June 22, 2014

QUOTE OF THE DAY

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Chicago Tribune: Doing Michael Madigan’s dirty work

The House speaker’s henchman had a busy week, fighting to protect the Illinois Constitution from the people of Illinois:

On Tuesday, attorney Michael Kasper appeared before the State Board of Elections, doing his best to disqualify the signatures of thousands of voters who signed petitions demanding a fair redistricting process.

On Wednesday he was in a Cook County courtroom, trying to convince a judge that the framers of the constitution had mapped out a process by which citizens could amend the document but booby-trapped it with language that bars every imaginable change.

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Crain’s: Take a close look at the fight over the remap referendum

The group attempting to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot to change Illinois’ indisputably hyperpartisan legislative redistricting process is running into some well-publicized petition problems.

Here’s what’s behind the difficulties.

Almost 90 percent of the petition entries submitted by Yes for Independent Maps that were tossed as invalid by the Illinois State Board of Elections this month were for people either not registered to vote or not registered to vote at the address shown on the petitions, official documents show.

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Daily Herald: Education board chief was paid $48K to leave quietly

The Illinois Board of Higher Education paid a former executive director $48,000 to resign in the fall of 2012 while stating publicly — to avoid negative publicity — that he would be available for consultation during the transition to a new chief, the state’s inspector general said in a report released Friday.

George Reid was asked to leave his $193,000 job in September 2012 after just 18 months because the board found he was an ineffective and combative manager who alienated staff, the report released by the Illinois Ethics Commission said.

His contract allowed for him to receive only $16,000 in severance, but the board paid him three times that because, according to the board’s ex-chairwoman, Reid threatened a lawsuit.

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Chicago Sun Times: Money for nothing: State paid UIC $498,355 for subpar study

The state spent almost half a million dollars on a flawed study of Gov. Pat Quinn’s now-defunct anti-violence program — the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative — after officials rejected a more rigorous evaluation that would have been free, auditors say.

The $498,351 study by the University of Illinois at Chicago didn’t even examine whether the program helped reduce violence, according to Auditor General William Holland’s office.

State Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said the study leaves taxpayers in the dark about whether the $54.5 million program made an impact in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the Chicago area.

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Chicago Tribune: Tollway poised to award contract to firm that admitted hiring fraud

The Illinois Tollway is poised to award a hefty construction contract to a New York-based firm that admitted committing fraud in connection with minority hiring for a tunnel project in that city, the Tribune has learned.

Judlau Contracting Inc.’s $64 million bid was the lowest of four received by the Tollway for construction of new interchange ramps at Interstate 290 and Thorndale Avenue in Itasca.

The interchange is the biggest chunk of work so far in the Tollway’s $3.4 billion reconstruction and widening of the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway, which will be converted into a toll road. Final approval of the Judlau deal is on the agenda when the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority board meets Thursday.

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Wall Street Journal: Hollywood Teaches Wall Street a Lesson in Corporate Welfare

Hollywood liberals like to savage corporate America as greedy and mendacious. Consider their portrayals of big business in such recent films as “The Company Men,” (2010), “The Promised Land” (2012), and “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). But here’s a dirty little secret: The film and TV industries have colluded with politicians to pick the pockets of taxpayers on a grand scale.

Media companies nab about $1.4 billion annually in tax incentives that 40 states offer for TV and film production, according to a report this year by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office. Most provide either rebates or tax credits that offset a percentage of their production costs.

Recipients last year included such box-office blockbusters as “American Hustle,” “12 Years a Slave” and, lo, “The Wolf of Wall Street.” New York taxpayers covered 30% of “Wolf’s” postproduction and below-the-line (i.e., labor, construction, crew) costs. The Empire State Development office didn’t respond to our request of how much “Wolf” and other films collected, but the film had a $100 million budget—and grossed nearly $400 million world-wide.

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CARTOON OF THE DAY

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