January 14, 2019
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
Headed down the same road
Three cheers for efforts to end self-interested patronage politics in Illinois. Nonetheless, those familiar with politics here can only watch with amusement at the recent legislative zeal to bring reform to the Illinois Tollway Authority.
It seems that legislators were shocked by recent newspaper reports of political cronyism in this highly political agency, including the appointment of those with Republican political connections to top administrative jobs there, as well as reports of no-bid contracts to businesses with political connections.
So in the last hours of the old General Assembly, legislators passed a bill allowing Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who took office today, to replace the nine-member board with a bipartisan group of his own appointees.
Then, presumably, the new directors will eschew politics and bring upright, honest and sleaze-free business practices to this important agency.
“This is not simply about getting new kids on the block. This is about making sure that this agency operates with the integrity, the transparency and in the best interests of the public that all taxpayers should expect,” said Christian Mitchell, the former Chicago Democratic House member who will serve as a deputy governor in the Pritzker administration.
Take that pronouncement with more than a few grains of salt.
For starters, political reform in Illinois has traditionally meant replacing one group of bipartisan-but-self-interested pols with another group of bipartisan-but-self-interested pols.
Second, recent reports about patronage hiring and contracting at the tollway authority were about the least surprising news story of the year.
The tollway authority, a state agency with a budget of nearly $700 million, maintains and operates 294 miles of tollways in 12 counties in northern Illinois.
Patronage politics and the tollway authority have operated side by side since it was conceived in 1958, no matter which political party in Illinois controlled the levers of power.
No wonder the Wikipedia description of the agency reports that “the close relationship between the governor and the near-majority of appointed board members has led to numerous allegations of endemic corruption throughout the tollway authority’s lifetime.”
Truer words were never spoken.
That’s why declarations from legislators about how shocked they were by the news reports have all the credibility of similar expressions of chagrin made by Captain Reneault when he learned there was gambling going on at Rick’s Cafe Americain.
The outgoing chairman of the tollway board is Robert Schillerstrom, a former Republican candidate for governor and onetime chairman of the DuPage County Board. He oversaw the appointment of individuals with GOP connections to positions within the tollway that are open to political appointments.
With Schillerstrom soon to be gone, his appointees won’t be far behind him.
The new appointees almost assuredly will have political pedigrees of their own. That’s how it works in Illinois - out with the old pols and in with the new ones. But nothing, at least substantively, ever changes.
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January 13, 2019
Chicago Sun-Times
No more foot-dragging on getting proper health care for prisoners
Illinois prison inmates, regardless of why they’re doing time, should not have to worry that substandard medical care will turn out to be a slow-motion death penalty.
Fortunately, a federal judge on Thursday gave preliminary approval to a consent decree that will bring in a court-appointed expert to oversee an overhaul of health care in state prisons.
That’s a big step, long in coming. But now comes the hard part: actually upgrading health care in the prisons so that no one dies or suffers needlessly.
People behind bars with medical problems don’t have the ability to shop around for health care. If the care is substandard, they can’t do anything about it. But two reports by court-appointed experts found the health care provided by an outside for-profit contractor had been widely unacceptable for 40,000 state prisoners.
In one case, for example, no one paid much attention to a 26-year-old inmate who repeatedly told health care staff members he had atrial fibrillation - until he had a stroke. A study released in 2015 found “significant lapses in care” in 60 percent of the cases in which prisoners died behind bars in 2013 and in the first half of 2014.
The final consent decree will spell out qualifications for health and dental care providers, such as physicians; require more health care space and better equipment; require the hiring of infection control staff; require the implementation of a electronic medical records system, and put a quality control program in place.
The federal court and involved parties are still negotiating to achieve a final approval of the consent decree. After that, it’s important that the foot-dragging stops that has delayed resolutions of these problems for eight years.
It won’t be easy. As Jennifer Vollen-Katz, executive director of the John Howard Association, says: “Execution for this is going to be very difficult for the department. They are under-resourced, and they are understaffed.”
Prison inmates can’t expect gold-plated health care paid for by citizens who, unlike prisoners, aren’t guaranteed more than basic health care themselves.
But that basic minimum would seem to be a human right, even in prison.
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January 12, 2019
(Arlington Heights) Daily Herald
The dawn of Gov. Pritzker
It would be fair to characterize our endorsement last October of J.B. Pritzker’s candidacy for governor as tepid.
That endorsement was more a repudiation of Bruce Rauner’s inept stewardship than an enthusiastic embrace of a Pritzker alternative.
But we did say, “Progress must come from somewhere, and we know that because of Illinois’ political realities, it will not be through Rauner’s re-election. Hope for change rests only with Democrat J.B. Pritzker.”
As much as anything else, we banked on the hope that Pritzker not only has the temperament to bring well-meaning people together to work on behalf of good government, but that he is well meaning himself — that he is motivated not by hidden self-serving agendas but by a genuine wish to do a good job.
Naive? Perhaps. But there is some evidence to support a belief in his fundamental altruism. And Illinois can only hope.
It is, of course, far too early to pronounce a grade on Pritzker’s performance.
But we are impressed by the early signs that suggest Pritzker means to have a more thoughtful and more collaborative governorship than Illinois has enjoyed in 20 years.
He reached across the aisle to include such Republicans on his transition team as former Gov. Jim Edgar and former Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno.
He invited all four of the legislative leaders to dinner at his home in a clear attempt at building relationships if not bipartisanship.
Going further than that, Pritzker tapped Republican state Rep. David Harris of Arlington Heights for his administration. Harris, who did not run for re-election, is expected to become director of the Illinois Department of Revenue.
Beyond all that, the new governor also has reached out positively to the general public.
Illinois has many difficult challenges and many of the solutions will be hard and controversial. Tough days lie ahead.
But it’s an encouraging start.
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