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.

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.

“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.

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 24^th 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
]]> http://lennon8802.wordpress.com/2006/08/09/john-gebhartd-on-house-republican-task-force-meeting/feed/ 2 lennon8802 http://lennon8802.wordpress.com/2006/08/02/question-of-the-day/ http://lennon8802.wordpress.com/2006/08/02/question-of-the-day/#comments Wed, 02 Aug 2006 20:36:22 +0000 lennon8802 https://lennon8802.wordpress.com/2006/08/02/question-of-the-day/ ]]> Does Topinka have a chance to get elected and what are you hearing where you live?

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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. 

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.