McHenry County Blog

An invitation from Carpentersville District 300:

Please plan to attend and share the news. District 300 students, parents, staff, and community members are encouraged to attend a public forum that will be held next month with municipal leaders and state legislators who represent the D300 community.

The D300 Legislative Reception will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 22, 2013, at Jacobs High School: 2601 Bunker Hill Drive, Algonquin.

For the past few years, this event was held in the morning; the School Board Legislative Committee decided this year to move the reception to an early evening timeframe to better accommodate working families, students, and staff members.

Refreshments will be served at 5:30 p.m., followed by dialogue with local and state leaders at 6 p.m.

The conversation will start with a brief overview of the district’s three legislative priorities for the 2012-2013 school year, which are:

• State Education Funding (General State Aid and Categorical Funding),
• Capital Development Board Funding, and
• Truancy.

Additionally, audience members will be able to ask questions of the legislators and provide input to them.

An email arrived from the Better Government Association’s Andy Shaw.

It announces the unveiling of its data base of state and local governmental pensions.

“We’ve updated the BGA Payroll Database of 500,000 government workers with 2012 numbers and, for the first time, we’ve compiled the BGA Pension Database, which contains searchable information on 400,000 retirees from the largest public-sector pension funds in Illinois. ”

Type in a person’s last name and find the pension.

I tried it for myself and got lots of hits for “Skinner,” but none whose first name was “Cal.”

Then I went to the part that allows searches by pension type, found “Judges/Legislators” and typed in “Skinner.”

And there is was, as you can see below:

It does not have non-Chicago police and firefighters yet.

State Rep. Mike Tryon (R-Crystal Lake) is introducing legislation today that will apply the Illinois income tax to visiting legislators from Wisconsin and Indiana.

Noting that the Democrats passed legislation to “close corporate loopholes” which resulted in Illinois taxing planes while they were flying over Illinois, incomes of movie stars filming in Illinois, baseball and football team players on Illinois fields,

“I think that ought to apply to visiting Democrats.”

“What’s good enough for the Green Bay Packers is good enough for the Wisconsin legislature.”

Of course, there’s no chance that House Speaker Mike Madigan would allow such a bill to be considered, don’t be surprise if you hear of Tryon’s bill introduction on radio and TV.

It’s easy to talk the talk, but of two McHenry County politicians speaking out on pensions and health insurance, only one is walking the walk.

He is Republican Joe Walsh.

Jack Franks was featured on a front page article of the Northwest Herald about legislative pensions. (McHenry County Blog print

The millionaire was quoted thusly:

“If we are going to ask others to have their pensions reduced, we have to do ours as well.”

That Franks’ quote was right next to a newly snapped photo of me and the amount of my pension–$77,506.

The amount was first posted in the comment section on January 3rd of McHenry County Blog at the request of a commenter. It was under my article listing the top 50 legislative pensions, as revealed by Jim Tobin of National Taxpayers United of Illinois. (I didn’t make the top fifty.)

Sunday, the Daily Herald ran a big article Congressman Joe Walsh.

Before Walsh took office he announced that he would not take health insurance or participate in the congressional pension plan.

You may remember that many Republicans criticized Democrats backing Obamacare for not including themselves and their families in the same health benefit plan they were imposing on most other Americans.

Walsh is one who is walking the walk by paying for his family’s own health insurance.

Maybe Franks is allowing some private enterprise to pay for his family’s health insurance, but, if so, he has not revealed that.

The end of the Northwest Herald article does reveal that Franks has not taken Joe Walsh’s congressional pension path, however.

Here’s the content:

“…as for what he is going to do with his pension once he’s eligible?

“’I don’t know. Good question,’”

One of the way lawyers in the General Assembly make money is by attracting clients who have not only a business agenda, but a legislative agenda.

Because state law does not require attorneys to list their clients, there’s no central place to look to see if a particular lawyer-legislator is benefiting personally from his legislative position.

Now comes evidence in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from neighboring state Wisconsin that this practice actually existed in Wisconsin.

Columnist Daniel Bice writes of two admitted felons asking for rollbacks of their verdicts based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Enron Jeff Skilling “honest services” case.

That’s the case U.S. Attorneys have used to convict numerous politicians whom, it was argued, did not provide their constituents with “honest services.” The Supreme Court ruled that was not a specific enough crime, that to fit there had to be a bribe or a kickback.

Most Illinois politicians, a highly evolved species, know better than to be involved in such direct behavior. They prefer the “I’ll do a favor for you now,” “You do a favor for me down the road” approach.

Anticipation of the Supreme Court decision required a last minute re-work of the case against Rod Blagojevich.

Now Bice is telling readers that Nicholas Hurtgen, a Wisconsin political operative turned Bear Stearn biggie in Chicago is seeking to withdraw his guilty plea.

Hurtgen, of course, was involved in the Crystal Lake Mercy Hospital scandal.

But the more interesting part of the column is the information about ex-State Senator Gary George, described as the most powerful African-American politician in Wisconsin. He “pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy for accepting kickbacks of legal fees paid by an inner-city social service agency” and is now out of prison.

Now read what the man with a now-suspended law license says,

“”It is not bribery behavior under federal law to seek and receive legal work as a state legislator.”

Think that might apply to lawyer-legislators in Illinois?

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After finishing this, I found this commentary on lawyer-legislator Abraham Lincoln on Tom Roeser’s blog:

Anyone who has deeply studied Lincoln, a political and literary genius, knows that he was a successful railroad lawyer while he was a state legislator…knows that he unfurled a map of Illinois on his desk in the House and bargained the routes of railroad lines across the state, making deals on what towns the trains would stop at…which he used to run for the U. S. Senate where he got more votes than Stephen A. Douglas (not that it did him any good as the legislatures in those days named U. S. senators and they picked Douglas).

Remember there were no serious conflict of interest laws then binding state lawmakers.

The following was written by my former colleague Penny Pullen. She serves as state president for Eagle Forum of Illinois and is active in Republicans of Wheeling Township.

“No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”

These true words were written in a 19th-century New York court decision, and they are still true today.

It is of some comfort that we have reached the midpoint in the General Assembly’s election-year session without yet being clobbered by a tax increase.

But no Illinois citizen can afford to assume our lawmakers will not yet commit what would appear to us as a rash act of political suicide. A lot of factors go into the collective decisions that beset us from Springfield.

Here are some realities that “we the people” do not automatically grasp:

• The hallways, chambers and offices of a Capitol building are constructed with a unique brand of highly resistant insulation. (It’s only a façade, but it’s convincing to those who enter the cocoon of a legislative session, and too seldom is it penetrated by an aroused citizenry.)
• Lobbyists not only have access to lawmakers to present the unique point of view they are paid to offer; they also have built relationships with the senators and representatives over sometimes years or even decades. (How many ordinary citizens have even bothered to meet their elected lawmakers, let alone developed a relationship?)
• Special interest groups dominate the campaign fundraising for those who hold the power to aid, abet or hinder their particular interest. (Have ordinary citizens shown themselves helpful when the going gets rough, or have they sat out the necessary process of offering financial backing to a candidate who’s doing the right thing?) Campaign contributions are no guarantee that a lawmaker will vote in line with the contributor, but they certainly and understandably open the door to friendly conversation, which can be just one step away from persuasion.
• Gov. Quinn is determined to raise our taxes, and he can wield power to get what he wants. (It’s up to “we the people,” for whom he has always claimed to be speaking, to make clear that this year, on this question, Pat Quinn does not speak for us!)
• Unique tactics are available to the governor, and he is using them: Never before have legislators’ landlords been stiffed by the state for legislative office rent, making the legislators themselves logical participants in the “Enough-already – let’s-raise-taxes-to-ease-the-pain” coalition. (Yes, that looks to the ordinary person like an oxymoron, but the governor is inflicting pain on certain segments – like the government schools lobby – for the express purpose of getting them to beg for a tax increase.)

Having been an elected State Representative for 16 years, I can tell you this: Anything can happen when the legislature is in session; it doesn’t have to make sense to “we the people.”

But, an aroused, engaged citizenry – even if only for these critical days and weeks (though sustained engagement is so much better!) – can produce enough angst in a re-election-driven legislator to bring him to his senses.

The single worst thing a citizen can do right now, though, is to assume that, this being an election year, we’re safe from legislators doing dumb things.

That New York judge knew what he was talking about.

Pressure will fill the House and Senate chambers in Springfield all the way to adjournment, be that May 31 or July 15; the real question is, whose pressure?

Will pressure from the voters exceed pressure from the usual sources of power?

It’s up to “we the people.”

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Penny Pullen served in Springfield from 1977-1993 as an elected State Representative and was a member of the House Republican Leadership from 1983-1993. She authored the legislation which, in 1983, repealed the state inheritance tax and was the leading Springfield lawmaker on pro-life reforms and on public health strategies to contain the HIV/AIDS epidemic.