Rep. Jack Franks still on the fence about override of AFSCME bill veto | Northwest Herald

 

Without Senate Bill 1229 becoming law, Rauner could try to impose his own terms should no further extensions be agreed upon, which could mean a strike if AFSCME opposes the final offer. Rauner wants a pay freeze and workers to pay more of their health insurance costs, and AFSCME wants wages to be increased 11.5 percent over four years, plus increased benefits.

While supporters say the legislation is needed to prevent an anti-union governor from forcing a strike and locking out employees – Rauner has promised he would not do so – opponents say it will eliminate the governor’s ability to get a grip on salaries and benefits for a cash-strapped state government in deep financial trouble.

The Senate on Wednesday voted to override the veto with two votes to spare, one which came from Republican state Sen. Sam McCann, of downstate Plainview, who said many of his constituents are state employees who support the measure. The House re-convenes Wednesday, but it is doubtful it will immediately take up the override.

Rauner blasted the Senate vote in a statement and implored the House not to finalize the override.

“Every senator who voted to overturn our veto chose special interests over the taxpayers. They made it abundantly clear that they’d rather raise taxes than stand up to the politically powerful. It is now up to House members to take the responsible, pro-taxpayer position and uphold our veto,” Rauner stated.

The bill passed the House with 67 votes, or four short of the three-fifths needed to override Rauner’s veto. Franks has split from Madigan on multiple occasions, most recently denying the speaker the three-fifths majority he needed to put a “millionaire tax” constitutional amendment to voters.

Regardless of Senate Bill 1229’s high profile, Franks called it a distraction from the ongoing budget battle between Rauner and the Democratic-dominated General Assembly – the state is now in its eighth week without a budget in place.

“I think that’s much more important than this sideshow. We’ve lost track of where we need to be,” Franks said.

Without Senate Bill 1229 becoming law, Rauner could try to impose his own terms should no further extensions be agreed upon, which could mean a strike if AFSCME opposes the final offer. Rauner wants a pay freeze and workers to pay more of their health insurance costs, and AFSCME wants wages to be increased 11.5 percent over four years, plus increased benefits.

While supporters say the legislation is needed to prevent an anti-union governor from forcing a strike and locking out employees – Rauner has promised he would not do so – opponents say it will eliminate the governor’s ability to get a grip on salaries and benefits for a cash-strapped state government in deep financial trouble.

The Senate on Wednesday voted to override the veto with two votes to spare, one which came from Republican state Sen. Sam McCann, of downstate Plainview, who said many of his constituents are state employees who support the measure. The House re-convenes Wednesday, but it is doubtful it will immediately take up the override.

Rauner blasted the Senate vote in a statement and implored the House not to finalize the override.

“Every senator who voted to overturn our veto chose special interests over the taxpayers. They made it abundantly clear that they’d rather raise taxes than stand up to the politically powerful. It is now up to House members to take the responsible, pro-taxpayer position and uphold our veto,” Rauner stated.

The bill passed the House with 67 votes, or four short of the three-fifths needed to override Rauner’s veto. Franks has split from Madigan on multiple occasions, most recently denying the speaker the three-fifths majority he needed to put a “millionaire tax” constitutional amendment to voters.

Regardless of Senate Bill 1229’s high profile, Franks called it a distraction from the ongoing budget battle between Rauner and the Democratic-dominated General Assembly – the state is now in its eighth week without a budget in place.

“I think that’s much more important than this sideshow. We’ve lost track of where we need to be,” Franks said.

Rep. Jack Franks still on the fence about override of AFSCME bill veto | Northwest Herald

Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » MJM’s sour grapes and some legit questions about McPier’s “technical default”

Rauner cost the taxpayers money.

Friday, Aug 21, 2015

* Wednesday’s statement from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office…

“Tonight the state legislature has taken an important step forward for Chicago and for Illinois. I want to thank Senate President Cullerton and the members of the State Senate for joining the State House in passing Senate Bill 2042. This bill ensures that the operations at Navy Pier and McCormick Place, which are two engines of our economy, are funded. It also ensures that we leave no federal dollars on the table which can support our residents.”

* On Thursday, the governor signed the federal funds bill into law…

Governor Bruce Rauner signed SB 2042 today, which appropriates money for the pass through of federal dollars without adding to the state’s budget deficit. The clean bill allows the state to provide some services to the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

“Governor Rauner supported and signed this clean pass through bill because it will help those in need without adding to the state’s budget deficit,” Director of Communications Lance Trover said. “While the Governor continues to work on passing a balanced budget with structural reforms to maximize how much we can invest in our schools and important social services, some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens will be able receive additional support.”

* Speaker Madigan’s response…

Madigan: Governor Failed Women, Children and Elderly While Helping Chicago’s McCormick Place

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - House Speaker Michael J. Madigan issued the following statement Thursday after the governor signed legislation authorizing the use of state funds for McCormick Place while opposing funding for women, children and the elderly:

“Governor Rauner’s piecemeal approach to federally funded programs creates more hardship and confusing disruptions. A few weeks ago, he vetoed all federally funded program spending. Now he cherry picks and says ‘no’ to state funding for critically needed services like breast and cervical cancer screenings, assistance for children with development disabilities and meals for the elderly. He also reversed course with the decision to support spending state money to pay Chicago’s McCormick Place bankers.

“The governor’s office called the inclusion of funding for these programs a ‘poison pill,’ and more than one House Republican made similar comments on the House floor, even going so far as to say these programs were ‘extra nonsense’ that ‘got in the way’ while they insisted on spending additional state money to ensure McCormick Place’s bankers get paid. I take great exception to those disparaging comments, as do the women, children and elderly who would have benefitted from the state dollars House Democrats supported.”

He has a point, but that federal funding/McPier bill really needed to pass.

* OK, now let’s move on to some context from Yvette Shields…

The legislation permits MPEA to draw from the account that holds pledged tax revenues to cover monthly payments to the bond trustee and also to make its December debt service payment. The agency requires an appropriation to do both and without a state budget in place it could not make the $20.8 monthly payment due to the trustee July 20.

The failed transfer triggered a technical default and prompted Standard & Poor’s to strip the agency’s $3 billion of debt of its AAA rating and Fitch Ratings to lower its AA-minus rating. […]

“Met Pier has been held hostage by the Illinois legislature, which should have unconditionally appropriated money to cover debt service,” [Cumberland Advisors] wrote in a recent commentary authored by Michael Coomes and John Mousseau.

“The political paralysis in Illinois does not make Met Pier a bad credit,” they wrote. “It is a good credit held hostage by the vagaries of the municipal market’s retail buyer base and headline risk. At Cumberland, we have sold our uninsured Met Pier debt because of these heightened political risks. We believe that Met Pier bonds will not be prudent investments until Illinois’ political issues are resolved.”

* But my beef is, what exactly happened here?

It’ll now cost more money to finance McPier bonds because somebody in the Rauner administration didn’t anticipate a very real debt service issue, or didn’t communicate that upcoming problem to the governor’s office or the General Assembly leadership, or they did and the warnings were ignored.

And are there any other preventable time bombs out there that we should know about?

The House’s State Government Administration Committee and/or the Senate’s State Government & Veterans Affairs Committee ought to get to the bottom of these questions. Pronto.

- Posted by Rich Miller

Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » MJM’s sour grapes and some legit questions about McPier’s “technical default”

House Speaker Madigan: Governor Failed Women, Children and Elderly While Helping Chicago's McCormick Place

 

Springfield, IL—(ENEWSPF)—August 20, 2015. House Speaker Michael J. Madigan issued the following statement Thursday, after the governor signed legislation authorizing the use of state funds for McCormick Place while opposing funding for women, children and the elderly:

“Governor Rauner’s piecemeal approach to federally funded programs creates more hardship and confusing disruptions. A few weeks ago, he vetoed all federally funded program spending. Now he cherry picks and says ‘no’ to state funding for critically needed services like breast and cervical cancer screenings, assistance for children with development disabilities and meals for the elderly. He also reversed course with the decision to support spending state money to pay Chicago’s McCormick Place bankers.

“The governor’s office called the inclusion of funding for these programs a ‘poison pill,’ and more than one House Republican made similar comments on the House floor, even going so far as to say these programs were ‘extra nonsense’ that ‘got in the way’ while they insisted on spending additional state money to ensure McCormick Place’s bankers get paid. I take great exception to those disparaging comments, as do the women, children and elderly who would have benefitted from the state dollars House Democrats supported.”

Source: Speaker Madigan’s Office

House Speaker Madigan: Governor Failed Women, Children and Elderly While Helping Chicago's McCormick Place

UPDATE 8-21-2015: The Plote case was continued to Oct 26 th at 1:30 with Judge Nicolossi.

Judge Tobin accepted the request from Plote and withdrew from this zoning/contempt case.   This was the option which Judge Tobin gave to both the plantiff ( Boone County) and the defendant (Plote Construction) after Boone County Chairman Bob Walberg’s conversation with the judge regarding the case.  For more details on this ex-parte communication see: http://boonecountywatchdog.blogspot.com/2015/07/boone-county-prosecutor-says-county.html

The case was re-assigned to Judge Philip J. Nicolosi with a re-scheduled date of Friday, August 21, 2015,3:00PM  Boone County Courthouse.

Friday, August 21, 2015 at 4:55 PM

The Plote case was continued to Oct 26 th at 1:30 with Judge Nicolossi.

The George W. Bush email scandal the media has conveniently forgotten - Salon.com

 

Looking back, it’s curious how the D.C. scandal machine could barely get out of first gear when the Bush email story broke in 2007.  I’m not suggesting the press ignored the Rove email debacle, because the story was clearly covered at the time. But triggering a firestorm (a guttural roar) that raged for days and consumed the Beltway chattering class the way the D.C. media has become obsessed with the Clinton email story?  Absolutely not. Not even close.

Instead, the millions of missing Bush White House emails were treated as a 24-hour or 48-hour story. It was a subject that was dutifully noted, and then the media pack quickly moved on.

How did the Washington Post and New York Times commentators deal with the Bush email scandal in the week following the confirmation of the missing messages? In his April 17, 2007 column, Post columnist Eugene Robinson hit the White House hard. But he was the only Post columnist to do so. On the editorial page, the Post cautioned that the story of millions of missing White House emails might not really be a “scandal.” Instead, it was possible, the Post suggested, that Rove and others simply received “sloppy guidance” regarding email protocol.

There’s been no such Post inclination to give Clinton any sort of benefit of the doubt regarding email use as the paper piles up endless attacks on her. Dana Milbank: “Clinton made a whopper of an error.” Ruth Marcus: “This has the distinct odor of hogwash.”

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As for The New York Times, here’s the entirety of the newspaper’s commentary on the Bush White House email story in the week following the revelation, according to Nexis:

Last week, the Republican National Committee threw up another roadblock, claiming it had lost four years’ worth of e-mail messages by Karl Rove that were sent on a Republican Party account. Those messages, officials admitted, could include some about the United States attorneys. It is virtually impossible to erase e-mail messages fully, and the claims that they are gone are not credible.

Three sentences from a single, unsigned editorial. That’s it. No Times columnists addressed the topic. By comparison, in the week since the Clinton story broke, the Times has published one editorial dedicated solely to the subject, and no less than five opinion columns addressing the controversy.

Just to repeat: In 2007, the story was about millions of missing White House emails that were sought in connection to a Congressional investigation. Yet somehow the archiving of Clinton’s emails today requires exponentially more coverage, and exceedingly more critical coverage.

Of course, back in 2007 Fox News seemed utterly uninterested in the Bush email story days after the news broke. A search of Fox archives locates only one panel discussion about the story and it featured two guests accusing Democrats of engineering a “fishing expedition.”

From then-Fox co-host, Fred Barnes: “I mean, deleted e-mails, who cares?”

Eric Boehlert, a former senior writer for Salon, is the author of "Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush."

 

 

The George W. Bush email scandal the media has conveniently forgotten - Salon.com

Democrats pledge to stand united in face of Gov. Bruce Rauner 'attacks' | Daily Chronicle

By JOHN O'CONNOR and SARA BURNETT – The Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD – Illinois Democrats, set back on their heels by an “epic struggle” with first-year Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, pledged Thursday to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in opposition while a potentially bruising primary for a U.S. Senate race took shape.

The party controlling both houses of the General Assembly marked Democrat Day at the Illinois State Fair in the unfamiliar position of defense, locked in a fight with Rauner over a state budget.

The first-time officeholder, carrying an agenda to curb union power, ended a dozen years of Democratic residence in the governor’s office last fall in an election drawing fewer than half of eligible voters to the polls.

“When we vote, we win. When we don’t, we get a government that doesn’t like us, look like us, and sure as [heck] has got an agenda to put us out of business,” labor leader Edward Smith said in a keynote address at a downtown morning brunch before the fairgrounds assembly. “We’ve got to leave this room fired up. ... I’ll give the governor one thing: He’s united the [heck] out of us.”

It marked a day of jabs at Rauner for attacks on the middle class, the minimum wage, labor rights and working families. But Thursday afternoon at the traditional, old-style state fair rally, few answered the trumpet to arms.

The crowd quickly dwindled. Chicago City Clerk Susana Mendoza, a candidate for state comptroller, told about 50 stalwarts, “Thanks for sticking around.”

Although most statewide candidates don’t go toe-to-toe again for more than three years, Democrats see a brass ring in the 2016 Senate race featuring freshman Republican Sen. Mark Kirk – predicted to be among the country’s more competitive.

U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth told the party faithful she’s the best candidate – a boast backed by a videotaped endorsement from Dick Durbin, the Prairie State’s senior senator – while former federal prosecutor Andrea Zopp took advantage of the bucolic state-fair setting to announce her candidacy.

“What we’re hearing now is that there is an assault on the middle class, we have a declining middle class,” Zopp said. “That opportunity that my parents had, that enabled me to succeed, is declining, that door to opportunity is closing. That’s why I’m running for the U.S. Senate, because we have to fight that.”

Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin and state Sen. Napolean Harris of Harvey also spoke as Senate hopefuls.

A day earlier, giddy Republicans packed the grounds to celebrate Governor’s Day, weathering the chants of hundreds of union protesters across the street. The demonstrators derided cuts to child-care and in-home services that Rauner says he had to make to manage spending while attempting to reach a permanent, yearlong budget agreement with legislative Democrats.

But he’s angered Democrats by insisting that they first adopt measures he calls his “turnaround agenda” and says will spur investment in Illinois and restore faith in politics.

Democrats say the measures Rauner labels business-friendly are anti-union.

“Democrats in the Legislature today are engaged in an epic struggle with a Republican governor,” House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, said. “Illinois has a Republican governor who thinks that Illinois budget-making should be used and leveraged to bring down the wage rates all across the state and bring down the standard of living of working people.”

Senate President John Cullerton, uneasy with plaudits from Rauner for a cooperative spirit while the governor demonizes Madigan, added, “The Senate Democrats are willing to compromise.”

“We are willing to work with Gov. Rauner,” the Chicago Democrat said, “but we don’t work for Gov. Rauner.”

Rauner deputy chief of staff Mike Schrimpf said Illinois homeowners pay among the nation’s highest property taxes and said “family incomes have fallen” during the decades Madigan and Cullerton have been in the Capitol.

“Gov. Rauner’s turnaround agenda will freeze property taxes and create a booming economy with more, better-paying jobs,” Schrimpf said.

Democrats pledge to stand united in face of Gov. Bruce Rauner 'attacks' | Daily Chronicle

Gov. Rauner signs bill to release $5.4B in federal funds : News

 

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed legislation to release $5.4 billion in federal funds during a stalemate over the state budget.

The measure signed into law Thursday would provide funding for social programs such as energy assistance, cancer screenings and family nutrition. It takes effect immediately.

The money was available but couldn't be spent because the Republican governor and Democrats who control the Legislature haven't agreed on a budget for the fiscal year that started July 1.

Spokesman Lance Trover said Rauner signed the measure "because it will help those in need without adding to the state's budget deficit."

 

House Speaker Michael Madigan attempted to add some state spending authority to a Senate plan last week, but then backed off. The Senate gave final approval to the bill Wednesday.

Gov. Rauner signs bill to release $5.4B in federal funds : News