"We should have billions of dollars every year as part of our budget process ... [to] maintain and expand our infrastructure," Bruce Rauner said last week, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Rauner has been doing his best to woo the road builders all year, and he was speaking to the Illinois Farm Bureau, which has lots of members who rely on roads and bridges to get their goods to market. So I understand the practical politics of his bold promise.

But this stuff costs money. Lots and lots and lots of money. And infrastructure is only his second priority. His top priority is education funding; he wants to spend even more money on schools.

Yet Rauner says he wants to slash the state's income-tax rate. Can he really do all that with lower revenues?

I'm not sure why, but the surprise appearance by former Governor Jim Edgar at the Illinois State Fair's Republican Day last week didn't generate much media coverage.

Despite the fact that Edgar is a Republican, this was not an easy "get" for Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Rauner. I'm told it took weeks of careful wooing and negotiations through one of Edgar's cronies. Edgar backed state Senator Kirk Dillard in the GOP primary against Rauner, and he has also expressed public and private concerns about how Rauner is portraying himself on the stump and about how that confrontational attitude could manifest itself if he's elected governor.

Another reason why I'm perplexed by the lack of coverage is that Democratic Governor Pat Quinn has repeatedly gone out of his way to praise Edgar since Dillard's Republican-primary loss. Quinn consulted with Edgar before his post-primary budget address, seeking his advice on keeping the income tax at current levels and providing some property-tax relief. Quinn then mentioned Edgar by name during his actual address, saying the former governor was right to keep a tax hike in place.

How would the City of Davenport have covered the recent vetoes by Mayor Bill Gluba of the Dock development plan and the St. Ambrose University rezoning request for a new stadium? And how would it have covered Gluba's proposal to bring illegal immigrants to Davenport, which was - to put it mildly - poorly received by the city council?

These were the questions that came to mind with the revelation by the Quad-City Times' Barb Ickes (on the same day as the vetoes) that the Fiscal Year 2015 city budget includes $178,000 for what she described as "a news-based Web site ... [to] shine new light on positive and negative city happenings."

It's clear that the site is an attempt to, at least in part, bypass the traditional news media and speak directly to constituents about good things city government is doing and positive developments in Davenport - without that pesky "other side" of the story. And, given our local television stations' tendency to air unsourced and vaguely sourced stories, one might infer that another motivation is giving those broadcast news operations easily adaptable material that would warmly present Davenport.

But this idea was also pitched by city staff quoted in the article as "bold" and a "deep dive," words that suggest ambition beyond marketing. As Davenport Business Development Manager (and former daily-newspaper reporter) Tory Brecht said: "As far as we can tell, no U.S. city has embarked on this effort."

The news site is supposed to be launched in the next few months, and of course it's impossible to pass judgment on it without actually seeing the thing.

Yet the twin aims of the initiative seem fundamentally incompatible, and it's hard to envision how the nobler of these goals can be accomplished given the inherent lack of independence in a city-run "news" operation.

And that's why I return to the Dock, the St. Ambrose stadium, and the Gluba immigration proposal. These were the city's big stories last month, and one can't envision a Davenport news site ignoring them while retaining its credibility. But I can't for the life of me figure out how it would have covered them.

On Monday July 14, 2014 Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba hosted a roundtable discussion at the Davenport Public Library. The purpose of the meeting was to address the influx of migrant children coming in from Central America into the United States and how a Quad Cities based "Caring Cities" campaign could assist.

The meeting was approximately 50 minutes long. This video has been edited down to 17 minutes.
In attendance and identified on the video are:
Mayor Bill Gluba, City of Davenport
Glenn Leach, Davenport Catholic Diocese
Mike Reyes, League of United Latin American Citizens
Cheryl Goodwin, President Family Resources
Mr. Ortiz, Outreach and Community Enrollment Coordinator for Community Healthcare
Rick Schloemer, Scott County Housing Council
Stephanie Lynch, Doctoral Candidate University of Iowa
Amy Rowell, Director of Moline World Relief
Byron Brown, Retired ARMY, CEO at TGR Solutions

[Note: Not every individual seated at the table is identified by name in the video. We are happy to update this story with any missing participants.]