The continuing mismanagement and scandals under the Blagojevich Administration.
While I’m sure Blagojevich partisans see there being too much coverage, State Auditor General Bill Holland identified a large number of issues relating to federal grant dollars being misused by the State of Illinois and Aaron Chambers is one of the few to pick up on the audit. Every newspaper is reporting on management issues and investigations within the administration, but no one is doing a very comprehensive job detailing the depth of the problems.
While some problems are arguable such as the welfare distributions, others such as the lack of oversight for $104 million in workforce development grants demonstrate a profound disregard for best practices in government. For a guy who ran on pledge to change the way Springfield works, he is comprehensively changing state operations for the worse. In addition to the mismanagement, few print sources (the Capitol Fax being the notable exception) between scandals involving the City of Chicago, Cook County Board President John Stroger and the Blagojevich administration.
Runner Up: The endorsement of Jim Oberweis by Jack Roeser, Renew Illinois and the Family Taxpayer Network. Bernard Schoenburg covers it today and lays out in a very fair way the right wing document Oberweis signed on to to receive support of the Roeser and Renew Illinois. Not only is this important in relation to Oberweis, but it tells us two things about the Republican primary. First, Roeser backed out of supporting Steve Rauschenberger evidently because he was too liberal and Oberweis would drink all of the kool-aid. Second, even if Jim Edgar does get into the race, one has to assume he’ll face a primary with Oberweis given Roeser himself challenged Edgar in 1994 and the platform of Renew Illinois is virtually the opposite of Edgar’s views.