Illinois House overrides veto of bill requiring monthly reports on state’s debt

Chicago News 10/25/2017, 09:25pm

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza meeting with the Sun-Times Editorial Board in September. File Photo. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Tina Sfondeles

SPRINGFIELD—Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza is one step closer to gaining the ability to get a closer look at the state’s giant pile of unpaid bills on a monthly basis — a move the Democrat achieved with unanimous support on Wednesday in an Illinois House veto override.

The Illinois Senate plans to take up the override in November.

The Debt Transparency Act would require state agencies to report monthly the amount of bills being held, liabilities that are being appropriated and liabilities that may have late interest penalties. State agencies currently submit their unpaid bills once a year in October.

The state’s bill backlog is at a staggering $16.5 billion, according to the comptroller’s office.

“The one person in the state responsible for managing through any type of fiscal crisis or even good times fiscally has very limited visibility on the financials for the state of Illinois. It doesn’t make any sense,” Mendoza said after the House override.

Mendoza called it “an almost impossible task” to safeguard taxpayer dollars and manage cash or debt management without being able to see the bills more transparently.

Rauner vetoed the measure on Aug. 18, saying “the inclination” to be more transparent about the state’s finances is a “good one.” But he said her bill “more closely resembles an attempt by the Comptroller to micromanage executive agencies than an attempt to get the information most helpful to the monitoring of state government.”

Rauner too said it would divert limited funds and staff attention from their main duties in providing services to Illinois citizens.

Though the veto message appeared to take a political shot at Mendoza, bill sponsor state Rep. Fred Crespo, D-Hoffman Estates, said the intent of the bill wasn’t a continuation of the Mendoza-Rauner war.

“I know on her end I can attest to this, it was never political. It’s just doing the right thing,” Crespo said.

Also on Wednesday, the House voted to override Rauner’s veto of a bill that would stop employers from asking for wage histories from job applicants. Proponents of the bill said it was intended to try to narrow the pay gap between men and women by keeping low salaries from following them to a next job. The House also voted to override a veto of a bill that requires that cursive writing be taught in schools, with its main sponsor arguing cursive can be used for note taking, signing documents and reading historical texts. The governor vetoed it because he said it was an unfunded mandate on schools. Both of those bills now head to the Senate.

And a bill heralded by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to establish a Student Loan Bill of Rights was also overridden by the House and now heads to the Senate. It was created as a way to address widespread abuses and failures in the student loan industry, which were revealed by Madigan’s investigation and lawsuit against Navient, one of the country’s largest student loan companies.

Above is from:  https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/house-overrides-veto-of-bill-requiring-monthly-reports-on-states-debt/

Women are sending President Trump their birth control bills

Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy,Yahoo Beauty 13 hours ago

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Many women are none too thrilled about the Trump administration’s new rules that roll back the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — the part of Barack Obama’s health care bill that guaranteed insurance plans would cover all forms of prescription birth control with a zero-dollar co-pay for women — and, starting today, they are sending their bills straight to President Trump.

Donald Trump on Oct. 23, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Getty Images)

Keep Birth Control Copay Free campaign created a digital invoice generator for women to send the White House a bill for what birth control would cost should their employers move to end their no-cost contraception coverage.

One simply enters their FDA-approved form of prescription contraception, and the campaign’s online tool calculates the average annual cost — $600 for oral contraceptives, $800 for an implant, and $1,111 for an IUD.  And then the invoice generator immediately sends the bill to Trump and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Women at a birth control protest in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Getty Images)

Each invoice generated through the campaign’s tool will also be submitted to the Federal Register as an official comment opposing the new birth control rules. The comment period on the new rules will end on Dec. 5, 2017.

Kristen Bell, Gloria Steinem, Kate Walsh, Martha Plimpton, Sasheer Zamata, Ana Gasteyer, Margaret Cho, Franchesca Ramsey, and Cecily Strong are just some of the boldface names of women who have come out to endorse the campaign — and would really love for you to send an invoice to President Trump.

The cost of birth control pills is $600 per year. This is an example of the invoice the Keep Birth Control Copay Free campaign will send to President Trump. (Photo: Keep Birth Control Copay Free)

The ACA, known colloquially as Obamacare, made no-cost contraception accessible to 62.4 million American women, saving these women an estimated $1.4 billion annually.

“Women are tired of footing the bill for male politicians’ attacks on essential reproductive health care,” said Amy Runyon-Harms, the Keep Birth Control Copay Free campaign coordinator. “Together, we are pushing back against President Trump’s dangerous political decision to reduce access to birth control, and today we are sending him the bill.”

Polling released in March 2017 by nonpartisan research firm PerryUndem found that 75 percent of all voters consider birth control to be a part of preventive health care for women, with 85 percent of women voters in agreement with that.

Furthermore, 33 percent of women of reproductive age polled said they could not afford to pay more than $10 a month for birth control. Fourteen percent said they could not afford it at any price should they have to pay for it out of pocket today.

And 68 percent of voters said that Congress and President Trump’s top health care priority should be lowering people’s out-of-pocket costs — in other words, the exact opposite of what these new birth control rules stand to do.

Polling released this month by the Small Business Majority found that 71 percent of female small-business owners say health insurance issuers should be required to include birth control coverage in their health plans, with this majority opinion extending across all political, racial, religious, and age lines. And 56 percent of these women business owners said that the ability to access birth control and to decide if and when to have children allowed them to advance in their careers and start their own businesses.

However, Heritage Foundation research associate Melanie Israel told Yahoo Lifestyle this month that the Obamacare mandate was “onerous,” and a ”burden on employers, individuals, and religious organizations who, because of their beliefs concerning the protection of unborn human life, are faced with the decision to violate sincerely held religious or moral beliefs, pay steep fines, or forgo offering or obtaining health insurance entirely.”

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/women-sending-president-trump-birth-control-bills-135938134.html

President Trump may be focused on saving coal miners, but solar continues to be the hot spot in today's jobs market.

Solar employment expanded last year 17 times faster than the total US economy, according to an International Renewable Energy Agency report published on Wednesday that cited data from the Solar Foundation.

Overall, more than 260,000 people work in the solar industry, up by 24% from 2015.

The solar business has benefited from the falling cost of solar energy and generous federal tax credits that make it more affordable for businesses and homeowners to install solar panels.

"It seems to be one of the few areas of high-paying, blue-collar jobs -- and you don't have to learn to code," said Bryan Birsic, CEO of Wunder Capital, a fintech company that allows investors to help finance solar panel installations.

Awareness is also up as Americans concerned about climate change look for cleaner energy options. Elon Musk has helped add to the solar buzz. Musk's Tesla recently started taking orders for solar roofs that is made of shingles to ease concerns that solar panels are ugly.

Most solar workers are in the installation business, the IREA report showed. Other leading jobs include manufacturing, project development, sales and research-and-development.

Related: Elon Musk's plan to make every solar roof beautiful

Men have most of the jobs in solar, but that is starting to change, especially in the sales business. Women now hold 28% of solar jobs, up from 19% in 2013, IREA said. By comparison, women make up just under half of the US workforce.

Solar isn't the only hot part of the clean energy job market -- wind jobs grew by 28%. About one-quarter of the roughly 102,000 jobs in the wind business are in manufacturing.

Both solar and wind scored a big victory in December 2015 when Congress decided to extend renewable tax credits that were set to expire.

The coal mining industry is grappling with far tougher conditions right now. Almost half of US coal jobs have disappeared just since the end of 2011, according to a Columbia University study. Kentucky, a state that overwhelmingly voted for Trump, lost an incredible 64% of its coal jobs over that span.

Attempting to revive coal jobs, Trump has signed executive orders aimed at easing the regulatory burden on the industry. But Columbia's study warned that Trump's regulation-busting is unlikely to spark a revival because coal's main problem is the abundance of cheap natural gas, not regulation.

Related: Why Trump's coal promises are doomed

Besides being better for the environment, the solar industry is considered to be fairly labor intensive.

Wunder Capital's Birsic said that's because unlike fossil fuels, solar energy in the form of sunlight is available in many environments naturally. That allows for more costs to go towards paying workers to install, manufacture and sell solar panels.

"Sunshine is free. You don't have to bring sunshine out there in the desert," said Birsic.

Solar costs have also come down dramatically. Birsic estimates that solar energy was 50% more expensive just five years ago. "It's showing no signs of stopping," he said.

While renewable energy job growth has slowed globally in recent years due to declines in Japan and Europe, IREA believes it will accelerate again. The group predicted that global renewable energy employment will nearly triple by 2030 to 24 million.

"The scales continue to tip in favor of renewables," the report said.

CNNMoney (New York) First published May 24, 2017: 12:52 PM ET