QUOTE OF THE DAY
Chicago Tribune: Madigan: Votes not there yet on income tax, minimum wage hike
As the General Assembly heads into its final month of session, House Speaker Michael Madigan said Tuesday that he doesn’t have enough votes lined up yet to extend the state’s income tax increase or raise the minimum wage.
The speaker, talking to reporters the day he was easily elected to a fifth term as Illinois Democratic Party chairman, said voting to keep the personal income tax rate at 5 percent instead of letting it fall to 3.75 percent on Jan. 1 will be a “difficult roll call.”
“Every person in the legislature is going to be called upon to make a budgetary decision — either a reduction budget or an as-is budget or a slight-increase budget,” Madigan said. “And they’ll be called upon to vote for the money to support the budget that they want.”
Bloomberg: Chicago Pension Measures in Doubt as Quinn Withholds Signature
It’s decision time in Chicago, the moment to rescue sinking pensions that could pull the city under. And nothing is happening.
Two weeks after Illinois lawmakers approved a bill to help stabilize two of the city’s four municipal retirement systems, Governor Pat Quinn hasn’t said whether he’ll sign it. City Council members, a year from re-election campaigns, are balking at delivering their part of the deal — a $750 million property-tax increase.
A recovery effort championed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who in 2011 succeeded 22-year incumbent Richard M. Daley, is imperiled as almost $20 billion in unfunded pension promises burden the nation’s third-most-populous city. Chicago’s credit rating has been cut four times since July to three steps above junk.
Crain’s: Lawyer wants probe of IDOT hiring under Quinn
A Chicago lawyer asked a federal judge yesterday to order an investigation into hiring under Gov. Pat Quinn, saying there’s an “embedded culture of patronage practices” in Illinois government and anyone who improperly got a job should be fired.
Michael Shakman, known for bringing the decades-old court case that led to bans on politically based hiring in Chicago and Cook County, filed his motion in U.S. District Court in Chicago as part of that ongoing lawsuit.
The filing accuses Quinn of improper hiring and reclassification of employees in the Illinois Department of Transportation. It cites a 2013 report by the Better Government Association, a watchdog group, that concluded hundreds of IDOT jobs may have been wrongly filled
Chicago Tribune: Watchdog questions free parking for city workers
Dozens of city employees get to park their cars for free in the upscale River North neighborhood, many on pricey piece of property, City Hall’s top internal watchdog said today.
Nineteen of the employees get free parking at 366 W. Superior St. in a warehouse the city also uses to store two city vehicles, according to a report by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson.
It’s a perk valued at $45,600 a year, based on an estimated cost of $200 a month per space, the report states. But the value of the property “may exceed $1 million, based on a recently sold property . . . one block away,” the report adds.
Daily Herald: Rideshare companies face pushback in Wisconsin
Police and city leaders are pushing back against ridesharing companies operating in Madison.
Undercover police have fined two drivers from Uber and Lyft more than $1,300 for violating Madison’s taxi ordinances last weekend, the Wisconsin State Journal reported Tuesday.
A representative from Uber, a company that hires drivers to use their own cars in shuttling passengers, decried the move.
The Freeman: The Progressive Income Tax
Most Americans dislike the income tax, now more than a century old. The rates are too high. The provisions are unfair. The recordkeeping is onerous. The revenues are wasted.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
But there are fans. The politicians, certainly, of both parties. What good would it do to serve in Congress if you didn’t have any money to spend? There are other sources of public money, to be sure, but none so effective at plucking the geese while minimizing the hissing. Withholding means many Americans look forward to receiving a refund even though that means they have provided an interest-free loan to the very officials conscripting people’s money for dubious purposes.
WSJ: The Other Stealthy ObamaCare Menace
The Affordable Care Act’s Independent Payment Advisory Board has been so heavily criticized for being an unaccountable body with the power to effectively ration Medicare services that many congressional Democrats no longer support it. IPAB’s bureaucratic cousin—the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation—deserves the same treatment.
Both institutions are in place to preserve rather than reform Medicare’s traditional, and broken, fee-for-service Medicare program. They both also embrace the ObamaCaretechnocratic mind-set.
IPAB’s 15 supposed experts (yet to be nominated by the Obama administration) are charged with governing a program with more than 50 million enrollees. The unstated yet clear agenda is to impose stricter price controls within Medicare. The long, sad history of price regulation—in Medicare and elsewhere around the world—reveals that these controls cut costs only by lowering quality and inducing non-price rationing (e.g., queues).
CARTOON OF THE DAY
