Capitol Fax

Rich Miller’s commentary on State Government

One of the very top officials in Bill Brady’s campaign told me a few days after the election that he believes Brady lost to Gov. Pat Quinn for one reason: The pro-choice group Personal PAC.

Brady’s election day model, the top campaign official said, had him taking 43 percent of the suburban Cook County vote. Instead, Brady only took 40 percent. That extra 3 points would’ve definitely won race for the pro-life Brady.

“The North Shore went to hell,” added this uppermost Brady operative, blaming Personal PAC’s mail, TV ads and robocalls for the loss.

A look at Cook County results showed that Brady vastly underperformed the Republican pro-choice Mark Kirk’s numbers in several northern Cook townships. Kirk is a north suburban resident, so he was expected to somewhat outperform Brady. Yet Kirk won New Trier Township by 4,535 votes, while the anti-abortion Brady won it by just 537. The pro-choice Kirk won Northfield by almost 7,000 votes to Brady’s 1,325-vote margin.

And it wasn’t just the North Shore. Kirk more than doubled Brady’s winning margins in Schaumburg, Wheeling, Maine and Lyons Townships. The same basic pattern played out in all the suburban collar counties as well.

Personal PAC CEO Terry Cosgrove told me he focused his group’s mail and robocalls almost solely on suburban women who voted in the last two general elections, but who didn’t vote in any primaries. That way, Cosgrove said, he could aim his message at what he believed were “very middle of the road, average suburban women.” He also included in his list 170,000 pro-choice Republican women whom his group had identified in suburban state legislative races over the years.

“I knew if we could get enough of those suburban women, that’s where victory was,” Cosgrove said.

Cosgrove said his media buyer’s research showed he could find those same “average” women voters via the early morning news and daily TV talk shows. “We were on every single network TV station in the morning through 4 o’clock,” he said. Cosgrove said Personal PAC spent $100,000 on TV the day before the election alone, figuring that he could catch busy, preoccupied women who were just about to make up their minds.

Cosgrove also determined early on that independent millionaire Scott Lee Cohen would help Quinn. “I didn’t care if they went for him because it wasn’t a vote for Brady,” he said.

“This race was a referendum on Pat Quinn,” Cosgrove continued, saying that he viewed it the same as a multi-candidate primary. Relative unknowns often split the “anti” vote in those primaries. Cosgrove figured Scott Lee Cohen would do the same. He was right.

Were there other important factors in this race? Absolutely. Organized labor and the Democratic ground game helped push Chicago’s turnout well above 2006 levels. The Brady Campaign - the gun control group, not the candidate - most certainly helped pit many of those aforementioned suburban voters against Bill Brady.

But it’s no secret that Personal PAC is infinitely more sophisticated with its messaging than its counterparts on both the Left and the Right. The best example of this is one of the group’s mass mailers featuring a photo of a middle-aged couple on the front. “My husband might not have made it,” the mailer began. “Prostate screening saved his life. Who would vote against that?” Brady voted against a bill mandating prostate cancer screening.

The idea behind the mailer, Cosgrove said, was to get women to talk to their husbands about Bill Brady. About one man in six are diagnosed with prostate cancer, and that rate is far higher among older men. The mailer was designed to play on an almost universal fear.

The group is also much more willing than typical candidates to use harshly blunt messages in their advertising. Cosgrove, for instance, said that men are more amenable to his abortion messaging when they’re reminded of their daughters. So, his TV ad featured a young woman who talked about how she was raped at the age of 18, saying she wouldn’t know what she would’ve done had she become pregnant. The rest of the ad featured photos of very young women along with the message that Brady was against abortion in cases of rape and incest. The idea was to drive the message home that this was about daughters. It worked.

Impartiality Questioned

I’ve always voted for Rep. Jim Sacia because I think he’s doing a fine job in Springfield. He’s right on all the important issues that affect the state. It’s his performance at home -- his passion for a peculiar type of “tourist attraction” near Nora and his demonizing of its opponents-- that distresses me.

He keeps saying he’s interested only in the facts.

Here are a few facts he never talks about.

Fact No. 1. The Jo Daviess County Board, elected by the people, said “No” to Mr. Bos’ megadairy proposal. That should have settled the matter.

Fact No. 2. But soon after that, another group of unelected officials, the Illinois Department of Agriculture, stepped in and overruled the County Board, claiming they knew better what was good for the people.

It seems to me that a principled “law and order” man would be outraged by such a raw violation of citizens’ rights, but Jim is strangely silent about it. It didn’t seem to bother him then, nor does it now. It would be nice to know why. Perhaps he will explain in a future report.

Fact No. 3. Not only does it not bother him that Traditions Dairy got such an unwarranted break, but he wrote to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to urge them to give Mr. Bos an additional break and waive its requirement for a Water Quality Certification. That seems to me to be going a little bit beyond his role as an impartial representative of everyone in his district. Unethical? Maybe no. Improper? Maybe yes. Unwise and unnecessary? Absolutely.

At the end of his diatribe against CAFO opponents, Jim urged people not to pay attention to half-truths and innuendo. Good advice. But earlier in his column he compared some of those opponents to the criminals he sent up the river. Some of the latter, he claims, were grateful for the punishment they got and thanked him. But the former? They’re just full of hate. Talk about innuendo!

Fact No. 4. He keeps referring to people who are simply exercising their right to hold an opposing viewpoint (and doing a great job at it I might add) as a “small, vocal group.” What’s that supposed to mean? What do membership numbers have to do with the issue? How “big” do you have to be before you’re “right”? And how does he expect them to do make their point? Use sign language until they have x-number of members?

These are not the remarks of a statesman.

Sincerely,

Richard O’Connor

Pearl City, IL

Stephenson County Leadership

Now that (the) political season moratorium is over, I thought it would be good to blend in with the furniture, but the (Stephenson) County Board leadership continues to step in it.

“For the last seven or eight years, when we’ve gotten to this point, it’s dead silence. No one comes up with any magic bullet to solve our dilemma,” said Jim Graham at Wednesday’s County Board meeting.

There we go again.

“Dead Silence”. Has our County Board gone deaf? Poppycock!

In November, 2008, I told the board to use the county nursing home as a model for its shortfall. In 2009 during the budgetary process I suggested feasibility study for the sheriff department (which he agreed to), but the leadership estimated it would cost $100,000 without even asking Northwestern University for a visit and a quote.

As I expressed to you during my presentation on this idea, the initial estimated cost was $15,000, but we will never know the savings now. What about the compliance officer that I suggested for $30,000 that could manage and try to bring in some of the outstanding fines and fees (now still at $3,000,000). I still believe that position would have paid for itself and brought in more to assist the general fund, but we will never know the savings now. I will not even bring up the line item of $100,000 donations to NIDA over the last two years that only created a job of one, an executive director position for them with no results.

“Dead Silence” Mr. Vice Chairman? I think not. I think what we have is a failure to communicate. Suggestions have been made, but when no one is listening then what is the point?

I attended the first two voluntary finance meeting when the 2010- 2011 budget was being worked on, but then I realized it was a waste of my time to sit through any more meetings because the leadership (Finance committee) was not listening and some did not even attend.

I strongly believe the leadership of this board has to be changed before any real progress back to financial stability can be made, working our way out of being on the national poverty warning list since May of 2009, improving the unemployment rate (still over 11 percent), and addressing the youth problem in the city of Freeport.

Unfortunately, by my head count on the new board, we will not have enough and will have to put up with this leadership for another two years unless some of the board members rethink the direction they have taken for the last eight years and realize adjustments must be made.

On Dec. 1, the direction is in the hands of just a few board members who will decide the fate of 46,000 citizens of Freeport and Stephenson County. Will they vote for the current leadership or the citizens they were elected to represent?

George Kinney

County Board Member

District “K”

3 More Close Their Doors

The inevitable happened - 3 more businesses closed on Savanna’s Main St. - Dominic & Maria’s, Great River Garden Center, and Tastee Freez. They were faced with all the business expenses going up and a much smaller customer base, which makes it impossible to stay in business.

I am sure the City thinks there was nothing they could have done. But they could have taken a portion of that $1,000,000 they are going to end up “throwing” at the new city hall and entice a new company/factory to locate here with the money and tax incentives.

Dubuque, IA has a new company bringing 2000 people. That would have helped our town. But they are working on that! I bet they even have a committee set up just for that purpose. Do we have one? I don’t think so.

Do we have a little “secret” committee to spend all our “friends” money? Probably so. How about that found money - Mike Moon’s $100,000. Don’t you wonder where that’s coming from? And the $1,000,000 that City Hall is sure to cost. They had that all set aside for the building, but yet had to borrow for our streets?

Need we remind them that the forefathers relied on the Depot and the railroad, and nixed anything else. Just as they pulled out, so could our “money-gushing” oil company. Then where would they be?

If that would happen and with declining population, they would be sending out an SOS, to us - they would raise something. We would end up paying for their mistakes. Why are they spending like “drunken sailors” when they should be:

- freezing raises;

- putting a ceiling on the outlandish salaries;

- not filling positions when somebody retires when population has dwindled;

- tightening their belts like everyone else is;

saving for tomorrow instead os spending for today;

- fixing roads and sewers to encourage people to want to live in Savanna when the prison opens.

Welcome to Savanna!

Penny Gharst

Savanna Businesswoman

P.S.: Shame on our city council for not supporting area businesses with the renovation of the city hall. What happened to that “Buy in Savanna” slogan? Taxpayers, check this out.

The Illinois Freedom of (Some) Information Act?

By Emily Miller

How quickly we forget.

In the wake of scandal and corruption at the highest levels of government, Illinois lawmakers passed a law in 2009 bolstering the Freedom of Information Act—a move designed to give everyday people access to important government information.

This year, however, lawmakers are having second thoughts and are trying to whittle away at this newly arrived accountability era by making it more difficult for the public to root out mismanagement, waste and corruption.

There’s no more glaring example of legislative backsliding than HB 5154, a measure passed by both the House and Senate last spring that flies in the face of reformers’ efforts to make Illinois government more transparent and accountable to taxpayers.

If the measure passes, the public will no longer have access to government employee performance reviews. This proposed law prevents government watchdog groups like the Better Government Association and the ACLU, along with investigative news teams, from accessing vital records that indicate whether Illinois is demanding the highest level of performance from its public servants.

Access to information about how our government spends our money is vital to uncovering waste and misconduct. Arguments to conceal performance evaluations hinge on fears that making those evaluations public will discourage managers from giving honest evaluations, or that the evaluation process will be used as a method of public humiliation to retaliate against unwanted employees. But these reasons only highlight the dysfunction of our personnel system, and do not speak to the legitimacy of the peoples’ right to access information about their government.

If the government gets to pick and choose, taxpayers will never know what’s really going on behind the curtain. Exempting performance evaluations from the sunlight of transparency does not serve the public good.

Gov. Quinn had the chance to veto the bill entirely, putting the public’s right to know how its tax dollars are spent first, but he did not. Instead, he used a legislative maneuver that sends the bill, with an amendment, back to the General Assembly to be heard next week.

No amendment could make this bill work for the public good.

We urge lawmakers to vote no on HB 5154 as it makes its way back through the General Assembly during the upcoming veto session.

Emily Miller is the Policy and Government Affairs Coordinator for the Better Government Association.

Another Bite at the Apple of Secrecy

By Josh Sharp

Ninety-six hours. That’s how long it took the General Assembly to make the performance evaluation of every public school teacher, principal and superintendent in Illinois exempt from public disclosure. Even more appalling is how this legislation eventually came to pass.

On January 11, 2010, an amendment suddenly surfaced in the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee. That amendment was designed to net Illinois more than $500 million in federal funding through the new “Race to the Top” program for the state’s neediest schools – but it also exempted teacher and principal performance evaluations from public disclosure. Only in Illinois would teachers unions demand that more money be tied to even less accountability. The amendment was presented to the committee even before it appeared on the public record and was approved by a 15-4 vote.

The legislation was then immediately moved to the House floor, but not before superintendent performance evaluations could be exempted from disclosure as well. They got their own special amendment, which was simply approved by a non-recorded voice vote on the House floor. This legislation would go on to pass both the House and Senate in a matter of days. It is now law, effective immediately, after Governor Quinn signed the bill the same day he received it – January, 15. So while other cities and states grapple with the realities of poor teacher performance and underperforming public schools the citizens of Illinois are sadly absent from the debate.

In August, the Los Angeles Times posted on its website a database of performance evaluations for roughly 6,000 third-through fifth-grade city schoolteachers. The database received more than 230,000 page views the same day it was published. Even more recently, the New York City school system announced its plan to release “value-added” scores rating the performance of more than 12,000 teachers. How well do Illinois educators stack up? We’ll never know; that information has been deemed “off-limits” by Illinois legislators and remarkably, it could get even worse if AFSCME and other public employee unions get their way.

For Illinois’ powerful public employee unions, an exemption for teachers, principals and superintendents was apparently just the tip of the iceberg. During the upcoming fall veto session AFSCME and their allies plan on trying to muscle through legislation, House Bill 5154, which would exempt from disclosure the performance evaluation of every public employee in the State of Illinois. College presidents? Exempt. City administrators? Exempt. Police officers? Exempt. If this legislation becomes law, the performance evaluation of every single public employee in the State of Illinois will instantly become “top secret” information; undoubtedly a long-time dream of AFSCME, but a nightmare for Illinois taxpayers, who now more than ever demand accountability and transparency from a state mired $15 billion in debt.

Access to these records is critical to government transparency; specifically, the public has a right to know about the performance of employees that their tax dollars are paying for – specifically those union employees that just recently received a guaranteed job through June 30, 2012, despite Illinois’ dire financial situation. Legislators should stand by language in the new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which clearly states:

“The disclosure of information that bears on the public duties of public employees and officials shall not be considered an invasion of personal privacy.” [5 ILCS 140/7(1)(c)]

Public employee performance evaluations bear precisely on the public duties of public employees and, as such, should remain open and accessible to the public. There are no degrees of transparency – the citizens of Illinois should act quickly to reject the giant step backward that House Bill 5154 represents. Call your local state representative or state senator and urge them to vote “NO” on House Bill 5154. Without your help another fundamental piece of the public’s right to know will likely be gone for good.

Josh Sharp is the Director of Government Relations for the Illinois Press Association, which is the largest state newspaper association in the country representing more than 480 daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois.

Where’s the Profit/Loss?

Morrison City Council met Monday November 8, 2010. Quite a few residents were in attendance with the city officials. Jim Blakemore and Bob Snodgrass will be searching for a new city administrator. Lester Weinstine is working on a “tax levy”. He said they can raise taxes every year without having a referendum. (Up to a certain percentage).

I spoke with Jim Dubois before the meeting. I asked him if he had an income/expense report for that night. He told me it was only about an hour from being ready. He needed to do inventory before he could give a report (at least on the concession stand). Why? If you know how much money you have spent (on product), and you know how much money you took in (on product), wouldn’t that tell you how much income you made for month? Maybe I went to a different school and learned different math, but that is how I would figure out what the income/expense report for the concessions stand should include. That should be done monthly.

With winter coming, I asked Jim if we were going to heat the three buildings at the Sport Complex.( Last year we spent thousands of dollars heating them due to no insulation and no drain valves). He said we have drain valves but we are heating the buildings because the material used on the inside does better if it is heated. Jim, what is the material that would be affected by the cold? I have been at most of the meetings and was never informed that drain valves have been installed. When did they do that? I don’t remember the city paying for them. How much did that cost and who did the work? I stopped out at the Sport Complex. I noticed the upper windows in the concession stands have insulation over them. The bathroom stools are a constant pressure flush system, so if you drain them the seals may have to be replaced before you can use them again-is that why we are heating the buildings? Wouldn’t it be more economical to pay to replace the stools than to pay to heat the buildings all winter?

Gary Tresenriter gave a report on the cracking cement at the Sport Complex. He said there is no warranty on the cement work. There are cracks and they will just monitor them since the ratio of cracks was only about 3% of the entire cement work done. You should stop out and take a look.

Bills paid for 2 weeks were $63,451.52. Somehow the expenses have been cut from about $250,000 a month down to about $150,000—AMAZING! How are they doing that? (No salaries included in this amount). Even though we pay salaries each month they don’t put them in the bills payable because they are a budgeted amount. I thought all expenses were budgeted. Although, when cuts are discussed, the three employees that retired are brought up as saving the city expenses since their positions weren’t refilled. I don’t get it!

Now here is a kicker! Harvey Zuidema asked about the proposed $599,774 they want to borrow from city sewer and water to balance the general fund. There is not even that amount in those accounts, totally. The city (who is the taxpayers) already had a ONE TIME loan from city sewer and water for $90,000, has that been repaid with interest? It seems to me that we, the taxpayers, are paying for the same thing several times.

Still not forgetting 101 and 103 W. Main St. buildings, what is happening there? Have they set a price? The Route 30 bridge-when will that be finished? East end water loop-we spent close to $10,000 more this month for engineering with Baxter and Woodman-What is going on there? What happened to that “$10,000,000 keg” we tapped so long ago, Mayor Drey? Has that been drunk from yet? If so, when?

I am still trying to find answers for many questions. We need to halt the spending. Get things under control. You know the saying “JUST SAY NO” doesn’t only pertain to drugs, it also pertains to spending money that is not there. Most of the proposed revisions on the budget are coming from city sewer and water. The council is having another “revision meeting” at the Council Work Session on November 22, 2010. Be there!!

Thought for the day: The desire to succeed means nothing without the will to prepare.

A Morrison Taxpayer,

Marti Wood

Capitol Report

By Jim Sacia, State Representative, 89th District

Where do we go from here? We return to Veto Session November 16, 2010 (some will call it “lame duck” as it is the last two weeks before the new General Assembly is sworn in early in January 2011).

Governor Quinn has stated publicly that he sees his win as a mandate to raise your taxes. He won by one fourth of one percent of the votes cast, winning three of the one hundred two counties. Senator Brady won ninety nine counties.

I get along well with Governor Quinn. I challenge his mandate to raise your taxes. I believe my mandate is to keep your taxes low.

I already can hear the arguments, “we are among the lowest income taxing states in the nation”. True, our three percent income tax is among the lowest. Add all of Illinois onerous taxes and we are right up there with the highest taxing states.

I believe expansion of gaming will be on the table. The argument out there is thousands of Illinoisans are traveling just across the borders in Iowa and Indiana and short bus rides into Wisconsin Casinos giving those states the revenue that should be staying in Illinois.

I believe both issues will be hotly contested during veto session. A number of representatives and senators who are leaving will easily cast votes that otherwise would be hard to get.

To write about our financial crisis and methods to fix it is perhaps beating a dead horse. I continue to maintain and will strongly argue that to eliminate fraud, waste, and bloating government agencies with top heavy administrative personnel is our solution. I’ve said it before fixing those three issues can get our fiscal house in order and certainly must be addressed before talking increased taxes.

Julie Hamos, the Director of Department and Healthcare and Family Services and a good friend I worked with as a fellow state representative, has invited the entire General Assembly to a health care reform meeting on November 16, 2010. Her email to us starts off with, “After January 2014, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will make about 700,000 more Illinoisans eligible for Medicaid by covering all people with income less than one hundred thirty three percent of the Federal Poverty level (now about $14,000 for an individual or $30,000 for a family of four)”. My question is how do we pay for this?

Medicaid is now our state’s most significant expense, recently surpassing education. It’s so important to help those in need. I get that. Tell me why we strive to rob incentives and hand out more and more.