McHenry County Blog

This is my favorite flag photo.

I took it about a half a dozen years ago when our family went East and spent a day in the nation’s Capital.

We didn’t plan well enough to know that one needed to make a reservation to go to the top of the Washington Monument.

But, we lucked out.

I had been once before when I lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I don’t know whether that was the trip when I saw President Harry Truman walking to work at the White House.

“Walking to work” sounds strange, doesn’t it?

But he was living in Blair House while the White House was being refurbished. “Rebuilt” is probably a better word.

We were on the sidewalk in front of the old War Department Building that became the Executive Office Building where I worked for the better part of a year as a baby Budget Examiner, having responsibility for the Small Business Administration’s budget. Now, it has Eisenhower’s name affixed to it.

The wedding cake building is located just to the West of the White House.

Visiting the Washington Monument reminded me of my father’s telling me he and other 4-H All Stars had camped on the grounds. Since he was born in 1916, that was probably in the early 1930′s. Undoubtedly due to a politically astute Ag teacher at Sudlersville High School, Dad was elected President of 4-H at a convention in Hagerstown, Maryland.

I think he told me that story as we drove past the County Fairgrounds where the convention was held on a trip from Crystal Lake to Washington for his treatment for lung cancer at Georgetown University Hospital.

One of these days I’m going to make it up to a Harvard Milk Days Parade.

It’s always an enjoyable event.

I had the best time in the late 1960′s when the McHenry County Young Republicans borrowed a baby (adolescent?) elephant named “Tuffy.”

It was owned by company named Tufcoat. The firm made some type of coating and used “Tuffy” as a symbol-mascott.

I walked behind the elephant with a snow shovel.

I got the idea from when a circus playing in Cleveland brought a adult elephant to Oberlin, Ohio, to try to get some free publicity. We were holding a Republican Mock Convention in 1964 and I’m guessing the circus got some publicity other than in the college newspaper, the Oberlin Review.

On April Fool’s Day the Oberlin Review ran a photo of my scooping up some elephant poop with a cutline that had nothing to do with the photo.

If others have parade photos they would like posted, just email them to calskinner2@gmail.com.

This is too long an introduction to a political photo taken at today’s Milk Day Parade.

It is of Republican candidate for McHenry County Sheriff Bill Prim and supporters.

Read what I have enlarged on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times today:

The emphasized part of the front page says,

“Madigan rips ‘lack of leadership’”

But the media has steadfastly ignored the role that House Speaker Mike Madigan has played in putting the pension systems into a sinkhole so large it is now obvious to even Madigan, one of its chief diggers, that taxpayers cannot pour enough money to satisfy legislative obligations, while allowing Democrats to continue spending a billion or more each year.

I’ve packed a lot into that sentence, too much, I am sure.

But consider that Mike Madigan has been head of the Illinois House 38 out of the last 40 years.

Anyone want to guess when the pension busting legislation was enacted?

And, who might have decided to allow pension enhancement bills to be voted upon?

It certainly was not Senate President John Cullerton.  At most, he was at Madigan’s leadership table giving “input.”

There is another garment of culpability that Madigan must wear.

When I was closely examining budgets, I noticed that each governor had an education section.  It had three parts:

• kindergarten through 12th grade
• higher education
• pensions

Unions have loudly carped that the Illinois General Assembly did not pay what its members should have for their pension system over the years.

They have a point there.

But it is a misleading one.

It was the union leaders who were urging Madigan and other legislators to put more money into State Aid to Education.

Want to guess where that “more money” came from?

Hey, you could be a legislator.

That’s right.

It came from the money governors requested for pension obligations.

From the unions point of view, it was a double win:

• There was more money for next year’s teachers’ salaries.
• Because the salaries were higher, pension benefits would be increased.

And yesterday Madigan blames former underling Cullerton for not mustering enough votes to pass “cover my rear end” pension legislation.

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Most readers will probably know that I am a former State Representative.

I received a generous pension for which I regularly thank people.  (Thanks!)

During my sixteen years in Springfield, I can count on very few fingers the number of pension bills I voted for.  State Rep. Joe Ebbeson  of DeKalb was the pension “scold” in the 1970′s.  I can’t remember who took on that role in the 1990′s.

In any event, my viewpoint was that I might serve long enough to have to figure out how to pay for benefits being promised and concluded that a “No” vote was the appropriate on.

“When in doubt, vote ‘No’” is still pretty good advice for a legislator.

It won’t make you popular at the time, but in time too many “Yes” votes turn out to have been bad judgment.

Gus Philpott, publisher of Woodstock Advocate, has been watching the General Assembly in action recently.

You can, too. Look here.

The last days of the session are particularly busy and often run late into the night.

And what do visitors to the chamber remark most about?

It’s staffers and legislators going from desk to desk to punch buttons when legislators are not at their seats.

In days past, that could be somewhat explained by members being on conference committees at the end of the session. Indeed, when the House chambers were remodeled, a glass walled room was constructed where such deliberations could take place within sight of one’s seat (at least if one were a House member of a conference committee).

Now the practice of ghost voting is visible on the internet.

It is made possible when members do not take their keys with them when they leave the floor.

Philpott writes of seeing it in the Senate here.

It’s not limited to the Senate.

You can read about how someone voted my switch when I was absent here.

When I was in my first year in the Illinois House–1973–one Democrat was on the floor so rarely that I thought he was a lobbyist. (Lobbyists were allowed on the floor then, at least at the edges of the floor. That was before House Speaker Bob Blair built plexiglass windows around the sides of the House chamber, earning him the nickname “Bulletproof Bob.”)

Thinking about the live broadcasting of House sessions reminds me of how I was fascinated by listening to WBBM radio on night in the late 1960′s. The station broadcast what the House was doing for several hours. It fascinated me.

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House Bill 332, by the way does nothing. It is a place holder for some subject matter on which sponsor House Speaker Mike Madigan might want some senator to amend something.

Bills like this make it virtually impossible for the public to follow what is happening in Springfield.

That is the entire point, of course.

There was a protracted fight in the Illinois General Assembly during the 1970′s over whether Illinois should celebrate Memorial Day on May 30th or go with the flow and make another three-day weekend ending in the final Monday of May.

In the end, tourism interests beat back those who wanted to honor those who died in battle, even though Illinois General John Logan started the tradition. He was even a State Representative for three years, served in Congress and was an unsuccessful Vice Presidential candidate.

I bring this up today, because the commercial interests seem to have outsmarted themselves for at least the last two years around here.

May 30th was a fine day last year and is predicted to be this year, while the last day in May hasn’t been so hot.

When Illinois voted to change the date to remember those who died for our country, I voted with the minority to leave it on May 30th.

Someone reading my article on McHenry County College Vicky Smith’s contract language which she interprets as pretty much requiring all Trustees to go through her to ask employees questions asked if I had every heard of anything like that.

In fact, I have.

When I worked for the Illinois Department of Management Services, the third Director talked to me about a rule that said anyone talking to a legislator had to write a memo the next day informing him of the conversation.

After work, when the Illinois House was in session, I hung out over there.

I told him that and pointed out that it was unreasonable for me to be required to write memos about every topic I discussed with my friends after work and at dinner.

I told him I would be happy to write a memo if I ever talked about CMS policy or operations, but not about personal conversations.

That seemed to satisfy him, even though it clearly did not meet the letter of the departmental rules.

At the Thursday night McHenry County College Board meeting, retiring Trustee Dennis Adams argued against extending MCC President Vicky Smith’s contract through June 30, 2015.

“I don’t think any harm would come until the end of June,” he said, adding that he thought the new Board members would come to realize Smith should be retained.

“It has the appearance of impropriety.  It will have a long life…It is an affront to the new Board members.  It has nothing to do with Ms. Smith’s performance.  It has to do with the process.

“It is not urgent.  It doesn’t have to happen today.”

Before any vote, the contract already ran through June 30, 2014.

After the contract was extended on a 5-2 vote, with outgoing Board members Barbara Walters and Carol Larson being joined by Cynthia Kisser, Linda Liddell and Mary Miller, a meeting was held to install the three newly-elected members–Molly Walsh, Chris Jenner and Tom Wilbeck.

In her last comments Walters complained, “It is now political.  This [MCC] is about students, not moving up the [political ladder].”

Somehow that bothered me.

As a Republican Precinct Committeeman, I knocked on doors in my Algonquin 7 precinct the weekend before the election supporting MCC candidates.

But I also was one of two people in the room that attended the meeting in 1967 when McHenry County College got its start.  (Iris Bryan was the other.)

And, you know who called that meeting?

A Republican Precinct Committeeman–Cal Skinner, Sr.

I was McHenry County Treasurer at the time, certainly a political position.

So, I hope I will be pardoned for pointing out that if “political” people had not started the ball rolling, MCC would not have come into existence in 1968 when a ten-cent per $100 of assessed valuation referendum was passed.

My father served on the first MCC Board.

Later he was elected to the McHenry County Board.

Did he serve on the MCC Board as a stepping stone to higher office?

Considering my father came within a couple of hundred votes of winning the County Auditor’s race against the McHenry County Board Chairman in 1964, the MCC Board service certainly wasn’t a prelude to running for county office.

When I spoke before the installation meeting, I pointed out that the old Board’s action would result in more negative publicity for the College.

And, as you can see below, my prediction was fulfilled:

Part 2 of the Chicago Tribune said about Lakewood’s alternative revenue bond purchase of what is not called RedTail Golf Club:

Lakewood is featured as one of the villages

“where bets backfired on taxpayers…where taxpayers should have been protected form tax increases” but weren’t…where “taxpayers instead awoke to hikes they never approved, ones that even exceeded what the law normally allows.”

Lakewood did not make the front page of the story, but the financing of the golf course it bought is referenced on page 10.

“That’s how taxpayers is upscale Lakewood in McHenry County ended up paying for a golf course they were told wouldn’t cost a them a dime.”

Although I was not quoted in the story, I have replayed the interchange between the three residents and the then-village board several times to the current village board members.

There were three of us there.

Former Village Trustee Roger Reid said that he didn’t think it was the role of government to be in the golf club business.

Attorney Jim Bishop asked if board members knew that golf courses all over McHenry County were having financial problems.

I asked, “Is this ever going to cost me a dime?”

I was assured that it would not.

The breaching of that assurance undoubtedly explains my defense of the Property Tax Cap, which prohibited the issuance of bonds without a referendum.  (I lost the fight to keep that prohibition for park districts and you can see the most recent “need” determined by the Crystal Lake Park District at West Beach.)

A sports management company made the projections that the golf course in Lakewood would pay for itself.   The Tribune article explains,

“Some residents remained skeptical, including [former Village Trustee] Roger Reid, who recalls going with a small group to the Village Board meeting to ask for assurance that taxes would not go up because of the deal.

“‘We were assured–up and down and sideways–that, “This is not going to go on you tax bill,”‘ Reid recalled.

“Then residents were hit with the catch in the law:  If projections are off, taxes can go up.

“Turns out, the town’s projections were so far off that the golf course couldn’t even pay a penny toward its loan payment for six years.  And, by the time the bond was paid off two years ago, records show, 53 percent of it was paid off through higher taxes, not the projected golf course profit.”

The Tribune article points out that no state agency verifies financial projections that will be made by firms like Power Wellness, the health club firm McHenry County College hired to justify putting taxpayers on the hook for paying back tens of millions of dollars in projected borrowed money.

Although the Illinois Attorney General has authority to “advocate for taxpayers misled by the deals…the issue has never been raised there.”

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If you into irony, the day after the Tribune article about the abuses of alternative revenue bonds ran, the Northwest Herald ran diminishing the dangers involved in using alternative revenue bonds.

On January 6, 2013, right on the top of the Sunday Chicago Tribune, there was an expose that should send warning flares up about the alternative revenue bonds that the majority of the McHenry County College Board seem set to issue.

Alternative revenue bonds are ones ostensibly to be repaid by identified sources of revenue, for example in MCC’s case, an increase in student fees of $8 per hour, increased tuition from more enrollment and health club fees among other sources…

But, just in case, don’t you know, to be paid by property taxes if the projected revenues from the other non-real estate sources don’t bring in enough money.

The Tribune doesn’t look at junior colleges in its article. As the headline implies, it looks at “Small suburbs [that have] exploit[ed} tax loophole."

The sub-headline on the front page reads,

"Even in places where residents might expect tighter oversight, Illinois borrowing rules let towns sidestep voters, make decisions that can backfire on taxpayers"

McHenry County College taxpayers managed

• not to step in the Briar Patch when the Board wanted to borrow, without asking voters at the ballot box, $25 million to finance a minor league baseball stadium,
• but are facing a similar entangling long-term obligation in current Board members' desired to borrow, without voter approval, $45 million to build a health club and new classrooms (even while only using the classrooms 45% of the time).

The story describes alternative revenue bonds as a

“device that lets towns borrow in a way that sidesteps voters and property tax caps.

• The catch for towns:  They must be able to foresee paying off the loans without raising property taxes.
• The catch for residents:  If towns’ projections are wrong, taxes are automatically hiked to make the loan payments.

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More tomorrow.

Aaron Jaffe sat across the aisle and behind me during my first term in the Illinois House in 1973-75.

Under Republican House Speaker Bob Blair, I got a lot of bills to floor and managed to get 12 of them passed both houses. As one of he staffers told me, Blair didn’t know what to make of that independent from McHenry County.

And, even though he had fired me from the House Appropriations Committee staff job I took after finishing my term as McHenry County Treasurer, I still voted for him over Henry Hyde…because I could count.

Now Jaffe has written a book called “Goodbye, American Dream.”

I hadn’t heard of it until I read an excerpt in Saturday’s Chicago Sun-Times. It was titled,

“Last of the old-time precinct captains”

Jaffe had a marvelous sense of humor and after one of my many property tax reform bills had been debated and passed, he observed, “Skinner, you have a tax bill for a heart.”

Jaffe offers this advice on winning elections from the perspective of a State Representative and Niles Township (mainly Skokie) Committeeman:

“I always maintained that if I could get 100 people to work an area of 60,000 for six weeks, I could win.

“They would give me their weeknights and weekends and go out and work the precincts.

“But today, candidates can’t get 100 in 60,000 to work an area that way–because, by and large, the people have lost their connection to politics.”

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Wish I could find a link, but I can’t.