More than a year ago, the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget was projecting a $3.2 billion deficit for what is now the current fiscal year. Part of the problem was that existing revenues were flat while spending was growing, according to the budget office. This is a recurring problem in Illinois. The previous fiscal […]
Rich Miller
Posted inRich Miller
Bears stadium bill advances
“We’re almost there” on a Bears stadium bill, Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) told some sports radio hosts on a Friday morning before the House returned to Springfield for three days of session last week. “We’re very close.” Asked if the rumor spread by sports business pundit Marc Ganis earlier that week was true about House […]
Posted inRich Miller
Bears’ Indiana gambit changes tone of legislators
Illinois House Democrats were told last week that a state capital projects plan designed to assist Arlington Height’s bid to lure the Chicago Bears away from their Indiana stadium gambit would cost up to $895 million. None of the money would be used to directly build the new Bears stadium or the surrounding commercial district […]
Posted inRich Miller
Resign-and-replacement schemes
Remember the national uproar last November when U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia bowed out of his reelection race at the last minute and quietly passed petitions to put his chief of staff Patty Garcia on the ballot? We saw a lesser, but still quite palpable mass grumbling when state Rep. Marty Moylan (D-Des Plaines) did the […]
Posted inRich Miller
SAFE-T Act questions persist
Gov. JB Pritzker set off a chain reaction last November when he told reporters he’d be open to changes in the SAFE-T Act, which eliminated cash bail and replaced it with a new pre-trial release/retention system, among other things. Pritzker was asked about the case of a woman, Bethany MaGee, who was horrifically set ablaze […]
Posted inRich Miller
Mid-decade congressional remap unlikely
The two most intense state legislative pressure campaigns I’ve witnessed both ended in failure. Back in 2017, Gov. Bruce Rauner tried everything he could think of to stop legislative Republicans from voting to increase the income tax to about where it was right before he took office for his one and only term. Both political […]
Posted inRich Miller
Budget deficit projections
The Governor’s Office of Management and Budget projected last week that the current fiscal year’s budget will run a $267 million deficit. The budget office recommended taking “immediate” action to plug the hole. And the problem gets much worse in the future, with a $2.2 billion projected deficit for next fiscal year, which begins July […]
Posted inOpinion
Many more “heroics” may be required
PHOTO BY ALAN SOLOMON/TNS Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever thought that Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration could ever keep state operations running for a year without an actual state budget. State and federal courts have ordered about 90 percent of state spending since the General Assembly’s Democrats and the Republican governor deadlocked on a budget […]
Posted inOpinion
Failing on his mandate
PHOTO BY ALAN SOLOMON/TNS Near the top of any list of Illinois government’s many problems is that House Speaker Michael Madigan has made a decades-long game out of messing with the minds and the agendas of our governors. If there’s one constant since 1983, it’s Speaker Madigan’s jiu-jitsu moves against whoever happens to be governor. […]
Posted inOpinion
Get out of the way
PHOTO BY ALAN SOLOMON/TNS With yet another poll showing plunging Downstate support for Gov. Bruce Rauner in a Republican district and the intense Republican freakout over Donald Trump’s impending presidential nomination and its impact on independent suburban women, there appears to be a growing feeling among Democrats, particularly in the Illinois Senate, that they need […]
Posted inOpinion
Record spending in campaign against McCann
PHOTO BY ALAN SOLOMON/TNS “He was a god in that district,” a high-level Rauner guy told me about state Sen. Sam McCann’s poll numbers from before this year’s Republican primary campaign began. Benchmark polling taken months ago showed McCann (R-Plainview) had a voter approval rating of about 70 percent. Sen. McCann “really was everywhere” in […]
Posted inOpinion
Can Gonzales defeat Madigan?
PHOTO BY ALAN SOLOMON/TNS A name from the past has been leading the charge for Jason Gonzales’ Democratic primary campaign against Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. Blair Hull, the hugely wealthy but unsuccessful 2004 Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, directly accounts for $100,000 of the $300,000 which the Illinois United for Change PAC has raised […]
