Productive? More like, “Drop dead!”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker gave Mayor Lori Lightfoot the time of day, as the two of them had a one-on-one meeting Saturday to discuss various issues – including whether or not state government would be capable of offering help to city government in meeting pension obligations.

LIGHTFOOT: Wants state aid on pensions

Oddly enough, both officials issued canned statements where they both said the meeting was “productive” without offering much of anything in the way of details.

WHICH I SUSPECT really means the governor told Lightfoot something the equivalent of “drop dead,” and waited until after she left the room before bursting out in hysterics.

With Lightfoot muttering under her breath at the lack of consideration she saw the governor offering up aid to the state’s largest city.

For what it’s worth, the city currently has pension funds that are about $28 billion underfunded. Which had various reports indicating that the mayor saw the solution as having the state combine the city’s pension funds into the funds that cover other municipal governments across Illinois.

In short, the state would have taken on the city’s problems – with the city then being allowed to use its sources of income to pay for other issues and problems it would rather resolve instead.

IT DOESN’T SEEM to be happening, although both officials feel the need for showing a sense of decorum. Largely because both of the government officials carry the “D” label following their names.

PRITZKER: How quickly did gov. say 'no'

If this were the “good ol’ days” of Democrat Rahm Emanuel and Republican Bruce Rauner, the two of them would be dreaming up choice insults to toss in each other’s direction. And you just know Rahm’s insults likely would have included a borderline vulgarity or two.

Because it really would be fantastical for anyone to think that Illinois state government, which has financial dilemmas of its own, would have any willingness to get itself into resolving a city government problem.

RAUNER: Would he have offered any aid?

If anything, I could envision that residents of the 96 counties outside of metropolitan Chicago (who at most account for about one-third of the state’s population) would be prepared to have a hissy-fit if Pritzker offered up any sort of aid on this issue.

IN FACT, I’VE heard so many tales throughout the years of the amount of aid the state has had to provide to bail Chicago interests out of assorted problems that I have no doubt any attempt to contemplate state aid to resolve a city pension problem would run into serious political opposition that I’m sure Pritzker would not want to have brought down upon himself.

Meaning it was a fantasy, at best, to believe the state would be able to offer up much help.

The pension problems the city now faces are most likely going to be ones that will dominate the Lightfoot Years, and may be what prevents her from being able to afford the kinds of things that Mayor Lori would prefer to be doing so as to build herself up a municipal legacy of significance.

One other point I should note; it seems that both Lightfoot and Pritzker managed to use an identical phrase – they “look forward to continuing to work together” on various issues.

EMANUEL: How vulgar would his vocabulary become?

AS IN BOTH of them still plan to ask the other for many, more favors in the future. They’re expecting that the “D” they have in common will result in each of them having their phone calls to each other returned.

They both have to continue to deal with each other for the next few years.

So Saturday’s meeting wasn’t of real significance. With the real story being what was said immediately after the two met.

And whether either one of these esteemed public officials said anything in private that would top Rahm Emanuel’s vocabulary at its most vulgar.

  -30-

Last man standing? It’s Mr. Speaker!

The Illinois General Assembly completed its business for the 2019 spring session this weekend – one day after they were scheduled to do so on Friday. History will record that they managed to get a lot of things done – including some measures (a casino within Chicago) that in the past seemed next to impossible.

 

MADIGAN: Illinois making recovery?

So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, felt the need to issue a congratulatory (of sorts) statement.

BUT READING THROUGH it, I couldn’t help but sense the real purpose was to remind people that Bruce Rauner is political history, while he remains in office. Rauner being the guy who spent four years in office perpetually blaming Madigan for Illinois’ inability to get anything done.

And even implying, at times, that Madigan ought to be the Chicago politico facing criminal indictment – rather than Edward M. Burke!

For as Madigan put it, 2019 will go down as the year of a balanced budget that boosts education funding, helps senior citizens and women and helps pay off $1 billion in old bills.

“While there remains more work to be done to put Illinois fully back on track, in these steps we see what Illinois can be when our leaders stand up for our middle-class families while still seeking common ground,” Madigan said. “When we use our time to build compromises, when we have a governor who encourages Illinois to think big again and when we all commit ourselves to working together to build a stronger Illinois.”

I’M SURE THE ideologues of the rural portions of Illinois will have their own retaliatory rants. But the sense is that we are better off for not having a government that was so anxious to play political games with organized labor that it was willing to disrupt its daily operations.

 

RAUNER: He gone!

Heck, even Illinois House Republican Leader Jim Durkin of suburban Westchester called the budget deal “bipartisan” and praised the fact it did not include tax increases.

Which makes the Madigan proclamation of the session’s end seem all the more the equivalent of a political raspberry – aimed in the direction of Gov. Bruce himself.

  -30-

Just why shouldn’t Trump finances be scrootin’ed the way IRS does for us?

TRUMP: On tax issue, nunya bizness is his 'tude

Monday was Tax Day, and some 50 million U.S. taxpayers (about one-sixth of the nation) waited until the deadline before filing their returns that acknowledge just how much they need to “pay up” to the guv’mint!

Yes, I must confess, I was amongst them. I made my trek to the post office Monday morning to ensure my envelopes to the Internal Revenue Service and Illinois Department of Revenue got the necessary postmarks confirming I met the April 15 deadline.

NOW BECAUSE I’M working the freelance routine, I’m constantly checking my mailbox for checks – none of which have any money withheld for taxes.

Meaning that for me, this is the time of year I have to acknowledge just how big my share of financial support for the state and federal governments during the past year was. And above all else, I have to PAY UP!

My share isn’t significant. Our nation certainly isn’t going to pay off its debts based off what I provide them.

Although it’s like the thoughts of one-time Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen, who once said, “a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

WHICH IS A thought we should keep in mind when our political people quibble over whether President Donald Trump ought to publicly disclose his own income tax returns.

DIRKSEN: A million here, a million there … 

Unlike most contemporary politicos, Trump has steadfastly refused to make his returns public – taking an attitude that’s something along the lines of “none of your business!”

Although I suspect that Trump’s real reason for so stubbornly refusing to let us see his returns – when putting together my own return this year, I couldn’t help but note the many potential tax write-offs that are available to certain people.

The write-offs that make it possible for them to significantly reduce the amount of their overall income that gets taxed. With some people being able to write off so much that they essentially wind up owing the government nothing.

IT WOULDN’T SHOCK me to learn that the roughly one-quarter I owed in taxes this year of the just under $16,000 I earned as a freelance writer during 2018 would be a larger share than what Trump has paid out.

DALEY: Scrootin'ed?

I’m also sure that the average U.S. taxpayer has an income situation closer to mine than to anything resembling the Trumpster. Which means keeping this issue low-key is more about Trump trying to keep the public from realizing how different he is from they are.

We hear talk from Trump about how his business finances are under audit and he doesn’t want to interfere with any IRS review being done. I think it’s more about him being arrogant enough to think it’s none of our business.

Because if it were our business, we’d have the kind of finances that would make us eligible for all kinds of tax write-offs. Since we don’t, he probably thinks we’re just financial chumps – but certainly doesn’t want it publicly known that he truly regards us as peons.

IT WILL BE interesting to see if House Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., has any luck in swaying the IRS in releasing the past six years worth of Trump’s returns. Or will the IRS conclude that this is merely a Democratic effort at playing partisan politics against the president.

NEAL: Will he get Trump taxes?

We’ll have to see just how much scrutiny our officials want to have done on our president.

Which actually reminds me of the 2001 moment when then-Mayor Richard M. Daley spoke of the concept, saying, “What else do you want? Do you want to take my shorts? Give me a break. How much scrutiny do you want to have? Go scrutinize yourself. I get scrootin’ed every day.”

Perhaps what we really need is for Trump to be scrootin’ed by the masses to make this issue go away. Just like the rest of us are submitting our own finances to by the IRS.

  -30-

Federal bureaucracy, red tape – is that the key to thwarting sanctuary cities?

It has long been the conservative ideologue manner for dealing with abortion – a medical procedure they’re determined to view as criminal, but which sensible people do not.

Just another step in Trump's efforts … 

They have their similar-minded elected officials push for policies and regulations that make a person’s ability to obtain the procedure so much of a burden that it effectively makes it impossible for many women to obtain – even if it remains in the law books.

IT SEEMS THAT the ideologues are taking a similar approach to immigration; specifically to the notion of Sanctuary Cities. As in the concept that federal immigration officials ought to do their own work in enforcing federal policies that are overly harsh, and shouldn’t be able to draft local law enforcement into doing their leg work.

It seems they’re once again trying to mess with the federal funds that many local police departments rely upon to fund their efforts. Almost as though they’re saying cities are free to declare themselves sanctuaries from the ideological nonsense that has taken over our federal immigration policies.

But those cities can count on being messed with in ways that it will make it difficult, if not impossible, to do the jobs that actually are within their listed responsibilities.

That certainly is happening in Chicago, where on Friday the city felt compelled to file a lawsuit yet again against the U.S. government for messing with the funds the Chicago Police Department expect to get. And that, in fact, every police department gets.

EXCEPT THAT IN this Age of Trump, officials want to withhold as their way of pressuring Chicago into accepting a more intolerant attitude toward “all those foreigners” whom they’re determined to believe are the root cause of all the problems our society faces.

Because once again, Chicago is being forced to fight for its share of the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant funds – a program that has become a significant part of the federal government’s efforts to help bolster local law enforcement.

Which is something that President Donald J. Trump always claims he’s interested in doing whenever he goes on yet another of his nonsensical rants about how messed up he thinks Chicago is.

… to bully Chicago and Rahm Emanuel into submission

But yet what does he actually do? Trump has talks with singer Kanye West about a whole lot of nonsensical babble, while messing with the funding that might help local police to do more in addressing crime.

THIS PARTICULAR ISSUE is pathetic in so many ways – largely because it occurred a year ago.

Chicago had to take legal action in order to get its share of grant monies, and a U.S. District judge wound up ruling in the city’s favor that federal demands requiring city and Cook County jail officials notify them of every inmate they were holding who had questionable immigration status were not sufficient cause for the feds to withhold some $2 million from the Chicago Police Department.

Yet it seems the Justice Department is once again refusing to cough up the cash, as city officials still have yet to receive the letter confirming that they’ll get the money this year.

As though officials in this Age of Trump have decided they don’t want to pay attention to any court order. They’re going to persist in pursuing their ideologically-motivated policies whose long-range intent are to make certain people feel so unwelcome in this country that they’ll want to leave.

ALMOST LIKE THAT “self-deporting” nonsense talk that came up during the presidential campaign of 2012. It’s as if this goes beyond anything that Trump says or thinks, and has become a part of the Republican platform for addressing the issue.

Ought to think before rants about bullying

Ignore those people who won’t do what they’re told, and maybe they’ll just give up.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes the courts to issue an order forcing the federal government to cough up Chicago’s share of the proceeds. It’s not like there’s anything new this year that didn’t apply last year.

As for whether the same nonsense will occur again next year, most likely it will. That may be the ultimate reason that strong turnout come Nov. 6 (and again in 2020) is so important – perhaps the so-called “silent majority” needs to be reminded their guy got 3 million fewer votes in 2016 – and that they’re really a loud-mouthed minority whose ideological bigotry doesn’t belong in the 21^st Century.

  -30-

What’s more important to Illinois govt.; a state budget or partisan politics?

I’d like to be wrong.

I’d like to be dismissed as being overly cynical.

RAUNER: How badly does he need a budget?

I’D BE VERY happy if, by the time you read this commentary, Illinois government has a tentative budget for the state’s upcoming fiscal year.

But the decades of time I have spent writing about the workings of our government officials bring me to the conclusion that I’m not going to believe we will have a budget for the 2019 fiscal year (which begins July 1) until I actually see evidence that the governor has put his “Bruce Rauner” on the bottom line and signed it into law.

Not even the reports I have been reading saying that officials could start off the process of approving a budget late Wednesday, which could result in something getting final legislative approval on Thursday, ease my skepticism.

There’s just too many ways that the talks taking place thus far can be thrown all out of whack, and not just because of the details that will come up in any legitimate spending proposal.

WHAT’S ULTIMATELY GOING to decide whether a budget can be put together is the degree to which ALL officials decide they’re willing to engage in, what some people cynically call, “the people’s business.”

MADIGAN: Will a minion thwart a budget?

The fact is that IF government officials in Illinois manage to put together a budget for Fiscal ’19, it would be the first time they’ve been able to do so in years. As in dating back to the days of Pat Quinn as governor.

Which isn’t really any testament to the political abilities of Quinn himself. It’s more a matter of the degree to which Gov. Rauner has placed his political agenda (a desire to undermine the influence of organized labor within state government) above the daily operations of Illinois.

If Rauner can’t get a budget in place for state government prior to the actual beginning of the fiscal year (which many, many governors have managed to do – even many Republican officials who had to deal with Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago), then he literally will become the governor who never was able to do a budget during his gubernatorial term.

QUINN: At least he passed budgets

THAT’S EXACTLY THE kind of “talking point” that would sway voters into thinking this Rauner guy is too inept to be worthy of a new term.

I understand that part of the reason we may get a budget agreement this time around is because Republicans are loosening up any opposition they might usually have. They want a budget, over all.

Yet it wouldn’t shock me if there are at least a few legislators of the Democratic political persuasion who would love for the Rauner campaign to have to seek re-election as an inept governor who couldn’t even handle a “basic” task as budgeting the state’s monies.

They may decide that such an “issue” is more important than another year of financial problems. A petty (and craven) way of thinking of things, yet it is one that political people of all persuasions are capable of thinking.

NOT THAT I’M saying I think Rauner is giving up on any of his principles. If he does manage to get re-elected come Nov. 6, I suspect he’ll become even more hard-headed in a second term than he ever was in a first.

Consider his new digital ad, the 43-second spot where he touts his desire to do a rebuild of Illinois similar to the idea that the Chicago Cubs turned themselves from a historically-pathetic joke of a baseball franchise into a championship ball club back in 2016.

The way Rauner puts it, the Cubs’ rebuild took 7 years, and he claims giving him another term in office would ensure he has seven years to rebuild Illinois (it probably would take much longer, but that’s a point for debate in a future commentary).

A part of me thinks this ad is Rauner’s backup plan, in the event that something comes up and the Illinois General Assembly’s spring session ends Thursday night (the deadline) without a budget on its way to the governor’s desk for review. A short-sighted strategy in that it manages to offend the sensibilities of the more rational amongst us in Illinois who prefer the White Sox or St. Louis Cardinals.

  -30-

Ill. budget “brawl” likely to get ugly

I remember back when I was still in college, trying to gain some experience that might make me a reporter-type person someday when an editor told me the very definition of “news” is wherever there is conflict. People in agreement about things just aren’t very newsworthy.

Madigan seems determined to continue ...

If that’s the case, we’re in for a significant scrap in coming months – because I can see massive conflict occurring within state government.

GOV. BRUCE RAUNER met Thursday with the General Assembly’s leadership, and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, made it clear he’s not about to meekly cower in the governor’s presence just to get a budget put together.

With regard to the Illinois government budget being put together for the state’s 2019 fiscal year (which begins July 1), Rauner earlier this week made a point of talking of the need for the state to have a balanced budget, while also implying that the problem was the Democratic majorities that run the General Assembly.

They’re not doing what Rauner wants of them. They are to blame for any inability of state officials to put together a budget before the state Legislature’s scheduled adjournment come the end of May.

Which led to Madigan issuing his own statement following the Thursday morning session – one in which he attempted to shift back blame to the governor.

AS THE ESTEEMED (some sarcasm intended) “Mr. Speaker” said, “If the governor’s agenda is to push more of his extreme cuts to health care, senior services and resources for our most at-risk residents, or if he again intends to move the goalposts and create chaos, he should stay on the sidelines and allow serious leaders to continue working cooperatively to address the challenges facing our state.”

Because I don’t expect Rauner to put himself on the sidelines during budget negotiations that are taking place in coming weeks between the Democratic and Republican leadership of the Illinois House of Representatives and the state Senate.

For one thing, Republican leadership wouldn’t allow it.

... the political brawl Rauner brought on

They’re not going to meekly go along with whatever kind of orders Rauner tries to bark out at them.

RAUNER’S OWN POPULARITY ratings have dwindled (26 percent approval, and 60 percent disapproval – the worst of any governor seeking re-election this year, according to the Morning Consult group’s latest study) to the point where I suspect many GOP legislators don’t want the governor taking them down to defeat along with him come the Nov. 6 elections.

While many Democratic officials counting on the Donald Trump unpopularity factor aren’t about to do anything to appear to be caving in to Rauner on anything.

Budget talks are going to be downright ugly – and likely to accomplish little of anything significant. Because both sides seem to be more interested in one-upping each other.

If you think about it, Madigan’s comment about, “if the governor is finally ready to accept responsibility for the management of this state and be an honest partner in trying to pass a budget, we welcome him to this process” is about as snide and sarcastic as Rauner earlier this week saying he was fighting against, “a corrupt machine of self-dealing, unethical behavior … that benefit a few against the people.”

WHICH MAKES IT ironic that Rauner wants us all to think his four-year term as governor has been about “reform.”

When the reality is Rauner has behaved in as an obstructionist a manner as any other official within Illinois government has ever done. Meaning that obstructionism in the name of partisan politics is very much a part of the “Way things are done” in Illinois.

Is Pritzker our 'savior' by default?

Although going for so much of the four years of his term without a balanced budget in place will leave the Rauner Years with quite a legacy – particularly if he insists on finishing out his time in office without a budget in place for fiscal 2019.

It will be enough to make all of us eager for Election Day so we can pick a replacement to live and work in the (newly-renamed) Governor’s Mansion.

  -30-

Rauner remembrance of tragedy – an effort to divert public’s attention?

Reading Gov. Bruce Rauner’s formal address to present a state budget for Fiscal 2019, I couldn’t help but notice his opening bit.

RAUNER: Trying to redeem his pol priorities?

The reference to it being exactly 10 years since the day a former Northern Illinois University student felt compelled to fire off his weapon – killing five students before he turned his gun on himself.

THE NEWS EVENTS of the day even called for a last-minute rewrite, also offering a mention of the death Tuesday of Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer – the officer who tried to stop a fleeing suspect being chased by other police, only to get shot and killed.

Both tragic happenings. In the case of the DeKalb slayings a decade ago, I’m sure the memories remain as strong now in the minds of those who were there as they were back then.

But a part of me couldn’t help but wonder how much this bit of rhetoric was an attempt at misdirection.

Rather than get worked up over the details of the budget proposal Rauner wants the General Assembly to approve for Illinois government for the fiscal year beginning July 1, he’d rather we think of these other happenings.

BECAUSE IF WE think too much of budgetary matters, then we wind up touching on some sore spots of the Rauner era of state government.

Let’s not forget that Rauner, although in his third year of government, has never managed to get a budget proposal of his implemented into law. Heck, he’s never offered up anything that wound up becoming policy.

The only reason we have a budget in place now is because Democratic legislators were joined by a few Republicans willing to put the daily workings of government at the forefront to pass a budget that Rauner himself tried to use his veto powers to kill off!

Because Rauner is the guy who came into the governor’s post thinking he could strong-arm the rest of state government into going along with his vision – one in which organized labor and unions take a severe blow to their influence over Illinois.

THAT CONCEPT WAS more important for the past two years to Rauner than anything concerning the daily operations of the state, which does have responsibilities to fulfill – regardless of one’s ideological hang-ups.

The question we ought to be asking ourselves is whether Rauner is willing to get serious and try to put together budget proposals this year – or if we’re headed for another budgetary standoff.

The last of which stretched out over two years, caused serious complications for daily government operations and created financial problems that will take Illinois years (if not decades) to resolve.

You’d think that Rauner, facing a re-election cycle complicated by the fact that the conservative ideologues the governor is counting on to support him have their own partisan objections (being anti-union isn’t conservative enough for them), would want a straight-forward budget process. Something to ensure that he signs into law the Fiscal ’19 budget on or before June 30.

BECAUSE THE $37.6 billion spending plan for state government the governor put forth includes some serious changes to the way retired teacher pensions are funded – mostly by sticking them on the school districts.

Something I’m sure will tick off the Chicago Public Schools, where officials would actually like to have the state assume a larger share of those pension costs. Is the governor’s budget address merely another excuse to set up a political brawl with Chicago interests later this year?

Some reports made mention of the fact that Wednesday’s budget address, in addition to being 10 years since the bloodshed at DeKalb, was 225 days from the end of the budget standoff.

Will it also become the beginning of a political sequel – one in which Rauner will try to redeem his political self-image at the expense of the people of Illinois. Elections day are March 20 and Nov. 6; those dates can’t come soon enough.

  -30-

DNAinfo.com ‘death’ in Chgo, NY shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone

As a reporter-type person who has experienced unemployment on several occasions, I sympathize with the DNAInfo.com website in Chicago and the individuals who earlier this week abruptly learned they were out of work.

RICKETTS: Owned Cubs/media pair less than Tribune Co.

Although there’s nothing at all surprising about the fact that the company operating websites in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington – along with Chicago – decided to suddenly ‘pack it in’ after eight years of trying to cover news in those cities.

JOE RICKETTS, THE head of the wealthy family that owns the no-longer-defending World Champion Chicago Cubs and also was a significant financial backer of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential bid (the family nearly got a member appointed to a Cabinet post), let it be known he was giving up because the business end was failing.

The company wasn’t generating enough revenue to cover the expenses of actually having people on the payroll to cover the news – which is an essential expense if one is going to cover the news properly.

Various reports have pointed out the fact that the employees connected to the websites in New York voted last week to organize themselves as a labor union. Some would have us believe that Ricketts’ decision to shut down was purely a response to not wanting to deal with organized labor.

Which may be true. But the idea that management would rather not have their employees sticking together to negotiate benefits for all is nothing new. The idea of an owner hating organized labor shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody!

Two local websites that are now ...

SO I’M NOT about to join the parade of Ricketts bashers, some of whom are even insisting that we boycott Chicago Cubs games in response to his anti-labor actions. I would never expect him to be sympathetic, and I personally certainly don’t need this as a reason to ignore the Cubs – a ballclub I have never much cared for.

What I take personally from the DNAInfo.com closings is evidence of how costly it can be to professionally report the news. And how those people who are eager to see newspapers and their centuries of experience in doing so (the Chicago Sun-Times is a baby, tracing its origins back to the days just before Pearl Harbor) wither away are truly ridiculous in their attitudes.

There are those people deluded enough to believe there is no loss to society from fewer newspapers because the Internet and websites are capable of replacing them.

... a part of Chicago's media history

Yet most websites I have seen that are news-oriented are way too reliant on having newspapers to generate stories and content in general that they can appropriate for their own use.

A SITE LIKE DNAInfo.com, which actually had reporters looking for stories in the neighborhoods of Chicago (some neighborhoods were covered more thoroughly than others) that was generating its own content is running into the same problems as those who historically were disseminating their content on printed pages of pulp.

Which means most of these sites wind up becoming the medium of choice for benefactors with the finances to not care about their financial bottom line.

Even then, there comes a point when many of them have to cut off the funding and shut down. Remember the ProgressIllinois.com website, which had reporter-type people out-and-about covering stories – with the bills being paid by the Service Employees International Union?

Even they had to give in – with the website remaining in place, but un-updated since that final date. AP: Donald Trump Wins Presidential Election (UPDATED) is the final headline, as though determined to perpetually remind us all of the annoyance our society brought upon itself just over a year ago.

Sun-Times still reporting news, despite death predictions.

THERE IS ONE significant difference between the two closings – DNAInfo.com and its sister websites suddenly found all their content erased from the Internet. A letter from Ricketts explaining his decision to suddenly shut down (and make the four months of vacation pay and severance his reporters will receive seem overly generous) is all that remains of the sites.

There is some speculation Ricketts may try to archive some of the content – for those who care to see what once was of this particular attempt at covering the news.

Although as anyone who follows the “news” is fully aware, yesterday’s stories are ancient history. It’s the ongoing developments that provide for an overall report that has relevance to people’s lives.

And without it, we as a society may have to get used to a condition in which our attempts at public “education” may wind up being fulfilled with cutesy pictures of kitty cats, quirky pictures of people doing something stupid, and all the porn, porn, porn we could ever desire.

  -30-

Balancing the budget; what will we cut?

It will be interesting to see just how Cook County government manages to balance out their budget for the upcoming fiscal year; what with the fact they now have a $200 million hole.

PRECKWINKLE: Looking for pop tax alternative

That is the amount of money the county would have expected to receive from the soon-to-be defunct pop tax, the penny-per-ounce charge on purchases of pop and other sweetened drinks.

AFTER NOV. 30, that tax won’t exist. So when the new fiscal year begins Dec. 1, there’s going to be a short-fall in anticipated revenue.

Are we merely going to see the county try to concoct some sort of alternative tax to replace the revenue they were expecting to get from the pop drinkers of the Chicago area? Or are we going to get some county agencies and programs get their funding levels cut to the point where essential services will be slashed?

County board President Toni Preckwinkle hinted throughout the barrage of propaganda put out by the American Beverage Association against the pop tax that health care services the county provides would suffer.

But Cook County Board members largely were not swayed by such arguments. In voting overwhelmingly to repeal the same pop tax that many of them voted last year to implement, they called Preckwinkle’s bluff.

TOBOLSKI: Eager to slash Cook budget

THEY’RE GAMBLING THAT there really is enough “fat” in government budgets that things can be cut without impacting essential services.

Either that, or they simply don’t care, or consider those services to be essential to them. They may just not care about the kind of people who actually have to rely on Cook County-funded services to maintain their health.

That certainly was the sentiment of county Commissioner Jeffery Tobolski, R-McCook, who earlier this week said he looks forward to cutting the county budget. “What we have (in revenue) is what we have to work with,” he said. “There are some tough decisions that have to be made.”

SUFFREDIN: Fears future tax hikes

Of course, the counter-point to that view was expressed by Commissioner Larry Suffredin, D-Evanston, who was one of two commissioners (the other being Jerry “the Iceman” Butler, D-Chicago) to vote against repealing the pop tax.

IN A STATEMENT he issued following the Cook County Board’s vote on Wednesday, he pointed out that one part of the pop tax was a promise that Cook County government wouldn’t consider raising any more taxes until at least 2020.

A move he said would have provided significant benefits to people living in the county. Now, they could face whatever alternate tax hike county officials concoct in their minds to try to make up for the revenue lost from the pop tax, which is necessary because, he claims, Illinois government owes Cook County some $186 million in reimbursements it hasn't been making -- which accounts for nearly the entire hole in the county budget.

In my mind, different taxes is a scary thought – one far more onerous than the roughly 20 cents extra I was paying any time I purchased a bottle of Coca-Cola (something I indulge in maybe twice a week).

BUTLER: Voted for pop tax AND against repeal

So now, county officials have the rest of October and November to figure out how to put together a budget that doesn’t leave Cook County government in serious debt come Nov. 30, 2018.

I KNOW COOK County Treasurer Maria Pappas said she offered up her portion of the county budget with a 10 percent cut in everything, and expects she’s now going to have to slash every line-item in her budget by another 2 percent.

Whether enough other officials are capable of taking such a hardline approach is questionable – I suspect many are trying to figure out what alternate item could be taxed. Of course, it has to be something that most people would feel wouldn’t impact them.

Anti-taxer mailings to pressure county commissioners continue, as now the activist-types want to ensure their desired spending cuts get imposed when the Cook County Board approves its 2018 budget sometime next month

Perhaps that is why some have suggested that the medical marijuana purchases now becoming common in parts of our state are a more acceptable item to tax.

It seems the image some people have of “deadheads” being forced to pay up is more acceptable to them than themselves having to pay whenever they buy a bottle of that beverage whose original recipe included a jolt from the coca leaf. Why else would we call it “Coke?”

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Is our long Ill. nightmare finally over?

The word came out Thursday, first from Republican leaders of the Illinois General Assembly, then from the Democrats who hold the majority power – we have an agreement on the way the state will fund public education.

RAUNER: Has he lost?

That issue has been tied up for nearly the past two months – ever since state government passed a budget for the current fiscal year despite Gov. Rauner’s objections. Rauner, feeling the need for a political victory over urban Democratic interests, continued to fight on with this issue – even though it created a potential situation where schools might not have the money on hand to open on time.

PERSONALLY, WHEN I first heard the Republican legislative talk, my suspicion is that this was some sort of political talk by which GOP interests claimed a deal that didn’t really exist – then would try to blame Democrats for failure when nothing wound up happening.

You might think I’m being politically paranoid, but I’m not alone in being suspicious.

Several education administrators I have spoken to have said they’re equally suspicious – saying they’re not going to believe a deal is in place until they actually see the governor sign something into law.

One school board president I know went so far as to say that while he was convinced Republican and Democratic legislators were in agreement, there still is the issue of Bruce Rauner.

“WE’LL SEE IF his people (Republican legislators) can talk him into going along with this,” that official said.

For the record, legislators aren’t really willing to say what their deal is – other than that much of the funding that was to be provided to Chicago Public Schools to cover pensions for retired teachers will be restored. That despite Rauner’s efforts to use his amendatory veto powers to remove it from the education funding bill that was passed by the Legislature back during the spring.

For what it’s worth, Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he is pleased with the deal, as it provides the city school system with what it desired. “That, and more,” he told reporter-type people.

MADIGAN: Can he complete deal this weekend?

Whereas Rauner said in his prepared statement he “applauds” legislators for working together. Although the Chicago Sun-Times wrote in its report that the legislative agreement did not include any of the collective bargaining changes that are supposedly the reason why the governor has been so ridiculously stubborn with regards to the budget and education funding.

SO IS IT possible that Rauner, who has never made a secret of the fact that he desires changes in state government structure to undermine the influence of labor unions, really will wind up coming out the big loser – with legislators feeling the need to keep state government functioning and the public schools open more than they need the financial support he’ll be providing to GOP officials in next year’s election cycle.

The key will be to see what happens on Sunday. For while legislators have met just about every day this week to discuss the issue, we’re now at the point where their staffers (the government geeks who actually know how to write legislation) are taking the grand concepts of the agreement and turning them into the legal language of a bill.

Things could still fall apart between now and then. But officials say that if a bill is crafted without anyone feeling like the other side is trying to pull a last-minute, double-cross (that’s really the way political people think!), then a vote could come Monday.

Our long state nightmare could finally be over. Or maybe?

BECAUSE WE’LL STILL have to go through the upcoming 15 months before the 2018 general election, and I don’t doubt that at this point, Rauner is desperately searching for a publicity team to replace the ideologue twits he recently fired to help him figure out the proper spin for his actions.

Nixon 'nightmare' over, is Ill. budget one too?

Rauner is likely to go into a re-election campaign being unable to say he accomplished much of anything, and was actually the cause of much of the “state nightmare” that may well be an Illinois equivalent of the “long national nightmare” that then-President Gerald Ford alluded to upon the resignation of Richard Nixon.

We’re likely to see a governor who overplays the regionalism card (urban vs. rural voters) and who banks his re-election chances on one gamble.

That the Democratic Party gubernatorial candidates wind up bungling their efforts so badly that they hand a second term at the Statehouse to Rauner, all gift-wrapped. Which isn’t completely out of the question, if you want to be honest.

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EXTRA: No ‘junk bond’ status for Ill. – does it bother anybody except Rauner?

It’s a bit of good news financially for the entity otherwise known as Illinois government. We're not junk!!!!!

RAUNER: Who else wanted Ill. to be 'junk?'

The Standard & Poors bond-rating agency on Wednesday let it be known that our state is no longer listed on their negative credit watch list. We’re not going to face the prospects of having our state credit rating reduced to junk.

THE BOND RATING agency that is one whose potential actions against Illinois for being so inept that we went through just over two full fiscal years without a full-fledged budget in place now says we’re “much closer to structural alignment” what with the way we managed to put together a budget for the state fiscal year that began July 1.

That budget, of course, includes the permanent increase in the state individual and corporate income tax rates that Gov. Bruce Rauner is determined to lambast from now through Election Day 2018 as a “32 percent tax hike.”

There were those who really believed the state would have been better off prolonging its financial ineptitude so as to avoid the increase – even though it can be shown the state needs the money in order to meet its financial obligations.

We were hearing the speculation that even with a budget in place, the state’s bond rating might still be dropped to junk status – which would mean the professional financiers were writing off the state’s future and saying our fundraising bonds would be virtually worthless.

A VERY BAD financial investment not worth making.

But with the Standard & Poors statement, it makes it clear that only the hardest-core of Republican ideologues are going to be able to spew out the Rauner campaign line. The irresponsibility and recklessness of the state’s actions during the past two years are going to wind up being a part of the gubernatorial legacy.

Rauner, I’m sure, will remain in “Blame Madigan!” mode for the next 16 months – but only the silliest of voters will take any of that seriously.

 

MADIGAN: Gained from S&P move

Madigan, of course, will enjoy every bit of this. Both with Standard & Poors, and the likelihood that Moody’s Investors Service will follow up with similar statements in coming days.

IT WAS MADIGAN himself who put out the word to the Statehouse Scene on Wednesday that he had achieved a sense of victory – or that Rauner rhetoric was exposed as being a little bit more phony than it previously was regarded.

“It’s clear from (Standard & Poors) statement that ratings agencies, like all Illinois residents, are hoping Governor Rauner will work in good faith with legislators to address those challenges rather than rejecting compromise by turning further to the extreme right,” the Speaker said, in a prepared statement.

Or will the Rauner types, whom I think are really just anti-Madigan rather than caring one bit about Gov. Brucie himself, continue to spew their trash talk – all desperately hoping for an Illinois version of what we have nationally.

A government meant to appeal to the same types of people as the 46 percent who actually voted for this Age of Trump. Perhaps they view a Reign of Rauner where only certain Illinoisans matter as being desirable – although I think they’ll be disappointed with the election results come Nov. 7, 2018.

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