Progress Illinois

A few electoral updates ...

Cook County Board President
The Sun-Times Michael Sneed raised eyebrows this week when she published a rumor that Mayor Daley might support Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th Ward) over Todd Stroger in next year's Democratic primary for Cook County board president.  WBEZ has the audio of Daley's response to Sneed's column: "I don't know where you get that. ... I haven't said anything at it. ... No one's asked me about the president of the county board."

WBEZ further notes that Congressman Danny Davis appears increasingly serious about running for the seat and links to a website for his soon-to-be-formed exploratory committee.  It's worth a gander.  

Attorney General
Republican Joe Birkett announced today -- with a slew of social media features -- that he plans to take a second stab at the state attorney general post, after losing to Lisa Madigan in 2002. While Madigan is expected to run for either governor or U.S. Senate, there is a chance she could stay put and run for reelection.  Birkett told the Daily Herald that he'll run regardless of what Madigan chooses to do.  

IL-14
Rep. Bill Foster has not one, but two Republicans now vying to unseat him.  Jeff Danklefsen -- "just a regular guy" from Geneva -- declared his candidacy this week.  He works for a property management firm and has no prior political experience.  Several weeks ago, Ethan Hastert, the son of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, announced his intention to run for the seat.

Comptroller
Democratic Raja Krishnamoorthi continues to raise money in his tentative bid for comptroller, which assumes incumbent Dan Hynes will run for higher office next year.  In a press release yesterday, his exploratory committee announced that he had so far brought in $390,000 in contributions.  “The unprecedented financial support we’ve received during these tough economic times demonstrates a hunger in Illinois for candidates who believe public service is an opportunity to help others, not merely a friends and family plan,” Krishnamoorthi said.  He is a former deputy state treasurer and served as Barack Obama's issues director during his 2000 congressional bid and 2004 Senate campaign.

Below are our daily picks from the Illinois blogosphere and media at large:

Charters Not Only Way To Fix Chicago Schools
The Sun-Times editorial board calls the much-hyped education report by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago "an overly simplistic analysis of test data."

Reaping What They Sow
The credit card industry is raising rates and limiting lending in anticipation of new federal regulations, and the Washington Independent's Mike Lillis reminds Rep. Luis Gutierrez and congressional Democrats that they have nobody to blame but themselves.

City Payments
Want to know who does business with the City of Chicago? Check out CityPayments, a new database of all vendors, contracts, and payments maintained by the Department of Procurement Services.

To receive our “Around The Horn” update in your inbox every afternoon—along with links to our top stories and the breaking news of the day—sign up for the Progress Illinois Extra.  You can also learn what we're reading via our Twitter feed.

It's tough to find good news in Illinois these days, but here's something satisfying to take into the holiday weekend. The Chi-Town Daily News' Alex Parker reports that the Chicago Department of Public Health has cleaned up the billing problems that almost resulted in the closure of several city-run mental health centers earlier this spring.

As you may remember from Parker's big report in April and our subsequent coverage, a new $16 million billing system implemented by the city last year was so flawed that patient mental health bills weren’t submitted to the state for six months in 2008. The computer problem led to a loss of more than $1 million in state funding and threatened to close down four clinics on the city's South Side. While the facilities were eventually spared by stimulus funds, the system was not fixed right away. But Department of Human Services spokesperson Tom Green says the city is now submitting claims "on a routine basis now." More from Parker:

It is unclear when the city’s billing glitch was fixed, or if it is billing for 100 percent of its services.

“We are pleased that everything is in sync again, as it should be,” says CDPH spokesman Tim Hadac. “We look forward to continuing to (use) every dollar that comes in as wisely as we can to serve Chicagoans of limited means who struggle with mental illness.”

When we talked with Hadac over email this spring, he told us that the billing data had started to flow. He also noted that state funding will return to proper levels in approximately 18 months, which is 15 months from now. A costly mistake, but at least it's been sorted out.

There are a lot of blind spots in the case against climate change legislation regularly made by deficit hawks like GOP Reps. Peter Roskam and John Shimkus. For one, the cost to households of enacting a cap-and-trade system won't be nearly as high as Republicans suggest. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the average household would be asked to pay an additional $175 per year by 2020. A complex regression run by FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver suggests that the average Illinois family would dish out slightly more  -- $192 per year -- than the national rate (while low-income households would actually save $40 dollars per year). Those are significant extra expenses, but you'd be hard pressed to find any rational person who considers this extra cost an "assault on democracy and freedom."

Opponents also rarely consider what Rep. Mike Quigley calls "the cost of inaction." Demand will rise when non-renewable energy sources dry up. Combine that with the inevitable human and financial costs of environmental destruction, and taxpayers will fork over much more in the long run if the nation fails to make a strong investment in renewable energy and cap carbon emissions now.

Environment Illinois tried to quantify that impact in a report released today titled "The High Cost of Fossil Fuels." According to their data, which is based on current and projected spending, Illinois will spend $1.074 trillion between 2010 and 2030 on oil, coal, and other forms of fossil fuel. If our current consumption habits aren't altered, that amounts to a $1,624 increase per person in combined fossil fuel costs in the year 2030.

Of course, fossil fuel use leads to what Environment Illinois' Citizen Outreach Director called Ryan Rastegar "the untold damages of global warming, mountaintop mining, oil spills, and pollution."

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Senate President John Cullerton appeared on WTTW's Chicago Tonight yesterday to discuss the ongoing budget standoff in Springfield.  While repeatedly declining to criticize House Speaker Michael Madigan throughout the segment, Cullerton directed most of his angst at Gov. Quinn, whom he described as "new to this" and suffering from a "credibility gap." 

Here's how Cullerton is framing his disagreement with Quinn:

- A tax increase is inevitable, Cullerton says, and will probably have to generate "somewhere around $3-$4 billion" in revenue.

- Because the General Assembly failed to pass a budget before the regular session deadline, they now need Republican votes on any tax increase.  He described the Democratic leadership as "courting" the GOP and "working with them," but also noted that the Republicans have "asked for a little more time."

- He disagrees with Quinn's veto of the bare bones budget yesterday, arguing that the package was crafted in a way that would allow Quinn to "keep the government going for a few weeks, maybe a month, at the request of the Republicans.  That's what they asked for so that they could then come around and support a tax increase."  He added: "We're asking him for one month, let the Republicans come in.  When they vote for a tax increase there doesn't have to be any of these cuts."

Cullerton's contention that there won't "have to be any of these cuts" once the GOP signs on to an income tax increase seems a bit unrealistic.  We don't know what the Republicans are going to demand in return for their support, but it probably won't be pretty. 

That's what's so frustrating about this whole scenario.  The House Democrats declined to pass an income tax increase during the regular session out of fear that it would be branded a "Democratic tax" and hurt them at the ballot box.  But the underlying fiscal realities aren't changing and the failure to act is already having dire consequences.  Before this over, those same cowardly House Dems may very well vote for a budget that both raises taxes and incorporates unpopular cuts or policies pushed by the Republicans.  As a result, they'll be on the record supporting a tax hike, but they'll also draw the ire of certain constituencies on the left once primary season rolls around.  Well played ...  

Below is the full video of the segment: Continue reading »

Today marks day two of Fiscal Year 2010 and, with no state budget in place, nonprofit agencies across the state are in turmoil. As we noted yesterday, Gov. Pat Quinn vetoed the dreaded "50 percent budget." And with no spending plan in place, neither Quinn nor Comptroller Dan Hynes are willing to go out on a limb and guarantee that agencies will eventually be reimbursed for the services they continue to provide.  That uncertainty has left many cash-strapped social service proiders with no choice but to begin issuing pink slips:

- The Occupational Development Center, a Bloomington program that provides job training for the developmentally disabled, was forced to end services this week.

- The Association for Individual Development in Aurora cut 80 jobs and "told 1,100 clients with developmental and mental health disabilities that they would lose services."

- Layoffs at the H Group, an addiction counseling center in West Frankfort, will result in 1,000 fewer people being served this year, according to estimates from administrators.

- More than a third of the 33 employees at Urbana's A Woman's Fund have been laid off.

- Thirty-one of the 210 staffers at the Mental Health Center of Champaign County were terminated yesterday.

- In the Chicago area, staff cuts went into effect at Between Friends, which means the organization will be able to provide counseling for 3,000 fewer domestic violence survivors this year.

- UPDATE: Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities, an agency that treats non-violent convicts with addiction problems, has laid off 50 workers and furloughed 150 other employees for two weeks.

As the Heartland Alliance pointed out on its blog yesterday, this first wave of cuts is just "the tip of the iceberg" as officials from every corner of the state grapple with their uncertain future.

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Showdown Over Tax Hike Set
By vetoing a 50 percent budget plan yesterday that the General Assembly had pushed through, Gov. Pat Quinn left the state operating without a budget and set the stage for another Springfield showdown. On July 14, lawmakers are scheduled to return to the state Capitol where they'll either take up an income tax increase or try to overide the governor's veto, which would cement severe cuts in human services.

Illinois Snags New Affordable Housing Money
Illinois is scheduled to pull in $95 million worth of federal stimulus money to spur affordable housing construction that has stalled because of the recession, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan announced yesterday.

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For an indication of how wide Cook County's foreclosure crisis has spread, look no further than the circuit court. That's where judges have been buried under a record increase in filings. Unfortunately, the trend hasn't slowed in 2009. During the first three months alone, the Woodstock Institute reports that 10,962 new cases were filed, marking a 41 percent increase over the same period last year.

Despite hiring more judges and clerks, the caseloads haven't gotten any more manageable. In an effort to plow through the backlog -- which stood at 46,854 earlier this year -- Cook County Circuit Court Chancery Division Presiding Judge Dorothy Kirie Kinnaird ordered a two-month reprieve on mortgage default calls, which are the initial court appearances a lender makes after a borrower has been unresponsive to foreclosure action. That moratorium begins today.

Kinnaird's order couldn't have come at a better time. For homeowners who signed onto adjustable-rate mortgages during peak spring months, their payments have recently reset. Coupled with rising unemployment, thousands more people are anticipated to file foreclosure this summer. Cook County Judge Lewis Nixon says he expects his caseload to grow to 300 a day, up from around 70 currently. But, as Action Now points out, that's going to require some persistence on the part of homeowners, who have largely declined to fight back in foreclosure proceedings. Of the 27,653 foreclosure default judgments in 2008, for example, a whopping 25,561 of the borrowers failed appear in court. The SouthtownStar explains:

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Below are our daily picks from the Illinois blogosphere and media at large:

Wind Power
Tribune reporter Michael Hawthorne argues in the newest issue of Illinois Issues that Illinois is at a turning point in its energy-producing future.

Inside A Toxic Tour
Mechanics' Sheila Burt takes a "Toxic Tour," founded by the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization as a way to educate the community about the looming toxic presence of several industries in their Chicago neighborhood.

On The Hook
In a new feature, the Reader's Ben Joravksy asks if Mayor Daley ever really believed the public wouldn’t have to pay for the Olympics. 

To receive our “Around The Horn” update in your inbox every afternoon—along with links to our top stories and the breaking news of the day—sign up for the Progress Illinois Extra.  You can also learn what we're reading via our Twitter feed.

Gov. Pat Quinn followed through on his promise to reject an unbalanced spending plan today, formally vetoing a portion of the state budget (SB1197) dealing with social services. He decided not to take action on the rest of the budget, however. Clout Street has Quinn's statement:

"The practical and only reality we have to face is that our state is in a massive deficit," Quinn said following his address. "We have to correct it. And that means getting revenue. That means asking the taxpayers to pay a higher income tax based on the ability to pay. That's not easy. That's a hard thing to do. But I think taxpayers understand that it's better to be honest about a deficit than to pretend it doesn't exist and sweep it under the rug."

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It's not the only crucial component of health care reform, but including a public option to compete with private insurance companies is an ingredient that progressives believe to be non-negotiable. To the delight of many who gathered in southwest suburban Summit last night for a health care forum, Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski went on the record in support of such a provision. Whether the type of public plan he prefers is robust enough to work is another question altogether. 

About 300 people turned out for the packed event, which featured eight speakers from organizations with a large stake in health reform, such as businesses, doctors, unions, nurses, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals. Rep. Lipinski wasted no time drawing a line in the sand, telling the 3rd Congressional District crowd that, in order to limit the cost of health care for individuals, small businesses, and the federal government, a public plan is a must.

But his support comes with a few caveats. Lipinski admits that employers may stop offering private insurance to workers if a government plan exists. "It all depends on how the public option is implemented," he said. And Lipinski prefers the "level-playing field option" championed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), in which the government-run plan would be granted no special advantages over private insurers, such as the ability to use Medicare's low rates or to access taxpayer subsidies.

This version of the public plan is a political compromise, to be sure. And it has its political advantages. Namely, it undercuts the argument made by the insurance industry and conservatives (like Rep. Peter Roskam) that any public plan would eventually make existing private coverage obsolete by stacking the deck too far in the government's favor.

But it's not ideal public policy.

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This spring, Attorney General Lisa Madigan flew to the nation's capital to testify before the House Financial Services Committee, where she asked Congress to grant state attorneys general the authority to challenge national banks for violating local consumer protection laws. While she did successfully negotiate an $8.7 billion settlement with Countrywide Financial after they engaged in deceptive mortgage lending practices, she pointed out that a bank's ability to move its state business to federally chartered subsidiaries -- thus preempting state law -- prevented her office from fully protecting Illinois citizens. Now, thanks to a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, Madigan will have a lot more power to do just that. The Washington Post explains:

The decision gives state attorneys general the ability to pursue in court banks that are alleged to have violated state laws such as those protecting consumers. Banking groups and their national regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, argued that that power is restricted to the federal regulator. [...]

[Justice Antonin] Scalia joining with the court's four liberal justices, argued that state authorities must have the power to pursue cases against companies operating within their borders so long as there is no federal law explicitly prohibiting it and they do so through the court system.

Why is this ruling important? The SCOTUS decision cements a state's right to enforce consumer protections within its own borders, a trend the banking and and mortgage lobbies have fought against for years. Combined with the Obama administration's executive memorandum requiring federal agency heads to prove there are "legitimate prerogatives" for preempting any existing state regulation, consumers can rest assured that no state statute will be ignored because lax regulators in Washington want to protect moneyed interests.

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It took a few months, but Illinois has finally accessed a seven-week extension of unemployment benefits made available under the federal stimulus package. Yesterday, Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law SB 1350, which modernizes Illinois’ unemployment lsystem and captures additional benefits under something called the Total Unemployment Rate Trigger (TUR). It also extends eligibility to those who leave their job voluntarily for extenuating personal or family reasons (i.e. sexual abuse, spousal relocation or sickness) and, starting in 2011, establishes a $15 allowance for all dependents of unemployment filers. Sen. Gary Forby (D-Benton), the bill's lead sponsor, put out this statement:

“This law has nearly unanimous support,” Forby said. “Given how heated things have been in Springfield lately, I’m glad all sides could come together and support this law.”

Under the system, laid-off workers who have exhausted their state benefits can now access 53 weeks of federally-funded support, 33 from the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program and 20 additional weeks courtesy of the newly-approved TUR program. The act takes effect immediately.

Things did not go well in Springfield last night:

- As expected, the House sent Gov. Pat Quinn a package of bills before leaving the capitol that only partially fund his proposed spending plans for community-based services in the next fiscal year.

- Quinn vowed to veto the package, which does not include an income tax increase and instead requires significant cuts.

- Senate President John Cullerton claims the spending plan sent to the governor’s desk would carry a $6.2 billion shortfall, while the governor puts the figure closer to $9.2 billion.

- Meanwhile, the Senate failed to approve a pension borrowing scheme to free up $2.2 billion for next year.  The Senate leader accused the governor of lobbying lawmakers behind the scene to vote against the plan, which he had earlier endorsed. Quinn denies the charge.

Quinn is expected to take "veto action" this afternoon and is scheduled to talk to reporters about the situation at 1:30 p.m.  What a mess.

Particularly frustrating is the fact that, amidst all the talk of short-term fixes and political risks, lawmakers are passing up an unprecedented opportunity to both address those immediate concerns and also reform the state's regressive tax structure and inequitable school funding formula. As the negotiations continue, it's a chance progressives hope they won't pass up.

A coalition of unions, human service groups, and lawmakers held a press conference in Springfield yesterday to push for substantive reforms.

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Looks like those 1,500 pink slips to Chicago city workers won't be necessary after all:

Labor leaders will join Mayor Daley this morning in announcing that they're finalizing a two-year package of cost-cutting concessions that would save the jobs of 1,504 city employees targeted for layoffs. [...]

"There's a deal in the works," [Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis] Gannon said this morning. "With 10.7 percent unemployment, it's unconscionable for labor leaders to stand by and allow 1,500 employees to lose their jobs and health care. There are still a lot of [union] organizations that have problems with it. But we're working toward" averting the need for layoffs.

The Sun-Times' Fran Spielman has more.  We'll post additional specifics after Daley and Gannon announce them.

UPDATE (11:45 a.m.): AFSCME Council 31 President Henry Bayer responds:

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