QUOTE OF THE DAY
Chicago Tribune: Quinn budget makes tax hike permanent
Gov. Pat Quinn has prepared an election-year spending proposal that would make permanent the 67 percent income tax increase set to expire in 2015 and couple it with property tax relief for homeowners, sources familiar with the plan said Tuesday.
Quinn planned to tell lawmakers in his Wednesday budget address that the temporary tax increase he signed into law in 2011 is needed to fund education, said one of the sources who was briefed on his plan but not authorized to reveal the details in advance of the noon speech.
The property tax relief would take the form of a $500 refund, sources said. One source said it would be an annual refund as part of a restructuring of the current property tax break for income tax filers.
ABC Local: Governor Pat Quinn to deliver 2015 Illinois budget address
Governor Pat Quinn will deliver his 2015 budget address on Wednesday in Springfield, Illinois.
Governor Pat Quinn’s Illinois budget address on Wednesday could be the most crucial speech of his political career.
Quinn’s pitch to lawmakers comes as Illinois grapples with a major financial dilemma and serious re-election challenges for the governor.
Reuters: Detroit’s wildly accelerating bankruptcy process
The technocratic governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, and the emergency manager he appointed to restructure Detroit, Kevyn Orr, spoke at an event sponsored by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research this week. Their relentless positivity contrasted with the creditor mess they had left behind in Detroit.
Orr insisted, as he has in other media appearances, that Detroit creditors must rapidly concede to proposed settlement terms so that the largest bankruptcy case in American history can be concluded. Bloomberg reported:
Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr said time is running out for creditors to reach an agreement with the city on a plan to resolve the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy by reducing $18 billion in debt.
Creditors know all about the city’s finances and don’t need any more information, Orr said today at a conference in New York sponsored by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Orr said that in the next couple weeks, he hopes to have enough agreement among creditors to get a debt-adjustment plan enacted by fall. Detroit entered bankruptcy July 18.
Huffington Post: Chicago Plastic Bag Ban Receives City Council Hearing, Rahm Remains Neutral
The Chicago City Council on Tuesday morning heard testimony on a proposed citywide ban on plastic bags in stores, an ordinance not expected to gain traction anytime in the immediate future.
Among those testifying in favor of the ban Tuesday was 13-year-old Abby Goldberg of Grayslake, Ill., who last year successfully petitioned Gov. Pat Quinn to veto proposed legislation that would have made it illegal for any given local government in Illinois to ban plastic bags.
“Sometimes kids can see the obvious solution because we’re not influenced by money or politics, but we cannot vote,” Goldberg said Tuesday, according to WLS. “So it’s our job to tell adults who have greater influence to take action.”
Fox Chicago: Illinois seeks to regulate rideshare services
A dispute among taxi companies, Chicago officials and rideshare companies such as Uber, Lyft and Sidecar is about to welcome one more player: state lawmakers who say the rideshare industry needs to play by the same rules as other transportation businesses.
Lawmakers on Tuesday introduced a proposal that would require rideshare companies to have commercial insurance, chauffeur licenses, vehicle requirements and set pricing rates. It also creates guidelines on where rideshare drivers must operate, restricting them from driving to airports, convention centers or taxi loading zones.
Rideshare companies, which connect drivers and passengers with the swipe of a smartphone app, are expanding their businesses across the world, and prompting government officials to grapple with ways to regulate the industry — Illinois included.
Bloomberg View: What Detroit Wants From Washington
Don’t send money, Washington.
That’s what Republican Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan said today at a journalist roundtable with Bloomberg View. When asked about the U.S. sending aid to Ukraine but not to Detroit, the governor said he isn’t bitter. “Let’s be innovative. Send me 50,000 visas to jump-start the economy.” He’s asking for the EB-2 kind that would keep some of the 1,800 foreign students who graduate from Michigan colleges each year with STEM degrees here.
“One tough nerd,” Snyder, formerly a venture capitalist and chairman of Gateway Inc., called himself in ads for his first gubernatorial race. Now, seeking reelection after running one tough place for three years — with his state’s biggest city, Detroit, in bankruptcy — Snyder appeared in an ad during this year’s Super Bowl. Donning scuba gear and surfacing with a soft sax playing in the background, he emerged from water, a metaphor for bringing Michigan back from drowning.
Chicago Tribune: Illinois’ war over charter schools
With all the clamor over New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s much-chronicled war on charter schools, you may have missed a serious threat to charter school expansion here in Illinois. Last week, the state House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would scrap the Illinois State Charter School Commission. That commission began its work only two-plus years ago, after a rousing bipartisan vote of confidence from lawmakers. It shouldn’t be abandoned so hastily.
The commission has the power to override local school districts that spurn efforts to open innovative charter schools in their communities. In other words, the state commission can provide children and their parents more — and better — educational choices than what local districts currently provide.
Fact of life: Many Illinois school boards resist charter schools because they see them as energetic rivals that may upstage the districts’ lower-performing local schools. Think of the state commission as a court of last resort, a way for charter operators to appeal local districts’ protectionist rejection of potential competitors.
Crain’s: Cab companies take on Uber and other upstarts in political brawl
Is it a case of a big, lumbering near-monopoly trying to protect its turf by calling in political chits? Or is it consumers who potentially are at risk through what some consider smartphone-enabled hitchhiking?
A major political row over just that has developed as both the City Council and Illinois General Assembly — prompted by a squad of some of the city’s best-connected lobbyists, consultants and media advisers — battle over whether and how to regulate the fast-growing ride-sharing industry in which “cabbies” are just folks using their own vehicles as often or rarely as they want.
On one side are conventional cab companies, which say there’s no way they can compete with San Francisco-based companies Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft or with other tech-savvy upstarts unless the new firms are held to the same liability and performance standards that conventional companies say are applied to them.
Chicago Tribune: Chicago-area home prices slip in January
Average home prices in the Chicago area posted their fourth consecutive monthly decline in January, but remain almost 11 percent ahead of where they were in January 2013, according to a widely watched national home price index released Tuesday.
The S&P/Case-Shiller home price index showed that average local home prices slipped 1.2 percent in January from December, after falling 0.5 percent in December. Since last September, when home prices turned in their best performance dating back to late 2009, home prices have declined 3.4 percent.
Average prices of Chicago-area condominiums fell 2.4 percent in January, from December, in the third consecutive monthly decline. Still, condo prices were up 16.3 percent from a year ago, according to the index.
NBC Chicago: Poll Shows Voter Conflict in Solving State Budget Woes
Results of a poll out this week show Illinois voters are conflicted in how to deal with the state’s budget mess.
A majority of respondents said they don’t want a temporary income tax hike to become permanent. On the flip side, a majority of respondents said they also don’t want to see spending cuts to programs which benefit students, the poor and the disabled.
Results of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute poll, conducted Feb. 12 through Feb. 25, were released Monday, in advance of Gov. Pat Quinn’s address this week to outline his ideas for the state’s 2015 budget.
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CARTOON OF THE DAY
