13 Feb 2023

Closures Such as St Margaret's Health-Peru Suggest a Troubling Future for Illinois Hospitals

By Rich Miller

The legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability released its latest monthly fiscal report last week. The report claimed the state is still on track to match the commission’s revised November estimate of a $4.1 billion revenue increase for the current fiscal year. Revenue had originally been projected to fall from the previous fiscal year. And much of the recently-projected increase is believed to be a one-time event and has so far been treated as such.

30 Jan 2023

Auto Manufacturers Suspect State Assembly Members of Cronyism

By Rich Miller

The Rockford Register-Star reported last week that the state of Illinois “has submitted what could be its best offer to keep the Belvidere Assembly Plant operating and save what could be thousands of jobs.” Stellantis announced in December it would idle its Jeep Cherokee assembly plant in February. So there appears to be a glimmer of hope that the state can finally notch a victory with a carmaker after years of trying. And the online Web site Jalopnik recently reported that Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin told the Ford Motor Company that he didn’t want their $3.5 billion electric vehicle-battery plant which would employ 2,500 workers because the company had partnered with China.

23 Jan 2023

County Sheriffs Suddenly Selective as to How, or Whether, to Enforce State Statutes

By Rich Miller

“All they are saying,” claimed Illinois Sheriffs Association executive director Jim Kaitschuk about dozens of his members, “is ‘We’re not going to knock on people's doors to ask whether they have registered their firearms. And if they're arrested solely on that charge, we will not house them in our jails until ordered to do so by a competent authority.”

16 Jan 2023

Lame-Duck State Assembly Session Surprisingly Able-Bodied in Its Bill-Passing Game

By Rich Miller

When the Democrats get their act together during a legislative lame-duck session, they can really pass a lot of stuff in short order. We’ve seen it before. Two years ago, the Democrats passed a huge amount of important legislation, including the SAFE-T Act, in just a few days.

09 Jan 2023

Reaction to Judicial SAFE-T Stay a Whole Lot of White Noise

By Rich Miller

Kankakee County Judge Thomas Cunnington set off a chaotic chain reaction December 29 with his ruling that the General Assembly over-stepped its constitutional grounds when it voted to eliminate cash bail. Judge Cunnington essentially said that a cash-bail requirement, even though not specifically mentioned in the constitution, could be inferred; and that the General Assembly had exercised powers that properly belonged to the judicial branch.

19 Dec 2022

Jehan Gordon-Booth: SAFE-T Act Does Not Require a Mandatory Punch in the Gut

By Rich Miller

Illinois House Deputy Majority Leader Jehan Gordon-Booth (D-Peoria) headed up her chamber’s efforts to amend the controversial SAFE-T Act this year. The day before the bill came up for a vote, I asked her what were, in her opinion, the largest misconceptions about the 2021 social justice reform law. Gordon-Booth pointed to the trespassing issue. “I don't care if you live in rural, urban, suburban. The trespassing [issue] was one that just made a lot of folks incredibly uncomfortable.”

12 Dec 2022

Gun Reform, the Third Rail of Illinois Politics: Not Just a Mixed Metaphor

By Rich Miller

There’s been sort of an unwritten rule the past several years in Springfield to stay away from doing things like ban assault weapons. The votes to pass one have seemingly been there in both chambers, but the will of past Democratic leadership seemed to be to not overtly poke any big, cash-rich bears, like the National Rifle Association, or to alienate or electorally imperil conservative members of their Democratic caucuses.

05 Dec 2022

State Democrats’ Cerebrations a Tepid Rhetorical Defense Against Republican Firehose Blasts

By Rich Miller

The state legislative debate last week over amending the Pre-Trial Fairness Act provisions within the controversial SAFE-T Act featured many of the same obfuscations and outright misinformation that characterized the fall campaign by Republicans and many of the same insufficient answers by Democrats. One of the problems that the super-majority Democrats have in both chambers is that when they know their bill is going to pass, they usually don’t take the Republicans’ objections seriously enough to fully engage with them. But on bills like this, misinformation can spread when points aren’t adequately rebutted.

21 Nov 2022

Pritzker Considers Gyroscopes as He Mulls Matching Revenues with Spending, and Vice Versa

By Rich Miller

Governor JB Pritzker’s administration recently used its annual Economic and Fiscal Policy Report to outline three new budget proposals. The report revised projected revenues upward by $3.69 billion for this fiscal year, but noted that most of the projected increase was from one-time sources, like an unexpected spike in the state’s Income Tax Refund Fund of $1.28 billion.

14 Nov 2022

State Republicans Inexplicably Inept (or Unlucky) with Their Campaigns' Finances

By Rich Miller

Representative Tim Ozinga (R-Mokena) made the classic blunder of not focusing on one election at a time. But his flub does give us an excuse to look at a few fundraising issues. It’s been no secret that Ozinga wanted to be the next House Republican Leader. But he hasn’t really been involved in many House Republican races this year, and then, the day before election day, all of a sudden reported giving his own campaign fund a million dollars.

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