services.
Options for the additional lanes currently being explored include tolled and untolled carpool lanes and express tolling lanes. The state will complete the federal environmental studies later this year to identify the preferred option.
A 2011 state law allows IDOT to build, finance, operate, and maintain highway projects using public-private partnerships, as long as the General Assembly adopts a resolution in support of the project. That law is modeled on best practices from across the country and includes opportunities for public hearings and input. The resolution introduced today would allow IDOT to further explore a P3 for the I-55 project and commence the procurement process. While managed lanes have been successful in other states as P3s, the I-55 project would be a first for Illinois.
“Managed lanes are truly an expressway within an expressway – one more option that will make travel more convenient for everyone who uses I-55,” said Illinois Transportation Secretary Randy Blankenhorn. “This project signals a new way of doing business at IDOT and a model for improvements throughout our system.”
“Regardless of the time of day, there is congestion along the Stevenson Expressway. Not only is it a source of regular frustration for drivers, including myself, it can be a dangerous situation for both motorist and passengers,” said House Republican Leader Jim Durkin. “What we are proposing today would give IDOT leeway to further explore the possibility of using private funds to keep the I-55 Congestion Relief Project alive and moving forward.”
“Relieving the congestion on this stretch of I-55 must be a priority for the state of Illinois,” said Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno. “However, we must also recognize the state must be creative in addressing our transportation challenges. This is an innovative approach that has been successful in other states and should be explored here.”
“This region has seen explosive growth in the past decade, but that has increased traffic on the Stevenson,” said Sen. Martin Sandoval, Chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “Allowing IDOT to explore a public-private partnership will be a win for taxpayers and drivers. I stand with Governor Rauner to find new ways to relieve congestion on this important corridor for Illinois.”
Using a P3 on this project could save taxpayers an estimated $425 million in construction costs. Possible toll revenues from the project and P3 financing sources would be available to pay for construction, operation, and maintenance costs. Construction could start as early as next year and wrap up in 2019.
It’s good to see the governor holding a bipartisan press conference for a change. And one of Sen. Sandoval’s two House members is none other than House Speaker Michael Madigan. Hopefully, that’s a positive sign.
Last July, Munger’s office had estimated that without a budget, the spending deficit would reach about $5 billion by the end of fiscal year 2016. But spending at the state Department of Human Services and the Department of Healthcare and Family Services — controlled, in the absence of a budget, by court orders and consent decrees — is now expected to add an additional $1.2 billion to the projected $5 billion deficit. […]
And as the backlog continues to grow and bills go unpaid, everything from social service agencies to state universities and colleges suffer, Munger said, echoing a familiar refrain.
Munger said the state could raise taxes, but suggested doing that alone would be political suicide.
“If we solve this problem on revenue alone, we will be looking at raising our tax rate in Illinois 3.75 percent up to somewhere between 7 and 8 percent,” Munger said. “I don’t know any legislator who would vote for that and I don’t know many businesses that would stay in Illinois for that.”
That’s true. But the huge tax hike she’s talking about assumes the state will attempt to get out of this hole all at once.
It’s not going to happen that way because, as Munger herself said, who could possibly vote for it?
* Instead, once taxes are raised, the government could very well pay down that backlog over time, just like Pat Quinn did after he and the Democratic GA raised taxes. The state dragged a mountain of debt behind it for years, gradually whittling it away until most of the tax hike expired. Such a strategy could very be used again.
There are two other options that could be in the mix as well, however.
1) The government could do massive “sweeps” from special state funds to pay down the backlog. Quinn only wanted to borrow from special funds, but Rauner is fine with just taking the money.
But unless you dip into the Road Fund and municipal revenue sharing (sacrosanct funds, but where the real money is), you can’t solve that problem. Taking money from the munis means harming Chicago, so that’s out. They swept the Road Fund last year to patch the FY15 hole, and the road builders (who backed Rauner) went kinda nuts. As a result, the latest GOP fund sweep plan specifically protects the Road Fund from being dinged.
2) Since state bankruptcy is not an option, the government could require businesses and not-for-profit groups to forgive part or even all of the debt owed by the state in exchange for new contracts. That would be the “businessman” way out of this deep hole, but it could do serious damage to some businesses and not-for-profits or even put them entirely out of commission.
Imagine being told by the state: “Yeah, we owe you $6 million, but if you don’t forgive that debt we’re not giving you any more contracts and that’ll put you out of business.”
* Related…
* Children, families, providers sort through ‘devastating’ cuts in autism-related services: Families of Illinois children with autism are reporting declines in their children’s communication skills and heightened anxiety after the ongoing lack of a state budget prompted drastic reductions in services statewide… Beginning last summer and fall, Autism Program providers began cutting back on services to people without insurance coverage or those who couldn’t pay the full price. Medicaid doesn’t pay for many autism-related services or reimburses providers at low rates.
* Sangamon County’s Habitat home-building program on indefinite hold: Habitat for Humanity of Sangamon County has suspended its affordable-housing construction program indefinitely as a result of a sharp drop in donations that organization leaders say is linked to the state budget deadlock… Stone said longtime donors of money and materials have described their own cash crunch as a result of delayed state payments and lost contracts. She added that she believes state workers have turned cautious out of concern for their jobs as Illinois enters its eighth month without a budget… “The companies that are so generous, the ones that depend on state funding, they don’t have the cash,” said Stone, “or they don’t have new (state) contracts. There are very generous companies in Springfield, but we were getting the same pushback from most of them.
* He did such a great job owning the Sun-Times that his can’t-miss business acumen is now in dire need at the Tribune…
Michael W. Ferro Jr., the majority owner of the Chicago Sun-Times’ parent company, has significantly expanded his media holdings without straying far from home.
In an unusual transaction, a company led by Ferro has bought a 19.9 percent stake in Sun-Times’ rival Tribune Publishing for $44.4 million, a move that will make his firm Tribune’s single-largest shareholder and shift his office out of the Sun-Times building.
Ferro, 49, will become non-executive chairman of Tribune, the publicly traded company whose publications include the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and nine other daily newspapers. […]
Ferro will retain his majority investment stake in Wrapports, the Sun-Times’ parent company. But he will step down as Wrapports’ chairman and cede all control of the Sun-Times and affiliated companies, including the Chicago Reader and Aggrego, a national network of online-only publications. The Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times will continue to operate independently.
Good news for Sun-Times employees, not so great for Tribune workers.
House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, D-Chicago, issued the following statement Thursday announcing hearings to be held by the bipartisan Education Funding Task Force throughout the spring to help craft a legislative plan to equitably fund education throughout Illinois:
“Senate President Cullerton has shown strong leadership on the issue of fair and equitable education funding, which is so important to every community across our state. The President’s commitment to fairly funding our schools and helping all students meet their full potential is one that I share, and I plan to work with him to achieve this goal while making sure that voices from across our state are heard and that all schools and programs are protected throughout this process.
“Beginning February 16 and continuing throughout the spring, House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie will lead hearings of the bipartisan Education Funding Task Force. The House Democratic members of the task force, who represent Chicago, suburban areas and downstate, bring to the discussion the views and concerns of residents from all across Illinois to help ensure a comprehensive approach to any changes in how our schools are funded. The task force will hear input from educators and advocates from throughout the state, and will work with all interested parties to craft legislation aimed at ensuring all students in Illinois receive the excellent education they deserve.”
The Education Funding Task Force will convene Tuesday, Feb. 16 at 10:30 a.m. in Room 114 of the State Capitol.
Rough translation: Thanks, John, but I’ll take it from here.
Several suburban Democrats aren’t exactly thrilled with the direction this topic has been going. As Senate GOP Leader Radogno pointed out the other day, the suburbs are mainly responsible for paying for the funding shift to lower-income schools as it stands right now.
The president’s commitment to fairly funding our schools and helping all students meet their full potential is one that I share, and I plan to work with him to achieve this goal while making sure that voices from across our state are heard and that all schools and programs are protected,” Madigan added. […]
Steve Brown, Madigan’s spokesman, suggested in a follow-up conversation that protecting “all schools and programs” means that no district would get less than they do now.
“You’re very unlikely to pass a bill that will cost districts money,” Brown said. That means the state would have to come up with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars a year more, and, “You need a source. . . .You don’t know the price tag now.”
* It’s easy to believe that the “conventional wisdom” about the Chicago Teachers Union expressed through the mainstream media (and here) accurately reflects the prevailing thought in the city.
But when you pit the CTU against Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicagoans have been picking the union’s side for years. It’s a very big reason why Mayor Daley tried to avoid confrontations with the teachers. It’s why Emanuel “lost” the teachers strike. It’s also something that Gov. Rauner has never really understood, going back decades.
Three times as many Chicagoans side with the teachers union as with Mayor Rahm Emanuel on how to improve public schools at a time when the two sides remain locked in contentious contract negotiations, a Chicago Tribune poll has found.
In households with CPS students, 73 percent supported the teachers union while 14 percent backed Emanuel. In homes without CPS students, 57 percent sided with the CTU compared with 22 percent with Emanuel. […]
The poll also found that support for the teachers union declined the higher the income of the poll respondent. Teachers received support from 70 percent of those who made less than $50,000, but that support dropped to 50 percent among those with incomes over $100,000. Still, only 29 percent of those with the higher incomes supported Emanuel. […]
A higher percentage of white voters backed Emanuel, 35 percent, but more of them still sided with the teachers union, 42 percent. Among Hispanics, 66 percent favored the teachers union and 13 percent supported Emanuel.
* The governor again called out Downstate and suburban Democratic legislators yesterday. Sun-Times…
Rauner argued that a bill allowing the state to take over CPS is not “dead on arrival” in Springfield simply because it would need approval from a Legislature dominated by Democrats.
“When the time comes, many Democratic legislators are not from Chicago, they’re from the suburbs . . . and you know what, when their voters understand what’s been going on and the subsidies that state taxpayers around Illinois have been funding CPS and now we can protect them from the mayor trying force off a half a billion dollars in liabilities on them, you watch,” Rauner said. “You’re going to see that that bill is not dead on arrival like some are trying to claim.”
* An e-mail from Rep. Stephanie Kifowit (D-Oswego)…
Hi Rich,
Just a quick followup. I caught the Governor’s press talk about CPS when he mentioned downstate and suburban legislators would be for the takeover of CPS. I’m not sure where he gets that from because as soon as he made mention, I have heard from residents the opposite. They don’t want the state to take over CPS, but they do want school funding change. Not sure where he gets that idea from.
Thanks,
Stephanie
We’ll see what happens if Rauner follows through with voter communication, warning people that their Democratic legislators are planning a half-billion-dollar Chicago schools “bailout.” Speaker Madigan, you may recall, used that exact same word last week to describe the governor’s takeover plan (even though Rauner’s plan bars more state money for the city). Rauner, however, has the cash to mail heavily to all districts, not just targets.
The city claims its schools are being shortchanged by the state. Others, particularly Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno, have long argued that the numbers prove otherwise.
The crises at CPS would be manageable if Emanuel had only listened to him last year when he offered the mayor some advice, said Rauner, who is overseeing a financial crisis on the state level.
“The mayor rejected it, he said no to any structural reform. He said, ‘What I want you to do is just send half a billion cash and leave me alone.’ That’s not going to happen,” Rauner said.
Gov. Bruce Rauner on Monday repackaged a set of reforms he’s pushed since he took office in January, linking them — and an offer of help — to the financial crisis facing Chicago Public Schools.
The Republican’s attempt to rebrand his “reform agenda” was quickly shot down as “unacceptable” by Senate President John Cullerton, whom Rauner had singled out as a Democrat who has worked to compromise.
The proposal would freeze property taxes for two years and boost state funding to high-poverty school districts by $74 million. As part of the offering, Rauner said Illinois could immediately give $200 million in state aid to offset Chicago Public Schools’ pension costs but only as part of a comprehensive school reform package that includes allowing the city and local towns to opt out of collective-bargaining requirements.
According to a city spokeswoman, $665 million in [CPS] bonds maturing in 2044 were sold at a price of 8.5 percent, and $60 million in 2026 maturity securities at 7.75 percent.
The interest cost of borrowing that $665 million would be a tad under $1.081 billion, while the cost of borrowing that $60 million would be $26.41 million.
These are approximate numbers because I don’t have the exact number of months.
…Adding… The governor’s complete contract offer can be read by clicking here.
* The war of words continues…
Dear Colleagues,
As you know, on three separate occasions our CMS labor relations team negotiated and signed a Tolling Agreement with AFSCME leadership. The Tolling Agreement provided for a process, agreed to by AFSCME, that allows the parties to either agree that impasse in negotiations has been reached or, in the event one party does not agree, allows either party to ask the Illinois Labor Relations Board to decide if the parties are at an impasse-that is, the Labor Board would decide whether further negotiations between the parties would be worthwhile. On January 15, 2016, after weeks of no meaningful progress at the bargaining table, the Governor asked the Illinois Labor Relations Board to determine whether we are at an impasse in collective bargaining negotiations with AFSCME. In the weeks since, work in the State of Illinois has continued as usual. The Governor and the labor relations team at CMS are committed to respecting the Labor Board process, and we appreciate that members of AFSCME want to do the same.
There has, however, been a great deal of incorrect information circulated about our negotiation and proposals. We know that, in recent days, AFSCME has been conducting “informational sessions,” but we question how productive those sessions can be if AFSCME does not provide accurate information.
We cannot sit idly by without correcting the incorrect information being provided to AFSCME bargaining unit employees and the public. We have asked AFSCME to let you vote on our proposals, but we believe you must have accurate information to make a fully informed decision. As the State’s lead negotiator who sat across the table from Roberta Lynch and Mike Newman for the past year and explained the State’s proposals, I would like to take this opportunity to correct numerous incorrect statements. That information is enclosed.
Further, I believe that employees should not be satisfied with summaries and that they deserve a full picture. It is my understanding that AFSCME has failed to provide you with the State’s full proposal. I believe that is counter-productive. You should be able to read the State’s proposal in full, and determine for yourselves whether the State’s offer, which is substantially similar to those accepted by seventeen other unions, is fair and reasonable, particularly in light of the State’s fiscal condition. I am enclosing with this letter the actual language of the 2015-2019 collective bargaining agreement as proposed by the State in its last, best and final offer. That document shows all the changes proposed by the State from the contract that expired on June 30, 2015. You can now evaluate for yourselves the State’s complete proposal.
We have asked AFSCME to let you vote this proposal up or down. We hope you will ask AFSCME’s leadership to allow you to take such a vote. Seventeen other unions ratified similar terms and conditions by wide margins-often over 80% of state employees in those unions approved-and we think if provided a fair vote, this proposal will be approved as well. Thank you for giving it your consideration.
John Terranova
Deputy Director
CMS Office of Labor Relations
* And here’s his fact check…
Fact Check - Correcting Misinformation
Myth: The State’s proposal would give Illinois state workers the worst health insurance coverage in the nation.
Fact: False. In fact, we’re not even close. With retiree coverage included, Illinois pays nearly 3/4 of the total cost of coverage for its workers. In comparison, Indiana pays less than 45% of the total cost of coverage. Paying 100% of retiree premiums is a huge benefit to our workers-if current employees were responsible for those retiree healthcare premiums, they would need to be putting away $947/month now to cover that future benefit! Even if we only look at coverage for active employees-where the State is proposing to pay 60% of costs-the State’s proposal is still better than many other States and on par with the private sector.
Myth: The State’s current healthcare plans aren’t actually Platinum or luxury.
Fact: The average actuarial plan value (what federal regulations and insurance companies use to assess how rich a health plan is) for the State’s current plans is 92%. This means that out of every dollar in healthcare expenses, the insurance plan covers 92 cents and the employee pays 8 cents in deductibles, co-pays, and other such expenses. “Platinum” under the Affordable Care Act is defined as plans that are between 88 % and 92%. Platinum is the highest level under the Affordable Care Act-above Gold, Silver, and Bronze. And as mentioned, the State’s average plan value is 92%-the high end of Platinum.
Moreover, to be clear: under the State’s proposal, employees will have the option to continue this rich coverage at higher premiums, should they so choose. Alternatively, employees would have the option to have less-rich coverage and maintain current premiums. Employees will not have to both pay higher premiums and receive less-rich coverage.
Myth: The State’s proposal would wipe out all job security rights.
Fact: The State’s offer does not eliminate these rights. Layoffs would still happen in reverse seniority order. Employees would still have the opportunity to “bump” less senior individuals in the same position and qualifications. Employees would also still have the opportunity to transfer to other vacancies for which they are qualified.
Myth: If I have a major medical issue under the new insurance, there is no limit on what I could pay. I could go bankrupt!
Fact: The Affordable Care Act has an annual out-of-pocket maximum of $6,850 for an individual. While that’s a lot of money, it prevents people from being financially ruined due to a medical issue. You can go here to fact-check this for yourself: http://obamacarefacts.com/
health-insurance/out-of-pocket-maximum. The bottom line is no matter what coverage level employees select, there will be strict limits on how much each employee is going to be asked to pay in any given year.
Myth: Merit pay is just political pay.
Fact: Politics has nothing to do with it. In fact, the State would prohibit any Governor’s staff and appointees from being eligible for performance bonuses. The State has also proposed working with all unions to find fair, objective standards to measure performance. The program that’s now in place for Teamsters will give half of all their members a bonus. While we guaranteed that a minimum of 25% of members would receive a performance bonus (the same guarantee that we made in the Teamsters contract), that percentage is the floor, not the ceiling. In developing the program, the number could go up, just as it did for the Teamsters. And the total bonus payout would remain the same regardless of how many people receive a bonus, so the State doesn’t gain anything financially by giving it to fewer employees.
Myth: The Labor Board is biased in favor of the Administration.
Fact: A majority of the Labor Board was originally appointed by Governor Pat Quinn. Governor Rauner reappointed two individuals Governor Quinn had previously appointed or re-appointed. Significantly, all members of the Labor Board appointed or re-appointed since 2015 were confirmed by a supermajority-Democrat Senate. Furthermore, the Chairman of the Board is, hardly an “enemy” of AFSCME. For many years he was responsible for negotiating collective bargaining agreements on behalf of the State, including many of the prior state contracts that AFSCME now praises. Most importantly, both AFSCME and the Administration voluntarily signed a legally binding tolling agreement providing for the Labor Board to resolve any dispute over whether the parties are at impasse. For AFSCME to preemptively impugn the integrity of the Labor Board is puzzling.
AFSCME complains that “in a recent case regarding an issue related to contract negotiations, the Board hastily rushed a decision and completely upheld the Administration’s position.” Although AFSCME did not identify the case, we believe it must be referring to an FAQ on the State’s website, which can be found at http://www.illinois.gov/EmployeeFAQs. In that FAQ, the State responded that, during a strike, the State can charge striking workers the full cost of their health insurance. AFSCME filed an unfair labor practice charge. After carefully considering the parties’ written submissions, the Board’s Executive Director dismissed the complaint and acknowledged the State’s longstanding policy to charge striking workers for the full cost of their insurance. The well-reasoned decision was upheld on appeal to the full Board. That AFSCME brought and lost a baseless charge is no reason to doubt that the Board gives a fair consideration to every case before it. For AFSCME to suggest otherwise is regrettable, let alone begging the question why AFSCME would voluntarily enter into an agreement to submit the impasse dispute to such a tribunal.
Myth: The Governor is “now seeking to impose on state employees” his contract.
Fact: Under the terms of the tolling agreement, it is up to the Labor Board’s to decide if the parties are at an impasse and whether the State may implement its last, best and final offer. It is critical to mention that the last offer made by the State to AFSCME is substantially similar to the agreements signed by 17 other unions. These agreements were ratified in many cases by over 80% of state employees in those unions. This is not a radical or extreme contract as AFSCME has portrayed, but one that is fair, reasonable, and overwhelming accepted by several thousand State employees already.
By submitting this dispute to the Labor Board, the Governor did nothing more than invoke the very process to which both parties voluntarily agreed.
What the Governor is seeking, and AFSCME is refusing, is for AFSCME to submit the Governor’s actual proposal to employees for a vote. What better way is there to determine whether the proposal is deemed fair and reasonable by the very people whose work will be governed by that proposed contract?
Myth: The Teamsters’ agreements provide “far more generous health insurance terms.”
Fact: Comparing Teamsters’ health insurance to AFSCME’s is like comparing apples and platypuses. AFSCME employees’ health insurance is provided by the State, where the State charges premiums. Teamsters’ health insurance is provided by Teamsters’ own health and welfare funds. The State contributes to those funds but does not get to decide the level of coverage or premiums. It is entirely out of the State’s control. Teamsters can provide the bare minimum coverage under the Affordable Care Act or they can provide more. Either way, the State plays no role.
The most that can be said in comparing Teamsters and AFSCME for health insurance is that, unlike AFSCME’s demand for a guarantee of Platinum coverage at Silver prices, Teamsters received no such guarantee from the State. What Teamsters get is entirely up to Teamsters’ own funds. This is similar to the point AFSCME makes about the trade unions with whom the Governor signed twelve separate collective bargaining agreements. AFSCME claims the distinguishing feature is that the trades’ agreements do not include a wage freeze. But what AFSCME fails to mention is the trades get compensated on a wholly different metric, known as the prevailing wage. That wage is determined through a certification process administered by the Department of Labor and is not guaranteed to increase during the course of the contract. In fact, the prevailing wage could go down over the life of the contract. So, there too, while AFSCME is demanding guaranteed wage increases through general and step increases every year of the contract, other unions have received no such guarantees.
As against seventeen other unions that have ratified the State’s offer by wide margins, AFSCME stands alone in demanding guaranteed wage increases and luxury health insurance coverage at what could be characterized as garage sale prices.
Myth: Only union workers are being asked to sacrifice due to the financial circumstances in the State.
Fact: Everyone is making sacrifices. Non-union employees are also on the State’s health insurance and will be subject to any premium increases or plan changes. This includes the Governor’s staff and the labor relations people who made this proposal. It’s also worth noting that non-union employees haven’t received an across-the-board wage increase in ten years. Cherry-picking salaries of some in the Governor’s office-without noting that the Governor’s office payroll is less now than it was during his predecessor-is as uninformative as focusing on the compensation of AFSCME’s top executives.
Fact is, our employees tell us all the time, as Teamsters and other unions told us during bargaining, that they are ready to be part of the solution, not the problem. They recognize that state employees in Illinois make more than their counterparts in other Midwestern States. For example, Illinois state workers made, on average, over $20,000 more per year in 2014 than state workers in Indiana or Missouri. In absolute dollars, Illinois state worker pay was third-highest. The two higher-paying States, California and New Jersey, have significantly higher costs of living. After adjusting for cost of living, Illinois workers are the highest paid in the country. The Governor is proud of our state workers and has never proposed to cut their salaries. He only asked for true shared sacrifice as we, all of us, together right our State’s fiscal ship.
Myth: The Administration does not accurately report what is said at the bargaining table.
Fact: Here’s what AFSCME’s Executive Director Roberta Lynch said during bargaining: “People who came up with this [merit pay proposal] ought to go to f**king prison . . . fact that you want to give measly 25% to some who are doing the job already . . . 75% of people not doing their best - that’s a f**king lie. I think it’s an insult to every single person who works for the State of Illinois.”
Here’s how AFSCME interprets the above quote: “it wasn’t fair to leave out 75% of employees from getting a bonus, given the difficult jobs that employees do-and that whoever came up with that idea should try going and actually working in a prison so they’d know how hard the job is.”
We appreciate that AFSCME’s Executive Director regrets her choice of words when she reads those words on paper. Nonetheless, she does not get to rewrite the history of negotiations based on what she wishes she has said.
Myth: SB1229, the arbitration bill that AFSCME unsuccessfully lobbied last summer and fall, was an opportunity to resolve outstanding contract disputes in a fair and rational manner.
Fact: Make no mistake about it, SB1229 was AFSCME’s attempt to rewrite the State’s labor laws as they have existed for over thirty years to saddle the State’s taxpayers with a multi-billion dollar cost of AFSCME’s unreasonable contract proposal that it knew, under the existing laws, it could never get the State to agree to at the bargaining table. Outstanding contract disputes-like the current dispute between the parties as to whether they are at an impasse-already have a fair and rational forum, which is the Labor Board, a process to which both sides voluntarily agreed. SB1229, or the new HB580–another version of the same failed bill, which would strip the Governor of his constitutional authority–is as unaffordable and damaging now as it was then. Several other Unions have already negotiated agreements with the State under the existing labor laws. Why must the rules be rewritten to give AFSCME what it wants and the State’s taxpayers cannot afford?
We now know that AFSCME is urging its members to support HB580, to once more ask to strip this Governor-and only this Governor-of his authority to negotiate with employees. This is as clear a signal as any that AFSCME is not interested in negotiating. AFSCME is not interested in defending its unaffordable proposals. AFSCME is only interested in imposing its will through an unelected, unaccountable arbitrator. This is bad faith in spades, and why the matter is now before the Labor Board.
CPS Senior Vice President for Finance Ron DeNard issued the following statement regarding CPS’ bond sale of $725 million in tax-exempt bonds today.
“Borrowing money was never a decision that we took lightly and though some wanted our efforts to fail, CPS needed to move forward in order to keep our doors open so we could educate our children. Along with the tough cuts announced yesterday and earlier this year, the sale of these bonds will produce sufficient proceeds to mitigate our cash flow challenges through the end of the fiscal year. CPS faces many financial difficulties ahead, but we are committed to working with CTU on a long-term contract and the State to finally address the inequitable state funding for CPS that is driving the District’s budget imbalance.”
Background
CPS will make its February 15 debt service payments.
CPS priced $725 million in tax-exempt bonds.
These bonds will largely reimburse the operating fund for expenses that the District has already paid, including capital expenses.
The bonds include $206 million of debt restructuring to provide immediate budgetary relief in FY16.
CPS will postpone its plan to convert variable-rate debt to fixed-rate debt.
CPS will postpone reimbursing the general operating fund for some of the swap termination fees.
About $615 million of tax-exempt securities due in 2044 are pricing for a preliminary yield of 8.5 percent and about $60 million of debt due in 2026 is pricing for a preliminary 7.75 percent, according to four people with knowledge of the deal who requested anonymity because the pricing isn’t final. The top yield is about 5.8 percentage points more than benchmark municipal debt that matures in 29 years, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“They’re in very severe financial straits,” said Dan Heckman, a senior fixed-income strategist in Kansas City at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, which oversees $128 billion. “This is just an effort to hopefully buy some time so they can continue to get their house in order but what a steep price they’re paying.”
They have a statutory cap of 9 percent, so it’s gonna be tough to go back to the markets unless they improve their financial position.
According to a city spokeswoman, $665 million in bonds maturing in 2044 were sold at a price of 8.5 percent,and $60 million in 2026 maturity securities at 7.75 percent. That’s roughly 580 basis points—almost six full percentage points—more than would have been charged to an AAA-rated school district.
Part of that is due to the terrible condition of Chicago schools. And, city aides are suggesting, part of it is due to Gov. Bruce Rauner’s repeated suggestion that CPS file for bankruptcy, raising market skittishness.
Officials originally planned for an $875 million bond issue. There was no immediate indication how they will make up that shortfall.
Groundhog Day was yesterday, but Exelon appears to want to keep celebrating. The Chicago-based nuclear giant is back to threatening to close nuclear plants in Illinois without financial help from the state.
Three months after appearing to soften on demands for hundreds of millions in ratepayer-financed subsidies, Exelon CEO Chris Crane said today that the company needs financial help this spring from Springfield.
If that doesn’t happen, he said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, “we’ll have to make the rational economic decision” on money-losing plants.
At risk of closure, he said, are two of its six Illinois nukes: the Quad Cities station in western Illinois and the Clinton plant downstate.
It was only in November that Crane said Quad Cities had gone from a money loser to break-even as the company looked forward to 2017. That is no longer the case as future wholesale power prices have dropped since then. […]
The renewed threats come as Exelon posted its first year-over-year earnings increase in years for 2015. The company gave investors the welcome news that it plans to raise its dividend 2.5 percent a year for the next three years.
* Some human service providers received this e-mail yesterday…
Good morning ….
Last week in his second State of the State address, Governor Rauner announced a transformation of the way we provide health and human services here in Illinois . The Governor’s vision rests on five important pillars: focusing on prevention and population health, transitioning from institutional to community care, promoting self-sufficiency and education, paying for value and outcomes rather than volume of services, and the use of data to better know and serve the people of Illinois .
Our health and human services leadership teams have been working to lay the groundwork for this historic transformation. You may have already noticed some changes within the state’s health and human service agencies. The agencies are committed to becoming more innovative, collaborative and effective in caring for the citizens of Illinois.
No one is more aware of this need for transformation than leaders such as yourself who have worked so hard for so long within our siloed, expensive, and too often ineffective system.
Governor Rauner invites you to be a partner in fixing this system. One of the most important lessons reinforced from your meeting with the Governor is that this transformation will require your help. Open communication between our office and your organization will be instrumental as we partner with you to transform Illinois into a national model for the delivery of more innovative, compassionate, and effective healthcare and human services.
Aloha,
Linda Lingle
Chief Operating Officer
Office of the Governor
Rape crisis centers cutting back, LSSI lays off nearly half its staff, Haymarket Center is closing its social setting detoxification program, but, yeah, they’re “committed to becoming more innovative, collaborative and effective in caring for the citizens of Illinois.”
* Dan Mihalopoulos is told one thing by the state’s attorney and another by Kim Foxx…
I filed a public records request with the state’s attorney’s office to get a list of all of the felony cases Foxx tried during her 12 years as an assistant state’s attorney, from 2001 to 2013. Though public officials often dawdle at least as long as legally possible to answer such requests, aides to the embattled incumbent state’s attorney, Anita Alvarez, quickly replied this time.
They said there was a single case — just one — in the Felony Trial Division where Foxx worked with a more experienced prosecutor to win guilty verdicts against the two defendants. […]
Foxx said that the office of Alvarez — the two-term incumbent she is challenging in the Democratic primary on March 15 — had purposely given me a list that was missing many cases she had worked on.
“It is extremely incomplete,” she said. “I did try quite a few cases. This is crazy to me.”
Alvarez’s aides said what they gave me is everything they have on Foxx.
Weird all around.
* From a press release…
Donna More’s campaign to unseat State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez has taken to the airwaves with a month long TV advertising campaign that will run in targeted cable TV regions of Cook County. The effort includes a :30 second spot that insists “Anita Alvarez must go.”
The schedule that the campaign purchased will have both :30 and :15 second ads running in primetime and daytime. The plan calls for the spots to air on major cable networks for now including CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Lifetime, TBS, TNT and USA networks.
The ads draw a sharp distinction between More and her opponents in the upcoming primary. Citing Alvarez’ misconduct, one ad criticizes her term in office as “justice delayed, justice denied” and then ticks off More’s unique qualifications: a former federal prosecutor with felony jury trial experience and a plan to reduce gun violence.
More is not a politician; she is a prosecutor who is running for office for the first time. She is the only candidate in the March 15 primary that isn’t beholden to political bosses.
* Kerry Lester has an in-depth interview with Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. From Kerry’s bullet points…
• She decided within weeks to hand the reins of the investigation over to federal authorities and that she frequently communicated with them in the months to follow.
• A 13-month delay before bringing first-degree murder charges against officer Jason Van Dyke stemmed from the difficulty of building a strong case, not just making an arrest.
• The timing of the charges days after a judge ordered release of a video showing the shooting of Laquan McDonald was “in the interest of public safety,” but she had decided on the charges weeks earlier.
— Illinois is not providing any funding for MAP grants or colleges and universities, which profoundly impacts women. Fifty-four percent of all undergraduates and 62 percent (more than 80,000 women) of MAP grant recipients are women, who will no longer be able to afford college. Research has shown that women with college degrees earn substantially more throughout their lifetimes. […]
— The budget impasse is costing women jobs. Seven in 10 workers employed in Illinois’ nonprofit sector are women and many of these organizations receive state dollars. An October survey by the United Way of 500 organizations that receive state funding found 22 percent have been forced to lay off staff.
— Economic opportunity has also disappeared for thousands of women in Illinois due to cuts to the Child Care Assistance Program. Seventy-eight percent of families using CCAP are female-headed, single-parent households. Without affordable child care, it’s impossible for many of those women to work. CCAP cuts put in place by the Rauner Administration in July remain in place for 10,000 children. In just one week last month, a local provider in Belvidere reported having to turn away two families seeking child care.
— An estimated 66 percent of unpaid caregivers are female. One-third care for two or more people. Without a doubt, cuts to services for children, seniors and those with disabilities will fall upon the shoulders of unpaid or undercompensated female caregivers.
— 60 percent of seniors experiencing food insecurity, meaning they don’t have enough to eat or don’t know where their next meals will come from, are female. Funding to Meals on Wheels has been stopped, placing at risk the 6.5 million meals delivered each year. Many programs throughout the state have already been drastically cut back.
The cost of worker’s comp is the biggest factor driving our job losses. If we simply aligned our workers’ comp costs with those of a state like Massachusetts – which is hardly a bastion of conservatism – we can save state and local taxpayers over $300 million per year, while protecting those who suffer workplace injuries, and grow more careers at higher wages.
Rauner loves to talk about the economic success that Texas has experienced, and he has a point. Texas has had robust job growth, and its unemployment rate is only 4.7 percent—while Illinois’ is more than a point higher. These are achievements Texas should be proud of. But it must be noted that Mississippi has a higher unemployment rate than Illinois, and so do several other conservative states. Guess what else. Texas has a poverty rate of more than 16 percent—the fifth-worst in the country. Illinois’ poverty rate is 11.5 percent, putting us roughly in the middle of the pack.
In other words, although Texas’ achievements are real, they come at a huge cost: Lower wages, less regulation and a weaker safety net are causing poverty to rise and the middle class to shrink.
And while the anti-worker policies of the far right might have contributed to Texas’ record of mixed economic success, they obviously haven’t conferred the same benefits on all states where they’ve been tried. Yet they seem to have had the same costs.
On the other hand, the Democratic approach to economic growth mitigates poverty, raises wages and helps grow the middle class. What’s the unemployment rate in deep-blue Massachusetts? It’s 4.7 percent—the same as Texas.
And, by the way, some progressive states, such as Minnesota and Vermont, have unemployment rates that are far lower.
Biss told me a sentence was cut for space…
It isn’t clear exactly what about the Massachusetts system the governor is advocating for, so I can’t immediately comment on the specifics.
In its first 73 years, few dramatic changes were made to the Massachusetts compensation system. Meanwhile, other states implemented speedier procedures and paid more adequate benefits. In the early 1980s injured workers, unions, and health and safety organizations in Massachusetts campaigned for reform.
In 1985 these groups convinced the state legislature to revamp the system: the Massachusetts Division of Industrial Accidents was reorganized, benefits were increased, cost-of-living protection was added, and insurers were made responsible for workers’ legal expenses.
Five years later, however, the Massachusetts economy entered a downturn. Business groups, exaggerating the burden of insurance premiums and threatening to leave the state, demanded rollbacks in worker benefits.
In 1991, in a shameful display of blaming the victim, the legislature:
• Reduced the total-disability benefit rate to 60% of wages
• Shortened the duration of total-disability benefits to three years
• Reduced the partial-disability benefit rate by 10%
• Shortened the duration of partial-disability benefits to five years
• Eliminated payments for the first five days of disability (except for extended injuries)
• Eliminated benefits for scarring other than on the face, neck and hands
• Reduced cost-of-living benefits
• Eliminated certain injuries from coverage
The governor at the time was Republican William Weld. He did, however, have a Democratic legislature to deal with.
A gubernatorial candidate travels around Massachusetts and hears complaint after complaint from employers about the spiraling cost of insuring their employees. Annual double-digit rate increases have become the norm. Small businesses are wilting under the weight of these costs. Large businesses are considering relocating to places where insurance costs are lower. Many employees do not have access to quality healthcare. The candidate understands that a crisis exists and makes a priority of controlling, if not reducing, these costs. The candidate becomes governor. Is there any possible way this story ends happily?
Actually, it did, in an almost fairy-tale-like fashion, though not without a lot of angst. The year was 1990, the candidate was Bill Weld, and workers’ compensation insurance rates had gone up a staggering 92 percent over four years. Then, shortly after Weld took office in 1991, things went from bad to horrible. Insurers filed for another rate increase, this time a record 45.6 percent. Faced with this mess, the governor pushed through the Legislature a reform bill that he promised would eliminate the need for any rate increase. Very few people thought he would be able to keep that promise.
Let’s skip to the happy ending. Workers’ compensation rates have plummeted by about 60 percent since passage of the reform, in what many observers have described as the most remarkable turnaround in any insurance market in the country.
So, it did work. Now, all Gov. Rauner has to do is figure out how to be as effective as Bill Weld.
/snark
*** UPDATE *** From Rep. Mark Batinick…
Rich,
I’ve been studying the Mass. model for work comp for a long time. Attached is an LRU report from January of last year I requested. They do several things there well that we don’t. When I look at their model I see a system that focuses on the worker getting paid and healed as fast as possible. Any case open more than 12 weeks after an injury must be reviewed “to ensure that the treatment is necessary, reasonable, effective, and of good quality.” While indemnity costs per worker were near the median, the percentage of claims paid within 21 days of the injury was the highest. The benefit of getting the worker paid and healed quickly is self-evident.
And yes. They do have a causation standard.
The Massachusetts information starts on page 4 of the attached report. But in the interest of transparency, I attached the entire document.
As Illinois moves into its eighth month without a budget, Eastern Illinois University plans an estimated 200 layoffs of non-instructional employees — as well as furloughing all administrative and professional staff additionally in March to make it through the spring semester.
These layoffs, along with cash flow reserves and budget cuts and freezes enacted last week, will be used to push Eastern through the semester financially considering no appropriations from the state have been allotted for higher education. […]
In regard to the layoffs, 30-day notices will be sent out to those employees either late this week or earlier next week, President David Glassman told the Faculty Senate on Tuesday. This will start the normal “bumping” process associated with the layoffs such as in the fall, when employees with higher seniority who get a layoff notice can instead “bump” those with less seniority. […]
While the university will run through spring, uncertainty still lingers in regard to what will happen over the summer and in the fall. Glassman said he along with Paul McCann, interim vice president for business affairs, have started looking into if continuing operations during the summer will be possible, relying on tuition alone as income.
“If I find out from Paul that we would not generate enough tuition dollars to operate the university (in the summer), then I have to figure out what’s our other alternatives,” he said.
Eastern is in a similar boat regarding the fall semester. If funds do not come in from the state by the July, August and September time frame, Eastern will not be able to afford the expenses of the semester at its current capacity without changes. This is also dependent on tuition and federal funding.
* I’ve been wondering aloud lately whether the governor has been deliberately attempting to sabotage CPS bond sales since last April. Greg Hinz follows up…
Though no one will speak for the record, insiders are charging that Rauner, who wants to bust the CTU by forcing it into bankruptcy, is trying to block the system’s ability to borrow that $875 million.
The specific charge is that last month, when Claypool was in New York trying to schlep the bonds, Rauner knew it and intentionally scheduled a press conference to announce revived legislation to allow the state to take over CPS and force it into bankruptcy.
“Rauner knew,” says one source who won’t be named. “He did it on purpose.”
Sources close to the governor shrugged off such charges, one saying that Rauner is willing to give CPS a little help if only Emanuel will “give a little help” to Rauner in his campaign to weaken the power of CPS and other public-sector unions.
But there is a bit of a pattern of Rauner, a conservative Republican, opening his mouth in a high-profile way at very inopportune times for CPS and its proposed bond issue.
Rich Miller of Capitol Fax reported on a pair of Rauner statements, one stemming back to April. Then yesterday, after it became clear CPS would try to go to market today, Rauner told reporters that he’s begun considering who to send in to run CPS, even though it’s doubtful he has the legal authority to do that.
Rauner is not backing down. Says a source close to him, “City Hall is spinning out of control. . . .(Investors) see a CPS balance sheet that is fundamentally broken and a financial plan that is a fairy tale. Chicago is crumbling before our eyes.”
Right. “Crumbling before our eyes.” You might say that game is on, too.
He’s actually done this three times, first in April, then last week and again yesterday.
*** UPDATE 1 *** Gov. Rauner just called the allegation that he’s attempting to sabotage CPS bond sales “ridiculous.”
…Adding… He also said that “Bondholders will make their own decisions. I don’t care about them one way or another.”
*** UPDATE 2 *** Greg Hinz has the 5th Floor’s react…
Responding to the governor’s remarks, Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn shot back: “So much for the governor’s pledge to change his tone in an effort to actually get something accomplished. That lasted almost a week. While it seems he would rather continue pointing fingers and hurling insults, the rest of us will continue working on solutions to the range of challenges facing our city and our state.”
Owed about $200,000 by the state of Illinois, a rape crisis center in Urbana has cut its staff hours and salaries.
And the Rape Advocacy Counseling and Education Services says that without state funding it will have to close by mid-April. RACES, located in Urbana’s Lincoln Square, is among the social service agencies that are not being funded because of the ongoing budget dispute between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic legislators. In 2015, RACES said it served more than 37,408 individuals, ages 3 through adult.
Beginning Monday, the agency cut its staff hours and salaries by 20 percent. […]
The cuts will limit the availability of counselors, legal advocates, and community educators who provide valuable services to survivors of sexual assault, the agency said.
Liberty Principles PAC, which received a $1.8 million contribution from Rauner’s own PAC last month, has moved to boost the campaign of Forest Park Commission Chris Harris who is challenging incumbent State Rep. Chris Welch (D-Hillside), purchasing $14,166 in newspaper advertising for the challenger, according to state election board records.
Run by political operative and radio personality Dan Proft, Liberty Principles PAC, an independent expenditure committee that is prohibited from coordinating its activities with a campaign it backs, is also supporting the reelection campaign of the governor’s Democratic ally in the Illinois House, State Rep. Ken Dunkin (D-Chicago).
Harris, who had at the end of the fourth quarter only $7,727 in the bank, echoes Rauner’s rhetoric on key issues, such as property taxes. […]
Harris reacted to Proft’s purchase of advertising in his behalf saying that he was “uncertain” what triggered the support.
“I did not know this and I haven’t seen any ads. I am not sure if there is a certain issue that they have picked up on that I support that Rep. Welch doesn’t and I guess I won’t know until I see an ad,” Harris told The Illinois Observer in a statement. “This is a Democratic Primary so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, in the big picture.”
*** UPDATE *** From the Chris Harris campaign…
The recent discovery that outside PAC money is being
spent in the 7th District State Representative race has raised concerns this group’s motives.
“In modern day politics, you can’t control most of what goes on around you, but you hope you can control your message,” said 7th District State Representative Candidate Chris Harris. “Even that can be altered by 3rd party sources hijacking it, though.”
As first reported by the Illinois Observer, an outside PAC that has received money from Governor Rauner purchased newspaper advertising against current State Rep Chris Welch in the 7th District race.
Harris stated: “There are many reasons PAC’s get involved in races: they want to advance a candidate; they don’t like a particular candidate; or they want a group to have to spend money they may not have planned to. We have yet to see what their plans are for this race, but I am certain that it is not to echo any backing of myself for Governor Rauner. The devastation caused by the budget stalemate should horrify everyone, and I reject Governor Rauner’s strategy of holding Illinois’ most vulnerable people hostage.
“Furthermore, I feel that that it is wrong-headed for Governor Rauner’s people to insert themselves into a Democratic primary election. The people of the 7th District are well aware of Rep. Welch’s poor record, and it is their voices that should decide this election.
“I am a mainstream Democrat. I believe we can have common sense compromise that will secure the financial future of this state. I support increasing funding for our schools and making sure that education is a priority. I am a small business owner who was union-backed in my local race, because I am focused on practical accomplishments that move us all forward.
“I am in this race because our current State Representative has a long history of corruption and patronage that devastated our local schools. We need a Democrat who will focus on fixing our communities and our state, not be a pawn for either Speaker Madigan or Governor Rauner.”
A nonprofit research group says poverty rates in Illinois are up to three times higher for racial minorities.
The Chicago-based Heartland Alliance’s research arm released a report Wednesday outlining significant racial disparities for income, unemployment, birth rates and housing, among other things. The 44-page document is called “Racism’s Toll: Report on Illinois Poverty,” and looks at institutional racism in the state.
* From the press release…
Poverty rates are two to three times higher for Illinoisans of color, and they fare far worse on nearly every measure of well-being. In the latest of its annual reports on poverty in Illinois, “Racism’s Toll,” Heartland Alliance’s Social IMPACT Research Center lays bare the moral, human, and economic cost of the deep inequities in the state and calls out public policies that have and are actively creating these racial inequities.
The disparities are remarkably persistent on nearly all quality of life domains:
Black children in Illinois are nearly 4 times more likely to live below the poverty line than white children.
The Illinois school districts with the most students of color receive 16% less in funding per student than districts serving the fewest students of color.
Unemployment rates are far higher for black Illinois workers than whites at every educational level.
Illinoisans of color are 2 to 3 times more likely to not have health insurance.
Black Illinoisans on average live 6 years less than whites.
Poor black (16%) and Latino (22%) Illinoisans are more likely to live within a mile of a hazardous chemical facility than poor whites (13%).
Nationally, the median net worth for a white household is $110,500 versus $6,314 for a black household.
The consistency and persistence of these severe disparities by race in Illinois underscore how much more work we have to do. As the report makes clear, these inequities are the product of the public policies, market forces, and institutional practices of both yesterday and today, which systematically place barriers in the path of Illinoisans of color.
Labor unions were forced to come to the rescue of their endorsed primary candidate in the 5th state Senate district, Democrat Patricia Van Pelt of Chicago.
On Monday, Van Pelt’s primary opponent, former alderman and unsuccessful mayoral candidate Bob Fioretti, joined the lawmaker for a newspaper endorsement session at the Sun-Times.
“I nearly fell off my chair when Van Pelt said she wants city governments to be able to declare themselves right-to-work zones,” Fioretti told supporters in an email.
“That means she’s against unions, she’s against the prevailing wage, she’s against all the gains unions have gotten for us,” Fioretti said.
What the heck?
* Sen. Van Pelt’s response…
Senator Van Pelt spoke on her longstanding opposition to right-to-work laws and support for unions in a statement today.
“I am against all implementations of right to work in Illinois, including locally,” the senator said. “Right to work in any form is an attempt to undermine unions and working families. Unions are critical in representing the voice of our workers. Having served as a union steward for many years, I know unions have increased fairness, safety, and employer accountability.”
“My opponent is attempting to slander my pro-union record. In a recent interview with the Sun-Times Editorial Board, I misspoke when I misheard a question on right to work zones. I clarified my answer with the board immediately after the interview.
“I’m proud of my record of standing up for unions. I won’t let my opponent distort it.”
The Illinois AFL-CIO, which recently endorsed Senator Van Pelt in the Democratic primary, reiterated their support for the senator. “Senator Van Pelt is a strong voice for unions. She has stood with unions on issues that affect working families and has stated her opposition to wage-killing statewide right to work and local right-to-work zones. We strongly support her re-election,” Illinois AFL-CIO President Michael Carrigan said.
During her tenure in the state senate, Van Pelt has been a tireless advocate for working families. She was a co-sponsor of the legislative override of Governor Rauner’s veto of the AFSCME no strike/no lockout arbitration bill, co-sponsor of civil rights legislation protecting pregnant employees, and co-sponsor of legislation to raise the minimum wage. She is running for re-election for in the 5th legislative district.
