QUOTE OF THE DAY
Yahoo Finance: Illinois pension reform law challenges to be argued next month
Challenges to Illinois’ pension reform law remained on track for a ruling by yearend after a judge on Wednesday ordered both sides back in court next month to argue their cases.
Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge John Belz, who is overseeing five consolidated lawsuits filed by labor unions and others, set Nov. 20 for arguments for and against the constitutionality of the law passed by the Illinois legislature last December.
Public labor union coalition We Are One Illinois and other parties have been seeking an expedited ruling in the wake of a July 3 Illinois Supreme Court decision in an unrelated case that determined health care for retired state workers is a pension benefit protected by a provision in the state constitution.
Chicago Tribune: Plainfield teachers, officials reach tentative contract deal
Plainfield teachers and school administrators early Tuesday reached a tentative agreement on a three-year contract covering the 1,833 employees represented by the Association of Plainfield Teachers union.
Plainfield School District 202 officials declined to release details of the tentative deal. Union members are expected to vote on the proposal on Oct. 17. If ratified by the union, school board members are expected to vote on the contract proposal at their Oct. 27 meeting.
Union representatives and district officials began negotiations for a new contract last November and started meeting with a federal mediator in August after the old contract expired. Both sides met again on Monday and reached the tentative agreement shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday, district spokesman Tom Hernandez said.
Chicago Tribune: Obamacare, Round Two
Open enrollment for the second year of Obamacare begins in scarcely more than a month.
Government officials swear that HealthCare.gov will not repeat last year’s debacle in which computer snafus thwarted many people from signing up. The government ultimately managed to enroll about 8 million people.
The government hopes to sign up another 5 million or more people in the Nov. 15 to Feb. 15 enrollment period. There will be more carriers jostling for business. They’ll offer more plans, and consumers will have to be careful to wade through key details: Are the premiums, deductibles and co-pays too high? Are the networks of doctors and hospitals too narrow?
WSJ: 64 Days to a Tax Increase
Taxes on Internet access services could top $14 billion a year if Congress allows the Internet Tax Freedom Act to expire at midnight on Dec. 11. That’s according to a new study from economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin’s American Action Forum.
The list of sensible legislation passed by the House but languishing in the Democratic Senate is long and distinguished. But of all the bills Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has refused to bring to the floor, an extension of the ban on Net access taxes stands out for the acute consumer pain that would result from its absence. The study’s estimate of $14.7 billion in annual taxes assumes that, without the federal moratorium, states and localities would apply to Internet connections the same levies they now apply to telecommunications.
Daily Herald: Illiana Expressway plan rejected by planners
The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning leaders Wednesday voted this morning to reject the Illiana Expressway, which has been strongly pushed by Gov. Pat Quinn as a job-machine but was characterized by critics as an expensive boondoggle.
However, because the vote, 10-4, was not a sufficient supermajority, it puts the ultimate fate of the project in limbo.
The Illiana is a proposed tollway linking I-55 in the South suburbs with I-65 in Indiana that would be built as a public-private partnership. While Quinn and the Illinois Department of Transportation are backing it as a vital piece of infrastructure, CMAP experts warned in 2013 it will cost Illinois taxpayers up to $1.1 billion with limited benefits.
Crain’s: New storm clouds rising over Sears
Three of the biggest insurance firms for Sears Holdings Corp.’s suppliers are seeking to reduce coverage, prompting at least one medium-sized vendor to halt shipments to the department-store chain, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Euler Hermes Group, one of the top providers of credit insurance to vendors, has been sending out cancellation notices, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Coface SA has indicated that it intends to do the same, two of the people said. Atradius Credit Insurance, another of the insurers, said it’s scaling back coverage, though the firm hasn’t yet pulled policies.
The situation has spurred one supplier to withhold products from Sears after a recommendation from its credit department, according to an e-mail obtained by Bloomberg News. The vendor, a closely held company, asked not to be named.
Fox Chicago: Illinois needs monitor to oversee hires
A Chicago attorney and anti-corruption campaigner is stressing that a court-appointed monitor is needed to ensure the state’s Department of Transportation is in compliance with political hiring bans.
Michael Shakman’s filing Monday in federal court comes in response to a motion by Gov. Pat Quinn’s attorneys that the governor’s administration’s response to allegations of political hiring in the department had been both “prompt” and “appropriate.”
Last month, Quinn aides announced the transportation department was laying off 58 people at the center of a state investigator’s findings that more than 250 people were improperly hired for political reasons at the agency over the past decade. The report found that the questionable hiring of “staff assistants” accelerated under Quinn.
Chicago Tribune: Emanuel to issue bond money to expand pre-K
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration plans to use an emerging form of financing, one that links payback to lenders on the success of the initiatives being funded, to expand early childhood education programs in Chicago.
The mayor’s office said Tuesday that it will use close to $17 million of what are known as “social impact bonds,” in addition to $4.5 million in state funds and about $10 million in capital improvement money from next year’s budget, to enroll more low-income children in pre-kindergarten over the next four years.
The social impact bond funding would cover the enrollment over four years of about 2,600 children into a half-day Child-Parent Center preschool program. Expected to launch in November, the program would enroll 374 students this year at six schools that now are dealing with a shortage of preschool seats.
Daily Caller: Who Has The Courage And Clarity To Topple Today’s Berlin Walls?
Fifty years ago this month, Ronald Reagan burst onto the national political stage for the first time with a televised speech in support of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign.
“A Time for Choosing” was the title of Reagan’s talk, and even though it failed to save Goldwater from a landslide defeat, it must be regarded as one of the most successful political speeches of the 20th century. This is because it clarified the grounds on which the eventual Reagan Revolution would be won. Reagan framed the choice as:
“Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
CARTOON OF THE DAY
