McHenry County Blog

I asked former State Rep. Penny Pullen to jot down her thoughts about the death of former State Representative and State Senator Ray Hudson. Here’s what she wrote:

State Sen. George Ray Hudson was the gentleman from DuPage.

George Ray Hudson

That’s the customary way a member of the state legislature is addressed from the chair.It is also a perfect title for Ray Hudson, who died last Friday, just six months short of his 93rd birthday.

I’ve always thought of him as courtly, in the sense of an elegant man who epitomized manners, and that set him apart from many of our more calloused colleagues.

His manner was of respect for anyone with whom he came in contact.

He could love a joke, but never at another’s expense.

Ray Hudson started his distinguished Springfield career in 1971 as a Representative from Hinsdale, moving to the Senate in 1983, where he served into 1993.

The only election he lost was a GOP primary for Congress in 1984, but as it was a mid-term bid, he was able to continue serving in Springfield.

He graduated with honors from Denison University in Ohio, where he achieved Phi Beta Kappa status and served two terms as student body president.

World War II took him into the Air Force, and his active membership in the American Legion became a hallmark of his life.

Politically, Ray was a founder of DuPage’s Taproot Republicans and an articulate conservative, in fact, the sponsor at one time of a Right-to-Work bill for Illinois.

He will be remembered by many as a key figure in Illinois’s victory against ratification of the euphemistically named Equal Rights Amendment.

Looking at an old ERA debate transcript in preparing to write today about Ray, I found a wonderful speech from June, 1977, in which Ray cited scripture – at a time when invoking the Almighty was not so politically acceptable as it is today and when an official who did so actually meant what he said.

Ray lived out his retirement years with his dear Barbara, one of those legislator wives who traveled to Springfield every week and watched with pride from the House or Senate gallery as her husband served and led.

The couple has three children and six grandchildren, one of whom posted the following tribute on his Facebook page last weekend:

“My amazing grandfather, George Ray Hudson, devoted father, grandfather, husband, State Senator, friend, patriot and faithful disciple of Christ has passed away. I will always remember the faithful example my grandfather was to so many. His life has inspired me on so many levels. I will miss you, Grandpa, and will see you again in heaven.”

Hallelujah, what a reunion that will be with the countless lives Ray Hudson has blessed.

= = = = =
Ray Hudson and I were the only two people who showed up at the time that House Speaker W. Robert Blair said the Illinois House would start during the 1973-74 session. That was my first session.

We started joking about “Blair time.”

That was usually at least an hour after the House Calendar said the session would start, sometimes one and a half or two.

Of such is comradery born.

Yesterday I digressed to relate how I didn’t brag about being an employee of the Executive Office of the President when Lyndon Johnson was in office when I ran for McHenry County Treasurer in 1966.

How could that have helped running in a Republican primary election? Just saying I had worked for the U.S. Bureau of the Budget was good enough, I figured.

1972 GOP Primary Election poster for Cal Skinner, Jr. This was posted in store windows back when stores were bold enough to allow such advertising.

When I ran for state representative in 1972 after being, how did I say, “underemployed,” for two years, I promoted myself as someone who had worked for state, local and federal government.

OK, so the state job staffing the House appropriations committee (back when there was just one and the chairman had real power) lasted until W. Robert Blair was selected as incoming House Speaker in mid-December, 1970.

It was legit, if brief.

I can still hear House Clerk Fred Selcke coming into the staff office (an office with a wooden balcony behind the rotunda’s southwest elevator) saying,

“The services of the following will no longer be needed after today. You will be paid through the first two weeks January.”

He didn’t add, “Merry Christmas.”

Bob Blair even tried to fire the Legislative Council’s interns, among whom were future Illinois State department head Jim Jeffers, future State Senator Prescott Bloom (favorite song “Different Strokes for Different Folks”), now Federal Judge Wayne Anderson and Springfield attorney Bill Panichi.  He found out he couldn’t.

That was a shock, let me tell you.

I left office as County Treasurer when my state constitutionally mandated term was up the first week of December, so I had been on the job two weeks at most. (No running for re-election if you were an Illinois county sheriff or treasurer under the 1870 state constitution. The old timers at the County Treasurer’s Association said it was because those who wrote the document figured, if you couldn’t get rich in four years, you were too stupid to fill the office.)

But, I could legitimately say I had experience in state government. My opponents only had experience in local government, one being a township supervisor and, because of that, a McHenry County Board member, the other a police chief in Fox River Grove and Harvard.

So, from personal experience, I know that stretching one’s experience or accomplishments is a temptation for political candidates.

Low self-esteem is seldom an issue with politicians who are seeking or holding the title of State Representative or State Senator. I served in the General Assembly for 16 years and can attest to that character flaw.

Their accomplishment is being voted into office in what is a two-party oligopoly system.

One hand washes the other. Even locally.

That was so evident when McHenry County Republican Chairman Bill LeFew gave a pass to Democrat Jack Franks four years ago. LeFew has been known to attend Franks’ fund raiser, even giving an impromptu testimonial once.

And the Feds’ tapes that were released of Rod Blagojevich certainly show what many of us suspected. This guy thinks too much of himself.

He really had and has an inflated opinion of his importance.

One witness, a former aide, testified at trial Blagojevich came into his Chicago office between 2 and 8 hours per week. Let a lawyer-politician like Blago interpret what “hard-working” means and the result can be a huge exaggeration.

Blagojevich has been commonly described as “narcissistic” in the media. He certainly has an over self-inflated opinion of himself and his accomplishments.

And no one with even a cursory knowledge of the evidence would characterize the impeached governor as “ethical.”

More tomorrow.

When on house of a legislative body like Congress passes one version of a bill and the other passes a different version, a conference committee is set up.

When W. Robert Blair was Illinois House Speaker from during my first term in Springfield (1973-75), there were actual meetings. I had some bills that went to conference committee and was actually put on the committee.

Later speakers just had staff members bring around whatever they wanted to put on the House floor for a vote soliciting signatures of reliable conference committee appointees.

According to an NPR segment I heard yesterday, most of the differences in the health care reform legislation will be decided by having a Democratic Party staffer from the Senate meet with his or her counterpart from the House.

The major differences will be determined by actual Democratic legislators meeting in person, but behind closed doors.

The Democratic Party apologist being interviewed said that was fair because no Republicans in the Senate and only one in the House had voted for the bills in question.

I seem to remember a campaign pledge from President Barack Obama that such negotiations would be held in public. C-SPAN coverage..

Now comes 16th District Congressman Don Manzullo with a call for negotiations to be in open session. Here is his press release:

Manzullo Signs Petition to Force Open Health Care Talks
Resolution would require Democrat leaders to negotiate bill in public

[WASHINGTON]  Congressman Don Manzullo (R-IL) today joined many of his colleagues in signing onto a discharge petition that would force Democrat leaders to come out from the shroud of secrecy and start negotiating the massive health care bill in public.

The resolution, H.Res. 847, would require Congressional Democrat leaders and the Administration to start negotiating the health care bill in a public forum open to the media.

So far, 151 Members of Congress have signed the petition. Once that number reaches 218, Democrat leaders would have to open the talks to the public.

Since the House and Senate approved different versions of the bill in November and December, Democrat leaders from the House, Senate and Obama Administration have been holed up behind closed doors trying to work out a compromise version of the bill to present to the President for his signature.

On the campaign trail last year, then-Sen. Barack Obama pledged that

health care reform negotiations would be broadcast on C-SPAN so the “American people will know what’s going on.”

On Dec. 30, C-SPAN called on congressional leaders to carry out President Obama’s “C-SPAN pledge” and allow coverage of the health care talks. Two weeks later, the talks are still behind closed doors.

“In all my years in Congress, I have never seen an issue that has invoked as many constituent calls and as much emotion as this health care issue.

“It has the potential to affect every American and dramatically change the way health care services are paid for and delivered in our country. With this much at stake, Democrat leaders should honor the President’s campaign pledge and allow C-SPAN coverage of the negotiations so all Americans can see what could affect them for the rest of their lives.”

Too often have I lamented that I was at a Cub Scout meeting on October 10th, instead of the Crystal Lake City Council meeting, when Mayor Aaron Shepley led the way for the selection of Bill Cellini‘s development group.

Three days after the selection Cellini was implicated in Tony Rezko’s indictment.

Cellini, a quite skillful guy, subsequently pulled out of the deal. Later, as the economy tanked, the whole group took a walk.

Later, Mayor Shepley and the city council passed a 75% city sales tax hike to finance development of the Vulcan Lakes. That was the same argument used to support the Vulcan Lakes TIF district, leading me, a resident of Lakewood, a suburb of Crystal Lake, to think “double taxation without representation” every time I shop in Crystal Lake.

I worked as the campaign manager front man for Cellini in Springfield in 1971 in a mayoral campaign after newly-elected Illinois House Speaker W. Robert Blair sent his Clerk Fred Selcke down to tell House staffers that pretty much everyone but a couple of legislative mistresses (not revealed by Selcke, of course) that their services would no longer be needed.

So much for my being on the Appropriations Committee staff for which the outgoing Chairman Dick Walsh had hired me after I finished my term as McHenry County Treasurer.

If you want a longer version to put it context, click here. Cellini told the council in October that his colleagues and he had had lunch every week for thirty years.

Yesterday on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times is a story about a deal Cellini and Michael Marchese put together in Chicago. It involved how the city paid the Chicago Industrial League $1 million to tear down an empty homeless shelter in Greektown to make way for high end condos.

“Normally when the city provides such financial assistance for a development, there are strings attached:

“The developers must set aside one of every five condos as affordable housing. Or else they have to pay a hefty fee — about $4.2 million in the case of the Greektown project,”

Novak reveals.

Not with Cellini and Marchese, the story says.

And the money came from the Near West TIF district.

TIF districts are the developers’ best friend all over Illinois. They take money out of the pockets of local tax districts like schools, forcing those tax districts to take more money out of your pocket at real estate tax payment time in order to get the maximum amount allowed by law.

And, guess what?

Marchese selected the demolition company, even though the Industrial League got the money for the tear down.

Local Alderman Walter Burnett (27th) says he didn’t know anything about it.

Marchese spokesman Rick Filler reported the cost for the property would have been $1 million more (to cover the demolition costs) had the city not picked up the bill.

But the apparent ruse allowed the development group to avoid setting aside 20% of the units for affordable housing, as is required when Tax Increment Financing money is used to subsidize a developer in Chicago.

Word on the street in Crystal Lake is that Marchese’s people were eying the old Crystal Lake Public Safety Building site which the city council demolished in August of 2007.

The property remains empty, only its parking lot being of use.

Here’s how Sun-Times reporter Tim Novak describes two of the people who sat at the table to make their successful presentation to the Crystal Lake Council:

The Funders

Michael Marchese — A frequent dinner companion of Mayor Daley, Marchese, 61, of Chicago, has been involved in several high-profile deals with the city. In one, he built a West Side shopping center on land he bought from the CTA for a dollar. He has developed every Home Depot in Chicago, at times with city subsidies. He owns Harlem Irving Companies, which his father started in the late 1950s. His wife Debbie is a board member of After School Matters, a charity Maggie Daley started. Marchese’s company has donated $30,000 to the charity since 2006.

William F. Cellini — A Republican power broker, Cellini, 73, of Springfield, is charged with trying to extort campaign contributions from a company seeking state pension business under Gov. Blagojevich.

Images may be enlarged by clicking on them.

Too often have I lamented that I was at a Cub Scout meeting on October 10th, instead of the Crystal Lake City Council meeting, when Mayor Aaron Shepley led the way for the selection of Bill Cellini‘s development group.

Three days after the selection Cellini was implicated in Tony Rezko’s indictment.

Cellini, a quite skillful guy, subsequently pulled out of the deal. Later, as the economy tanked, the whole group took a walk.

Later, Mayor Shepley and the city council passed a 75% city sales tax hike to finance development of the Vulcan Lakes. That was the same argument used to support the Vulcan Lakes TIF district, leading me, a resident of Lakewood, a suburb of Crystal Lake, to think “double taxation without representation” every time I shop in Crystal Lake.

I worked as the campaign manager front man for Cellini in Springfield in 1971 in a mayoral campaign after newly-elected Illinois House Speaker W. Robert Blair sent his Clerk Fred Selcke down to tell House staffers that pretty much everyone but a couple of legislative mistresses (not revealed by Selcke, of course) that their services would no longer be needed.

So much for my being on the Appropriations Committee staff for which the outgoing Chairman Dick Walsh had hired me after I finished my term as McHenry County Treasurer.

If you want a longer version to put it context, click here. Cellini told the council in October that his colleagues and he had had lunch every week for thirty years.

Yesterday on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times is a story about a deal Cellini and Michael Marchese put together in Chicago. It involved how the city paid the Chicago Industrial League $1 million to tear down an empty homeless shelter in Greektown to make way for high end condos.

“Normally when the city provides such financial assistance for a development, there are strings attached:

“The developers must set aside one of every five condos as affordable housing. Or else they have to pay a hefty fee — about $4.2 million in the case of the Greektown project,”

Novak reveals.

Not with Cellini and Marchese, the story says.

And the money came from the Near West TIF district.

TIF districts are the developers’ best friend all over Illinois. They take money out of the pockets of local tax districts like schools, forcing those tax districts to take more money out of your pocket at real estate tax payment time in order to get the maximum amount allowed by law.

And, guess what?

Marchese selected the demolition company, even though the Industrial League got the money for the tear down.

Local Alderman Walter Burnett (27th) says he didn’t know anything about it.

Marchese spokesman Rick Filler reported the cost for the property would have been $1 million more (to cover the demolition costs) had the city not picked up the bill.

But the apparent ruse allowed the development group to avoid setting aside 20% of the units for affordable housing, as is required when Tax Increment Financing money is used to subsidize a developer in Chicago.

Word on the street in Crystal Lake is that Marchese’s people were eying the old Crystal Lake Public Safety Building site which the city council demolished in August of 2007.

The property remains empty, only its parking lot being of use.

Here’s how Sun-Times reporter Tim Novak describes two of the people who sat at the table to make their successful presentation to the Crystal Lake Council:

The Funders

Michael Marchese — A frequent dinner companion of Mayor Daley, Marchese, 61, of Chicago, has been involved in several high-profile deals with the city. In one, he built a West Side shopping center on land he bought from the CTA for a dollar. He has developed every Home Depot in Chicago, at times with city subsidies. He owns Harlem Irving Companies, which his father started in the late 1950s. His wife Debbie is a board member of After School Matters, a charity Maggie Daley started. Marchese’s company has donated $30,000 to the charity since 2006.

William F. Cellini — A Republican power broker, Cellini, 73, of Springfield, is charged with trying to extort campaign contributions from a company seeking state pension business under Gov. Blagojevich.

Images may be enlarged by clicking on them.

I got a letter dated March 3rd from my friend Rod Blagojevich Wednesday. The post mark says, “MAR 10 2008,” so he meant to get it to be sooner.

Actually, it came addressed to

Skinner Campaign Fund
275 Meridian St.
Crystal Lake, IL 60014-5411

You know what my friend Rod wanted?

He wanted to “share…some exciting news.”

“I am proposing to cut taxes on businesses by 20%,” he gushed.

Sure, it’s “one-time,” but my friend Rod wants me “to be able to keep more of (my) money so you can continue to invest in our economy.”

My friend Rod also touts his infrastructure plan. $25 billion. Wow!

“Big money,” as they say on “The Wheel of Fortune.”

And $300 because I have a kid. He says it’s like the Federal plan.

“If a Democratic Congress and a Republican President in Washington could come together in less than a month…surely we can come together here in Illinois to do our part.”

That’s the bait.

Here’s the pitch:

“I need you to call your legislators in the Illinois General Assembly and urge them to pass this much-needed economic stimulus plan right away.”

I figured there was a catch.

Oh, yes. For those investigative reporters out there, here’s what is on the postage meter’s first class postage of 33.4 cents: “21 2745953.” It was mailed from zip code 62701. There is “000250″ printed above the “21″ number.

When Governor Dan Walker used what we thought was the private Revenue Department circuit breaker mailing list to contact senior citizens during my first term, House Speaker Bob Blair stuck a prohibition on a conference committee bill at a special session within a week.

I got a letter dated March 3rd from my friend Rod Blagojevich Wednesday. The post mark says, “MAR 10 2008,” so he meant to get it to be sooner.

Actually, it came addressed to

Skinner Campaign Fund
275 Meridian St.
Crystal Lake, IL 60014-5411

You know what my friend Rod wanted?

He wanted to “share…some exciting news.”

“I am proposing to cut taxes on businesses by 20%,” he gushed.

Sure, it’s “one-time,” but my friend Rod wants me “to be able to keep more of (my) money so you can continue to invest in our economy.”

My friend Rod also touts his infrastructure plan. $25 billion. Wow!

“Big money,” as they say on “The Wheel of Fortune.”

And $300 because I have a kid. He says it’s like the Federal plan.

“If a Democratic Congress and a Republican President in Washington could come together in less than a month…surely we can come together here in Illinois to do our part.”

That’s the bait.

Here’s the pitch:

“I need you to call your legislators in the Illinois General Assembly and urge them to pass this much-needed economic stimulus plan right away.”

I figured there was a catch.

Oh, yes. For those investigative reporters out there, here’s what is on the postage meter’s first class postage of 33.4 cents: “21 2745953.” It was mailed from zip code 62701. There is “000250″ printed above the “21″ number.

When Governor Dan Walker used what we thought was the private Revenue Department circuit breaker mailing list to contact senior citizens during my first term, House Speaker Bob Blair stuck a prohibition on a conference committee bill at a special session within a week.