Chicago Sun-Times

Copper doors make pension reform hard sell

Sun, 22 Sep 2013 02:36:18 -0500

Bill Daley’s withdrawal from the governor’s race pretty much snuffed out the “Statehouse doors” controversy. The late-summer scandal quickly cranked up to full roar after details emerged that a set of six, custom-made doors on the newly remodeled Western wing of the Illinois Statehouse cost almost $700,000. I was on vacation during much of the uproar, but I figured this would happen years ago when the remodeling began. This kind of thing always happens. The last time the remodelers were turned loose, the press went nuts over some $400 doorknobs. The cost of a new rug for the secretary of …

Raoul for governor? He could win

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 06:36:48 -0500

The numbers so far show that Raoul could overcome a somewhat late start and very well win the race.

Ty Fahner’s bad fantasy

Sun, 11 Aug 2013 02:34:39 -0500

Last March, the president of the influential and heavily corporate CEO-populated Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago told a long and involved story. The tale was about how he and some members of his group had tried to browbeat the New York credit ratings agencies into lowering Illinois’ bond ratings. The ratings hadn’t yet plummeted to where they are now, so the idea was to use ratings cuts to put pressure on Illinois to enact a tough pension-reform law that drastically reduced benefits for current and future public employee retirees. There were a “couple” of interactions on the …

Tipping the scales against Illinois

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 16:56:01 -0500

While watching White Sox players embarrass themselves yet again this week, my sad eyes turned to a private club behind home plate. The slogan “You got a guy” was plastered all over the front of the club, which is run by a Chicago ticket broker. This being Chicago, everybody wants “a guy” to handle things. It’s who you know, not what you know. That ticket broker sure knows his target audience well, I thought, as yet another Sox player committed yet another moronic error. A Metra employee who couldn’t get a raise last year after his supervisor recommended a pay …

Quinn’s payroll stunt dangerous

Fri, 12 Jul 2013 02:22:14 -0500

Pretty much everybody is cheering Gov. Pat Quinn for vetoing state legislators’ salaries out of the Illinois budget this week. Quinn vetoed lawmaker salaries because, he said, he was tired of waiting year after year for legislators to pass a comprehensive pension reform plan. Probably the only state politicians despised more than Quinn himself these days are legislators, so nobody is weeping for legislators’ personal financial troubles. Quinn, down in the polls and desperate for any kind of “win,” knows this is a sure-fire way to appeal to the populist disgust with the no-can-do General Assembly. But man, is this …

Whom not to boo at Pride Parade

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 02:22:48 -0500

If you’re heading to the Pride Parade this weekend, you might be tempted to boo some of the state politicians who’ll be marching. If you want to boo them for screwing up the state’s finances, then go right ahead. But don’t jeer because the marriage equality bill failed to pass the General Assembly. First of all, the people who stopped the marriage bill won’t even be at the parade, let alone marching in it. The politicians marching in front of you on Sunday are on your side. They support marriage equality or they wouldn’t be there. The Illinois Senate passed …

Travel state, then run for governor

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 02:23:39 -0500

Several months ago, I offered Bill Daley some unsolicited advice. Before you decide whether to run for governor, I suggested to Daley during a phone call, you should take some time off and drive around Illinois. Cairo, in deep Southern Illinois, is 370 miles from Chicago. It’s a whole other world down there. Maybe take a day and head out to Quincy, which is about as far west as you can go in Illinois and where the economy usually thrives even during recessions. Quincy is almost 100 miles closer to Kansas City than it is to Chicago. Tuscola is a …

If Gov. Pat Quinn’s a leader, it’s from behind

Fri, 24 May 2013 02:23:36 -0500

How can you be a leader if nobody is following you? This week on my blog (CapitolFax.com) I wrote that Gov. Pat Quinn is honest, but “no leader.” His press secretary fired off an angry retort: “Give me a break. “Real leadership requires honesty and making hard but necessary decisions for the common good. Real leadership requires telling the truth, looking at the big picture and doing what’s best for generations to come. Prior governors got things done like approving big early retirement initiatives, pension holidays and unaffordable contracts that helped create the crisis we’re in now. Gov. Quinn has …

Pension problem began long ago

Fri, 10 May 2013 02:26:55 -0500

Lawmakers are human beings, and like most human beings they don’t make any major changes until it’s clear that something absolutely has to be done. Pension reform is a good case in point. It’s been obvious since just after World War II that Illinois’ pension systems were dangerously underfunded. But nothing was done until the problem was discussed at the state constitutional convention in 1969. The delegates came up with a plan that they believed would scare the Illinois General Assembly into finally providing adequate funding for the pension systems. The idea was simple. Legislators were forever barred from cutting …

Illinois GOP is out of step with changing electorate

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:24:54 -0500

Not all that long ago, DuPage County was about as reliably Republican and rock-ribbed conservative as they came. Things are changing For one, it’s not nearly as Republican. Back in the 1998 governor’s race, Republican George Ryan defeated Democrat Glenn Poshard by 104,000 votes in DuPage. But in 2010, during the greatest Republican landslide since 1946, Republican Bill Brady managed to beat Gov. Pat Quinn by less than half Ryan’s total: 45,000 votes. Barack Obama carried the county in both of his presidential bids. DuPage used to be dominated by Pate Philip, the no-nonsense conservative former state Senate president. Pate …

Black pastors hit gay marriage

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 02:24:20 -0500

There was a time at the Illinois Statehouse when using African-American ministers as political props was all the rage. ComEd touted support from black preachers to pass a bill to raise its rates. AT&T did the same when it passed a major piece of legislation. Before the national real estate and banking crash, the mortgage industry fought a bill to crack down on excessively lenient home loans by putting black ministers up front. And though the ministers were obviously just doing a bit of payroll shilling, their state legislators took them quite seriously. ComEd and AT&T won their fights. The …

It’s Cullerton vs. crowd on pensions

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:37:36 -0500

What we have in Springfield right now is an epic legislative stalemate over an issue of absolute importance. On one side we have the Senate president, John Cullerton, who says he wants to make sure that any pension reform legislation has a chance of being constitutional. On the other side, we have pretty much everybody else. And I’m not sure why. Cullerton came up with a plan that makes a whole lot of sense. His legal team was dubious at first that any public worker pension benefit could be reduced because our state constitution expressly forbids it: “Membership in any …

Fracking could be Illinois’ savior

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 02:25:19 -0500

Before “fracking” and horizontal oil drilling was tried in North Dakota, the state was producing about 80,000 barrels of the sticky black stuff a day, not much more than Illinois. Last December, North Dakota pumped out almost 800,000 barrels a day, making it the second-largest oil producer in the nation, ahead of Alaska. Thanks to fracking, jobs are now so bountiful that the biggest problem is persuading qualified workers to move to the remote state. North Dakota’s state government coffers are bursting with cash, and the governor wants to cut taxes and embark on a major infrastructure program for roads …

Gay marriage won’t ruin Illinois

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:35:37 -0500

For well over 30 years, whenever the subject of gay rights came up in the Illinois General Assembly, legislators ran away in droves. The excuses were always the same. Homosexuality is immoral, so religious businesses owners shouldn’t have to hire a gay person, or serve a lesbian in his restaurant, or sell one of “those people” a home. The state shouldn’t “condone” this immoral act by passing such a law. Besides, they said, Illinois just wasn’t ready to provide the same protection for gays as everybody else. It’s been a long road. Way back in 1819, a year after Illinois …

Gov. Quinn is short on ideas for more jobs

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 02:25:16 -0500

I spent Thursday afternoon looking at some numbers and discovered some good news that you probably don’t know. For the first seven months of the fiscal year (through the end of January), Illinois tax revenues grew by about a billion dollars. That’s almost a 7 percent growth rate, according to a nonpartisan legislative commission. But man, is there ever a lot of bad news. You knew there’d be bad news. This is Illinois, after all. All of that extra money is barely enough to cover the state’s increased pension payment this year. That pension payment is going up another billion …

Miller: There’s no viable center in state gun debate

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 02:24:38 -0500

If you want to understand why little to no progress will likely be made on gun control here in Illinois or nationally, just look at the abortion issue. Abortion is a hugely emotional and divisive issue in this country. At the heart of the matter is the belief by the extreme opposition that no legal right to an abortion ought to ever exist, while those on the other extreme view any tiny, baby step infringement as a giant leap toward prohibition. Both sides are well-funded, well-organized and have reams of studies, talking points, experts and lawyers to back them up. …

It’s wise guy or schnook for Gov. Pat Quinn

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 02:24:14 -0500

At the end of the movie “Goodfellas,” mobster-turned-informant Henry Hill laments that he’s out of the business. “Today everything is different. There’s no action. Have to wait around like everyone else. Can’t even get decent food. Right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody. Get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.” I’ve often said that if you want to understand politics, then you have to watch that movie. The insights it offers about Outfit members applies loosely to politicians, who operate …

Concealed Carry will not do us in

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:55:21 -0500

I’ve long subscribed to the belief that if someone’s behavior isn’t hurting anybody else, then the government ought to leave them alone. Legalizing marijuana certainly falls into that belief structure. If somebody wants to get high and eat Cheetos all day, then I don’t think they ought to be locked in steel cages. There was a time just a few years ago when the “mainstream” media constantly fretted about blogs — forgetting that the First Amendment didn’t belong solely to “traditional” news outlets. But the country is much better off after a literal explosion of free speech. Blogs have made …