Progress Illinois

The Chicago City Council held its full monthly meeting yesterday.  We've got some of the highlights:

Budget Priorities Take A Beating

All eyes have been on Mayor Daley's 2010 spending plan as of late, which relies on $370 million from the city's asset-sale proceeds to help balance next year's $6.14 billion budget. Despite this windfall, the safety net is still going to take a hit.  During the public portion of yesterday's meeting, several social service providers testified in favor of restoring the cuts to substance abuse and mental health funding. As regular readers may recall, the city's 12 mental health clinics will lose an additional $3 million in state funding this year because of the Daley administration's own incompetence at implementing a new $16 million billing system.

In response, Ald. Joe Moore (49th Ward) voiced support for rescinding the cuts and blasted Daley's "property tax relief" gimmick -- a plan introduced yesterday to pull $35 million from a reserve fund created by the parking meter lease to refund some taxpayers between $50 and $100 on their bills. "What impact is that going to have on those homeowners lives? It's very negligible," Moore said. "I think you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck by helping the mentally ill lead productive lives through counseling and other support services."  Listen:

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Ald. Moore isn't the only one slamming Daley's meager property tax rebate.

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America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) kicked off its annual conference in Chicago this morning and health care reform is sure to be a major topic of discussion. Just over two weeks ago, AHIP CEO Karen Ignagni said her organization -- the nation's top health insurance lobby -- was "concerned" that the recently-passed House bill will increase health care costs for families and employers across the country and "significantly disrupt" coverage for millions more. This came after Ignagni's months of lip service to Democratic leaders about her support for their broad proposal.  The group even commissioned a study to back up its conclusions about the bill, but the findings were largely dismissed for shoddy math and effectively refuted by the Congressional Budget Office's analysis.

Today, eight small business owners affiliated with the Main Street Alliance showed up at the conference with a simple question for Ignagni: Why is AHIP attempting to maintain the status quo? After sending a letter Friday requesting a meeting, the entrepreneurs were not surprisingly rebuffed.  Instead, they appeared outside the conference, where they explained, one-by-one, how the exploding cost of health care premiums was making it difficult to operate profitably. Watch some excerpts:

Following the press event, the business owners took to the streets, joining hundreds of their friends and allies -- including numerous labor leaders and reform advocates -- in a protest across the street from the conference.

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Amid reports about Wal-Mart's renewed effort to move back into Chicago, editorial boards and local media figures resorted to a familiar refrain: that people in low-income communities should simply be grateful for any new jobs.  Ald. Howard Brookins Jr. (21st Ward) has also pushed the argument that Wal-Mart's poverty wages are perfectly sufficient, despite the fact that he is one of several aldermen who refused to take unpaid furlough days from his $110,000 (part-time) job, claiming at the time: "I can't afford it." The hypocrisy is staggering.  But don't hold your breath waiting for the local media call him out on it.

Just as the debate resumes over whether to allow Wal-Mart to expand in the city, the Grassroots Collaborative has released an analysis (PDF) of newspaper coverage during the thick of the historic big box living wage fight back in 2006.  They found that the coverage largely excluded the perspective of  people directly impacted by a potential Wal-Mart expansion: politicians and business leaders made up 75 percent of the 380 quotes identified in the study, while community groups and residents had only a 6 percent say.  More from the report:

The most frequent frames to characterize the Living Wage debate focused on its potential negative effects. Other common frames discussed the ordinance as a political power-play between city and labor leaders. These frames would leave readers with the impression that the living wage was an idea manufactured and pushed exclusively by union leaders, unsupported by or unimportant to ordinary working people and met with unified predictions of economic doom from the business community and city officials.

As we've pointed out before, the living wage fight isn't is about families' financial security and good public policy.

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Just one week after President Obama signed into law a measure that adds sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under hate crime statutes, gay rights advocates were back on Capitol Hill yesterday pushing for additional civil protections. Among them was Illinois' own Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who testified in favor of the recently reintroduced Employment Non-Discrimination Act (S. 1584), which would finally bar most workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

To the credit of state lawmakers, Illinois' own Human Rights Act was amended back in 2006 to include both sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under anti-discrimination laws. The fact that we are one of only 12 states to put such protections on the books underscores the need for a federal response, Madigan told the Senate's Education, Labor and Pension Committee. "Through the enactment of a statewide statute prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, Illinois has promoted tolerance, fundamental equality and the common humanity of all individuals in our state," Madigan said. "The benefits of such a message to the citizens of our state cannot be underestimated." Watch an excerpt from her testimony below:

Could this be the week that the Senate finally passes an unemployment benefits extension? Senate Majority Harry Reid (D-NV) thinks so.

At about 4 p.m. CST today, the Senate will take its second cloture vote on H.R. 3548, which would provide an extra 14 weeks of unemployment assistance (and 20 weeks for those in states with unemployment rates above 8.5 percent) to workers who have already exhausted their benefits. Should 60 senators approve the final language, Democrats will have to wait an additional 30 hours before a final vote can be called. That means the upper chamber could approve a final version late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. Reid expects them to do so:

After weeks of delays because of a fight with Republicans over amendments, Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, said he expects the Senate this week to approve an extra 14 weeks of unemployment aid for those who have exhausted their benefits. People out of work in states where the unemployment rate is more than 8.5 percent would get up to 20 weeks.

“We have a million people – one million people – who are eligible for this,” Mr. Reid said.

Two amendments will also be considered, including an extension of the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers that is scheduled to expire at the end of the month. We'll be updating this post later in the day with the roll call, as well as any other updates from the Senate floor.

UPDATE (4:43 PM): The Senate approved a cloture vote by an 85-2 margin tonight. Our post on that roll call is here.

Chicago International Charter Schools (CICS) teachers made history last summer by becoming the first charter school employees to unionize in Chicago.  Today, they made it official and ratified their first contract. Teachers at three of CICS' Civitas campuses -- Ralph Ellison, Northtown Academy, and Wrightwood -- have struck a three-year deal. Among the contract highlights are a commitment to cap classroom sizes at 29 and to formalize community and teacher input. Also, the 140 Civitas teachers will see their wages increase over the next three years, their evaluations will be standardized, and staff will have due process in disciplinary or dismissal cases. (Catalyst has a more detailed run-down here.)

When the General Assembly lifted the state's charter cap last June, they cleared the way to doubling the number of outsourced public schools. While Civitas' landmark contract is limited to only three of the dozens of charter schools in Chicago, the expectations for transparency and public input in these institutions -- which rely almost exclusively on tax dollars -- are certain to set a new tone. As Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, sees it, the agreement is a key step in keeping innovation, not cost cutting, as the driver of the privatization model.

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Almost two days after the H.R. 3548 survived its first cloture vote, there has been no major movement on the bill that would extend unemployment insurance for Americans who have exhausted their benefits. Why? Republicans keep throwing up new procedural barriers.

After reaching a bipartisan agreement to include an amendment extending the first-time homebuyer's tax credit, Senate Republicans agreed today to drop their efforts to weigh down the legislation with controversial amendments regarding ACORN and the E-Verify program. In exchange, they've turned to a new form of obstruction: demanding a vote on two new controversial amendments. The first would speed up the expiration date for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (a non-starter for Democrats who point out that a sunset date for the bank bailouts is already written into law). The second is yet another attempt to change to the way the extension is funded, by using "unspent" stimulus money, rather than the federal unemployment surtax, which amounts to 0.2 percent tax on the initial $7,000 of employees' wages.

As we've discussed before, funding an extension through the surtax is a sound strategy. After all, unemployment benefits have been extended so frequently over the past 30 years, many businesses have already budgeted for it. And it's not exactly a hefty expense, costing employers, on average, an extra $14 per employee annually. The GOP opposition is nothing more than petty politics.

Until those details can be ironed out, the legislation will stay lodged in the upper chamber. And every day that it does, another 350 Illinois families will exhaust their benefits.

The Congress Hotel employees have been striking for over six years. In the coming days, a huge batch of their fellow Chicago hotel workers may join them.

At 8 p.m. last night, employees at five area hotels run by the Starwood Chain -- the Westin Michigan Avenue, the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, the W Lakeshore, the W, and the Tremont Hotel -- voted by an overwhelming majority to authorize a strike. The workers, represented by UNITE-HERE Local 1, are not walking out on the job just yet. But the vote gives union negotiators the green light to call a work stoppage or a boycott if contract negotiations don't progress, a major escalation in a campaign that's already featured a dramatic civil disobedience.

It's been eight weeks since UNITE-HERE's three-year contract covering workers at 30 downtown hotels expired and the two sides are still not close to reaching a compromise. Like their comrades at Hyatt -- one of the city's other big chains -- Starwood is claiming poverty, citing the recession as the reason they can't boost pay or benefits for its employees. Furthermore, in an attempt to cut costs, they are requesting that employees work 120 hours a month in order to qualify for health insurance, a move union officials say would disqualify almost half of their workers from coverage.

There's no doubt that the recession depressed tourism last year. But hotels seem to be on relatively sturdy financial ground;

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Yesterday marked a solemn milestone for the service workers at the Congress Hotel in downtown Chicago. For six years, four months, and 11 days, UNITE-HERE Local 1 members have walked their picket line in hopes of securing fair wages and benefits, marking the longest hotel strike in the nation's history. But apart from the Congress dispute, the specter of more work stoppages is hanging over the union and the 6,000 Chicago workers it represents across the city.

The three-year contract covering UNITE-HERE Local 1 workers at 30 downtown hotels expired on August 31. In the seven weeks since, despite intense pressure from the labor community and its advocates, union negotiators told the Tribune that little progress has been made. "Things have gotten really bad," said Annemarie Strassel, spokesperson for Local 1. "I think that employers see the bad economy as an opportunity to ram through proposals."

Yesterday afternoon, members of Local 1 marched up and down Michigan Avenue, stopping at the Congress, the Hilton, the Blackstone (where the local and the roughly 200 workers it represents have been negotiating a contract for months) to demand that the city's workers are treated fairly.

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The Showdown in Chicago continues ... Via SEIU and National People's Action, here's some great video of a surprise rally that followed the Goldman Sachs protest we highlighted earlier.  Many of those same demonstrators headed over to Wells Fargo's office building and gathered in the lobby, chanting: "Bailouts? No thanks! Bust up big banks!."  When security finally escorted them from the premises, the crowd yelled in unison, "We'll be back!  We'll be back!" Watch it:

During the subprime mortgage boom that led to the financial crisis, Wells Fargo was easily one of the worst actors.  In recent months, several lawsuits filed across the country (including here in Illinois) have alleged that the bank targeted minority homeowners for high-interest mortgages while offering cheaper deals to white customers. Moreover, local unions have spent much of this year fighting Wells Fargo's efforts to cut off credit to companies like Hartmarx and Quad City Die Casting.  In fact, the United Electrical Workers (who represent the Quad City employees) were on hand in Chicago today and can be seen briefly in the video above.

In other Showdown news, be sure to read the Nation's Esther Kaplan on the first evening of action.