G-Rod

How Ugly Will the General Election for Governor Be?

Pretty ugly from this quote from Pete Giangreco:

Pete Giangreco, campaign consultant to Blagojevich “in case he decides to run,” said Blagojevich is focused on governing and not on his potential Republican opponent next year. But Giangreco gave a hint of what the Democrat’s strategy might be against either of the most prominent Republicans, attempting to tie them to fellow Republicans George Ryan and Tom DeLay, the controversial U.S. House Majority Leader.

“Topinka … was first mate on the Titanic” as treasurer when Ryan was governor, Giangreco said. He chided LaHood as “a staunch defender of Tom DeLay.”

And on the Republican side, I think we can just put the phrase “chicago democrat” in the same category as lockbox in the 2000 Presidential election.

If The Guv Wants a Fight-Pick This One

Via the Cross Guys who won’t be happy with the analysis

Kristin McQueary runs down the conflict between The Blagorgeous and Tom Cross over school funding. Last year Cross worked to get a split between categorical assistance and the general formula fund. He wants the same for new funding, while the Governor wants to target new funding for the funding formula.

For the past two years ? and especially last year ? House Republican Leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego) negotiated a split of education funding to boost the state’s contribution to categorical programs. He is irked that under the governor’s current plan, he’ll have to fight for it again.

“I’m not yelling and screaming out it as much as it seems like a deliberate attempt to ignore the suburbs,” Cross said. “I’m not opposed to putting more money into the state aid formula, but I think we’ve shown the governor’s office before that (categoricals) are important, too, so why go down this road?”

This is even more complex in that the Governor is seeking to increase state mandates upon local districts to increase graduation requirements so there’s an argument for categorical assistance. After all, if the state is requiring new services, it should help pay for them, right?

Wrong, the important part of the article is here:

In a meeting with the Daily Southtown’s editorial board, Blagojevich’s director of education reform, Elliot Regenstein, said about 40 percent of school districts statewide will be impacted by the graduation requirement changes. Most of them are downstate.

Many districts, including Chicago Public Schools, already meet the math, science and English mandates under Blagojevich’s bill.

It’s a largely rural problem again. Rural districts don’t have the faculty or the money to increase their ability to meet these requirements easily and they are are poor in terms of taxing capacity in many cases.

Categorical assistance will divert the money to everyone and split it up, but the districts being hit here are the Districts most in need, most of whom don’t have th financial wherewithall to afford the new requirements plus others.

The entire idea behind the general formula is to provide a base level of assistance depending upon need–by not funding it well, districts with the most needs are hurt. Most of the suburban districts Cross is advocating for are not doing that poorly and have the ability to tax themselves.

The Governor is not making this case–and he should–it shores him up in areas he is weakest and it’s the right thing to do. Cross and he have had a reasonably good relationship, but friends can disagree and this is a the fight to have that disagreement. Don’t demagogue on him–Cross is just protecting his constituents, but fight for rural districts and some inner ring suburbs that face serious funding challenges while other districts have plenty of local funding.

Sending money into the general formula helps those districts most in need and by primarily putting new moneys into it, it creates every incentive for members of the Lege to focus on raising that pot of money instead of sending it to categorical assistance.

On the Other Hand

The Governor’s Team deserves ridicule for serving up this stinker:

The administration this week asked eight top state employees who have nothing to do with education to enlist friends and relatives in a letter-writing campaign to newspapers. Now the administration is being criticized for possibly coercing some of its employees into working for the governor’s aggressive public relations machine.

“This is more of the all-self-promotion-all-the-time that this administration seems to go for,” complained Charles N. Wheeler III, a state government expert at the University of Illinois at Springfield. “To have this kind of stealth grass-roots propaganda campaign … strikes me as something over the top.”

With some minor alterations, Meneghetti’s newspaper piece sticks closely to the form letter Blagojevich deputy chief of staff Brian Daly circulated Monday to the eight high-level employees at the Department of Central Management Services, an agency that manages state property and supplies.

The memo encourages the employees to have “friends and relatives” send letters to newspaper editorial pages across the state as part of the administration’s “outreach efforts” and to make sure to show copies of those letters to their boss at Central Management.

And I think we all know, CMS employees probably should be focusing on other priorities as the Register Star pointed out.

What’s most disturbing about this is that CMS seems to be one of the most politicized state offices when it should be the model of good management practices. That puts nearly all of the Governor’s efforts to reform state operations in question. Just as the auditor’s reports pointed out.

Post-Dispatch Attacks G-Rod

And it’s unfair. Because Dick Mell yelled, everyone seems to be jumping about the Governor’s including a provision to force divestiture of holdings by family members of Illinois Government officials.

First, is that a horrible standard? Here’s the selected text

(415 ILCS 5/22.52 new)
25 Sec. 22.52. Conflict of interest. Effective 30 days after
26 the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 94th General
27 Assembly, none of the following persons shall have a direct
28 financial interest in or receive a personal financial benefit
29 from any waste-disposal operation or any clean construction or
30 demolition debris fill operation that requires a permit or
31 interim authorization under this Act, or any corporate entity
32 related to any such waste-disposal operation or clean
33 construction or demolition debris fill operation:

09400SB0431sam001 – 15 – LRB094 09305 RSP 44857 a

1 (i) the Governor of the State of Illinois;
2 (ii) the Attorney General of the State of Illinois;
3 (iii) the Director of the Illinois Environmental
4 Protection Agency;
5 (iv) the Chairman of the Illinois Pollution Control
6 Board;
7 (v) the members of the Illinois Pollution Control
8 Board;
9 (vi) the staff of any person listed in items (i)
10 through (v) of this Section who makes a regulatory or
11 licensing decision that directly applies to any
12 waste-disposal operation or any clean construction or
13 demolition debris fill operation; and
14 (vii) a relative of any person listed in items (i)
15 through (vi) of this Section.
16 The prohibitions of this Section shall apply during the
17 person’s term of State employment and shall continue for 5
18 years after the person’s termination of State employment. The
19 prohibition of this Section shall not apply to any person whose
20 State employment terminates prior to 30 days after the
21 effective date of this Amendatory Act of the 94th General
22 Assembly.
23 For the purposes of this Section:
24 (a) The terms “direct financial interest” and
25 “personal financial benefit” do not include the ownership
26 of publicly traded stock.
27 (b) The term “relative” means father, mother, son,
28 daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, husband, wife,
29 fatherin-law, or mother-in-law.

I can think of one time I’d like to have seen a similar rule. Remember when Dan Carlisle was charged with the largest manure spill ever? And his sister was Becky Doyle–head of Illinois’ Department of Agriculture?

The Post-Dispatch takes on the Governor for his most recent dust-up with his father-in-law, but forgets that Mell was the one who made a stink.

I’m no stranger to criticizing the Governor, but this is a good bill and bitching at G-Rod for doing the right thing because Mell has a thin skin helps no one.

I’ll admit that instituting such a rule might cause problems in places like Ag, but it isn’t as absurd as everyone is making it out to be.

Now, y’all need to stop it because I’m feeling awfully weird defending the guy over this.

Minor Point: Rich Miller says the following in this weeks column:

There’s no problem with the law if a member of the governor’s family owns stock in a regulated monopoly like ComEd or SBC. A family member could be a state licensed cosmetologist, real estate agent, or even a horseshoer.

If a relative listed above only owned stock in a landfill, the prohibition wouldn’t apply. In this case it’s set up that the ownership has to be direct–and that, to me, makes it far different.

I can imagine significant problems in Agriculture if this was applied because families usually farm that have a member on Ag–that said, direct regulation like a mega-hog farm like Carlisle’s is a far different standard and under far more direct regulation. The rule may need to be tweaked, but why wouldn’t expanding it be a good thing?

It’s a Good Bill

Maybe it’s my contrarian nature, but the Governor is doing the right thing on the landfills bill and it’s not his fault that Mell had another eruption. In fact, the administration is learning and starting to move the sujbect away from the personal and to the policy on this issue which is what they should do.

The bill itself should be uncontroversial and despite Mell’s protestations about other issues, giving the state government the ability to act when public health is at risk isn’t a terribly novel power.

“There are so many aspects of this bill that my agency has needed for so long to increase our regulatory oversight, our enforcement, our ability to address abandoned open dumps in the state of Illinois,” IEPA chief Renee Cipriano said. “To say this is focused on the alderman is simply untrue.”

Part of the problem is the Governor has so annoyed the press that a story like this is too good to pass up, but there’s some glimmer of hope they are learning finally. The other part of the problem is regardless of what Mell says about wanting to keep this private, he’s the one who brought the personal into the public again. The administration deserves credit for the bill.

Give the Guv a Break

I just heard some jaws hitting the floor, but this time he’s getting screwed by much of the local press. His order to force pharmacies to dispense pharmaceuticals that the pharmacy chooses to carry isn’t being explained very well. Carol Marin, in defending the Governor, doesn’t even do a good job.

An LA Times piece points out what the order actually does and why it should be non-controversial.

If an individual pharmacist will not provide birth control pills because of moral or religious beliefs, the drugstore must have a plan to ensure that the patient receives the pills promptly.

In most cases, that means having another pharmacist on hand to dispense the drug.

The policy does not require that all drugstores carry contraceptives; many don’t, especially in Catholic hospitals.

But if the pharmacy has them, it must dispense them to anyone with a valid prescription ? or risk suspension of its license, said Susan Hofer of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which oversees pharmacies.

This isn’t about requiring every pharmacy to carry contraceptives, it’s about when they choose to carry a pharmaceutical, a legal prescription must be filled.

The Governor didn’t waiver on this, he didn’t grandstand, and he didn’t do anything but order pharmacies to do what they’ve already chosen to do. I’m happy to criticize him when he deserves it, but with that comes a responsibility to point out when he does the right thing. This is one of those cases.

Quick Update: The Trib’s editorial does a good job on the issue.

Christian Scientist Druggist Refuses to Dispense Antibiotics

Yeah, there’s a line to draw somewhere on this issue of whether a pharmacist can refuse to dispense drugs for moral reasons. At some level, I’m sympathetic to the notion that there should be accomodations for different beliefs, but it isn’t the simple answer that advocates of allowing pharmacists to decide on a case-by-case basis.

Blagojevich was absolutely right to issue an emergency order that requires pharmacists to dispense birth control.

Going forward from there, if there is going to be an accomodation, the answer has to be that any pharmacy that refuses to fill a prescription should have to publish specifically what they refuse to dispense and immediately notify the Doctor or patient that they refuse to do so and allow them to take the prescription elsewhere. There should also be a rule that a pharmacist may not hold onto a prescription–if they refuse to fill it, then they should pass it on to a pharmacy that will.

Very simply, if a chain pharmacy is going to not dispense at some times then they should not dispense at all. There is no excuse for the rules to change on what will be dispensed by the time of day. If pharmacists want to argue that their health care role is important, than being clear about the type of care provided and providing it consistently should be a requirement of that role. And if the chain wants to be involved in such sales and the employee doesn’t, the employee has a choice to find another pharmacy that doesn’t dispense drugs they don’t want to dispense.

For those that disagree, perhaps they should explain why Christian Scientists shouldn’t be pharmacists.

UPDATE: (via Capitol Fax)To clarify the issue here’s a quote from the Post Dispatch

She said the rule says that if a pharmacy does not have contraception prescriptions available, they must either order more or give the patient a choice between transferring their prescription to another pharmacy with the product or taking back the prescription.

So, actually, if a pharmacy doesn’t want to dispense birth control, they don’t have to have it. They can just give the patient the prescription back or transfer it.

The Governor is absolutely right on this issue and should be commended for it.

UPDATE 2: Pharmacy creates problems in comments so replace one letter with a *. It’s a spam protection thing.

Second, the title is satire. I’m not sure if my satire is entirely unfunny, or if the world has gotten weird enough that I can’t write satire on it anymore.

So I was Wrong

Some of the audits are on-line and in some cases at least the overviews are on-line. I misread the story and thought it was a couple audits, but it is several that have been realeased. It’s different than the Missouri system which I use quite frequently so the mistake is mine–The Auditor’s Office could make things clearer, but does make most available in some form.

The point made throughout the audits that I’ve already picked up on and why Holland and his people focused on it is quite simply, taking money allocated by the General Assembly and putting it to other uses is a violation of the State Constitution. It’s an usurptation of Legislative Power, but in this case there doesn’t appear to be a willful effort to subvert the law, but an incredible fumbling from the CMS that is supposed to provide support to the other agencies. Improperly spending line item appropriations is specifically what the Illinois Auditor is supposed to watch for and he found it in multiple agencies because of this poorly implemented system.

Public Aid
The comments about CMS being unresponsive are on page 10 of the printed document, the 15th page of the .PDF file

State Police
The CMS comments are on page 9-10 of the printed document, the 12th and 13th page of the .PDF file. The e-mail from GOMB, which was dated two months prior to the law taking effect and four months before CMS actually billed the agency, is referenced on the 12th page of the .PDF file.

Department of Military Affairs

IDOT synopsis
#1 Point

IEPA Synopsis #1 Point “The Agency made payments for efficiency billings from improper line item appropriations”

Prison Review Board

Property Tax Appeal Board

Pollution Control Board The only cited issue–though to be fair, it isn’t required to provide detailed dollars amounts due to the nature of the Board.

OFFICE OF BANKS AND REAL ESTATE COMPLIANCE EXAMINATION

Many thanks to who helped me out with figuring out the links and where everything was in the files.