I’d make it a priority

ArchPundit May 23, 2006 3 Comments

While hiding out from George Bush, Topinka attacks Blagojevich for higher education funding.

At what opportunity cost? Seriously, this is what’s frustrating. Even in endorsing Blagojevich in 2002 I pointed out he was being dishonest about spending. Now, Topinka is offering up a free lunch for the universities. Where does the money come from?

I think the cuts, especially to ISU which is a quality school for students who don’t go to U of I, are horrible, but I’m not sure how Judy thinks she can solve that and every other problem without a tax increase.

Leaving the Mess for the Next Guy

ArchPundit May 23, 2006 No Comments

We’ll see how close the story is to the plan, but this stuck out at me:

Schools would get at least $1?billion a year for the next four years from such a deal, with the remaining $6?billion going into an education trust fund governed by a board appointed by the four legislative leaders, governor, comptroller and treasurer, according to a Democratic source briefed on Blagojevich’s proposal late Monday.

Madigan should oppose this point simply to save Lisa the headache. It’s again a revenue stream that ends after a set amount of time while the asset isn’t available for 6 more years. While we are still speculating on the total plan, it’s worse than that–nearly $650 million a year goes to education (if one doesn’t count the displacement effect) so the net gain in the first four years is $350 million/year. What happens in year 5 if the other $6 billion is not distributed?

Survey USA Guv Numbers

ArchPundit May 22, 2006 1 Comment

Rich says the commercials didn’t work because Rod’s numbers went down on approval and up on disapproval slightly. I’m not so sure.

Rod isn’t trying to improve his image with the commercials. I’m betting the campaign doesn’t expect the approval numbers to move much in the next few months if at all. So if you are an incumbent with a load of cash, what do you do? Make sure your opponents numbers look worse than yours.

Negative campaigning always hits the person going negative slightly, but it usually hits the target the hardest. From the Meeks numbers and the Topinka and G-Rod numbers rumored out there, the commercials are doing exactly what they are supposed to do–drive down Topinka’s numbers.

Blagojevich’s numbers are bad. The question is can he make Topinka’s numbers bad enough to win. Given the GOP problems this year and given the Blue tilt of the state, all other things equal I’d put my money on the Governor. That said, the developing investigations could quickly flip that if indictments start being issued. After laying down for George Ryan in 1998, the press isn’t about to let another candidate get away with saying there is nothing there.

The Republican response is lacking. I’m getting press releases that are the usual (meaning they could be from either party) about how it’s election year politicking.

Yeah, it is. So? And what is the Republican response?

It’s fine to attack the Governor. I’m happy to quite often, but it’s a little hard to get too worked up about him when there don’t appear to be any serious policy proposals coming forward on the other side.

What is Judy’s education plan? How does she plan to solve the long term structural problems? While a recent bill was passed to allow easier consoliditation no one is seriously talking about forcing consolidation.

How about providing a blue print to make the state less dependent on property taxes for educational funding? If a tax swap isn’t it, what is?

How about a serious response to All Kids? Senate Republicans pushed for managed care to save money for years. So Blagojevich instituted it and then used the projected savings (close to what Republicans claimed would occur) to provide co-pay insurance for all children in Illinois. It’s hard to take serious the complaints without alternative ideas.

What about pensions? I’m not a fan of spending the proceeds of the bond sales in one lump as we did. What are the other solutions? Hitting the targets? We are doing that. We should do better, but how else do Republicans want to make the long term financial viability of the state stable? Raise taxes?

Cut services? Which ones in detail and remember G-Rod for all of his faults, already did a number on state jobs.

Want to be upset about the state of our state parks? Go for it–I find it appallling that one of the premeir archeological sites in the country is being overridden by crappy development in the Metro East. How do you want to fix it? Judy has been good on this issue so the criticism is more general. Where is the money coming from? Or is it as Blagojevich charges, only about Republicans in parks jobs?

It’s fair to say this administration is mortgaging the future by spending money from assets and using the money on continuing expenditures. However, there has to be a serious counter proposal how to change that and that involves restructuing the state tax system and probably raising them. If not, show me a proposal.

This Governor is irresponsible, but to prove you can govern, you have to do more than say, we aren’t him. His programs are popular, but probably unsustainable. How do you sustain them?

Ethics? What is the Republican ethics proposal? Why weren’t Republicans pushing for the Fritchey-Hynes bill?

I understand that Democrats are in control in Springfield and the mess they make is their mess to fix, but if you want to take the reigns, you have to demonstrate you aren’t going to do the same thing and right now, there isn’t a lot of evidence that it wouldn’t be much of the same. As someone who could easily throw the Governor under a bus, I’m not seeing many reasons to do so that actually produce a better outcome.

Quick Update: And for bonus points–what about mercury emissions? These are as much if not more of a danger to our park system than underfunding it. Where’s Judy’s plan for that?

Ummm…what happened to political operatives having memories

ArchPundit May 22, 2006 No Comments

Apparently Scott Fawell wasn’t the only one to put the clout list to electronic format.

Rich has the basics on the whole story, but the big issue is that someone was flouting civil service rules for some of the jobs and that is where it becomes a big issue. Not surprisingly, Kelly and Rezko show up in the stories.

Worst of all is the use of counsel to follow the investigations. It smells. Bad. It doesn’t mean automatically that this is George Ryan II, but it certainly does a great job of suggesting to the press that it is, in fact, GR II. Even if true, it isn’t GRII, it’s more like Ernie Fletcher and we see how that ended.

If the Administration let Gianulis and on down run away with the hiring bus, then throw them under it. That’s the good result of all of this.

The Not So Meek Inherit a lot

ArchPundit May 22, 2006 No Comments

Meeks isn’t running as everyone knows and now we await for tomorrow to hear about how the Governor plans to increase school funding.

Pearson et al. discuss a possible sale of the lottery or other state assets. The concern to me is whether it is a short term revenue source that is created or if it is an ongoing revenue source to draw upon. All too often this administration has tried to keep taxes low by selling off assetts or other short terms solution without fixing the long term revenue problem.

That said, Meeks not running is most helpful in giving the Governor another plank to run upon. It boxes Judy in by essentially forcing her to promise not to raise sales or income taxex yet come up with a way to pay for what the Governor is proposing that regardless of the details, sounds good to many voters.

The Great Proposer

ArchPundit May 3, 2006 5 Comments

Marin points out that with unified Democratic control, we still cannot get campaign finance reform–though I’m inclined to spread the blame around to the Speaker and Jones, she has a very good point.

Make it start on January 1st and let’s get rid of direct union and corporation donations and limit the amount from PACs and Individuals.

Hynes gets it as does Fritchey:

State Comptroller Dan Hynes, first of all, didn’t even need a law to issue an executive order banning campaign contributions from contractors doing more than $10,000 in business with his office. He unilaterally did that more than a year ago.

And now, he’s pushing legislation that would ban pay-to-play politics, close the revolving door for officeholders who become lobbyists and provide public funding for judicial races.

He’s calling it the Government Integrity Initiative. And right now it’s deader than a doornail, buried in the graveyards of the House and Senate rules committees.

Hynes has been barnstorming the state trying to drum up support. “It’s not just the right thing to do,” he said Tuesday, “it’s the politically smart thing to do.”

If we cannot pass the full bill, let’s pass the Hynes-Fritchey bill. Democrats are in control–we can’t blame Republicans for local problems. Certainly Bush has created a vast number of longterm financial problems, but when it comes to the State of Illinois and ethics, he’s done the right thing though it’s probably the thing he regrets most–appointing Patrick Fitzgerald. Let’s start to make Fitzgerald have some free time at the state level and reduce the opportunities for corruption.

End the Sales Tax on Gas

ArchPundit April 28, 2006 2 Comments

LOL—it took me a bit to get what Topinka was trying to do with this. Illinois’ gas tax per gallon is 19 cents, but it also charges 5% sales tax. If one were to deliver true cost relieve the way to reduce the tax burden is on the 19 cents not on the 5% Judy is suggesting doing away with over $2.50/gallon.

The impact of her current proposal at $3 gallon would be to reduce each gallon of gas by 2.5 cents. On 12 gallons of gas, that would save 30 cents a tank.

This idea is about as useful of opening up ANWR, which despite a Hastert’s whining as of late, wouldn’t actually affect world oil supply by much (if approved in 1995, ANWR would currently be producing between 0% and .5% of daily world oil production on its way to a whopping less than 1% as demand is expected to increase). If approved now, even when it reaches full capacity, ANWR would produce less than 1% of the world’s daily oil consumption and given the oil market is a global market, would do nothing to reduce US reliance on foreign oil as the Bush Administration’s own figures put maximum daily output at 876,000 barrels a day .

At such a rate, it wouldn’t even account for the increase in billion of barrels per day required by the US between now and when ANWR would open in about 12 years. Worse, it would be half of what would be required by the world market for one year of projected annual average increase in consumption between 2002 and 2025. ANWR is a diversion from the reality that gas prices are a function of supply and demand and demand is way up. The way to insulate yourself from the effects of demand on pricing isn’t to produce more when it’s virtually impossible to do so in a meaningful way, it’s to conserve and switch to other energy sources.

I imagine the next canard will be that the big bad environmentalists won’t allow refineries to open. The reality is that refineries have been closing and few new ones being built for far more basic reasons:

It is true that refineries must comply with environmental regulations that have been strengthened in recent decades. Republicans frequently complain that the United States has not built a new refinery from the ground up in over 30 years. This ignores the inconvenient fact that we have certainly added refining capacity. And it is refining capacity that matters, not the number of refineries.

If we lack sufficient capacity now, the problem has its roots not in excess environmental regulation, but in the decision to deregulate energy markets in the late 1970s. Before then, the U.S. government regulated the distribution of oil and gasoline products in a command-and-control regulatory scheme that resulted in the development of significant excess refining capacity. In 1981, when this system ended, the United States had 324 refineries with a capacity of about 18.5 million barrels a day, but only 68 percent of that capacity was used. The rest remained idle. Obviously, no business can remain viable with those ratios. No grocery store would leave one third of its shelves empty, no manufacturing company would leave its plants idle for four months a year — and no one would expect them to.

Between 1981 and 1994, about 145 U.S. refineries closed. In the same period, overall U.S. refining capacity fell to 15 million barrels per day, pushing utilization rates to a more sustainable 92 percent.

Since then, refining capacity has grown at a slightly greater rate than demand. Between 1994 and 2002, capacity grew 11.6 percent while demand for finished products grew by 11.5 percent. This trajectory enabled refineries to operate profitably in a deregulated marketplace. Only over the past two years has refining capacity fallen behind the growth in demand for finished products.

Looking at EIA’s data, the number of refineries has fallen from 324 in 1981 to 149 in 2004. The capacity in BBL/DAY has falled from that year, but in surriounding years (after the excess capacity was cut, it has been stable, but utilization has gone from 68% to 92%. IOW, it isn’t those environmental wackos keeping us from having more refineries, it is market forces that promoted efficiency and reducing excess capacity. If one looks at historical data, current products supplied isn’t an unusual amount given historical trends so there is no reason to think that refining capacity is the cause of the spike in gas prices. The trend is upwards, but certainly no spikes.

So while everyone is looking for someone to blame, stop with the whining about those of us who think that we can have a clean environment and a good economy and look to the Asians who are increasing demand for crude oil dramatically.

The CMS Experiment Needs to Be Over

ArchPundit April 27, 2006 No Comments

However it needs to be sold, it isn’t working.

Summary of Findings:

Total this audit 22
Total last audit 24
Repeated from last audit 17

7 problems fixed. 5 created. 17 continue. If you can’t document the savings, what is the point?

CMS’ contract files lacked certain documentation for 6 of 10 contracts we tested. The maximum award amount for these 10 contracts totaled $270 million.

CMS evaluated vendor proposals using evaluation criteria that were not stated in the RFP.

In 6 contracts we reviewed, CMS did not timely execute the contracts. In one of the contracts reviewed, the vendor was allowed to initiate work on the project without a formal written agreement in place.

The Department?s process to monitor vendor expenses was inadequate. For some contracts, the Department paid expenses with little or no review. In 4 of 10 contracts tested, the Department received no detailed documentation to support reimbursement for expenses.

The Department did not consistently develop or formally approve changes to contracts.

The Department has not established a property management function to effectively manage occupancy costs and revenues.

The Department should further refine its billing process for savings initiatives. CMS billed $41 million for efficiency initiatives to State agencies during FY05, yet only collected $21 million from various State Agencies. The remaining balance was written off by the Department.

During the prior year, CMS did not maintain adequate documentation to support the amount of savings it attributes to efficiency initiatives. Also, savings goals stated in RFP’s, vendor proposals and/or contracts were not always realized or documented. In April 2005, the Department reported savings of $621 million. In October 2005, the Department issued a report citing a reduction of estimated savings to $529 million, however, this figure does not include any costs the Department incurred related to its initiatives, which are estimated to exceed $72 million.

CMS did not maintain time sheets for its employees as required by the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act.

Topinka Watch and the new ads

ArchPundit April 20, 2006 1 Comment

The TopinkaWatch.com site is up and running and has the transcripts of the new ads up on the site highlighting assault weapons and minimum wage. And a stolen photograph. UPDATE: My mistake, Jake’s photo isn’t up there so I’m assuming they figured out there was an issue.

Now, when I say the following, I’m not looking for a debate on assault weapons because my position is nuanced, however, this is a good commercial if you are targeting suburban women where Topinka is stronger than another Republican would be.

And the minimum wage ad ties her to Bush–which is probably her single biggest liability more than George Ryan. As Rich points out, Shrub, is very, very unpopular in Illinois. The only drawback to the strategy is that by pointing out these issues, Blagojevich could be helping her to solidify her base. Well, maybe not.

And while Blagojevich’s numbers are certainly problematic, this isn’t a sign of weakness many take it to be–I’m pretty sure Miller has said it, but I can’t find it–the last person to pull off this early negative campaign was Jim Edgar in 1994 when he defined Dawn Clark Netsch early in the year.

There are $14 million sitting out there to define your opponent as George Bush with a mouth (and yes, I do like Judy in general, but think about the tactic).

State Finances Downgraded

ArchPundit April 14, 2006 2 Comments

This is very, very bad.

SPRINGFIELD — A leading Wall Street bond house Thursday issued a negative outlook toward the state government’s finances because of concerns over the billions of dollars owed to Illinois’ public pension systems.

The move by Fitch Ratings represents a jolt to Gov. Blagojevich as he tries to mold a 2007 state budget and fend off Republican Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, who has made the state’s precarious financial condition a cornerstone of her bid to unseat him this fall.

The state faces a $39 billion funding shortfall in its pension funds and, under a 1995 law, is committed to an ever-increasing schedule of payments that threatens to hamstring the next administration.

This year, $1.6 billion was diverted by the state to its pensions. In the 2008 budget year, the total that must be spent rises to $2.75 billion. And by 2010, the final year of the next governor’s term, the state’s annual pension commitment will reach $3.8 billion.

“Fitch believes that, barring a significant revenue increase or a substantial reduction in expenditures, Illinois will be unable to follow its own plan to contain the $39 billion unfunded pension liability,” the firm wrote in a report issued Thursday.

“This intractable problem, including cash flow pressures, is apt to impair credit quality despite the breadth and wealth of the state’s large economy,” Fitch concluded, listing Illinois as one of only three states with such negative outlooks

This doesn’t have immediate consequences, but if it isn’t dealt with properly, there will be a dramatic increase for the state to borrow money.

It’s fair to say that everyone punted except Hynes on the problem of underfunding pensions before Blagojevich, but making it worse doesn’t leave the administration somehow clean. Continuing an unsustainable policy is not an excuse.

Via the 13th Floor at Governing