Issues dominate in Illinois gubernatorial race, but so does money

This past Tuesday night was the latest round of the Illinois Democratic gubernatorial candidates forum; this one sponsored by NBC-Ch. 5, The Urban League, the Union League Club of Chicago, and Telemundo; and in a brisk pace, local media doyenne, Carol Marin teased out their positions for those that may have missed an earlier forum that was sponsored by the local DCC, on the city’s far North Side, and two sponsored by a duo of local women’s organizations: Chicago Women Take Action Alliance, and She Votes Illinois; plus one by the state’s LGBTQ community, all of which helped solidify the various positions that the candidates have established. 

On stage were billionaire J.B. Pritzker, businessman Chris Kennedy, community activist, Tio Hardiman, former teacher Dan Biss and educator, Bob Daiber, and veteran candidate Robert Marshall - all of whom were forced at points to give specific answers to specific question, and at time, some like Hardiman attempted to grandstand without being specific, often frustrating Marin in her attempt to move the hour along. 

Case in point is the state’s tax system -- one of the least progressive in the tri-state area and that has been debated, and pilloried by many for several years. As the Chicago Tribune reported: “All of the candidates except Marshall favor replacing the state’s current 4.95 percent personal income-tax rate, which Democratic and Republican lawmakers raised last summer, with a graduated tax that would place a higher levy on higher incomes akin to the federal system. 

The change, which would require a voter-approved constitutional amendment, couldn’t be considered for at least two years. Pritzker, Biss and Kennedy declined to specify the highest tax rate they would support on those making the most money, but Pritzker and Kennedy each said Illinois should adopt changes to the state’s tax code to grant additional tax credits to help the middle class until a graduated tax could be considered.” Opinions varied with Biss feeling that the change would hurt the middle class, but that it was endemic to do the right thing, for all taxpayers; with Daiber saying that any changes in revenue and budget should help fund schools in the state, and, says the longtime educator, that a quality education was vital for the future of the state’s economic viability. 

The elephant in the room was still the current occupant of the governor's chair, Republican Bruce Rauner, whose stalemate over a budget agreement with the state assembly crippled the budgets of local colleges and universities, and social service agencies, as he hammered out his insistence on what was a partisan and union bashing position, foreign to this blue state. The old adage that money can’t buy you love, but it can get you into political office is being tested in the Land of Lincoln and it came out in full force that evening. 

For many, the leading candidate is Pritzker, worth nearly $4 billion dollars, and in a race where many say will be won by only a wealthy man; Rauner spent $28 million of his own dollars getting elected, and hired an unprecedented 400 staff members to ease that win, has set the gold standard in the 2014 reign. Pritzker’s people won’t say how much that he intends to spend, from his own pocket, but it’s an easy assumption that the Hyatt Hotel heir will spend what the thinks that he needs, should he win the primary. Some Democrat party leaders, such as Sen. Dick Durbin and Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, have given their prestigious endorsement to him, and that only increases the amount that can be raised and matched. 

Those involved in the gubernatorial battle describe the spending as an arms race, pitting two free-spending billionaires willing to invest whatever it takes, said Politico.com, shortly after the Pritzker candidacy was announced. “I’ve never in my career started a race with an opponent sitting on $70 million at the outset,” said Pritzker campaign manager Anne Caprara, who served as executive director of Priorities USA, the pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC. “That is new, I will say.” “

Pritzker is widely regarded as the front-runner ahead of the March 20 primary election, benefiting from pouring more than $42 million of his fortune into extensive TV advertising and building up his campaign while the Democratic establishment has coalesced around his candidacy.” Others breakdown that Rauner spent $68 million campaign dollars with the $28 million of his own money, and can go higher much higher for his reelection bid. And the entire race may hit $300 million in total, setting a national record, for the fifth most populous state in the country. “That has left Kennedy and Biss running as outsiders and trying to emerge as Pritzker’s top rival in hopes of shaping public perception that the contest is down to two candidates,”continued the Tribune. 

Rauner is still, for this mostly liberal state, is continuing to look like Scrooge, especially with the nearly two year stretch, where the state lacked a budget, under his stalemate, only to have one that was finally approved over his veto. 

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His recent amendatory veto of a major education funding bill (which gave parity for low income children),and was passed again, over his objections as “just a bailout for Chicago,” but which he much later cheerfully signed - is the one to beat, say all of the men on the stage. Supporting an unheralded $75 million voucher program for a state that still struggles to meet state constitution mandated pension tabs, is one area, of opposition, and one that had the support of the Chicago Roman Catholic Cardinal Blase Cupich, who recently closed five Catholic schools for reasons of economy but now plans to build a multi million dollar complex on land across the street from Holy Name Cathedral, tainting all involved with hypocrisy, say some, who scoff at the reasons for the closings. 

The governor also received the dubious distinction from the National Review, the de facto Republican Party house organ, that claimed Rauner was the worst Republican governor in the nation. Being in the opposition means more than bashing and the need for building that better mousetrap, and hearing how it would be made seemed to be the goal of the evening and Marin’s questions were targeted to elicit a response. 

Coming out swinging was Kennedy, the scion of the storied political family, whose trailing poll numbers have caused worries among his supporters, sparked when “Biss [who] is the only supporter of a financial transaction tax, known as the “LaSalle Street tax,” on individual transactions in Chicago’s financial and commodity exchanges. Such a tax, he said, could generate up to $8 billion. But the transactions tax, long supported by the Chicago Teachers Union, is viewed as unlikely in an era of digitized trading in which exchanges could leave Chicago. The comment prompted a rebuke from Kennedy, who suggested Biss was trying to “promise something we can’t deliver.” 

Yet delivering on improving educational opportunities for all, is another item on the new governor's short list, whoever that may be, as graduation rates from Illinois’ public colleges has improved from a low of 73.1 percent - in the traditional four years -- to 88.30 percent in 2016.

If the state’s economic drivers are to be sustained in a new era that demands, as employers continue to search for qualified employees. Previously, economists have claimed that 64 percent of jobs in the state will require post-secondary education this year. 

Hovering in the background are traditional “pay to play” politics and Rauner recently ran ads revealing Pritzker in a seemingly assent to be made attorney general in the now infamous Blagojevich tapes; a charge that he has denied; and which he answered in what some are calling a “dodgy” manner. 

When Marin asked Kennedy to say something nice about Pritzker, he replied that he was a “poster child of all that’s wrong with the corrupt system in our state.” “It’s difficult for me to heap praise on him. And that’s where I unfortunately need to end it,” Kennedy said. The remark was a breach of debate protocol — even Hillary Clinton was able to muster up praise for Donald Trump’s children in an October 2016 presidential debate — and afterward, Kennedy said he apologized to Pritzker.” 

Biss, who like Kennedy, has gone after Pritzker as being a typical Illinois politician with the tacit suggestion, that his loyalties are divided and that his a strong supporter for longtime Speaker of the House MIchael Madigan continuing a fight that began at the Chicago Women Take Action Alliance forum, “ . ..when unexpectedly, in an offhand remark about Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, and that Pritzker was his favored candidate, to which he replied, “That’s hypocrisy, if you want to see the man that voted for Madigan, look at the end of the table!” 

 On Tuesday, this was the scenario: “The best thing for (Rauner) in this election is to run against another billionaire who’s Mike Madigan’s candidate,” Biss said. “If we want to be successful, we can’t afford to do that. And so I think it’s important to nominate someone with a record of standing up to Mike Madigan.” Pritzker responded that Biss was “the only candidate on this stage that voted for Mike Madigan for speaker of the House, that ran Mike Madigan’s super (political action committee) in 2016, and you’ve accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from Springfield insiders and bankers and lobbyists.” “So I don’t think you’re the one to lecture here,” Pritzker said to Biss. “I think you should just be who you are and stop criticizing others.” 

“Biss served in in the House for one term and backed Madigan for speaker before moving to the Senate. In 2016, Madigan's personal campaign fund gave $500,000 to Leading Illinois for Tomorrow, a federal PAC Biss ran that made about $10 million in independent expenditures, mainly for TV ads seeking to link Rauner to then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump,” said the Tribune.

With some issues at the forefront, especially economic ones, the standard “gotcha” of Illinois politicians is in the background, and does not seem like it’s going away. Stay tuned.

Rauner's petulance cost Illinois public shool students

In an unexpected, but still unexplained, action Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner took an amendatory veto to ensure that the $75 million dollar scholarship program, that many are calling a voucher for lower income students to attend Catholic and Independent schools, does just that as he quibbled over terminology that he feels will delay the program for about three dozen private schools.

According to the Chicago Tribune, “Rauner’s issue centers on language that would require nonpublic schools to be “recognized” by the board of education to participate in the tax program. He says that eligibility should be expanded to schools that are “registered” with the board.

While it all seems semantic, it also has delayed the new funding formula from going to the neediest students and schools across the state, that were impaired under the old formula, and the funds that they have received have been from the previous and woefully inadequate one used for decades and that gave Illinois the reputation for the most inequitable per pupil funding in the nation.

The State-Journal Register reported that “Making this adjustment to this bill will maximize the number of schools eligible to participate, and therefore the number of students who may benefit,” Rauner said. “Inclusivity was the spirit of this legislation to begin with, and we simply must ensure that we follow through with the appropriate language to get the job done.”

State Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, the chief architect of the school funding bill, said the governor’s veto of the simple trailer bill creates potential “chaos” for every Illinois school that stands to benefit from long-overdue funding reform.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker noted Rauner is “once again using Illinois children as pawns in his political games.”

$36 million dollar pledges were made when the tax credit became available on Jan. 2. The move was widely seen as part of the compromise needed to pass the bill along with intensive lobbying by Cardinal Cupich, of the Chicago archdiocese.

In strong language the Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey condemned the move, and said, in a press statement: “Bruce Rauner has a weird notion of fairness. First, he vetoed the state’s budget for the 2018 fiscal year, which included additional funding for public schools, and also vetoed revenue to end the budget crisis. He attacked the bill on school funding reform—which would drive dollars to districts and students that need them the most—and called it a ‘bailout,’ even though students in Chicago are among the neediest in the state with some of the highest class sizes, ratios of students to social workers and fewest enrichment opportunities. And when he took too much political heat for holding the state’s more than two million public school students hostage for his anti-worker, anti-woman agenda, he said he would support changes only if they included a scam that funnels public dollars to private schools and massive tax breaks to billionaires like himself.”

“In his latest take on fairness, the governor has held up a technical bill—that his own appointed Illinois State Board of Education needed to implement the new funding law—to ‘save’ three dozen additional private schools by giving them a crack at the public money trough. It’s no surprise that he’s running more nauseating television commercials touting this scam as his signature achievement. I guess in the governor’s mind, nothing can be saved unless he’s able to destroy it first.”

Adding further delays are even more problematic, but “according to Jackie Matthews, spokeswoman for the Illinois State Board of Education, the agency does not yet know when it will be able to implement the new funding model, and that the delays were based on the figures used --- in other words, the old “attack the methodology” tactic

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Before the veto superintendents were told it could go into effect in December, but the Illinois State Board of Education pushed it back to April, and now she says that “implementing a new funding formula is a complicated process that takes time. The evidence-based funding law fundamentally changed how the state distributes increases in state funding,” Matthews said. “ISBE is a little over four months into our work to implement the historic new law. Implementation requires that new systems be built, new data be collected and verified, and additional communication and collaboration streams be established within and outside of the agency.”

Addressing school superintendent concerns, Matthews said, “the models produced were based on unverified data generated for the specific purpose of helping policymakers evaluate the various funding reform proposals.”

Just to make a point, say some, this move is to say that he’s still in charge, despite earlier claims that he wasn’t, but that Speaker of the House Michael Madigan was, a remark that he later regretted, say others; but this petulance now robs the neediest students of their right to a decent education.

Chicago government braces for more than cold weather in 2018

With a tumultuous 2017, Chicago now faces an uphill battle of both challenges and problems, many that might take months to tackle. Number one on the list is the leadership of the public school system, the nation’s third largest, which now has its third leader in less than a decade, Janice Jackson, who replaces Forrest Claypool, forced to resign in an ethics scandal involving an employee supervising work from his previous employer, where there was a significant financial agreement, has received praise for her success as an educator, but also criticism for supporting the recent round of school closings in the Englewood neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest.

An African American, she has also received a warning from other black leaders that if she creates policies that harm black students and their neighborhoods, then she will be in more than just a hot seat.

The revelation that Claypool, long the go-to-guy for tough jobs, who had a squeaky clean reputation sent local residents and politicos reeling, especially after predecessor Barbara Byrd Bennett, was recently convicted of embezzling money and funneling it to her former employer, in exchange for a kickback

With a majority of Chicago Public Schools holding mostly Hispanic (46.8%) and African American (37.0) students, the political will for leadership and development is scarce in this long racially divided city, where many students of color are clustered, especially on the South and West sides, in crumbling buildings, some devoid of proper heating and cooling.

With rampant cost overruns for maintenance and teachers pensions, and the looming ghosts of the 2012 teachers strike, the financial forecast has improved, but is still sorely in need of triage.

One area of overlapping improvement was the creation of a new school funding formula, statewide, but that gave CPS students a boost to what had been the nation’s worst for low-income students; and, especially with the old formula that was strictly tethered to real estate taxes, and left some wealthy suburban schools with a bonus, even surplus, and some in the city, struggling to stay open.

In what many are considering to be a step in the right direction, two bond rating agencies have given thumbs up to the recent Illinois school funding formula, with reservations but praise nevertheless. S&P Global Ratings “revised the outlook on the Chicago Board of Education’s junk credit rating to stable from negative . . . citing a boost in state and local funding for the cash-strapped school district,” reported Reuters.

Jackson will have a tough time to show that student test scores continue to improve and tackle the financing and at the same time, handle the racial divisions, where some might see her, despite an ilustours record, as a sell out.

For Mayor Rahm Emanuel he faces another hit for the city’s reputation as being corrupt, and his resignation to Claypool’s departure made him look as if he was not in control of his department heads, especially in his quest for re-election; made even more questionable from the city’s black residents who are still stinging from the 50 school closings in their neighborhoods in 2013.

The Claypool departure has also reinvigorated calls for an elected school board, but that move is not a panacea for freedom, as it could easily be dominated by one faction, or another, of which the city has many.

The brightest light on the state level was the success in an override of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto, for a budget after a two year absence and that left many public colleges and universities facing deficits that could only be handled, in some cases with furlough days, and forced cuts in programs.

For 2018 social service agencies who were forced to beg for private donations, or close, will have to shore up finances and staffing to fulfill their missions, while the state pays a backlog of unpaid bills that was pegged at $16.6 billion dollars.

Comptroller Susana Mendoza requested a new rule that would require monthly reports of unpaid bills, and “will require state agencies to report bills on a monthly basis and include how old the bills are, whether funds have been appropriated to pay those bills and how much interest is owed,” reported Bloomberg Markets.

In what will be eventually seen as an ill-advised move the state has begun award $75 million of tax cuts -- vouchers really -- for private and Roman Catholic schools, a move that was decried in the press, but that Cardinal Cupich lauded, and pithly commented when pressed by supporters of the Chicago Teachers Union, they got their raise, what’s the issue?

The $75 million could go a long way in restoring cut programs such as the arts and special education, and more teachers, but the cardinal bypassed in feigned wonderment.

Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle, searching for needed money, created a sweetened beverage tax, called a pop tax, in local parlance, that had people in arms, especially retailers who employed many heads of households. While some liberals took a short-sighted attitude, “if you want to drink this, then pay up,” most realized the financial pitfalls, in what was another regressive tax in the Emanuel quiver.

The claim that the tax was to fight childhood obesity, was later retrenched and Preckwinkle said, it was always about the money. With voters ready to topple her and the county budget, the tax was rescinded on Dec.1.

Now, the fight to get money into the coffers has brought out many who say, delete the bloated bureaucracy of the nation’s second largest county, and what anti-union critics say are inflated salaries, putting Preckwinkle in an unenviable position, to manage the $3.1 billion budget, but also showing the county’s 5.2 million residents that they have power, and can use it.

The long held belief that the Chicago Police Department operated under different rules than other public servants, treating people of color differently than whites, still holds sway, but there was hope in the unprecedented conviction of an officer, Marco Proano, who shot into a car, using unreasonable force, gave hope to many. Of course, it will take a long time for trust to be regained by many of the public towards the police.

Finally, on the gubernatorial side, the reelection of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who has become as unpopular as Scrooge on Christmas Eve, has brought only one GOP contender, Rep. Jeanne Ives, while the Democrats have a plethora of people, including J.B. Pritzker, the Hyatt heir, the earnest, and former head of the Merchandise Mart, Chris Kennedy, and son ot the late Robert F. Kennedy, Ceasefire creator, Tio Hardiman, and educators Daniel Biss and Bob Daiber.

Pritzker supporters are in earnest and some are saying that the only way to beat Rauner is someone as wealthy as he is, if not more. But, there are others that say this should be about the issues, and not money.

Speaking on money, despite the largest property tax in Chicago history, and the increases in water and sewage rates, pension obligations are to the tune of $40 billion, say some, and others that, collectively, the tax hikes and other measures will take at least a decade to show improvement.

It’s going to be quite a year in 2018.