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The Daily Herald has a piece today about the split between House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President Emil Jones. The hook is the rate freeze, but here’s some other stuff the two couldn’t agree one.
There was no agreement on whether to let counties impose cigarette taxes of up to $2 a pack, something DuPage County pushed in hopes of averting budget cuts and layoffs.
Nor could they find agreement to override Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s veto of added consumer protections for mobile home residents in negotiating leases for the land their homes sit upon, protections designed to help residents of an Elgin mobile home park.
However, also left unfinished was how to fund a nearly 15.6 percent increase to lawmakers’ paychecks that the Senate previously approved. […]
But it is the prospect of higher power bills and what, if anything, should be done that has political leaders at odds.
I didn’t have a weekly column this week because of last week’s vacation, but the previous column, which I don’t think I linked to and which was written after the first week of veto session, was about this split.
Jones has long believed that House Speaker Michael Madigan doesn’t show him enough respect and that Democratic Party of Illinois chairman Michael Madigan does not adequately represent the liberal interests of their party. Jones’ new veto-proof majority has given him some major bragging rights, so the proper respect will be demanded. Since the election, grumbling about the state party’s failure to get involved in any races other than Madigan’s Illinois House contests has also been loud. For instance, while the state Republican Party was sending out mailers and doing media work on behalf of congressional candidates, Madigan’s only focus was maintaining his own majority. Madigan said last week that none of the campaigns asked for the party’s help, but a Jones partisan scoffed at the excuse. […]
The governor’s office claims that Blagojevich phoned Madigan twice last week to talk to him about the minimum-wage bill but that the speaker didn’t return either call. Madigan’s press secretary said he wasn’t aware of any calls from the governor’s office. I asked whether he would check, just to make sure, but he declined, saying that he would know about something as important as calls from the governor.
The governor’s press office then tracked down the record of one of the calls and reported back that Blagojevich tried to call Madigan at 2:51 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 14. The speaker’s spokesman stuck by his claim, however.
Maybe Dr. Phil can conduct a relationship intervention. It may be the Democrats’ only hope of avoiding a massive implosion after their great “victory.â€
Since then, Madigan and his people have tried to tone down the rhetoric, and so has the governor. But Jones has carried on.
posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 10:26 am
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Sounds like Madigan might need to get out of the way. I wan’t a fan of Jones until now. For now I’ll just say mix it up President Jones. Mix it up!!!
Comment by Levois Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 10:43 am
The Republicans can sit back and enjoy this intraparty fight between ultra-liberal Taxes on Everybody But the Rich Emil and I Want my Daughter to be Governor in 2010 Madigan, with Blago cheeping weakly on the sidelines.
Another example of be careful what you wish for, of course. The Dems wanted a Republican rout and the got it. Did they really think it was going to be smooth sailing on out.
Comment by Cassandra Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:38 am
Great ? by Rep Bost to the Speaker during session on Wednesday. He noted the Speaker recoginized Sec of State White as being in the Chambers and Comptroller Hynes when he entered the Chamber but Mr Speaker I wonder why you didn’t introduce the President of the Senate ?
Was that just an oversite - We think not !!!!
Comment by sideliner Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 12:25 pm
How about having Madigan and Jones settle dispute with a log-rolling contest? (I was going to add placing the log above a tank filled with piranha, but then I realized I would get citicized by animal-rights activists for advocating something that would give those poor little fishies indigestion!)
Comment by fedup dem Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 12:42 pm
Instead of gloating over the democrat’s feud, the republicans should try to learn a lesson or two. Come together for the election and fight over the spoils later. This is just another example of why the GOP is irrelevant in this state.
Comment by Garp Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 1:14 pm
Emil needs to recuse himself from the electricity rate hike issue. He’s too in bed with ComEd to be rational about it. Just take your millions form them and run, Emil.
Comment by Disgusted Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 2:06 pm
I agree with Disgusted–I mean didn’t Frank Clark of Excelon host a Pres. Jones fundraiser this summer at his HOME? How can Emil weigh in objectively in this matter?
One reason the utilities are raking in so much dough is they don’t fix the aging infrastructure that makes up their systems. When the rate increase passes,(you know it will) there should be an ammendment that requires the utilities to replace their ancient systems on a timetable and procure a decent % of elecrical power from renewable sources.
Comment by Loop Lady Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 3:30 pm
Lisa Madigan has been trying to negotiate with the Illinois Hospital Association (which contributed heavily to Blago’s campaign) on her proposed charity care mandate (although I think her initial aim of 8% was high knowing there would be negotiations on that, and so far, I see the greedy cheapskates from Provena going to court to appeal a tax ruling when they only provided less than 1% in charity care (see the ruling on the web for more info on that case).
Next, we hear that Rod is NOT going to be working with Madigan’s team on the charity care issue, but instead, he wants to get into it on his own (and like he’s not going to favor his contributors over at the IHA, right?).
So, in light of that fact, how closely do you think that ANY of the Madigans are going to be working with Rod on anything? I hope they turn him into a governor who has to beg and whine for their attention, because I’ll tell you…Lisa Madigan, as the state’s top attorney, is going to be representing Illinois in this hospital ruling issue that was just appealed by the hospital that lost its property tax exemption.
Comment by Angie Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 4:35 pm
Let Emil have his super majority we’ll see how everyone likes it after the next election.
I’ll take the little redhead almost everytime in this battle. I’d rather see a leader overly supporting consumers than one who is in bed with a regulated entity who needs his help to support their bloated bottom line.
Comment by aidanquinn Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 4:41 pm
I agree that if the rate increases become effective, legislation should be passed that requires the state utilities to make binding commitments to buy a certain percentage of renewable energy. The Governor’s “pretty please” plan is a joke. And it’s also sickening to see Sen. Jones constantly shilling for his pal at ComEd. This whole utility restructuring deal turned out to be a real mess and consumers will end up getting fleeced. Thank you legislators for buying into the electricity competition crapola.
Comment by buy renewable energy Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 7:56 pm
Let’s get real; there is no procedure or mechanism that will ever allow real competition in this area of power generation, due to the infrastructure. it’s not like a rival company can comeinto Illinois and string up their own lines independent of the utils that are here now. All you got with the new system were paper power companies essentially trading futures in Enron-like market manipulations. Not one new plant got built from this arrangement. Old plants got a new sign on the front door, is all. Every cent of profit went, not to improving the system in any way, but into bigger executive salaries and stockholder dividends.
What we have here are defacto monopolies. Market forces are never going to fix this situation because the playing field cannot be made level. If I had my druthers, all the power utilities would be government-owned, but that’s a discussion for another day and place. We’re talking about working with what we’ve got.
Let us make the best of that. Give them a capped annual percentage amount of increase, something the majority of citizens can afford, tied to concrete goals and timetables. That is, they can milk the market but MUST sink a certain amount of profits back into the system: upgrading infrastructure with the more efficient long-distance transmission lines, for example. More and better emissions controls on the coal and gas fired plants. Decommission and/or rebuild of the oldest plants that were grandfathered in with less stringent air quality rules. A deep and serious commitment to next-generation safe fission plants to replace our aging ones, with a date set for groundbreaking.
I think that’s a fair trade for what amounts to a license to print your own money, with natural barriers to any competitors. This way at least when rates go up, we the users of the power are getting something back for it, some permanent improvements. More reliability, cleaner air, more efficiency, better stewardship. Nowhere does Adam Smith promise we get that using only market forces. Use market forces and unfettered capitalism where the conditions are right. Power utilities are not that place.
Emil is not helping with any of this by just caving to the utilities. If he’d get over himself for ten minutes and collaborate with Madigan on this, we could make this kind of comprehensive fix to what everyone agrees is a broken system.
Or they can all jerk us around for another 4 years….
Comment by Gregor Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:15 pm