Politics – Rich Miller

One reason why Gov. Bruce Rauner promised to veto HB40 last spring was to prevent a House Republican revolt on the state budget. The bill deletes a so-called “trigger” provision in current law which states that if the Roe v. Wade case is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, Illinois would automatically revert to outlawing […]

The four leaders met last week, but didn’t appear to accomplish much of anything. It was Sen. Bill Brady’s first leaders’ meeting since his chamber officially confirmed him as the Senate Republican Leader, and he was the one who called for the sit-down. Leader Brady ran for governor three times, winning the 2010 primary. Numerous […]

Late last Thursday night I was chasing a story about the rumored retirement of state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, Illinois’ first female House Majority Leader, when I got a text message from a high-level employee of Attorney General Lisa Madigan. She asked if she could call me Friday morning about something her boss was doing that day. […]

Lost in much of the hoopla over the process of passing school funding reform through the Illinois General Assembly is the fact that this is a pretty darned good and far-reaching bill. While this legislation is far from perfect and doesn’t provide an immediate fix, it finally puts the state on a path to equitable […]

It’s been clear for decades that the way Illinois funds its public schools has been wrong-headed. But finding a solution has eluded everyone who has tried. Until now. Gov. Jim Edgar thoroughly defeated a Democratic rival in 1994 who championed a “tax swap” idea. The plan Dawn Clark Netsch backed would’ve traded an income tax […]

After years of harshly bad-mouthing the state’s economy, Gov. Bruce Rauner has pivoted in the past couple of weeks as the campaign season has heated up. “I’m proud since I became governor,” he said recently, “we have recruited and added around 120,000 new jobs to the state of Illinois.” “But,” Rauner said, “we should be […]

Gov. Bruce Rauner has said for the past several days that he’s open to just about any sort of compromise in order to get school funding reform signed into law. For example, he recently told Amanda Vinicky on Public Television’s “Chicago Tonight” program that there was nothing on his list that he had to have. […]

Chicago has vast property wealth and the largest population by far in Illinois. But it also has a large amount of that property wealth locked up in Tax Increment Financing districts. According to figures released last week by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, Chicago has more than half of the $12.4 billion in […]

The education funding reform bill which passed the House and Senate in May and was finally sent to Gov. Bruce Rauner’s desk in July was the product of four years of research, endless listening tours and lots of hard bargaining. The House Democrats changed some things at the last minute to benefit Chicago and the […]

During the lead-up to the recent special legislative session over the state budget and a tax hike, Gov. Bruce Rauner’s staff studied whether their boss had the power to force legislators to attend the sessions. A court ruled during the Rod Blagojevich-era that the General Assembly must convene at the date and time ordered by […]

In the end, Mike “Z” Zolnierowicz had only one choice. Gov. Bruce Rauner’s top political lieutenant, the man everyone calls “Z” who was most responsible for winning the 2014 Republican primary and the governor’s former state chief of staff, simply had to resign late in the afternoon on Friday, July 14. The week began with […]

After Gov. Bruce Rauner hired Illinois Policy Institute president Kristina Rasmussen as his new chief of staff, I reached out to one of the House Republicans who voted to override the governor’s budget and tax hike vetoes. How was he feeling? “You mean after the irate phone calls and emails and the letter that arrived […]