Daley Proposes Fifth Year of Highschool

Mayor Daley suggested Thursday that high school be extended for a fifth year to defray college education costs now squeezing working poor and middle-class families.

Unless something is done to loosen the college tuition collar, Daley warned that the “birth rate will go down in the United States and our knowledge-based economy will not grow.”

“You hear families today [say], ‘I’m only going to have one or two kids. College is going to cost you. If you go to a private school, it’s 40, 50, 60, 70 thousand dollars. What happens to the rest of society who can’t afford that? That’s bad for this country. It’s bad for the future of this country,” Daley said.

 To read the rest of the article click here.

A budget that adds up? Its days are numbered

BY RICH MILLER

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a serious candidate for governor lay out a detailed budget plan as Judy Baar Topinka did this week.

Incumbents always challenge their opponents to produce an alternative plan of their own, and the opponents usually respond with a few broad ideas and a “vision for the future” label slapped on for good measure.

The reason we don’t ever see specific, detailed proposals is that those details invite tremendous amounts of nitpicking, and candidates who get bogged down in nitpicking usually lose. Before they can respond to one critique, the other side and the media have already moved on to, “But what about paragraph 849?”

For the rest of the article click here.

Tollway Leasing

Hearings are being held in central and southern Illinois this week on the proposal to lease the state’s 274 miles of toll roads. The carrot proponents are dangling in front of downstaters, many of whom live far from the toll system, is the possibility of an additional $14 billion for road construction.

“We should spend the money on transportation,” said Sen. Jeff Schoenberg, D-Evanston, who is pushing the proposal. “We should use part of the proceeds to leverage federal transportation funds.”

The senator also suggests $100 million be set aside to defray toll increases.

Skeptics argue that leasing the tollways could lead to higher tolls.

John Gebhardt on House Republican Task Force Meeting

Thanks for your information about previous House Republican Task Force meeting you attended
last August.  I did attend the meeting as the JWCCAA Legislative Chair -
our JWCCAA President was unable to attend so she asked me to represent the
Chapter as the Legislative Chair .  Here is my summary of the meeting
along with the letter I left with Rep. Tracy and Sen. Sullivan.  It was
sturctured different from the meeting you had.  There was a lot of
interaction with the audience and with both parties there a lot of finger
pointing.  It became what I would term a very "democratic" meeting with all
side being heard.  I enjoyed the give and take.



Let me know what you think after
you read my comments.



John Gebhardt




RE: Attendance at the House Republican Pension Task Force Meeting in
Mt.
Sterling
07/24/2006

 

Date:  July 25,
2006

 

I attended the House Republican Pension Task Force hosted by Rep. Jill
Tracy at the AFSCME Local 3567 Hall in Mt. Sterling on Monday, July 24th
from 6-8 p.m..  In attendance were
Republican Representatives Bill Mitchell, Rich Meyers, and Jill Tracy, and
Democratic Senator John Sullivan (Rep. Tracy had invited Sen. Sullivan to the
meeting).  There was an audience of
about 25 people with people representing the prison guard’s union AFSCME Local
3567, the Vets Home employees, and teachers.  Rep. Jill Tracy opened the meeting with
remarks that this meeting was designed to get public input to seek solutions to
the problems of pension funding.
She also is planning similar meetings on the Road Tax and Medicare
Funding.

 

The format of the meeting was: first each Representative and Senator
Sullivan made opening remarks.  Then
Matt Habrocker from the Republican Legislative Research Staff presented a Power
Point presentation showing the history (as viewed by the Republicans) of the
lack of pension funding.  Then Rep.
Mitchell threw out a lot of facts and figures at which time Sen. Sullivan did
the same to try to balance what Rep. Mitchell presented.  Most of the information was presented so
quickly that I was unable to get it down accurately.  Rep. Mitchell said we all would be sent
the information presented in the Power Point.

 

At various points during the two hours there were a lot
of verbal exchanges between the Republicans and Sen. Sullivan as to what was
spent and funded.  Rep. Tracy and
audience members tried to cut off the verbal exchanges whenever the discussions
got into one party blaming the other for the problems we now face.  The format for the evening was basically
questions and statements from the audience to the Representatives and Senator
Sullivan.   

 

In summary, I believe the Representatives and Sen.
Sullivan began to realize the audience was tired of hearing partisan politics
and they wanted the members to begin to work more on a “bipartisan” level to
solve the problems with pension funding, the staffing shortages of the prisons,
the lack of funding to education, and shortage of staff at the veterans
homes.  A theme that surfaced from
the meeting seemed to “priorities and revenue”.  Republicans representatives were pushing
for an established set of priorities as to what needs to be funded and all felt
there is a need to find new sources of revenue as there is not enough coming
into pay the bills.  I sensed from
the audience that they would not be opposed to an increase in income tax “as
long as it was dedicated to funding the shortfalls that currently exist vs.
spending for new programs”.


 

On the issue of getting more for “downstate”, Sen.
Sullivan said he was recently appointed as Chairman of “downstate”
Democrats.  Rep. Meyers said five
years ago, they use to have a bipartisan meeting of “downstate” representatives
and he would look into trying to get that going again.  Both agreed that “downstate”
Representatives and Democrats needed to work together if they are to get
anything downstate because of the Chicago influence.  Sen. Sullivan said 60% of the people of
Illinois live within a 75 mile radius of
Chicago.    

 

There was mention of an A+ Coalition being formed to try to get people to
work together to solve the current funding problems.  The AFSCME union representative passed
around a sign up sheet for members in the audience to join the coalition.  Since I was totally unaware of what this
group is or what they are proposing, I did not sign the sheet.

 

The question came up about GASB 45 and I was surprised to learn that
“none” of the Representatives or Senator Sullivan was informed about what it was
and what implications it would have on pension funding, but they would all look
into it.

 

When asked about selling off state assests, like Illinois highway
tollways, to raise revenues, everyone present stated they were not in favor of
doing so as it would be a short term solution to a long term problem.  Also, if the state is making money with
an assest, why sell it off for someone else to make the money.  Rep. Meyers said he was basically not in
favor of selling off assests, but as a member of House committee that will be
looking into this area he wants to see the facts and figures before he makes a
final decision.

After the meeting I gave both Rep. Tracy and Sen. Sullivan the following
statement as the “Legislative Chair of the JWCCAA Chapter of SUAA.  This statement was approved by JWCCAA
President Susan Deege who appointed me JWCCAA Legislative Chair, so I could
represent JWCCAA at this meeting. 

Respectively submitted,

John Gebhardt/JWCCAA Legislative Chair

Question of the Day

Does Topinka have a chance to get elected and what are you hearing where you live?

SUAA Blogspot

This Blogspot is designed to allow interaction between visitors with an interest in the Illinois pension systems.  Initially there will be two sections, the first will be a current news article with an opportunity to give your thoughts and second is a SUAA Forum on Issues.

 

At this point there are two rules.

 

1. As SUAA is an advocacy group for pension and health insurance improvements we do not accept comments on other subject matter.
2. If you post a comment, it must be kept clean, stick to issues and never get personal.  Violators will be banned.  Yes, we can prevent you from posting.

 

Following is a Charlie Johnston article that he suggests it may be too early to play taps for Illinois Governor Candidate Judy Barr Topinka.  We invite visitors to this site to offer comments on issues that SUAA posts, and on other forum issues listed.  Other forum issues include: pensions and pension systems, group health benefits, social security and politics. 

No Time to Play Taps for Topinka

I’m a bit astonished as I read the Blogs and newspaper articles giving GOP Gubernatorial Nominee Judy Topinka up as dead in the water. That is not how I have read events of the past two months at all. In fact, I believe this race is hers to lose.

About two months ago, Dem. Gov. Rod Blagojevich went on a withering offensive, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each week on TV ads attacking Topinka. It was unusual to jump into television ads that early and that far out from election day, but Blagojevich’s numbers were so bad, he had to try to set the tone of the race early. What was not at all unusual to anyone who has ever been intimately involved in a big race is that you play some of your time on defense and some of your time on offense. Just because your opponent is racking up yards when he is on offense does not mean you are losing.

What was really striking about that period was that Blagojevich could not coax his own numbers above 50%. What was also striking about it was that with several million dollars of effort, he only managed to push Topinka into the mid 30s, instead of annihilating her. For six weeks of sustained effort and millions of dollars spent, Blagojevich barely got the equivalent of a field goal – and that’s not a sign of strength.

In a one-on-one race, I am not a believer in early television. It is hugely expensive and produces results that are deceptive because they are transient and shallow. In a primary in Illinois, people don’t start paying serious attention until after New Year. In a general election they don’t start paying serious attention until after Labor Day. Horse-race numbers at that point start to mean something.

In a race where the incumbent has a huge war chest that dwarfs the challenger, one of the best tactics for the challenger is to horde their own money until after Labor Day while making every effort to goad the incumbent into spending as much of his own money before then as possible. Hmmm…that’s what Topinka has done thus far. Maybe it was an accident – or maybe it is sound strategy.

Certainly, she will have to have a good offensive plan once Labor Day has come and gone. But to reveal much of it before then only gives her well-funded opponent ample time to craft a response. In the meantime, she has work to do in shoring up the Republican base, which is socially conservative. I have read several interviews in which she makes a point of her opposition to partial birth abortion and her support for parental notification. It seems to me as if she is working at it – and I am a social conservative.

If Topinka shores up the base and has a good, solid game plan after Labor Day, she wins this race going away, even if Blagojevich raises four times as much money as he already has. You don’t need all the money in the world; just enough to clear the threshold that gets your message across. In a gubernatorial general election in this race, the first five million you raise is critical. If, after that, you raise another 50 million, it is not even half as meaningful as that first five – because that’s what gets you past the threshold.

Given those parameters, it doesn’t matter how much more money Blagojevich raises now. His problem is that, after all is said and done, he’s still Rod Blagojevich.