Kane County fears cost of new sex offender rules

By Matt Brennan For The Beacon-News

A state attempt to comply with federal sex offender law could end up a costly measure for Kane County.

Currently sex offender law has two tiers of registration, 10 years and lifetime. Registrations are annual. Under the proposed state Senate legislation to reach national compliance, there would be a three-tier system — lifetime, 25 years and 15 years. Some tiers would require more frequent registrations, requiring more man-hours.

The bill would also require juvenile offenders who were granted court supervision or deferred adjudication to register as sex offenders, which will also increase man-hours for court services and the Sheriff’s Department.

Illinois will face a 10 percent reduction in grant funding each year that it is in non-compliance with the federal sex offender guidelines, beginning in the 2012 fiscal year. Senate Bill 1040 would put Illinois in compliance.

Click on the following for the rest of the story:  http://couriernews.suntimes.com/7886549-417/kane-fears-cost-of-new-sex-offender-rules.html

Restoration of historic Stone School expected to finish in 2012

Stone School will be 150 years old in 2012 and while the restoration won’t be finished, the committee is hoping to an ice cream social next summer to show how much progress has been made.

Cost of total restoration still is estimated to be $30,000 and Sturges said money is being raised slowly but surely. The committee recently received $1,000 from the Lions Club and another $1,000 from the Boone County Historical Society. The dumpster in front of the school, filled to the brim with debris taken out of the building, was donated by Marengo Disposal.

Click on the following for more details:  Restoration of historic Stone School expected to finish in 2012

A Chain Letter which is so sad.

Charlie Sheen is 45 and his story is still all over the news because he is a substance abuser, an adulterer, and sexually promiscuous.
Lindsay Lohan is 24 and her story is all over the news because she's a celebrity drug addict and thief. While..............
 
 
Justin Allen 23,

Brett Linley 29,

Matthew Weikert 29,

Justus Bartett 27,

Dave Santos 21,

Jesse Reed 26,

Matthew Johnson 21,

Zachary Fisher 24,

BrandonKing 23,

Christopher Goeke 26

and Sheldon Tate 27......
are all Marines that gave their lives this week for you. There is no media for them; not even a mention of their names.
Honor THEM by sending this on! I DID. WILL YOU? ~~~~~~~~~~

If you are unhappy with Register Star coverage, Thursday is your chance to speak up.

Click on the photocopy to enlarge:

Slump Alters Jobless Map in U.S., With South Hit Hard

Several Southern states — including South Carolina, whose 11.1 percent unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the nation — have higher unemployment rates than they did a year ago. Unemployment in the South is now higher than it is in the Northeast and the Midwest, which include Rust Belt states that were struggling even before the recession.

Unemployment remains high across much of the country — the national rate is 9.1 percent — but the regions have recovered at different speeds.

Now, with the concentration of the highest unemployment rates in the South and the West, some economists and researchers wonder if it is an anomaly of the uneven recovery or a harbinger of things to come. ….

West has the highest unemployment in the nation. The collapse of the housing bubble left Nevada with the highest jobless rate, 13.4 percent, followed by California with 12.1 percent. Michigan has the third-highest rate, 11.2 percent, as a result of the longstanding woes of the American auto industry. …

Brookings analysis, which found that many auto-producing metropolitan areas in the Great Lakes states are seeing modest gains in manufacturing that are helping them recover from their deep slump, while Sun Belt and Western states with sharp drops in home values are still suffering. The areas that have been hurt the least since the recession, the study said, rely on government, education or energy production. Places that were less buoyed by the housing bubble were less harmed when it burst.

Click on the following for all of the story:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/unrelenting-downturn-is-redrawing-americas-economic-map.html?_r=1&hp

NEA President earns large TRS pension

“We’ll shine the light. You’ll bring the heat.”

Thank you for registering and searching at www.openthebooks.com.
You’re ready for reform. Over 25,000 people have rendered over 300,000 pageviews since our spectacular online launch.
As the Chicago Tribune exposé of sweetheart union access to City pensions became a national story, we have the only publicly accessible City of Chicago retirement database. Choose RETIREMENT and CITY OF CHICAGO from the two dropdown search boxes on the homepage, then click twice on MONTHLY ANNUITY AMOUNT (orders from most to least).
Union Chief, Dennis Gannon has the top city pension of the last ten years. Retiring in 2004, Gannon worked one day for the city and has a monthly pension of $13,583. He has already collected over $1 million.
If our portal was up five years ago, three years ago, or last year, the sunlight would have made insider union pensions impossible! In Illinois, transparency is the foundation for good government.
On September 6th, we exposed that the unions also have insider access at the state level. Read the post, here. Listen to my interview with Big John & Amy on WIND 560AM Chicago, here.
The second highest teacher pension in teacher retirement history ($20,200/month) went to the President of the National Education Association (NEA), Washington DC. His Illinois government pension was predicated on his out-of-state union pay and not his earnings as an elementary school teacher from Harvey. For his earnings, contributions and monthly annuity, click here.
What are you finding? On a confidential basis, please let us know.
Thank you for being a part of our website launch and a watershed moment in Illinois politics.

Sincerely,

Adam Andrzejewski
Founder | CEO
For the Good of Illinois

October 15 Electronics Recycling Day

Township Reform Pops Up on Illinois Lawmakers’ Radar

March 2, 2011 · 12:12 am

…., townships are permitted, but not required under law, to provide a hodge-podge of various services to residents.

The services a township may provide range from senior and public health services, to prohibiting animals from running at large, to providing fire protection. They can also purchase land and maintain roads in unincorporated areas.

As a result, townships levy taxes on their residents to pay for such services—services that critics say could often be efficiently absorbed into the county operations, which would likely make delivery more practical and less costly to taxpayers.

Yet, even if outraged voters wanted to rid themselves of an unwanted township, the task would prove to be almost impossible.

Moreover, townships are permitted, but not required under law, to provide a hodge-podge of various services to residents.

The services a township may provide range from senior and public health services, to prohibiting animals from running at large, to providing fire protection. They can also purchase land and maintain roads in unincorporated areas.

As a result, townships levy taxes on their residents to pay for such services—services that critics say could often be efficiently absorbed into the county operations, which would likely make delivery more practical and less costly to taxpayers.

Under state law, voters cannot vote to dissolve their own township. In order for a township to end, or “discontinue,” every other township in that county must also vote via referendum to discontinue it. ….

That means even in townships where residents want to eliminate the organization, they must act collectively by getting 10 percent of voters in every township in the county to sign a petition to get the issue on the ballot as a referendum in the next general election.

This is an unreasonable standard.

Click on the following for more details:  http://bgathinktank.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/township-reform-pops-up-on-illinois-lawmakers%E2%80%99-radar/

$100,000+ pensions for 27 retired state pols

BYTHE BETTER GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION April 29, 2011

At the end of fiscal 2010, the General Assembly Retirement System was only 26 percent funded with $66.2 million in assets and $251.8 million in liabilities.

Zettler obtained the pension data under the Freedom of Information Act, and provided it to the BGA, which confirmed the data.

GARS plan participants contribute up to 11.5% of their pay annually and their retirement payouts depend on the total number of years served. For example, those with 20 years of service can collect up to 85% of their final salary for their remaining lifetime. Moreover, if a participant retires at age 60 or older, that person gets a 3 percent pension increase every year.

Leading the GARS list of annual pensions is former state Sen. Arthur Berman, who collects $203,428 annually, according to the data, which is as of March 7.

The Chicago Democrat retired from the General Assembly in 2000 with a salary of $59,657. But he later took a higher-paid position with Chicago Public Schools and his pension was determined based on the higher salary under a reciprocal state-pension system agreement that ended in 1994.

Click on the following for more details:  http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/5076845-418/100000-pensions-for-27-retired-state-pols.html

U.S. To Hand Over Iraq Bases, Equipment Worth Billions

Flag: 2008 to present  On 22 January 2008, a new design for the flag was confirmed by Law 9 of 2008. In this current version, the three stars were removed, while the Takbir was retained in its 2004 form. The parliament intended that the new design last for one year, after which a final decision on the flag would be made. However, the flag law was reviewed in parliament on 30 April 2009.  The script  represent the Kurdish people in northern Iraq.

With just over three months until the last U.S. troops are currently due to leave Iraq, the Department of Defense is engaged in a mad dash to give away things that cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars to buy and build.

The giveaways include enormous, elaborate military bases and vast amounts of military equipment that will be turned over to the Iraqis, mostly just to save the expense of bringing it home.

"It's all sunk costs," said retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who oversaw the training of Iraqi soldiers from 2003 to 2004. "It's money that we spent and we're not going to recoup."……….

There were 505 U.S. military bases and outposts in Iraq at the height of operations, said Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq. Only 39 are still in U.S. hands -- but that includes each of the largest bases, meaning the most significant handovers are yet to come.

Construction costs exceeded $2.4 billion, according to an analysis of Pentagon annual reports by the Congressional Research Service….over 2.4 million pieces of equipment worth a total of at least $250 million -- everything from tanks and trucks to office furniture and latrines -- have been given away to the Iraqi government in the past year

Most of the $2.4 billion was spent building about a dozen huge outposts that, in addition to containing air strips and massive fortifications also have all the comforts of home

One U.S. officer whose unit turned over a military outpost in a Baghdad neighborhood to the Iraqi Army in 2009 told the Washington Post that Iraqi soldiers looted it within hours of the U.S. departure….

Much of the U.S.'s most lethal and valuable military equipment is being shipped out of Iraq, in one of the military's biggest logistical efforts in history. Johnson, the spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said that 1.5 million items have been removed in the past 12 months, with about 800,000 to go.

Read the rest of the article by going to:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/26/iraq-withdrawal-us-bases-equipment_n_975463.html

iFiber is coming

Kirkland about to get wired with fiber-optic plan

By NICOLE WESKERNA

nonprofit Illinois Fiber Resources Group, known as iFiber, is leading the effort to install a network hundreds of miles long throughout northwest Illinois to provide better access to broadband. Northern Illinois University is acting as the fiscal agent for the $68.5 million project.

Herb Kuryliw, network and technology architect for NIU, said the iFiber program stemmed from an NIU pilot program that ended in 2006. He said the 711 miles of fiber-optic network being installed throughout the area is meant to be an economic driver for community anchor institutions, such as schools, hospitals and government agencies.

“We’ll be able to reach out to communities with small populations – 150-home communities – and bring a superhighway of broadband activity,” Kuryliw said.

Construction of the network started about two months ago, said John Lewis, chairman of the iFiber organization. In that time, about 50 miles of fiber-optic cables have been installed among Rockford, Belvidere and Cherry Valley along Business Route 20 and Route 72, he said.

Click on the following for the rest of the story:  http://www.daily-chronicle.com/2011/09/24/kirkland-about-to-get-wired-with-fiber-optic-plan/argddrf/