Politics – Rich Miller

Gov. JB Pritzker announced last week that he had picked Sol Flores to be his fourth deputy governor. He’d previously announced deputy governors Dan Hynes, Christian Mitchell and Jesse Ruiz. Pritzker’s deputy governors are each overseeing a block of related state agencies and departments and track their progress on goals that the governor wants those entities to […]

 I missed JB Pritzker’s impromptu speech to a gathering of Republicans last week by a few minutes. But the fact that Pritzker even stopped by the event, hosted by Senate Republican Leader Bill Brady and House Republican Leader Jim Durkin, was notable. As one top Republican said after Pritzker’s speech, just imagine Gov. Bruce Rauner […]

 The state constitutions of Illinois and Arizona have very similar language prohibiting reductions to pension benefits and welding pensions to contract law. But the two are very different states. In 2016, when Arizona’s legislature approved a pension reform bill to limit first responders’ pension benefits and then-voters approved amending their constitution to match that legislation […]

D.T. is really quite good at one special skill: branding. He has slapped his name on a ridiculous range of consumer merch – teddy bears, steaks, made-in-China ties, vodka, underwear and even a urine test. Then, of course, there’s his very own post office. Yes, he bought a 60-year lease on the “Old Post Office […]

 “Is that the guy from the Policy Institute?” House Speaker Michael Madigan asked his press secretary after an Illinois News Network reporter recently tried to ask Madigan a question at the Statehouse. The Illinois Policy Institute transferred ownership of the network to the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity back in January. But they […]

 I had the pleasure of meeting several Democratic women candidates from Lake County during the Illinois State Fair last summer. Sen. Melinda Bush (D-Grayslake) was showing them around town and brought them to a reception I was attending. Those candidates were positively joyful. They seemed genuinely thrilled to be running for office. Only one had […]

Governor-elect J.B. Pritzker has taken the prospect of an immediate income tax hike off the table, telling the Sun-Times that he won’t pursue an “artificial” progressive income tax during the coming spring legislative session. Pritzker floated the idea as a possible way to impose an immediate graduated income tax, which the Illinois Constitution forbids. He […]

 The last column I write before Election Day is always the toughest because some papers will publish this before Election Day and others will publish it after. So today you get a yard sign story. Let’s start with U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam’s campaign, which sent out two press releases during the fall campaign complaining about […]

 “I’ll be a check on the Pritzker-Madigan agenda,” Republican attorney general candidate Erika Harold says in her latest TV ad about Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner J.B. Pritzker and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. And now a similar line of attack is cropping up elsewhere. In southern Illinois, for instance, state Rep. Jerry Costello’s Republican opponent David […]

The more I read it, the more skeptical I became of the racial discrimination lawsuit filed against the J.B. Pritzker campaign by 10 current and former field-level workers last week.   The initial demand for $7.5 million in one business day along with personal recommendations from Pritzker himself in exchange for their silence really hurts […]

Dear J.B. Pritzker, I totally understand the campaign politics of not wanting to say what you think the income tax rates should be under a graduated tax structure. I also get why you won’t say what ought to be the income level at which people will begin paying a higher income tax rate than they […]

J.B. Pritzker was recently endorsed by Crain’s Chicago Business. The state’s premiere business magazine endorsed a candidate whose biggest promise is to raise taxes on the publication’s well-off subscriber base.Gov. Bruce Rauner has called Pritzker’s graduated income tax proposal “a green light to raise taxes on everyone.” Pritzker has infamously dodged hundreds if not thousands […]