Reuters: Judge to hear arguments over Illinois pension reform law
Illinois faces an uphill battle to defend on Thursday the constitutionality of a law aimed at easing the state’s huge unfunded pension liability.
Lawyers for the state will try to convince a judge in state capital Springfield that the law is crucial to save the state’s sinking finances. Attorneys for public labor unions and others will argue the law is invalid because it trounces on state constitutional protections for public worker retirement benefits.
Illinois has the worst-funded state retirement system and its huge unfunded pension liability has helped pound its credit ratings to the lowest level among states.
Bond Buyer: Chicago Passes Budget That Punts on Pensions
The Chicago City Council adopted Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s $7.3 billion 2015 budget, pushing off a fix for a pension-related fiscal cliff until after next year’s municipal elections.
Emanuel stressed the city’s fiscal strides, including passage of reforms for two of the city’s four pension funds and its improved structural balance, after Wednesday’s 46-4 vote in favor of his spending plan.
“This is the fourth year in a row we have balanced a budget without raising property, sales, or gas taxes. This will be the fourth year in a row we have put money back into the rainy day fund rather than take money out,” Emanuel said. “This is the fourth year in a row that we have increased our investment in the basic infrastructure that people have come to rely upon.”
AP: Legislation stopping pensions for felons advances
Legislation giving Illinois’ attorney general more power to stop state pension payments to convicted felons has passed the Illinois House.
The measure is sponsored by Democratic Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston and Democratic Rep. Elaine Nekritz of Northbrook. It would give the attorney general the ability to intervene to halt pension payments to anyone convicted of a felony related to their public service.
The Illinois Supreme Court in July upheld a lower court’s ruling that Attorney General Lisa Madigan couldn’t challenge a Chicago police pension board decision allowing former commander Jon Burge to keep his pension. Burge was convicted of lying about torturing suspects.
Some lawmakers debating the bill Wednesday decried that decision. Nekritz says the legislation would prevent something similar from happening.
Crain's: Uber wins Springfield war as override effort fails
The sponsor of a state bill to tighten regulation of Uber Technologies, Lyft and other ridesharing firms has thrown in the towel on his bid to override Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto. But state Rep. Mike Zalewski says he still hopes to obtain part of what he wanted in a negotiated deal with the ridesharers.
In a phone call late today, Zalewski said his override effort is over.
Asked whether that’s because he no longer has the votes, with both Mr. Quinn and Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner opposing the bill, Zalewski replied, “It’s clear to me that an agreement with Uber and the other companies is a better approach.”
Wirepoints: State Senator Makes an Ass of Himself on Minimum Wage
In an Illinois Senate committee hearing yesterday on raising the minimum wage, a witness tried to describe research indicating that, while relatively skilled, secure workers benefit from a higher wage, the unskilled, most vulnerable often lose their jobs entirely. What the witness tried to describe is actually a lengthy compilation of all major research on the minimum wage — dozens of dozens of studies done here and around the world, which are not consistent on all points.
The compilation is in a 155 page report completed by the National Bureau of Economic Research (the NBER). As you probably know if you follow big economic issues, and as you would hope is known by your representatives who vote on them, NBER is among the most respected, non-partisan groups of economists around. Its researchers have included 13 past chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and 24 Nobel Prize Winners in Economics. They have included Democrats and liberals like Paul Krugman, Austan Goolsby, Janet Yellen and plenty of others.
The NBIR paper says “the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.” But what happens when you try to tell that to a champion of the underprivileged intent on capitalizing on the popularity of raising the minimum wage? Arrogance, rudeness and willful ignorance. Listen to Senator Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) and judge for yourself. That’s his voice you here through most of the video.
Washington Post: The moral and political case for reforming the criminal justice system
There isn’t much room for optimism among progressives these days. The president’s avenues to legislative achievement in his final two years are narrow and seem mostly to lead to the right — toward a corporate tax reform in one instance, and a NAFTA-style trade deal with the Asia-Pacific region in another.
But in these dark days, there is, as we are already witnessing, reason for hope — in the form of a landmark climate change deal with China last week and an expected executive action on deportations very soon. And today, increasingly, there are signs that the United States could make greater strides on criminal justice reform than at any time in a generation or more.
From a moral standpoint, the need to reform the justice system is clear. During the past four decades, the U.S. prison population has quadrupled even as the crime rate has dropped. We have some 2.4 million people behind bars, far more than any other country, costing about $80 billion a year to maintain. Worse yet, as result of racial disparities in sentencing, more than half of U.S. prisoners are minorities. These staggering statistics stem from the failure of the “war on drugs,” the true impact of which can only be measured in destroyed lives and devastated communities, especially among the most marginalized segments of society.
International Business Times: Chicago Lawmakers Call for SEC Investigation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel
Chicago lawmakers are planning to send a formal request to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an investigation into donations to Mayor Rahm Emanuel from executives at financial firms that manage city pension money. The donations were first documented by International Business Times in a report quoting former SEC and federal prosecutors saying the contributions may run afoul of the agency’s pay-to-play rules.
The aldermen scheduled a City Hall news conference Tuesday to announce the action.
In a letter to Andrew Ceresney, who directs the SEC’s division of enforcement, Aldermen Bob Fioretti, Scott Waguespack and John Arena write the donations constitute “pay-to-play actions” that “have violated the public trust and are a breach of the fiduciary duty” by the Emanuel administration officials who oversee the city pension systems. They say “Chicago has a deep history of pay-to-play” and that their “goal is to end these tactics and protect the citizens of Chicago and employees’ investments.”
Daily Herald: A watchword for the legislative veto session: wait
As Illinois lawmakers prepare to convene the so-called 2014 fall veto session, we have a suggestion that’s unusual for us on what they should do. Almost nothing.
Or, stated better, we urge them to take seriously the direction often applied to physicians and “first, do no harm.”
In the context of a lame-duck legislature with, especially significant, an outgoing governor, the two directives aren’t far apart. For, whatever the legislature could be poised to “accomplish” before the new leadership takes control, its actions on topics including the minimum wage, income taxes, staffing of fire stations and even school funding have the potential to create much mischief without key players being held accountable for it.
SJR: Judge details IDOT monitor's duties
A federal judge has provided details about the duties of a monitor reviewing hiring at Gov. Pat Quinn’s Department of Transportation and set a deadline for a preliminary report.
A description of Noelle Brennan’s responsibilities comes in a Tuesday filing by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sidney Schenkier. He also set a Feb. 27 deadline for an initial report.
Anti-patronage attorney Michael Shakman has alleged improper patronage hiring at IDOT. Quinn’s administration eliminated some of the jobs in question but vowed to cooperate.
SJR: School funding bill must be tweaked
There was general agreement Tuesday that the system for funding K-12 education in Illinois needs to be fixed.
However, there was also general agreement that a school funding reform bill passed by the Senate last spring that attempted to address the issue needs changes.
The House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee and the House Elementary and Secondary Appropriations Committee held a joint hearing on Senate Bill 16 Tuesday, the proposal that changes Illinois’ school funding formula to have most state education assistance distributed to the neediest school districts.
Chicago Tribune: Cook County may pay $41,000 in parking, traffic tickets to Chicago
Cook County commissioners will consider a proposal Wednesday to cut a $41,640 check to finally settle up with the city of Chicago for years worth of unpaid parking and traffic tickets issued to people driving county vehicles.
The check would cover more than two decades’ worth of outstanding traffic fines, according to a news release from Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. And Preckwinkle says she will go after the employees who were driving when the tickets were issued to try to recoup the money.
The amount, $41,640, covers the full cost of all the unpaid traffic tickets still on the books, minus any late fees and penalties that have accrued over the years, according to Cook County spokesman Frank Shuftan.
AEI: An anti-corporate welfare, anti-cronyism agenda for the 114th Congress
Policymakers in both major US political parties have increasingly condemned “crony capitalism” and “corporate welfare.” Many House and Senate candidates in the 2010, 2012, and 2014 election cycles gained considerable support by promising to combat policies that favor narrow interests at the expense of the broader public interest.
There is plenty of debate as to what counts as corporate welfare and crony capitalism, and there is no consensus definition for either of these words. But they are real phenomena: much federal policy tilts the playing field, picks winners and losers, and rewards well-connected insiders. This contributes to the public perception that the “game” is rigged and harms economic growth and innovation.
Scholars at the American Enterprise Institute have identified a few policy changes lawmakers can pursue if they want to combat cronyism and corporate welfare. There are dozens of programs, policies, and tax provisions beyond those mentioned here that could count as crony capitalism or corporate welfare. The ones here are just a start.