New York, June 13, 2017 — Summary Rating Rationale
Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the Regional Transportation Authority’s outstanding general obligation bonds, which are backed by a pledge of regional sales tax revenues, to A2 from Aa3, affecting about $2.2 billion of outstanding debt. The outlook remains negative.
The downgrade factors in the repercussions of an extended political impasse in the Illinois General Assembly over how to balance the state’s budget. After two years of failed negotiations, and operating with substantial budget deficits, the state has allowed a backlog of bill payments to reach record levels, putting pressure on many public- and private-sector entities awaiting state payments, including the RTA.
Payment deferrals have led RTA to rely on short-term borrowings that have created biennial refinancing requirements. This practice, while manageable, is only one measure of RTA’s potential stress stemming from the continuing financial erosion of its two largest related governments - the State of Illinois (Baa3 negative) and the City of Chicago (Ba1 negative). Over the long term, pressures to provide funding for constitutionally guaranteed state and local pension plans are increasingly apt to harm RTA’s economic base, eroding its ability to generate funding to support transit system capital investment and operating needs. Although these factors are outside the RTA’s control, they will pose increasingly serious challenges, offsetting the otherwise strong credit profile of the authority’s sales-tax revenue debt.
After the downgrade, the RTA sales tax bond rating remains higher than the general obligation debt of either Chicago or the state. The rating differentials (of five and four notches, respectively) between the authority and these related governments are supported by legal and practical insulation of pledged regional sales tax revenues. It also reflects RTA’s sufficient debt service coverage from the sales taxes and the authority’s role in overseeing transit in a region that relies heavily on maintaining its far-reaching, high-capacity public transportation system. At the same time, fiscal pressures of the local and state governments will make the city and state more inclined to take adverse actions, such as shifting operating expense burdens onto the transit agencies when possible, and the prospects for state capital funding support will be diminished. The lower rating is consistent with RTA’s exposure to the state, which collects its regional sales tax and also provides matching payments for those revenues.
Rating Outlook
The negative outlook incorporates the State of Illinois’ continuing credit deterioration, which threatens to keep exacerbating ongoing aid payment delays in coming months, without an agreement to bring the state’s revenues and expenditures into closer alignment. It also factors in the Chicago area’s economic vulnerability to overlapping public pension liabilities, which may necessitate sizable tax increases that erode resources that could otherwise be used to address the transit system’s deferred capital investment needs.
Factors that Could Lead to an Upgrade
More dependable flow of state aid funds, reducing the need for short-term borrowings
Mitigation of pension funding pressures affecting related state and local governments
Improved bondholder protections, such as a more stringent additional bonds test
Factors that Could Lead to a Downgrade
Substantial increase in length of state aid payment delays
Weakening sales tax revenue performance and reduction in debt service coverage
Deteriorating liquidity position and lack of market access
There is no shortage of ambitious politicians angling to become the next governor of Illinois. Ten months before the March 2018 Democratic primary, the list of contestants still grows.
Last week, two more jumped into the already-crowded field: State Rep. Scott Drury of Highland Park, and Chicago activist Tio Hardiman, who challenged Gov. Pat Quinn in the 2014 primary.
The field also includes Evanston State Sen. Daniel Biss; Bob Daiber, a regional school superintendent from Madison County; two wealthy businessmen, Chris Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker; 47th Ward Ald. Ameya Pawar, and Skokie small business owner Alex Paterakis.
They are all eager to thwart Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s reelection plans.
Nine candidates, in all. All men. Where are the women?
In Illinois’ nearly 200 years, the governor’s office has been held exclusively by men.
Sure, women have made political strides in Illinois, occupying nearly every top job, from U.S. senator to attorney general to comptroller. Yet only two — Democrat Dawn Clark Netsch and Republican Judy Baar Topinka — have been nominated for governor by their parties.
* The Question: Do you think a woman may yet announce for governor? If so, who? If not, why not?
The Republican grievance over Chicago centers around language in the formula that would essentially fold the city into the rest of the state. Chicago Public Schools, one of the largest districts in the country, has long acted as a separate creature when it comes to state money for schools: It’s responsible for items the state covers for all other districts such as teacher pension costs and debt service payments.
Instead, CPS has been getting a unique state payment known as the “block grant.” Officials from Chicago have long argued their standalone finances are far more than what the state gives them, but Republicans say the city has done a terrible job of management.
The Democratic formula tries to change all that by establishing a uniform mechanism for all districts. What was formerly the block grant would be folded into Chicago’s total state aid and counted toward the district’s need. But Rauner said that’s special treatment and siphoning money that should be going downstate, along with the contention of a need for new money.
Manar said that’s entirely wrong. “The block grant is gone in this bill. In exchange, we cover a piece of the pension cost — not their full pension cost — a piece.” The legislation would include $215 million to go to Chicago’s suffering teacher pension system.
Purvis and Rauner say the state should not be doing that on top of including the block grant money in the new formula. “They got the block grants, but I think everyone agrees they should get one or the other,” Purvis said.
Hmm. I thought the governor was OK with both as long as he got pension reform. A Senate Democratic official put it this way today: “That was the deal he was for before he was against it.”
* Anyway, that brings us to our deep dive. At my request, Fix the Formula Illinois & Funding Illinois’ Future Coalition, which includes the Illinois Association of School Administrators and the Illinois Association of School Business Officials among others, sent me this…
SB1 ends the special Chicago Block Grants going forward, and the dollar value of those grants last year are incorporated into Chicago’s base funding under SB1. In other words, Chicago students keep their prior year funding just like all other students keep their funding from the prior year. That’s pre-existing funding Chicago students get to keep, not new money.
However, because this pre-existing funding is included in Chicago’s base under SB1, it moves CPS closer to its Adequacy Target. That means a reduction in the amount of formula funding CPS shares in when new state funding for schools is distributed under the new Evidence Based Model.
As you know, the state pays the pension costs for all districts but Chicago Public Schools. Resolving this lack of pension parity under current law is crucial to getting school funding right in Illinois. To accomplish this, SB1 covers the “normal cost” of teacher pensions. Normal cost is the actual employer contribution required to cover the future pension benefits teachers are earning in a single year. For CPS that’s $220 million. For the rest of the school districts in the state it’s $900 million for normal pension costs, according to the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The amount the state contributes for CPS’ normal cost under SB1 doesn’t grow in the future. Moreover, if in the future other districts become required to pay their own pension costs, they would be handled the same way. CPS’ pension bill goes directly to them while the bill for every other district gets sent to the state. That doesn’t change.
The same is true for legacy (unfunded liability) costs. CPS is the only district that must pay its own legacy pensions costs. That means CPS has to use a portion of its local property tax dollars to cover this pension legacy cost. Obviously, CPS can’t spend the same tax dollar twice, so the local revenue it has to spend on pensions is not available to spend on students and just 86 cents on the dollar can go to the classroom. The formula in SB1 accounts for this by reducing Chicago’s local capacity target—that is the amount of local tax resources CPS is able to use to fund schools. It doesn’t give Chicago these dollars, but recognizes it must use a portion of local property tax resources to pay the required unfunded liability for its pension system.
Many districts moved across funding tiers as changes were made following the initial introduction of SB1 and similar legislation in HB2808. For example, many low-wealth downstate districts that started in Tier 1 moved to Tier 2 in one of the amendments. After a series of changes, many of these districts ended up back in Tier 1, as did CPS, as dollars were added to the tier to account for lower adequacy. That is part of the process of refining a bill as complex as school funding reform. In the end the formula helps those districts it intends—districts with more low-income students or low property wealth, whether in Chicago or elsewhere in the state.
After all is said and done, CPS would receive $70 million from the $350 million new funding modeled in the formula, or 20%, proportionate to the number of Chicago students. This is less per pupil than districts with similar low-income populations and somewhat more than districts with similar property value. Which makes perfect sense given CPS serves a greater percentage of low-income students than do most districts with similar property wealth available to tax, but has more property wealth than most districts that serve a similar proportion of low income children.
The good news is the evidence-based formula in SB1 accomplishes its intended purpose of providing new funding in a manner that equitably accounts for both student demographics and population. Over 80% of new dollars go to districts with greater than 50% low income students, while 70% of new dollars go to districts with lower than median property wealth.
Chicago homeowners are about to get whacked with a 10 percent increase in their property taxes.
Owners of commercial properties will have to dig almost as deep. The average hike there is 9.3 percent.
Both pieces of news come in a summary from Cook County Clerk David Orr of the bills that’ll be in the mail soon. Orr’s office completes the process of calculating, or extending, each property owner’s bill.
The huge city hike has been expected, since both Chicago and Chicago Public Schools imposed multiyear property tax increases, mostly to pay for shortfalls in worker pension systems.
But this is likely to intensify a debate over the heavy reliance on the property tax system that has become a central issue in the race for governor.
Increases in the suburban portions of the county won’t be quite as steep as in Chicago proper, and in some cases, there will be a decline. According to Orr, the new average residential bills for 2016 will rise 6.5 percent in the north suburbs and 3.9 percent in the south suburbs.
The average city increase will be about $360.
* ILGOP…
“Today’s double-digit property tax hike is just another sign that Illinois’ property tax system is broken and corrupt, and the politicians and wealthy insiders who benefit from the system refuse to take responsibility. This is exactly why we need Governor Rauner’s property tax relief plan passed immediately. Let’s take the property tax system out of the hands of the Chicago political machine and give it back to the public.” – Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Steven Yaffe
Crain’s Chicago Business is reporting that Chicago property tax owners are “about to get whacked with a 10 percent increase in their property taxes.”
Democratic Leaders in the General Assembly, who make money off the property tax system, are blocking Governor Bruce Rauner’s property tax relief plan.
Rauner’s plan would freeze property taxes and give local voters more referendum power to lower property taxes.
…Adding… As a commenter notes, Gov. Rauner signed the bill that allowed Chicago to raise these taxes. Click here.
Gov. Bruce Rauner was back in Peoria last week, pushing another of the planks in his platform of reforms that he’s had little luck implementing since his election.
This time, the issue at hand was a property tax freeze the governor’s been pushing for two and a half years years without any success, though hovering over the whole discussion was the continued lack of a state budget.
Such a freeze was part of multiple versions of the “grand bargain” deal that members of both parties in the state Senate were crafting, though Rauner didn’t like the limited length of the freeze that were being discussed. He’s especially scathing about the two-year version that got called for a vote after the gov effectively pulled off GOP support from the legislation. […]
Asked about it, Rauner ignored the potential, saying that a two-year freeze is “not real” and that it guarantees rates will rise in years three, four, five and six. (You can ask yourselves whether that same thing would happen at the end of Rauner’s preferred four-year freeze.)
*** UPDATE *** I just totally unloaded on the person who sent me the original video because I specifically asked if there was anything else about the topic on the clip and was told in no uncertain terms that what I had been given was all that Kennedy said. Turns out, that wasn’t the case. Here’s the end of Kennedy’s answer…
Let’s balance our budget the way a great state balances its budget, and if we want to legalize marijuana for other reasons, then let’s do that.
So, he’s getting closer to actually coming right out and saying he’s OK with legalization, but he’s not quite there yet. More importantly, my apologies to the Kennedy campaign.
[ *** End Of Update *** ]
* Tracker footage from last night’s Democratic Women of Kendall County event…
* Transcript…
Audience question: Where do you stand on Illinois legalizing marijuana for recreational use and financial benefits for the state?
Chris Kennedy: I’d say this. We are not a failed state. We have a state government budget problem, that’s what we have. We don’t have an economic problem. Now Gov. Rauner is slowly making that state government budget problem become an economic problem. It doesn’t need to be that way. When Pat Quinn was governor, we had a slightly higher income tax, we had a balanced budget, we were paying our currently due payments under all pension programs, and we were paying down outstanding payables. That’s pretty much all you want out of your government right there. And we can do that again without a lot of harm at anybody in our state, and that’s what we should do. The idea that we should abandon that and instead pay for everything by legalizing marijuana because we don’t want to take on the hard work necessary to balance a budget in a modern state in America is ridiculous. Let’s separate those two issues. Let’s separate those two issues.
Lots of words.
And, may I ask, who are these people who say we should abandon the hard work of balancing a budget and “pay for everything by legalizing marijuana”?
* Brian Mackey is in Mt. Vernon today to watch the appellate hearing on the lower court’s ruling to pay state employees without an appropriation.
Background on the case is here. Justices Richard P. Goldenhersh, Melissa A. Chapman, and Judy Cates are hearing the oral arguments. Deputy Solicitor General Brett Legner is arguing for the attorney general, who wants the payments stopped. On the other side of the case are Steve Yokich for AFSCME and Kenton Skarin for the Rauner administration…
…Adding… Brian is also covering another lawsuit over the comptroller’s office. So, we’ll leave this on.
As we’ve all seen over the past several months, Gov. Bruce Rauner is adamantly refusing to provide any help whatsoever to Chicago, which is struggling mightily under the weight of years of fiscal misfeasance, until his Turnaround Agenda demands are met. A long-sought education funding reform bill, a 911 emergency call center fee, even a bill to allow the expedited sale of the Thompson Center have been hit with Rauner’s broad (and often false) brush of being a “Chicago bailout.”
* OK, now let’s take a look at these three issues one at a time. First, here’s the Chicago Tribune editorial board on the education funding reform bill that has passed both chambers…
Let’s get something straight: It’s not a bailout. CPS is teetering on bankruptcy. It is borrowing to pay off borrowing and faces a structural deficit so alarming that none of the proposals in Springfield to overhaul the statewide formula would funnel enough money to bail out CPS. Not even close.
That said, this proposal would put CPS on steadier footing while closing the gap between wealthy and poor districts from Rockford to Cairo. It should not be summarily dismissed simply because CPS gets help. Let’s all acknowledge CPS serves the largest number of low-income children in this state.
“I came to the conclusion that my constituents weren’t that concerned with the amount that the people of Chicago paid and if Chicago legislators were comfortable with that amount, fine,” Hays said. “But what I was not willing to do was go home and tell my own constituents that when you dial 911 and on the other end of the line it says that this has been disconnected and people ask, ‘Why did this happen?’ I was totally uncomfortable with saying that the mayor of Chicago and the governor are in a wrestling match over something peripheral to your 911 service.”
And if it’s a “bailout,” it’s a self-imposed one because the Chicago City Council has to approve that new fee before it can be implemented.
City Hall would be crazy to share control over what goes there. […]
Rauner also wanted the Legislature to grant him a say in what zoning changes would be allowed for any new development. This is necessary, the governor’s administration has argued, if he is to negotiate the best deal for the state, potentially bringing in an estimated $300 million.
Democrats did not yield to the governor last week, nor should they have. In this deal, the state is just another landlord. Zoning decisions are made by municipalities. And fees imposed for zoning changes are collected by the municipality for use by the municipality. City Hall expects to invest much of that money in more impoverished parts of town.
The governor should do what sellers do: Find a potential buyer and then negotiate with the city for whatever zoning changes the buyer might demand.
As I’ve also argued, this had nothing to do with a “bailout” and everything to do about control.
But Rauner has a stronger public hand. His pledge to stop any and all Chicago bailouts fits right in with attitudes of this state’s “white flight” suburbanites and city-hating Downstaters.
If the governor was accurately describing the above legislation as “Chicago bailouts,” I’d let it go. But he’s obviously not, so somebody needs to point out that he’s using politically expedient dog whistle language.
And, please, don’t tell me this isn’t racially and geographically divisive rhetoric. I grew up in a rural Downstate area. I also covered Pate Philip’s tenure for many years. This ain’t rocket science. It’s old style politics at its worst and was used to fire up the rubes since long before I was born.
* And it’s not new to Rauner, either. From a column I wrote almost exactly one year ago today…
Having spent much of my white male life downstate, I can vouch for the effectiveness of these attacks. Yes, some downstaters realize they’re being pandered to, but many still love it. Finally, they say, we have a governor who’s saying what we’ve been thinking. […]
Even so, deliberately creating this much division is flat-out wrong. Stop it.
“He understands that there are divisions between Chicago and the rest of the state. There’ve always been. But he exploits that by saying things like Chicago teachers are virtually illiterate, or calling Chicago Public Schools prisons or referring to our schools using corporate terms like a bailout,” Pawar said.
“I mean, it is code words to prey on people’s fears about what they might think about Chicago. It’s embedded in race and class. What he does is racist. It is racist. There is no doubt about it, except he’s a lot less bombastic and nasty about it. But the code words are there,” he said.
The governor’s camp pushed back.
“The Rauners are proud to have personally supported Chicago schools and contributed substantial resources to improving education in the city for many years,” spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said in a statement. “As governor, Bruce continues to work towards funding reform that is fair to the entire state.”
What a lame push-back.
Look, Rauner has accomplished some things on criminal justice reform (including signing the bail reform bill last week) that no racist would ever do. He’s for automatic voter registration, for crying out loud.
I think that Rauner is simply a very accomplished political opportunist who claims he’s for “the people” while employing all sorts of tactics to win the media cycle, including tactics used by racists and those who would divide this state for their own personal political gains.
But it does need to stop. No political gain justifies this crud.
*** UPDATE *** Pawar is now coming right out and saying it…
ILGOP Releases Digital Ad “Illinois Deserves Better Than This”
Ad Highlights Mike Madigan’s Tax Hike Agenda, Refusal to Pass A Budget
After Democrats in the General Assembly again refused to pass any budget, the Illinois Republican Party released digital ads highlighting their failure and inability to stand up for the hardworking taxpayers of the state.
Instead of compromising and working with Republicans to get a truly balanced budget with the reforms needed to fix our state, Mike Madigan’s muppets in Springfield only want to pass a massive tax hike without structural change.
That’s not the path to getting our state back on track. We’ve got to stop just sticking it to taxpayers in Illinois.
In response to toilet-gate and the Blago tapes, boss Democrats engineered an early endorsement of Pritzker by labor leaders of the Illinois AFL-CIO to demonstrate J.B.’s strength.
A Kennedy being squeezed by Cook County Democrats and organized labor in Illinois?
Richard J. Daley is rolling over in his grave.
Now there’s another problem for Democrats: the exhaustive analysis of Cook County property taxes by the Chicago Tribune’s Jason Grotto. It shows that under Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios, a Boss Madigan ally, property assessments in Cook County are riddled with errors. According to the Tribune, lower-priced homes were overvalued, while higher-priced homes were undervalued.
Minorities won’t like that. Without minorities, Boss Madigan can’t rule and take advantage of all those Pritzker bucks. And so, Kennedy hit at Madigan’s weak spot.
The Tribune story, Kennedy said, “demonstrates there is enormous prejudice in the system, the system is rigged against the poor, and that is probably a de facto violation of the Civil Rights Act because people of color are so disproportionately punished by the system and disproportionately paying much higher taxes.”
On the other hand, I think Berrios has some points in his favor, too. For instance, the main map the Tribune displayed to summarize its findings showed that while the poor, black West Side on average is overassessed, so is the white Northwest Side and most of northwest suburban Cook.
Here’s that map. Dark red means the properties were overvalued by at least 10 percent, light red is overvalued by less than 10 percent…
The full Kennedy interview is here. That’s quite a play-in Kass has.
*** UPDATE *** From Assessor Joe Berrios…
Mr. Kennedy’s comments stem from Chicago Tribune stories based on faulty sales ratio studies not done by assessment professionals and not including all properties, countywide.
I grew up in Cabrini Green, am the first minority to become Assessor and was the legislature’s first Hispanic-American. I won’t allow unfair assessments to cause minorities to pay more than they should.
The Cook County Assessor’s office does base all valuation on all sale prices and market conditions over a three year period for similar homes in each neighborhood. The Assessor doesn’t set tax rates or levies. That is done by school districts, municipalities and other taxing bodies. Mr. Kennedy’s lack of knowledge of assessments may have caused his errors.
Gov. Bruce Rauner’s education adviser, Beth Purvis, said the governor supports 90 percent of the education funding reform bill that was passed by the legislature this spring, but would still veto it because it is too generous to Chicago Public Schools.
A key proponent of the bill, state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, fired back at the governor’s office, saying, “Most rational people would take 90 percent and call it a win.”
Lawmakers filed a motion last week that will delay Senate Bill 1 from being formally transmitted to Rauner for his signature or veto, in hopes that tensions will eventually die down.
In an interview with The State Journal-Register last week, Purvis said she views the extension as allowing for “continued conversations” that can produce legislation the governor could support.
One major sticking point for Rauner, she said, is that the bill funnels $215 million into the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund this year, in addition to a $250 million block grant the Chicago school system receives.
Except the governor has said he could support that $215 million in exchange for pension reforms.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has some political advice for Gov. Bruce Rauner: When you like 90 percent of a proposal, take yes for an answer. […]
Emanuel, who has burnished a deal-making reputation during his decades in government, suggested the school funding formula bill is close enough to what Rauner wants that the governor should sign it into law.
“Now look. I would like to get 100 percent all the time. I got three aldermen here. None of us get 100 percent of what we’re seeking. Ninety percent in public policy is a victory, and yet the governor is still issuing a veto threat when it meets the needs of the children of the state of Illinois 100 percent,” the mayor said.
Later, Emanuel contended “you cannot make perfection the enemy of progress. It explains why we don’t have a budget.”
*** UPDATE 1 *** Pritzker campaign…
Bruce Rauner is showing his true colors by planning to veto an education bill that he mostly supports. After talking up the issue for years and even convening his own task force, Rauner is cowardly abandoning the bill to make a political statement.
This is the epitome of failed leadership: getting 90% of the job done and still refusing to compromise. It’s clear that Bruce Rauner will never step up to the plate and lead our state. Real leadership is negotiating and compromising for the future of our state and our children — something Bruce Rauner refuses to do.
Rauner’s strategy is clear: it’s my way or the highway.
While Illinois has the least equitable school funding system in the country, Bruce Rauner is failing to solve the problem. And, under Rauner’s failed leadership, Illinois is breaking national records for not passing a budget for 713 days. Despite this fact and the incredible pain he is inflicting across the state, Rauner continues to put himself and his special interest allies above Illinois schoolchildren.
“While Bruce Rauner can try and bankrupt our state, he cannot bankrupt our people,” said Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh. “Rauner almost reached a compromise, but instead of doing what’s right, he cowardly retreated the moment he didn’t get his way. That’s not how compromise works. No one should be in government unless they truly care about our state and our families. Unlike Rauner, JB invests in people and in our communities. It’s abundantly clear that Rauner will always put politics above the people of our state.”
*** UPDATE 2 *** Biss campaign…
“This is yet another example of Bruce Rauner protecting his rich friends rather than fully funding schools in Chicago and hundreds of other low-income districts across Illinois — the same low-income districts that are hurt by our corrupt property tax racket. As governor I will fully fund all schools to give all kids the education they deserve, starting by making the millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.”
As Illinois draws closer to entering a third year with no state budget, Illinois Senate President John J. Cullerton issued a statement reminding everyone that the Senate has actually passed a balanced budget. He urged Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Illinois House to take up and finish the work the Senate has done.
Statement from Illinois Senate President John J. Cullerton:
“I want to remind everyone that the Illinois Senate approved a balanced budget. Not just any budget, but the budget Governor Rauner introduced. We held spending to the exact level he wanted, kept the tax rate that he asked for, cut $3 billion in spending and ultimately eliminated the nearly $5 billion deficit in his proposed budget.
“The Senate has done its work. It’s up to Governor Rauner and the Illinois House to finish the job.
“Illinois has already gone two years without a budget, and Governor Rauner is dangerously close to extending that to three years. That is unacceptable. We need a bipartisan solution. With the May 31 deadline passed, it now requires Republican votes to get a balanced budget approved in the House. The governor needs to sit down with House Republicans, come to agreement on this balanced budget and then help make it the law.”
The SDems also included a breakdown of what their budget did. Click here for that.
As we’ve all seen over the past several months, Gov. Bruce Rauner is adamantly refusing to provide any help whatsoever to Chicago, which is struggling mightily under the weight of years of fiscal misfeasance, until his Turnaround Agenda demands are met. A long-sought education funding reform bill, a 911 emergency call center fee, even a bill to allow the expedited sale of the Thompson Center have been hit with Rauner’s broad (and often false) brush of being a “Chicago bailout.”
Rauner will never again get another “opportunity” like this one. The Democrats have historically protected Chicago and the city needs more help now than ever before. Going after the city is, by far, Rauner’s “best” leverage to force the Democrats to cut a deal with him.
The Democrats, particularly in the House, won’t budge, partly because their city-based and statewide union allies are demanding all-out war. Labor leaders see barely disguised anti-union agendas everywhere, particularly in the governor’s proposed property tax freeze, which they believe is designed to put so much long-term fiscal pressure on local governments that they’ll demand relief from their union contracts.
The unions have done pretty much everything that House Speaker Michael Madigan has asked them to, right up to and including endorsing a billionaire for governor, despite the fact that this particular billionaire’s family has a not so great relationship with unions at its massive Hyatt Hotel chain.
In return, Madigan has done pretty much everything that organized labor has asked him to do, including running multiple versions of a bill to weaken Rauner’s negotiating hand with AFSCME. And while the Senate Democrats were negotiating workers’ comp reform and a property tax freeze with the Republicans, Madigan put up a brick wall.
The Democrats’ position got a little stronger when the people who run the Chicago Public Schools figured out how to (barely) keep the doors open for the rest of the school year. Without an imminent early June crisis in their party’s traditional home base that could’ve forced their hand with Rauner, they could turn their attention to late June, when a budget has to be passed or the state will be whacked with junk bond status, K-12 schools may be forced to cancel fall classes, social services completely collapse and some of the “directional” universities have to consider becoming half the skeletons they already are.
But Rauner has a stronger public hand. His pledge to stop any and all Chicago bailouts fits right in with attitudes of this state’s “white flight” suburbanites and city-hating Downstaters.
More importantly, the governor’s constant demands for a property tax freeze put him on the side of the vast majority of Illinoisans.
Most Statehouse types believe that Rauner cares nothing at all about the very real and lasting damage this impasse of his is causing. In his prior business career, he’d regularly bust out companies and sell off their pieces if he wasn’t getting his way or if the companies weren’t performing up to his standards. This impasse doesn’t look all that much different.
Some even go further, including Comptroller Susana Mendoza, to claim destruction has been Rauner’s real plan all along. He never wanted a budget, they say. He deliberately set out to shrink government by killing it.
And Madigan is no bleeding heart liberal, either. He’s never been a big fan of the bureaucracy, having fought with AFSCME and the teachers’ unions countless times over the decades (but making up for the spats whenever it was beneficial to his position). His people have denied that the impasse is having any significant impact on the state’s economy. He’s even claimed to some of his members in private that social service providers weren’t as bad off as they’ve said. And a large number of universities are in Republican House districts.
And so, as it has been for two years now, we have a soulless irresistible force up against a heartless immovable object. They both have strong enough bases of support to have sustained them through this mess, even though the vast majority of the population can’t stand either one of them. They’ve done their best to prevent a complete catastrophe on their own side of the fence which could force capitulation. One is a kabillionaire who can bring limitless resources to the campaign playing field. The other has opened a new and expensive front with a billionaire candidate.
We could be heading for the biggest showdown in the history of Illinois at the end of the fiscal year on June 30th. We’ll either get a deal or our state will implode.
Ratings firm Moody’s Corp. on Friday downgraded the credit ratings of seven public universities in Illinois over concerns about the state’s nearly two-year budget impasse.
The universities were downgraded because of their reliance on the state of Illinois for payments and appropriations, according to Moody’s. Of the seven universities, five of them—Southern Illinois University, Northern Illinois University, Governors State University, Northeastern Illinois University and Eastern Illinois University—now have junk status. […]
In one example, Eastern Illinois University only received $16 million from the state in the 2016 fiscal year, compared with $52 million in the 2015 fiscal year.
Moody’s downgrade marks the end of a 90-day credit review rating for these seven universities.
It also follows a move by both S&P Global and Moody’s to downgrade state of Illinois bond ratings earlier this month. Ratings firms have warned that the state can be downgrade to junk status next month if the partisan gridlock isn’t solved, which would make Illinois the first state with such a rating. [Emphasis added.]
Resumption of steady and consistent state support contributing to improved operating performance
Significant and sustained growth in liquidity
Factors that Could Lead to a Downgrade:
Continuing decline in directly paid state operating support or “on-behalf” payments for pension and other post-retirement health benefits
Inability to adjust further to changes in state funding
Material declines in liquidity
Continued enrollment and net tuition-revenue declines
* I’m planning to take Monday off. We’ll see how that goes. Until then, this one’s for my buddy Ed Murphy, who is leaving state government to join the Rauner campaign today…
The regular session of the Illinois General Assembly ended on May 31 without the legislature passing a budget for IDOT or any other state agencies. Without a budget, IDOT does not have the authority to pay contractors, which potentially could lead to a suspension of construction activity statewide on June 30, the end of the state fiscal year. This suspension would also impact all engineering contracts and other IDOT and local agency spending.
The Department is scheduling a call with industry representatives for early next week to discuss the ramifications of the budget impasse and how it affects construction projects. While the industry continues to focus on increased funding for our transportation system, the immediate issue to be resolved is the approval of IDOT’s budget so that the important work the construction and engineering industry is doing is allowed to continue without interruption.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed legislation to reduce county jail crowding by granting bail relief to non-violent offenders.
The Republican governor signed the measure Friday in Chicago. Legislative sponsors joined him. They were Chicago Democratic state Sen. Donne Trotter, House Republican Leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs and Chicago Democratic state Rep. Elgie Sims.
Rauner says the plan improves the criminal justice system. He said, “Our system must work equally for all our residents.”
Willie Wilson, an African-American businessman who once ran for mayor and has since been working on criminal justice reform issues, was deeply involved in the passage of this legislation. You can hear him speak about the bill today by clicking here.
* From the Senate Democrats…
Senate Bill 2034 establishes rights for defendants with regard to bail, encourages courts to adopt a statewide, data-driven risk assessment tool and extends the sunset of the Illinois Street Gang and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law by five years. This legislation shifts the focus of pre-trial release decision making from a person’s ability to afford bail to an individual’s threat to public safety or flight risk.
Detailed summary:
• Requires the court to appoint a public defender or attorney for a bail hearing if the defendant wishes but cannot obtain counsel on their own.
• Presumes that any bail set should be non-monetary and that the court should address the risk in the least restrictive way possible.
• Under this legislation, defendants have the right to a new bail hearing and a right to bail credits for time served.
• Requires an individual in custody for a non-violent misdemeanor, Class 4 felony or Class 3 felony due to an inability to post monetary bail to be brought before the court at the next available court date or seven calendar days from when bail was set for a rehearing on the bail.
• Provides defendants with the right to conditions of release considerate of the defendant’s economic and social circumstances.
• Encourages the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts to implement a data-driven, validated, statewide risk assessment tool to determine if a defendant is a danger to the community or a flight risk.
Background:
• The effectiveness of cash bonds has come under scrutiny. Studies show that many low-risk offenders are detained in jail due to an inability to pay bail. This can cause further negative effects on the detainee such as increased likelihood of recidivism.
• The Eighth Amendment requires that there be no excessive bail or fines imposed while in police custody.
• Under current Illinois law, all individuals that are arrested must qualify for bond unless there is proof or a strong probability that the defendant is guilty of certain offenses that are listed in statute. If an arrestee qualifies for bail, they can place a deposit of 10 percent of the ordered bail amount in order to be released from jail. They also have the option of placing collateral up for bail.
* From the governor…
“We are taking an important step in improving our state’s criminal justice system,” Governor Rauner said. “Our system must work equally for all our residents, in every community, regardless of their income. We should be focused on putting people in jobs not jail.”
Notably absent at the bill signing ceremony was Dart, who launched a campaign last fall against the cash-bail system. The sheriff’s office did not respond to an inquiry about why he wasn’t at the event. Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, noted Dart’s absence and suggested he should have been invited.
I know that many people feel property taxes are fundamentally unfair. But the freeze plan would do nothing to fix that. The state could use some of the higher income taxes to bolster aid to schools and local governments, but there is so far no guarantee of it.
Unable to resist an income tax hike much longer, politicians desperately need the freeze as political cover. It may help them keep their jobs at election time, after frustrated taxpayers start paying the real cost of long-failed leadership.
As described so far, the freeze would not promise to put a single extra penny into schools or local police departments or fire districts and the like. And with a few exceptions, it wouldn’t let the officials elected to run those services add an extra penny either.
That last paragraph is not quite accurate. The Senate’s package broadened the sales tax base, so locals would get a bit more money from their share of the tax. And if the income tax rate rises, the locals could get some more money from that as well through the revenue-sharing Local Government Distributive Fund.
* But there is another big problem with this property tax freeze idea that has mostly gone unspoken.
One of the ways of getting out of this budget mess by not increasing too many taxes is by sweeping the LGDF and shifting pension costs down to local schools, community colleges and universities.
But you can’t do that and freeze property taxes without causing gigantic damage to those local entities (universities, which don’t have a property tax stream would likely be forced to raise tuition, which is also not a good thing).
And if you did do those sweeps and cost shifts without a freeze, you’d undoubtedly force local property taxes to rise, which is something the governor says is a horrible thing.
You could do the shift with a freeze if you did things like eliminate collective bargaining rights, I suppose, but good luck passing that bill.
Days ago, the Chicago Tribune published a bombshell three-part report exposing how bosses of the Chicago political machine - Mike Madigan, John Cullerton, Joe Berrios and others involved in the property tax appeals business – have manufactured a property tax system that targets the poor and puts millions in their own pockets.
Today, the Illinois Republican Party is releasing a social media infographic highlighting how Chicago Machine insiders game the system to benefit themselves at the expense of low- and middle-income homeowners in Cook County.
Links to ILGOP social media posts are HERE and HERE.
The insiders:
Mike Madigan - longtime House Speaker and Chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois, Madigan controls all legislation in the Illinois House, particularly legislation affecting Illinois’ property tax system. Madigan also moonlights as one of Chicago’s top property tax appeals attorney and makes “over a million dollars” from Cook County’s rigged property tax system “in a good year.”
John Cullerton - one of Madigan’s former top lieutenants in the Illinois House and now President of the Illinois Senate, Cullerton, like Madigan, also controls legislation in the Senate, including bills concerning property taxes, and moonlights as a property tax appeals attorney.
Joe Berrios - Cook County Assessor, Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party and longtime Madigan ally, Berrios often mixes official business with politics, taking in over $2.5 million in campaign contributions since 2009 from property tax appeals attorneys whose appeals are at his mercy. Contributions from property tax appeals attorney amount to over half of Berrios’ total campaign cash.
Chris Kennedy - millionaire, inheritor of the Kennedy family fortune and now Democrat candidate for governor, Kennedy has hired Madigan & Getzendanner, Mike Madigan’s law firm, to appeal property taxes for the previously-Kennedy family-owned Chicago Merchandise Mart. Like Pritzker, Kennedy recently received a massive property tax break from an appeal on a downtown Chicago development spearheaded by Kennedy and his business associates.
J.B. Pritzker - billionaire, inheritor of the Hyatt family fortune and Mike Madigan’s preferred candidate for governor, Pritzker has been bankrolling and profiting from the Chicago Machine for decades. The Chicago Sun-Times recently revealed that Joe Berrios awarded J.B. Pritzker a $230,000 break on his property taxes for a multi-million dollar mansion Pritzker claimed was “uninhabitable.” The attorneys who oversaw Pritzker’s appeal have contributed over $100,000 to Berrios’ political organizations.
Bickering between Democrats and Republicans that once again has left Illinois without a budget and dominated state politics, but lawmakers still managed to approve about 500 pieces of legislation in their spring session.
That means Gov. Bruce Rauner’s desk is set to be cluttered with bills this summer, leaving him with lots of decisions to make even as he continues to tangle with lawmakers over big budget questions like whether schools will open in the fall.
Several of those proposals were pushed through by Democrats that control the General Assembly in an effort to put the Republican governor in a tough spot politically as he asks voters for a second term in office. Other bills are aimed at President Donald Trump’s administration.
* Maura O’Hara, executive director of the Illinois Venture Capital Association, writing in Crain’s…
It is ironic, then, that just as Illinois’ venture ecosystem has reached liftoff, the Illinois Legislature seems determined to undo this progress and drive away the private company investors who have helped finance hundreds of new and expanding companies in our state. The Illinois Senate in late May passed SB 1719, which would impose a 20 percent tax on capital gains earned by investors in private companies. The House is expected to consider corollary HB 3393 bill in the overtime session. Chief sponsors of the bill—Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Evanston, and Rep. Emanuel Chris Welch, D-Westchester—call it a “privilege” tax.
Let’s look in simple terms at the business of investing in private companies. Imagine that you are adept at identifying a good company. Because of your experience and reputation, friends pool their money and ask you to invest in companies on their behalf. You spend five to 10 years finding great portfolio companies and management teams; help them to identify and generate new customers; and invest in improved operations in the belief that these companies at some unknown future date can be sold for more than you paid for them. Recognize, too, that while you are finding and nurturing these great companies, you may forego a salary.
But it’s worth it because when all the companies are sold, you, as the general investor, will be in line for one-fifth of the increased value or “capital gain,” created by your hard work and expertise. The remaining four-fifths of the capital gain is divvied up among your “friends” who pooled the money you invested. In the real world, these friends are limited partners—often pension funds and endowments that seek a greater return with private company investors than they can find in public markets.
Now here comes the state of Illinois using tax policy, which is generally designed to promote or discourage certain types of economic activity, telling you to fork over 20 percent of your hard-earned and highly uncertain capital gain for the “privilege” of doing business in Illinois. That’s a tax policy that will drive private company investors right out of the state.
Never mind that it usually takes five to 10 years for a private company investment adviser to receive any capital gain from the sale of a portfolio company or investment. Or that a capital gain only occurs if the investment increases significantly in value—in part reflecting the investment adviser’s expertise.
Suburban police chiefs don’t oppose a law that would make them ineligible for a second pension, but they don’t like the term “double-dipping.”
Oak Brook Police Chief James Kruger, president of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police and the DuPage County Chiefs of Police Association, noted the statewide group has been working on the bill for years with state Rep. Grant Werhli and state Sen. Mike Connelly, both Naperville Republicans.
He noted it was “the only public safety entity to support the legislation,” which would prevent retired cops from returning to work and being eligible for a second police pension or one through the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund.
Instead, police retirees on the public payroll will enroll in a 401(k)-style plan if Gov. Bruce Rauner signs the bill.
The issue arose when Robert Marshall retired from a 28-year career with the Naperville Police Department and took a job as the assistant city manager, where he became eligible for a second, IMRF pension. He later became the police chief while receiving his police pension and participating in IMRF.
Double-dipping “implies a police officer is receiving two pensions from the same source,” Kruger said. Still, he said, the association views the measure as a “a template that should be put in place for other public employees in Illinois as well.”
The City of Chicago continues to pay an average of more than one police misconduct settlement every other day, according to 2016 data analyzed by The Chicago Reporter.
The city paid nearly $32 million in 2016 for 187 misconduct lawsuits and spent $20 million more on outside lawyers to litigate the cases, slightly more than in the previous year and well above what the city budgeted for these settlements.
The Reporter has added the cases, as well as those paid in 2011, to its Settling for Misconduct database, which now contains information on 943 misconduct lawsuits. Launched last June and updated today, the database is an effort to bring transparency and accountability to how the city spends money on police settlements. In a report earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice criticized the city for failing to make the settlements transparent and recognized the Reporter’s database as an important source of information about the cases. The database allows people to search lawsuits against police officers based on badge numbers, officers’ names, neighborhoods and settlement amounts.
Overall, Chicago spent more than $280 million on misconduct lawsuits from 2011 to 2016, plus another $91 million for outside lawyers to help defend police officers in those suits. The city routinely fails to budget enough money for settlements, forcing the City Council to borrow to pay them and adding significantly to taxpayers’ burden.
Other findings from the 2016 settlements:
· More than 90 percent of the cases ended in a settlement, which means the city and police officer do not admit guilt or liability.
· About two-thirds of the cases stemmed from incidents in majority black census tracts.
Read the full story. Database reporter Jonah Newman is available for phone and in-person interviews. Please let me know if you wish to schedule an interview.
Sincerely,
Susan Smith Richardson
Editor & Publisher, The Chicago Reporter
“We can’t keep spending $30 million and up a year and hundreds of millions of dollars over several years for lawsuits related to the police department,” said Lori Lightfoot, president of the Chicago Police Board and chair of the mayor’s task force on police accountability. “That’s an untenable state of affairs.” […]
Police shootings, not surprisingly, are among the most costly cases. The city paid more than $12 million last year for 14 police shootings, seven of them fatal. In an additional 31 cases, officers allegedly drew their guns and pointed them at people, including, in some cases, children.
Thanks @KennedyforIL for speaking to us today. Despite it being finals week, 60 people came to hear Chris. Great way to end the year. pic.twitter.com/omONeRJ9yL
Question: I’m a Catholic as well… I wanted to know how you reconciled being a Democrat and the abortion thing and also being Catholic and being such a public figure while being Catholic?
Kennedy: Um, on the abortion thing, I think you know we have laws in our country and the laws are the laws. And if if, and I think we ought to protect them. I’m a big believer in science and medicine and I think a relationship should be between a woman and her doctor. I’ve had four kids, my, my wife’s OB, I was in all of those meetings, the woman never even looked at me. Never even looked at me. She was like, I was over there and she talked to her and those were her relationships. I learned a lot from that and I don’t think I have a role in all of that. And I don’t think I should tell other people what we should do either.
* J.B. Pritzker: At times, ‘your faith has to overcome maybe logic’: [Pritzker said he won’t] “analyze” Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s “morality.” But, referring to his budget battle with Democratic Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan that’s cost nonprofits and social programs dearly, points to Rauner, his potential opponent in the general election, and says, “I would say that the effect of his actions has caused so much devastation, and it’s hard for me to understand how he wakes up every day and says this is OK.”
* Ald. Ameya Pawar: ‘There’s always the opportunity for redemption’
Meanwhile, we wonder why Gov. Bruce Rauner, if he really wants to get a budget approved, hasn’t called the Legislature back into session.
Rod Blagojevich called umpteen special sessions. I think the GA was in session all but two or three months from November of 2006 through May of 2009. It was a brutal, exhausting time. And the specials accomplished nothing except to give the House Democrats a platform to launch public criticisms of the governor.
They don’t really work as intended, and can backfire badly on the governor. Legislators have direct, face-to-face access to Statehouse reporters when they’re in Springfield, not so much when they’re home in their districts.
And members will get a ton more heat from their constituents back home about this impasse than they ever will in Springfield, where lobbyists who oppose a deal can get to them much more easily.
George Ryan called some successful specials, but he’d already cut the deals before doing so.
Special sessions also cost money because of required per diem payments. If the House and Senate bring themselves back voluntarily, there are no such payments.
* On the other hand, rank and file members from both parties can’t talk to each other as easily when they’re not in Springfield. And, frankly, barring an impending agreement between Speaker Madigan and Gov. Rauner (Ha!), that’s probably the only way this’ll get done unless the Senate gets its act together again.
* During yesterday’s House committee hearing, Rep. La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago) called for a recall of Gov. Rauner for putting term limits and a property tax freeze ahead of a budget, and then said this…
He should know that people on the West Side have been living on their concrete and living in the dirt for a very long time. And now he wants them to die.
Illinois’ “political gridlock” prompted two major credit rating agencies to downgrade the state’s credit rating — two levels above “junk” status — but that one-two punch could motivate politicians to end the messy budget impasse. […]
Civic Federation President Laurence Msall said Thursday’s downgrades by Moody’s and S&P will have an “enormous impact on the state financially” that should light a fire under Rauner and Democratic legislative leaders.
“This downgrade is going to cause tens of millions of dollars in additional borrowing costs that could have been used to help our most vulnerable citizens and, instead, will just evaporate into higher debt service costs,” Msall said.
“There’s no denying the financial and reputational wreckage caused by the State of Illinois not having a budget. It is well beyond the time for our elected officials to resolve their differences and allow the state to move forward. If the Legislature and the governor needed yet another wake-up call as to how dangerous the situation has gotten in Illinois, they now have it.” […]
Rauner’s office on Thursday said the governor had already warned the “super majority” about a pending downgrade before legislators left Springfield without a budget.
“This report underscores the need for real structural changes to repair the years of unbalanced budgets and deficit spending by the majority party on Illinois’ finances,” Rauner spokeswoman Catherine Kelly said in a statement. “Every rank-and-file Democrat who blindly followed the Speaker down this path is directly responsible for the downgrade.”
* We really need a trustworthy third party to analyze SB 1, the education funding reform bill. Maybe the Civic Federation. Somebody just needs to tell us mere mortals what this bill will actually do. Heck, I’d even accept a BGA analysis right now…
This week, Republicans in Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration said plans from the state’s General Assembly can hurt Rock Island County schools to benefit Chicago Public Schools.
This is an ongoing battle in Illinois, one that Rauner has waged the past few years. Illinois Secretary of Education Beth Purvis said it was “as complex a formula as you’ll see.”
Authors of various bills now allow $250 million in an additional benefit to the Chicago district, Purvis said. […]
The governor’s figures show that United Township could get $93,573.12 less if a last-minute budget amendment is included in the final legislation. […]
The Illinois Senate Democratic Caucus disputed the analysis produced by the state Board of Education. The Democratic analysis maintains that United Township would not lose funds but would, in fact, gain $1 million.
* Sen. Manar’s response was harsh, but the paper’s online version appears to have been changed from the original…
Dr. Purvis should stop lyin' & @qctimes printed her lies. There's no $250m additional CPS benefit in #SB1 & revisionist history isn't cool. pic.twitter.com/GZJo6xoYAH
“The state as a result is shrinking, but it’s becoming wealthier at the same time. We got smaller last year, but our average income went up like 10 percent. [Gov. Rauner] is creating an environment, only the rich survive. It’s like gentrification in the city, but it’s statewide. We’re pushing the poor and the disabled, the very people that benefit from agencies like DCFS, out of our state, and I think it’s part of a larger plot.”
Using U.S. Census data, Pew found total inflation-adjusted personal income in Illinois grew an average of just 0.8 percent between fourth-quarter 2007 and fourth-quarter 2016. Illinois gained a bit in the latest year, up 1 percent, but the institute emphasizes that over the decade as a whole, Illinois was tied for dead last with Nevada, with total income growth rising only half as fast as in the nation as a whole.
Much of the slow gain in personal income is due to population loss, as reported here and elsewhere.
* And here we have per capita income growth from the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis…
In 2016, Illinois had a per capita personal income (PCPI) of $52,098. This PCPI ranked 14th in the United States and was 105 percent of the national average, $49,571. The 2016 PCPI reflected an increase of 3.4 percent from 2015. The 2015-2016 national change was 2.9 percent.
Yesterday, on day 708 without a budget, Bruce Rauner toured the state to promote his teardown agenda while lawmakers held a hearing with victims of his budget crisis. Instead of showing up, Rauner had the audacity to call those victims ‘props’ and the hearing a ‘sham’ as he spent another day not working on a balanced budget.
News reports told the real story of people who’ve been hurt by Rauner’s crisis:
The message came from people with drug addiction, domestic violence counselors, and parents of disabled children — like Kathy Hansen of Elmhurst.
“We are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and family members who can’t sleep at night because the state has virtually abandoned our loved ones,” Hansen said.
Joyce Coffee, who directs Family Rescue, a South Side organization that helps victims of domestic violence, said her not-for-profit had spent its reserves and was drawing on a line of credit to keep its doors open in the midst of the two-year budget stalemate.
“We have chosen deliberately to remain in operation because the alternative is that there would be few if any services for those thousands of victims,” Coffee said. “We are saying to you that we are subsidizing the lack of decision-making at the state level. We can no longer afford to do that.” […]
“Gov. Rauner, the consequences of indecision and failure to negotiate are not mere talking points,” said Ines Kultleska, CEO at Guardian Angel in Joliet, another domestic violence services provider. “They are leaving scars on the already most vulnerable and harmed amongst us.”
It’s clear that these are real people suffering from a manufactured crisis — not props.
“Bruce Rauner calls the victims of his budget crisis ‘props’ and says listening to them is a ‘sham.’ That says all you need to know about our failed governor and his priorities,” said Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh. “These are real people in real pain, but Rauner can’t be bothered to listen. Bruce Rauner has no regard for the damage he is causing and is entirely unwilling to do his job for the state.”
I get what they’re saying here, but the House Democrats weren’t working on a budget yesterday. Instead, they were very clearly working on their messaging. Rauner was, too, of course. But this wasn’t some high road by the Democrats. It was pure politics. They were only trying to act superior, because if they truly and deeply cared they would’ve actually done something by now, with or without Rauner.
Long way to go to match Gov. Rauner’s $70 million.
* From the ILGOP…
“Billionaire J.B. Pritzker felt the need to scam city schoolchildren and homeowners out of $230,000, but apparently has $14 million to give to his own campaign. He’s just another Chicago insider who works the system to benefit himself at our expense.” - Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Steven Yaffe
Moments ago, billionaire Democrat candidate for governor J.B. Pritzker deposited another $7 million into his campaign coffers, bringing his total personal contributions to his campaign to $14 million.
Pritzker’s $14 million contribution to his campaign comes after the Chicago Sun-Times revealed his property tax scam that shortchanged Chicago schoolchildren and homeowners by over $230,000.
Why would Pritzker spend millions of his inherited fortune on his campaign?
Because he’s just another Chicago insider who works the system to benefit himself at our expense.
