Feb. 16, 2017
(Arlington Heights) Daily Herald
Domestic violence programs are unnecessary, innocent victims of state budget confusion
In this space on Thursday, we urged lawmakers and the governor to work for a solution to the state’s budget stalemate as soon as possible.
Gov. Bruce Rauner said he was willing to compromise and state Senate leaders are working toward such a compromise.
It’s been two years, so a solution can’t come soon enough. And that’s especially true for social service agencies that rely on state funding and need to know what dollars might be coming.
The continued wrangling, however, is no excuse for what the state did to domestic violence programs as reported by the Associated Press in a story published in the Daily Herald Wednesday.
The AP said Illinois officials waited more than five months last year to alert 62 domestic violence programs that approximately $9 million in funding had been eliminated in the stopgap budget approved in June. And to make matters worse, no one in authority is saying why the funding was eliminated — in fact, it may have been a mistake.
Illinois Human Services Secretary James Dimas sent a letter in December to all providers alerting them that the money was left out of the temporary six-month budget that expired at the end of the year. He told providers that were was “some confusion” about funding in the six-month spending plan and vowed to get it returned when money is available.
That’s a hollow promise and one that came months too late, given the state’s spending woes. And no further explanations have been forthcoming about why the money was removed.
The effect of the removal has been swift and devastating for those agencies that provide shelter, counseling and advocacy for victims of domestic abuse. In Kane County, for example, Mutual Ground, a 24-hour shelter and counseling center, laid off four people in November, the AP reported, after not receiving state checks or answers as to why not. Another six already had left the agency and Mutual Ground was unable to afford to replace them, executive director Michelle Meyer said.
“We have no more case managers who help clients get benefits, housing, child care, accompany them to court, Meyer said. “There’s nobody to pick up that work. Everybody that we can’t help is put on a waiting list.”
The Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports on its website that the funding reductions and untimely payments from the state is causing serious problems in helping the nearly 42,000 adults victims and 8,000 child witnesses of domestic violence that Illinois agencies served last year.
“On just one day,” the coalition reports, “Illinois domestic violence programs couldn’t meet the needs of over 700 survivors seeking services. We suspect these numbers will only increase over time, as they have increased in each of the last three years. Reductions in funding are adding to struggles domestic violence programs already face. Costs of doing business increase every year, yet funding has remained stagnant, or been reduced, forcing programs to turn away even more survivors seeking help.”
Domestic violence is a real problem. Illinois has been shirking its duty, and this is just one example of why state lawmakers and the governor need to put politics aside and come up with a workable budget.
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February 20, 2017
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
What Kennedy did was not illegal, but he may have led supporters astray.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Kennedy didn’t do his supporters at the University of Illinois any favor recently when he sent them a combined campaign announcement and solicitation for contributions.
The mass email he sent to employees on their university accounts was within the rules. After all, Kennedy may have been the chairman of the UI’s Board of Trustees from 2009-2015, but he’s a private citizen now.
But he set up his email recipients for a potential problem because it’s an ethics violation for state employees to make a political contribution through their taxpayer-provided email accounts. The seven-paragraph message included a method by which recipients could make a contribution.
It’s hard to imagine that the error by the Kennedy campaign was anything other than inadvertent. He, obviously, got a mailing list, a valuable resource for any marketing or political organization, and decided to make use of it.
An ethics official said it’s “up to the state employee to make sure the state employee does not become involved in any kind of prohibited political activity.”
Well, of course. But that doesn’t mean a state employee, perhaps not as familiar with the rules as he should be or tempted to violate rules he knows are in place, wouldn’t run afoul of ethics restrictions.
Although this kind of violation is minor on the scale of typical Illinois-style corruption, the email rules are in place for a good reason - to prevent public employees from engaging in political activities using public resources.
Kennedy’s action quickly raised questions. The UI’s ethics office reported receiving multiple inquiries about it, showing how sensitive some people are on the issue and how easily employees could get themselves into trouble.
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February 19, 2017
Chicago Sun-Times
Bring back legislative scholarships? You’re kidding
What can the Legislature do for public higher education after trimming spending for two decades and then watching as university budgets were whacked even harder in the last two years?
Well, it could consider reinstating scandalous “legislative scholarships” - all unfunded, of course. And, in fact, there is a bill pending in Springfield to do just that.
What a joke. Legislative scholarships were a scam before and they would be again.
Before the scholarships were abolished in 2012, Illinois legislators for years doled out free tuition to relatives, pals, campaign contributors, lobbyists and political workers. They were shameless.
Now, state Rep. Thaddeus Jones, D-Calumet City, wants to bring them back. He has introduced a bill that would allow every legislator to give out four one-year scholarships and two four-year scholarships every year. The state’s universities, already reeling from vanishing funding, would eat the cost.
It’s not as if the state doesn’t already have scholarships available. For example, there are the need-based Monetary Award Program grants for students at public universities. But guess what? With the end of the stopgap budget, there’s no funding for MAP grants. Why not?
Maybe because the MAP grants go to students who don’t know a single politician.
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February 18, 2017
Belleville News-Democrat
Remove these splinters before major amputations are needed on Illinois budget
On Wednesday, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner essentially handed his budget duties to those forging the grand bargain in the Illinois Senate, but used his budget address to set a few parameters and restate his positions.
He underscored that tax increases cannot be imposed without significant reforms to improve the job climate. He said he cannot accept proposals to increase sales taxes on food and drugs.
And he said this: “we cannot tax people’s retirement incomes.”
We say this: “Why not?”
The feds tax retirement income. Illinois is one of only three states that do not.
Instead of some lukewarm reforms and taxing everybody in the neighborhood of 5 percent, what about just closing the loophole that lets retirees escape paying state income taxes? That would put another $2 billion in state coffers and use retirement income to generate a partial fix for our $130 billion state pension deficit.
Yes, we can hear the AARP screaming now about balancing the state budget on the backs of those with fixed incomes. True dat. But we could build in some protections for lower retirement incomes, say taxable after $35,000.
Illinois has 350,000 people drawing pensions, and of that more than 14,000 are drawing public pensions of greater than $100,000 per year. How fair is it to ask the average Illinois family to pay an additional $745 in state income taxes when so many are paying zip?
Letting retirement income escape state taxes is truly a loophole that lawmakers in 1983 giddily and popularly passed, sort of like the free bus rides for seniors regardless of income.
Pain is coming in Illinois. Taxing retirees and selling the Thompson Center in Chicago are tiny splinters to be removed before amputations are necessary.
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