Politics – Rich Miller

 Rep. David McSweeney (R-Barrington Hills) announced last week that he will not seek reelection. Instead, he said he’ll likely be making a 2022 statewide bid for either US Senate against Sen. Tammy Duckworth or secretary of state if Jesse White retires. He may not be a household name, but McSweeney has been a huge thorn […]

The statement issued by Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office last Thursday night had some good advice for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who gave what was billed as a “State of the City” address earlier that evening. Lightfoot had outlined the challenges facing the city, including an $838 million budget deficit and her need for Illinois government’s […]

 You don’t have to read past the first sentence of Tim Mapes’ statement last week to see one of the core problems with the way he ran the Illinois House Democratic operation. Mapes was responding to an investigative report commissioned by House Speaker Michael Madigan to get to the bottom of allegations of sexual harassment […]

 The Illinois AFL-CIO hosted its annual State Fair reception last week. The highlight was probably a speech by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who thanked his audience of union leaders for their support in the 2018 campaign and for their help passing an enormous amount of legislation during his first session of the General Assembly. But there […]

When House Speaker Michael Madigan announced in February of 2018 that he’d fired Kevin Quinn, the brother of Madigan’s alderman and political general, he said he made the decision because of Quinn’s “inappropriate conduct” with Alaina Hampton, whom he called a “courageous woman.” Hampton had come forward with allegations of sexual harassment by Quinn and […]

 Most state legislators don’t have to worry about next year’s general election. The combination of gerrymandering and the simple fact that many of the state’s regions are dominated by one party or the other pretty much guarantees that all but a handful of incumbents will sail through on the November ballot. But first they have […]

“Sterigenics should be completely shut down until we determine it can operate safely,” gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker tweeted last October. A month after taking office, Pritzker made good on the first part of that campaign promise. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency issued a “seal order” which closed the company’s doors. Sterigenics sterilizes medical instruments at […]

One of the points that Gov. J.B. Pritzker has made since Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot began using the news media to ask for a multi-billion dollar state pension bailout is that other parts of Illinois are having the same problems as our largest city. Rockford is one of them, as the governor noted last week.  […]

 Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the $45 billion infrastructure bill into law last week during a three-day fly-around to several Illinois cities. It’s a good bet that the billionaire Pritzker paid for the plane that took him and whatever staff he brought to the various venues, since he’s regularly done that since taking office in January. […]

“We are so proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish this first legislative session of ours,” Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton told a TV interviewer earlier this month. “We said that we wanted to think big for the people of Illinois, we said that we wanted to get Springfield back on the track of working […]

 Back when this state was fairly well-run – meaning, before Illinois voters elected three anti-Springfield “populist” governors in a row – the general rule of thumb was that for every two dollars appropriated to K-12 education, higher education received one dollar. But that all started to change with Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who believed, with some […]