Division Street

“In November 2002, Joseph Gleiter sat at the breakfast counter of Plaza Cafe in Orland Park, eyeing Rod Blagojevich as he made his way through the crowd,” Kristen McQueary writes.

“Just days before the election that would crown him governor, Blagojevich stopped in the southwest suburbs to shake hands at a local hangout. Gleiter had one question for him:

“‘I’d like to know what you’re going to do about these facilities,’ he said, referring to the group home in which his mentally disabled son lives. ‘If you make cuts, these people are going to end up in state facilities.’

“Gleiter wagged his finger at an antsy Blagojevich who - naturally - was hours behind schedule that day.

“‘It’s a matter of setting priorities,’ the soon-to-be governor assured Gleiter before his handlers steered him toward another table.

“Priorities. Right.

“What were they again?”

Go read the rest of it to find out.

The Sun-Times cast a goofy-looking governor as John Wayne to illustrate its story about Rod Blagojevich’s offer to send the state police - and possibly the National Guard - to Chicago to help out the apparently hapless Mayor Daley. As noted the headline to this post, I think the Sun-Times missed a comedic opportunity.

Meanwhile, City Hall is pissed.

“We’re a little puzzled about how it would work,” mayoral spokesmonster Jackie Heard said.

Who isn’t? What a logistical nightmare.

“Daley administration officials also noted with some cynicism that Blagojevich had yet to respond to efforts by City Hall earlier this year to seek youth job and recreational programs to help prevent an onslaught of summer violence.”

It’s also classic Blagojevich grandstanding. “It is, at the very least, a little disconcerting that we’re only hearing about this as the media does,” Heard said.

Fortunately, classic Blagojevich grandstanding includes the fact that he never follows through with his grand pronouncements, so let’s declare this dead-on-arrival and move on.

“[The governor] cut more than $240,000 for the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and $800,000 to address the state’s DNA testing backlog. Another $1 million to offset the cost of videotaping police interrogations was cut,” Kristen McQueary reported on Sunday.

I thought of this while reading these stories today:

* “Olympic Bid Raises $12 Mil, $37 Mil To Go.”
* “Mich. Ave Riverwalk To Cost City $8.1 Mil.“

I realize the funding sources for all of these things are different, but doesn’t it say something nonetheless about our priorities?

Found this nugget in a Rich Miller column about the political machinations behind the lagging capital bill and gubernatorial politics:

“Daley has turned thumbs down on the capital package because: 1) The price the city would have to pay for a casino license was way higher than what Daley agreed to; and 2) The governor inserted language giving himself control of all Chicago school construction projects against Daley’s wishes.”

A) So he can name all the schools after himself? Or . . .
B) So he can throw some contracts to Chris Kelly while he awaits trial?

1. This got me to thinking: What if we let Rod ride for free - and we don’t let him off.

2. Governor’s budget proposal accidentally sent to Fermilab.

3. Who’s talking and who isn’t.

That’s how much more money the governor is putting in his pocket by refusing to excise the pay raises included in the budget bill the legislature sent to him.

Of course, that money will eventually end up in a defense lawyer’s pocket, but that just makes it worse.

*

“[T]he governor faced blowback for his decision to leave a 3.8 percent cost of living adjustment intact while cutting hundreds of other programs, including those relied upon by the developmentally disabled, autistic children, the elderly and battered women,” Dave McKinney writes in a Sun-Times story apparently not available online.

The Blagovevich administration says it had no choice but to leave the pay raises alone because of state statute, but McKinney points out that in 2003 Blagojevich said “In these difficult times, when state agencies are being consolidated, when the number of state personnel is being reduced - in short, when others are being asked to sacrifice - this is not the time to give pay raises to the governor, lieutenant governor, to the constitutional officers, to the men and women of the General Assembly, or to the Supreme Court or Circuit Court judges.”

The judges eventually got their raises thanks to an Illinois Supreme Court ruling, but Blagojevich’s veto for everyone else stood.

*

By the way, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal - the subject of this Division Street post - changed his mind again and vetoed raises for the legislator there.

“Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been interviewed multiple times by federal investigators looking into allegations that he and key members of his administration offered contracts and state work in exchange for campaign fundraising help, according to documents unsealed Thursday,” the Tribune reports.

“Blagojevich made no mention of the newly unsealed revelations at his fundraiser Thursday night, but in a speech to donors he did allude to critical coverage of him by the media and sarcastically gave that as a reason why he needed to keep raising campaign funds.

“’We can’t just rely on all this good press we’ve been getting these days,’ Blagojevich said while an audience of several hundred chuckled.”

He’s declaring independence from the system.

“The reformist image of Gov. Bobby Jindal, considered by Republicans a top potential vice-presidential choice, has recently taken a beating after Mr. Jindal refused to veto a sizable pay increase that Louisiana legislators voted for themselves this month,” the New York Times reports.

“The increase would more than double the salary of the part-time legislators effective July 8, to $37,500 from $16,800, with considerably more money available once expenses are added in. It has touched a nerve in this impoverished state.”

Just for some context: Pending pay raises for Illinois legislators would “raise the basic salary of a state representative and senator by more than $7,000 a year, to nearly $73,000,” according to the Jacksonville Journal-Courier. “Compensation for legislative leaders would top $100,000, and the governor’s salary would go up $20,000 to a total of $190,000.”

(To be fair, Illinois lawmakers are considered full-time; they are part-time in Louisiana.) I stand corrected; Illinois lawmakers are also considered part-time.

“Conservative talk-radio show hosts and bloggers have denounced it, newspaper editorials have inveighed against it - The Times-Picayune of New Orleans called the increase ‘greedy’ and its main proponent ’shameless’ — and the legislators themselves received floods of e-mail messages from angry constituents,” the Times piece continues.

This is fascinating because of the reform rhetoric that propelled Jindal into office. It sounds awfully familiar.

(more…)

From Bob Reed’s interview with Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn:

“Let’s consider this: Obama wins the presidency. The governor has to appoint a new senator. Would he name you? Well, it would be snowing in Hell. If it were up to me, I’d rather the governor appoint himself, and we could get a fresh start in Illinois. I think enough people on the Democrat and the Republican sides would say, ‘Hallelujah.’”

A recent poll by the Midwest Democracy Network found that just 13 percent of Illinoisans approved of the job Gov. Rod Blagojevich is doing, and just 17 percent approved of the job the legislature is doing, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes today.

In other findings, 21 percent approved of the job the mob is doing and 28 percent approved of the job the Kansas City Royals are doing.

The poll had a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points. In follow-up questioning, 4.8 percent of respondents said they accidentally said “approved” instead of “disapproved”, and .1 percent said “Rod who?”