Progress Illinois

Take a look at this headline from today's Daily Herald:

Reading that, you might guess that the west suburban town of about 150,000 passed a referendum opposing an income tax increase in Illinois.  Or perhaps someone polled Naperville residents' on the various tax hike proposals being discussed at the state level.  Well, not exactly:

Naperville's business community on Thursday had a chance to voice its concerns about jobs, taxes and the economy directly to Gov. Pat Quinn. [...]

Some [Naperville Chamber of Commerce] members said Thursday an income tax increase would be detrimental to the business community.

John Schmitt, president and CEO of the chamber, said he was not prepared to comment specifically on Quinn's income tax proposal but that the chamber doesn't typically support tax increases. But he was glad the business community had a chance to share its concerns and called the visit productive.

Last we checked, the Naperville Chamber doesn't represent the entire town ...

Combing through the Illinois political coverage today, we found ourselves frustrated by a handful of things.  Here's a rundown:

Stantis on early prisoner release

Tribune political cartoonist Scott Stantis published a brutal cartoon about the state's early prisoner release plan this morning (you can view it here).  It depicts a pack of snarling dogs leading a group of ominous-looking animals -- snakes, bats, etc. -- out of a prison cell. On a stool next to the door, a quivering piece of jello with the label "Quinn for Illinois" says "I'm pretty sure this will work ... unless it doesn't."

Where to begin ...

On the merits, the cartoon is wildly sensationalistic. The 1,000 inmates being released (62 this week) are nonviolent offenders serving sentences less than one year long. These are not hardened criminals -- many are likely in for drug offenses -- and they were scheduled for release anyway.

And why are the animals so darkly colored? "Without knowing the race of the prisoners being released," quips The Beachwood Reporter's Steve Rhodes, "it's never a good idea to depict criminals as dark animals when the incarcerated are disproportionately people of color." Indeed.

Sweeny on Jim Ryan

Next up is the latest column from the Rockford Register Star's Chuck Sweeny, which runs down Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Ryan's "proposals to return the state to solvency."

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It was a big day for health care on Capitol Hill yesterday. The leadership of the U.S. House officially unveiled its health care package and the Congressional Budget Office offered its preliminary score of the measure. To mark the occasion, Fox Chicago whipped up a quick report on the developments. Unfortunately, it was a pretty partisan presentation. Watch it:

Let's start with the CBO's score of the bill, which FOX says "will cost $1 trillion over 10 years." According to the budget wonks in DC, the legislation’s coverage cost will be closer to $894 billion over that stretch. It is also projected to cut the deficit by more than $100 billion during that period and cover 96 percent of legal residents by 2019, providing comprehensive insurance to more people at a cost equal to the Senate bill. In other words, it meets all of the president's main criteria.

How does it achieve those goals?

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While making the rounds on FOX's morning news shows, former Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott appeared on Good Day Chicago this morning to give his two cents on health care reform. We watch the show regularly and have seen the often under-informed anchor Jan Jeffcoat let her guests get away with some tall tales. Unfortunately, today was no different. Instead of calling Lott -- who's now a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry -- on his false claim that health care reform will cut Medicare benefits for senior citizens, Jeffcoat reaffirmed it. Watch:

JAN: You mentioned that there will be cuts in Medicare and for the elderly. So are we taking away health care from one group to fulfill another group?

LOTT: That's what this bill and other bills would do. And I just don't think fundamentally that it's fair or that it will happen. It does in effect tell doctors that they're not going to get increases based on inflation. It tells seniors that you're not going to have some of the coverage that you might have had. They say they are going to do it by eliminate waste and fraud in Medicare. Well goodness gracious, if that were something easy or could be done, why haven't we done it sooner? I do think that there's a little bit of a mentality ... that we're going to be taking from older generations and passing it on to future generations. I don't think it's fair and that's one of the problems that they have.

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Even as it has acknowledged that the state faces monstrous debts, the Daily Herald editorial board has not hidden its skepticism about raising income tax rates in Illinois.  What's frustrating about their editorial yesterday, however, is the way in which they discount the motives of progressives who support such a policy.

In the piece, the paper targeted members of the Responsible Budget Coalition for acting out of "self-interest" and lawmakers calling for new revenue for failing to identify programs unworthy of state funding:

AFSCME Council 31, which Bayer heads, is among the 90 special interest groups that make up the coalition. Others include Arts Alliance Illinois, Chicago Jobs Council, Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans, Protestants for the Common Good, the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, the Legislative Education Network of DuPage and many more. All, no doubt, serve a positive societal function. Many provide critical services. But some, we're willing to venture, bring little more than self-interest to the debate.

The hard fact is that the state's special interests do not hold the answer to our budget woes. On that point, we must count on our political leaders to define terms that are clear and unequivocal. And they must realize that until they provide those, no other response, whether for cuts or for tax increases, will be acceptable. [Emphasis added]

Let's take this one by one, shall we? First, it's pretty bizarre to describe Responsible Budget Coalition members as "special interests." It's true that a few key unions are members of the group, but those organizations exist to advocate for thousands upon thousands of workers and their families (both inside and outside of their ranks) who can't do so individually. Suggesting that they are on par with corporations, which use their resources and government contacts to protect or increase profit margins, obscures the primary mission of the labor movement.

More to the point, the large majority of the Coalition members have no clout at all.

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Over the weekend, the Sun-Times continued its investigative series on the state pension system. In the latest installments, the paper rolled out more examples of clout-heavy bureaucrats and pols who have retired from one job only to land another covered under a separate pension plan. Additionally, five dozen pensioners are collecting payments based on salaries from labor unions, lobbying groups, and other non-governmental organizations. While their reporting should certainly spur debate about how to close certain loopholes in the system, the Sun-Times leaves out important context, failing to point out yet again that rank-and-file workers -- the majority who pay into the pension funds --  aren't reaping anywhere near these sorts of rewards.

Yesterday, columnist Mark Brown attempted to imagine some potential legislative reforms that could bring the pension payouts "under control." Some of his suggestions deserve consideration. Raising the retirement age five years to 55, which is in line with most private sector jobs, could save the state money in the long-run. He also proposes taxing any retirement income over $75,000, which would "capture some of the excessive public pension income -- as well as more well-to-do private sector retiree benefits." Lawmakers could then use the resulting revenue to pay down the state's hefty and long-ignored pension obligations.

But one of Brown's ideas is notably off-base. "Next, we could get rid of the automatic 3 percent annual increases for government retirees," he suggests, "and replace it with a capped, inflation-based cost-of-living factor." In its original primer on the state pension system, the Sun-Times reporters laid the groundwork for this proposal:

It's rare for private pension plans to provide automatic raises. Social Security payments began automatically going up each year in 1975, but that's based on the actual cost of living, which has usually been less than 3 percent. And those automatic increases now face the possibility of being suspended for two years.

But the paper's suggestion that the state pension system offers more generous annual increases than Social Security is just plain false. 

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Kudos to the Sun-Times for their headline on today's article previewing Mayor Daley's public budget hearing tonight: "A Meter Culpa From The Mayor."  Heh.

But then come these passages from Fran Spielman's actual article:

With a $520 million shortfall that can only be filled by tax increases and spending cuts, three nights of public hearings on Daley's preliminary 2010 budget are expected to turn into giant gripe sessions before City Hall lowers the boom. [...]

Even after wringing concessions from organized labor and drying up a "rainy day" fund created by the parking meter deal, Chicago has a $520 million budget shortfall in 2010.

With no obvious untapped sources of revenue, Civic Federation President Laurence Msall has warned that city government will be "forced to re-invent itself in the way it delivers services and eliminates services not critical." [Emphasis added]

By asserting that tax increases and spending cuts are the sole avenues available to close next year's budget deficit, Spielman reinforces the myth that Mayor Daley's overgrown tax increment financing (TIF) system simply can't be used to relieve pressure on the city's operating budget.  It's a myth the mayor has worked hard to erect and preserve.  Indeed, any mention of dipping into his TIF piggy bank is met with red-faced derision. 

But as we laid out earlier this summer, there are several avenues available to Chicago aldermen to free up TIF funds for operating expenses.  Here's the short version:

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This lede from the AP -- in their article on July foreclosure filings in Illinois -- is just terrible:

A new law in Illinois that aimed to help give homeowners facing foreclosure more time apparently led to a spike in problems during July, according to data released today by RealtyTrac.

"Led to a spike in problems" leaves the impression that the Homeowner Protection Act had unintended consequences which ultimately exacerbated the foreclosure crisis.  The takeaway is that state legislators and Gov. Quinn did something wrong by approving this legislation. But that's just not the case.

As we noted yesterday, the law did exactly what it was supposed to do: bought struggling homeowners some time while federal policymakers debated how best to help stem the spread of foreclosures.  The problem is that the programs in place at the national level are underperforming and Congress is yet to push for more aggressive measures.

Here again is the Woodstock Institute's Geoff Smith, as quoted in yesterday's Tribune article:

"The 90-day window is good but only good if you can help the borrower get into a better loan and theoretically that would be through the [federal loan modification] program," said Geoff Smith, Woodstock's vice president. The grace period "seems to have achieved its goal of delaying the foreclosure process. What happens next is where the big question mark is. Are those people whose foreclosure was delayed, are they now getting the help they need?"

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The August recess is in full swing. Here's the latest health care news:

More Hedging On The Public Option

The big news nationally is that the White House hinted again yesterday at a willingness to drop a public insurance option from the health care reform packages if it means ultimately passing a bill. While progressives activists have pushed hard for a robust government-run program to compete with private insurers,  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told CNN that a public option was “not the essential element” for reform. This isn't the first time the Obama administration has hedged on this point, but at this stage in the negotiations, it should send a strong signal to moderate and liberal Democrats where the president currently stands.

In its place, Senate Democrats will likely turn to non-profit cooperatives, an alternative already favored by the Gang of Six senators on the Finance Committee. Ezra Klein's June interview with Sen. Kent Conrad is a good place to get caught up on the specifics. The New York Times' briefly explains the idea here:

The co-op, modeled after rural electric and agricultural cooperatives in Mr. Conrad’s home state, would offer insurance through a nonprofit, nongovernmental consumer entity run by its members. Mr. Axelrod said one downside of a co-op, from Mr. Obama’s point of view, was that it might be unable to “scale up in such a way that would create a robust” competitor to private insurers.

Will that concession go far enough to win the support of moderate Democrats who remain on the fence? None of Illinois' still undecided lawmakers -- including Reps. Debbie Halvorson, Bill Foster, and Melissa Bean -- have explicitly identified the public option as the major problem with the bills working through Congress. However, if they felt the inclusion of a government-run plan left them vulnerable to overblown conservative attacks about expanding government, co-ops could give them some leeway while preserving some choice on the private market. Of course, the full House would still face a vote on a bill that includes the public option; it would likely be gutted in the Senate version, where moderate votes are really needed, and then negotiations would begin over specifics in conference committee. And the entire package could crumble if progressives in the House revolt, like Rep. Jan Schakowsky and her colleagues vowed to do last month. Stay tuned. Continue reading »

Earlier this week, we highlighted a segment from Sean Hannity's nightly Fox News program that spent over six minutes smearing State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.  What we found perplexing about the piece wasn't that it included numerous distortions and omissions -- that's par for the course, after all -- but rather that Tribune political reporter Rick Pearson had submitted to such a lengthy interview with Hannity.  How could he "possibly be confident the resulting report will be fair and accurate?" we asked. 

Well, it turns out that Pearson didn't actually know his analysis was going to end up on Hannity's show.  To the contrary, he taped the interview under the impression it would be used as part of a straight news report on the U.S. Senate race -- one that examined both Giannoulias and GOP candidate Mark Kirk. He only later found out that he would be appearing as part of a Hannity hit-job on Giannoulias and that his comments regarding Kirk would be left out entirely.

On Steve Cochran's WGN Radio show yesterday evening, Pearson shared his thoughts about the segment, saying that he felt "hijacked" by Hannity because his presence in the report had been used to "lend them credibility." "[I]t's almost like an identity theft kind of thing in a way," Pearson added, "because all I have is my credibility.  And I know that show doesn't have any."  Listen:

Internal mp3

Pearson's experience is a good lesson for reporters as the campaign season ramps up: Before you submit to a national news interview, be sure you know who is ultimately going to be slicing and dicing your words.

An abridged transcript of the Pearson interview appears below:

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