Get the latest news from around Illinois.
Chicago Tribune: Doubting Rauner? We understand. Here's a reminder. Plus a Senate Pass/Fail.
When senators return to the Illinois Capitol on Tuesday, they’ll have the place to themselves. The House is not scheduled to be in Springfield again until March 7.
Perhaps the calm will focus minds and hearts. This might be the last chance for a budget compromise, now teetering toward collapse, to find its footing. Gov. Bruce Rauner has outlined what he’d like to see in a final deal. The compromise could end the budget standoff and include items on his agenda — freezing property taxes and passing pension reform. But it’s unclear if his suggestions have been folded into the proposed deal’s 12 bills.
Belleville News-Democrat: Highest pay in nation not good enough for Illinois workers
Someone apparently needs to check the state of Illinois’ email system, because the 38,000 members of the American Federation of State, Callous, Me-First Employees failed to get the three messages from Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner that this state is so broke that we are in a crisis and cannot afford another $3 billion a year in raises.
The state’s largest employee union authorized a strike rather than take the same deal 20 other state unions already accepted.
They were the nation’s highest-paid state workers at $63,660 in 2015, which is double your private sector average Illinois salary of $32,206. Not to mention, they only work 37.5 hours a week, pay about one-fourth of their platinum health care coverage while taxpayers put in $15,000 a year and their early retirements at age 50 and their premium pensions are the main reasons Illinois taxpayers face a $130 billion liability.
Daily Herald: Rauner right to rip AFSCME strike threat
If Gov. Bruce Rauner were balking at a contract agreement solely for the purpose of breaking Illinois’ largest union, we might have some reason to pause over the announcement Thursday that members of AFSCME Council 31 have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.
But here are some of the outrages that AFSCME’s leadership won’t accept: a provision allowing raises based on merit rather than simple longevity, maintaining a 37.5-hour workweek but payment of overtime after 40 hours instead of the current 37.5, 100 percent state subsidy of Bronze-level health care coverage with options for employees to keep their current Platinum coverage, or accept Gold or Silver, if they want to pay the difference, continued payment of 100 percent of retirees’ Platinum health care coverage after 20 years service.
WTTW Chicago Tonight: Rauner Crushes Prospect of Further Union Negotiations
The fresh, heightened potential of a state employee strike did nothing to sway Gov. Bruce Rauner, who on Friday swiftly dismissed the notion of returning to the bargaining table with public workers’ main union.
“There are not going to be any more negotiations,” Rauner said after a Black History Month event. “We should implement our new contract. It’s reasonable. It’s fair.”
State Journal-Register: It’s time for penance at the Capitol
The state’s unpaid bills total topped $12 billion last week. It seems outrageous, but it was just mid-December when that total reached $11 billion. If Illinois continues on the path it’s been on, it won’t be long — maybe late March? April if we’re lucky? — before it hits $13 billion.
These days there is barely time to compose a lament at the dismal state of Illinois before the next ghastly milestone hits and even more despair descends. And that next milestone is just a few days away: When the calendar flips to March on Wednesday, Illinois will head into its 21st month without a state budget.
News-Gazette: Gaming the system
Workers’-compensation lawyers have more than a rooting interest in professional sports.
Professional football is a big business, and there’s no doubt it’s a rough game.
With a 100 percent player injury rate, the athletes’ bodies can take a real beating, sometimes leaving them with physical problems that last a lifetime.
Chicago Sun-Times: Billionaire pols could use a little farm team training
In politics, there used to be farm teams.
If you planned to run for governor some day, you might start out by running for the Chicago City Council. You could learn to hit a curve ball before moving up.
But now very wealthy men — they all seem to be men — with no previous experience in elective office are pushing right to the top. People like Bruce Rauner, Donald Trump, Chris Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker, self-funded and self-impressed, are running for governor or senator or president or whatever and often winning. Because money often wins.
State Journal-Register: Rauner’s office: Gov spends 55% of Illinois nights at Mansion
The Illinois Executive Mansion has been available to governors and their families for 162 years, but the prospect of living in a historic building hasn’t been enough to get them all to reside there.
Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration believes he’s an exception and said he spends approximately 55 percent of his nights in Illinois at the Executive Mansion. The administration didn’t expand on how many days that actually is.
Chicago Sun-Times: Rauner backs water testing near quarries used as cheap dump sites
Gov. Bruce Rauner has stepped into a years-long fight over dumping construction debris close to drinking-water supplies, an issue that’s pitted the city of Chicago against southwest suburban communities worried about possible contamination.
The Rauner administration is backing a bill in the Illinois Legislature to require groundwater testing near quarries that accept broken concrete, rock, brick, stone and dirt from construction sites.
Rockford Register-Star: Let’s end policing for profit in Illinois
We have all seen a police television drama where the criminal ring leader loses his luxury sports car, yacht or mansion because they resulted from illicit criminal activity. In Illinois, however, grandmothers and other innocent residents have their property taken without being found guilty of, or even charged with, a crime.
From 2005 through 2015, Illinois law enforcement took more than $300 million from Illinois residents — a figure that is certainly very conservative, largely because reporting standards around civil asset forfeiture range from lax to nonexistent. In other words, property is taken without the public ever knowing that it happens or the circumstances.
Rockford Register-Star: Proposed casino legislation dictates more bankruptcy, education losses for Illinois
In Illinois, Lincoln’s essential premise of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” has been corrupted into “government of the casinos, by the casinos, and for the casinos” — as exemplified by the new casino legislation in Senate Bill 7.
In 2015, U.S. Congressional hearings highlighted that much of the Illinois bankruptcy was precipitated by $35 billion to $100 billion in giveaways since 1990 to gambling interests — diverting funds particularly away from essential education funding. For example, the original 10 Illinois casino licenses worth $5 billion ($7.5 billion in 2017) were given away for only $25,000 each to political insiders, including one insider who thereafter went to prison.
Chicago Sun-Times: CPS privacy breach bared confidential student information
Confidential information about Chicago Public Schools students — including medical conditions and dates of birth — was kept on unsecured web documents that anyone could call up despite laws and CPS rules that are supposed to safeguard children’s privacy.
Some of the personal, identifiable information involved requests for certain ongoing nursing services for students that are handled through a private CPS contractor, RCM Health Care Services.
Chicago Tribune: Jesse Jackson Jr.'s workers' compensation benefits 'troubling': ethics expert
Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s six-figure federal benefits package should be investigated by the U.S. Labor Department’s inspector general, a government ethics expert said Friday.
Craig Holman, of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said he found the fact Jackson receives about $138,000 a year from the federal government “troubling.”
Chicago Tribune: All Chicago police dispatchers now trained in mental health awareness
All call takers and dispatchers in the city’s 911 police operations center have completed mental health awareness and de-escalation training as the department works to improve the way it responds to crisis situations.
Training for the frontline civilian employees included how to best communicate with callers who may be having a mental health crisis, techniques to calm a situation before officers arrive and how to recognize situations that may need a response from officers specially trained in crisis intervention.
Rockford Register-Star: Let’s not make Amerock the latest missed opportunity for Rockford
Old Rockford thinking would have killed the Amerock hotel project long before it required a third version of the development agreement with the city.
Over the past few years, however, a new Rockford thinking has emerged. That thinking — bold, aggressive and unafraid of risk — has produced AAR’s maintenance, repair and overhaul facility at Chicago Rockford International Airport, the UW Health Sports Factory, City Market, Alignment Rockford, the Burnham Building and the Prairie Street Brewhouse, to name just a few.
Rockford Register-Star: Winnebago County sheriff says budget cuts may sink Rock River patrols
You can bet the Ski Broncs will be out on the Rock River this summer. So too, will recreational boaters, jet skiers and anglers.
Whether the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department’s boat patrols will be present on the river remains to be seen.
Bloomington Pantagraph: A matter of trust: Metro Zone fallout is a key question
If Bloomington ends the Metro Zone revenue sharing agreement with Normal, future talks about how to move forward probably will not include an offer by the city to share sales tax revenue on a larger scale.
“Obviously, my council turned that down by 5 to 4,” said Bloomington Mayor Tari Renner, referring to a June verbal straw poll of the council that opposed proceeding with any further discussion on an idea to pool, and then share, all sales tax revenue throughout the Twin Cities.
The Southern: One year after HUD took possession of the Alexander County Housing Authority, people still live with roaches, rats, mold and despair
On a recent afternoon when Kristen Simelton was digging for the remote under the couch cushion, she pulled out a smashed rat instead.
Roaches and rats by the hundreds have taken up residency in units at Elmwood Place and McBride Place apartment complexes within the Alexander County Housing Authority. These unwanted house guests share the food and the furniture with the children and their parents who live here.