Road Salt Costs Set to Increase for Local Governments

The effects of an historically cold and snowy winter are being felt all the way into July and will continue to pinch local government budgets into 2015. 

The Department of Central Management Services put cities on notice that the agency found no takers willing to submit bids for road salt contracts. The salt is purchased in bulk by the state through a joint purchasing pool and made available to local governments at reduced prices. 

Earlier this month, the Illinois Department of Central Management Services informed many city and county officials in charge of buying road salt that no vendors responded to their requests for bids. 

More than 560 communities participated in the solicitation for road salt bids, said department spokesman Mike Claffey. Of those, 367 communities received bids from salt vendors and 195 did not. The department offered to seek new bids from vendors, while cautioning public works departments to explore other alternatives.

The alternative is for cities, villages, and towns to purchase the salt themselves at higher prices:

Demand appears to be driving up prices, state officials said. Municipalities that did get bids from vendors are looking at prices ranging from $70 to more than $140 per ton. Last year, the going rate was $55 to $65 per ton.

The salt shortage is affecting counties as well: 

Sangamon County will solicit bids for winter road salt this year after the brutal winter left the state unable to provide the usual supplies. 

County Highway Engineer Tim Zahrn said Monday the bid process could result in costs 20 percent to 50 percent higher than the $58.01 per ton paid for salt last winter. But he said the county had little choice after the Illinois Department of Central Management Service announced it was unable to obtain supplies on behalf of nearly 200 cities and counties this year.

The cost of road salt isn't an issue that most residents pay attention to as long as their roads are salted following a snowfall. But it represents yet another budgetary pressure on local governments that, along with increasing wages, pensions, and employee health insurance costs, ultimately affect local taxpayers even if they aren't aware of its impact. 

AG Madigan Paves Way for Board Review of Rejected Concealed Carry Applicants

The Illinois State Police have adopted an emergency rule that allows rejected concealed carry applicants to learn why their application was denied. Still at issue was that the 200 denied applicants wouldn't be permitted to have their applications looked at by the review board under the new rules. It appears that the Attorney General is working on that:

The only way those applicants would be allowed to get a new review is if the judge sent them back to the board, the ISP said. The attorney general’s decision is a response to that. 

“We’re going to be asking the courts to remand the cases back to the review board for more process as a result of the new emergency rules ISP announced last week,” said Madigan’s spokeswoman Natalie Bauer.

The players in Illinois' concealed carry law continue to expand. First there was the federal court decision that struck down Illinois' concealed carry ban and provided a 6-month window to prompt reluctant Illinois legislators to pass a concealed carry law. Then there were lawsuits filed by applicants that were denied conceal carry permits without being provided the grounds for denial. Then the Illinois State Police implemented an emergency rule to allow applicants to learn the basis of a denial. Now the Attorney General is asking the Cook County Circuit Court to remand the cases to the review board so that the litigants have the benefit of the new emergency rules. 

How government actually works is very different from that old Schoolhouse Rock video. Laws and sausages, my friends. Laws and sausages. 

Previous Posts

State Police Issue Emergency Concealed Carry Rules

Concealed Carry Law Lacks Transparency for Denied Applicants

In Defense of Red Light Cameras

I'm going to stake out an unpopular position and profess support for the use of cameras to augment the enforcement of traffic laws.

The Chicago Tribune has published several articles in recent days that raise questions about Chicago's red light traffic camera program. Over a ten-month period, the Tribune found unexplainable spikes in improper ticketing at various intersections throughout the city. City leaders have yet to offer a definitive explanation for this surge in tickets.

Critics of the program suggest that this surge could be caused by a technological flaw, or perhaps a change in the standards for how violations are determined. Human oversight of the program is being questioned. Some even suggest that the cameras are being tinkered with deliberately to generate more tickets and revenue. This particular theory plays into the the "red light cameras as revenue generator" conspiracy meme. People tend to prescribe the worst motives to the use of traffic camera technology, whether it be concerns about "big brother" or revenue-grabbing.

Quite obviously, something has gone awry with the Chicago red light camera program. The problem needs to be addressed. I would, however, caution against any popular movement to throw the baby out with the bathwater by ending the red light camera enforcement program altogether.

Red light camera traffic systems are universally unpopular. They poll badly. The recent problems with Chicago's program only remind people why they don't approve of the cameras. My own personal view is that people don't have issues with the cameras as much as they have issues with being caught for violating traffic laws. The public supports traffic laws in concept, but not always in practice.

When your neighbor is pulled over for a traffic violation its a shame. It's an injustice when it happens to you. It's not that you weren't speeding, but seriously, couldn't the officer have cut you some slack and only issued a warning? Well no I didn't stop while making a right turn on red, but it's a stupid law anyway. A ticket can require the expenditure of time and money. Both are in short supply. The public gets angry and distrustful.

This anger and distrust likely explains the overwhelming popularity of a bill approved last spring by the Illinois General Assembly that would prohibit law enforcement from evaluating police officer performance based upon the number of tickets issued. The bill was quickly signed into law by Governor Quinn during an election year.

The public believes that these evaluation tools incentivize police officers to write more tickets. Do people stop to consider that the tickets are for legitimate infractions of the law? I would suggest that they don't really care. It's possible that the public views traffic infractions as "lesser crimes" and believe that the police should leave them alone and focus on weightier law enforcement issues. Based upon testimony in the House and Senate, this is certainly what police unions believe.

I would submit that red light and speed cameras allow more time for police officers to combat serious crimes by freeing them from having to spend as much time enforcing basic traffic laws. Traffic enforcement cameras also allow cash-strapped cities to cast a wider law enforcement net at less cost because cameras aren't entitled to salaries, health insurance, and pension benefits. This is beneficial to taxpayers.

But if it's true that the public finds the enforcement of certain traffic laws to be a hindrance, shouldn't we be revisiting these laws instead of tamping down on enforcement? This state of affairs reminds me of the tendency on the part of the public to support particular government programs, but not necessarily the funding required for their operation. In this case, the public may like the idea of laws that support traffic safety, except when caught committing an infraction.

We don't yet understand the flaws in Chicago's red light enforcement program. It's interesting, though, that the Tribune series doesn't appear to include examples from other cities throughout the nation to suggest that the very usage of red light cameras is unjust and unworkable. If it's strictly a local problem, then there's a local solution.

It's an election year and the the proverbial pot is being stirred. The issue of traffic enforcement cameras may work its way into the legislative races and gubernatorial campaign. It will certainly be a big issue during the Chicago mayors race. It's a populist issue. Hopefully the emphasis will be on how to improve the traffic camera program and not on its abandonment.

Marijuana Distribution in Illinois and Beyond

I came across two stories on marijuana distribution today that I thought might make for an interesting post.

First, the State Journal-Register writes about the efforts of prospective marijuana growers to set up shop in Illinois cities as a result of the medical marijuana law.

The (Bloomington) Pantagraph reports that a Chicago-based company has leased a building in the central Illinois town of Normal for a possible growing operation. Green Thumb Industries founder Ben Kovler tells the newspaper that Normal's central location is appealing and the city government runs well. Normal City Manager Mark Peterson says several representatives of the company have met with him. 

Farther south, St. Clair County officials are considering a special use permit for a marijuana cultivation center near the village of Marissa. 

The growers want to be ready to roll (pun intended) in the event they are awarded one of the 21 permits that will allow them to sell their product to the 60 dispensiaries permitted under the law. 

FiveThirtyEight, run by election-forecaster extraordinaire Nate Silver, has an interesting story where the author attempts to use the Fermi estimation technique to "ballpark" the total number of marijuana dealers in the United States. Here's how that works:

Instead, I approached the question through a technique called Fermi estimation, a back-of-the-envelope strategy that is generally good about making sure you’re in the right order of magnitude if not exactly correct. You’re probably somewhat familiar with it if you’ve ever heard the classic interview question, “How many piano tuners are there in the city of Chicago? 

First, break the problem into parts. You estimate the demand (the number of piano tunings needed in Chicago in a year), and then given the demand, you estimate the supply (the number of piano tuners) needed to meet that demand. How many people are in Chicago? Given that, how many households? How many households with a piano? How often does a piano need to be tuned? How many pianos can a piano tuner tune in a week? So, how many piano tuners do you need to satisfy demand?

And the result of this estimate?

With 18.7 million marijuana transactions per month and 240 transactions per dealer, division says that we’d need 77,917 pot dealers to satisfy demand. This seems surprisingly reasonable. That’s a little less than the number of employed real estate brokers in 2011, another profession which involves a member of a community going to other people’s homes to make deals. 

So, how does this stack up against other metrics of the drug salesman profession? Again, we sought to estimate the minimum number of people required to satisfy the market, but unsurprisingly the actual number may very well be higher. Based on FBI statistics, there were about 94,900 arrests for marijuana sale or manufacturing in 2011. And while this number accounts for the entire marijuana production apparatus in the U.S. — at all steps in the chain, from producers to major traffickers to low-level part-timers — it’s unreasonable to expect that the nearly 78,000 estimate is exactly right. But hey, at least our source isn’t Yahoo Answers.

So there you have it. 

State Police Issue Emergency Concealed Carry Rules

In a previous post I wrote about lawsuits filed by individuals that were denied concealed carry licenses without having the basis of the denials explained. Looks like the the Illinois State Police are trying to respond to the complaints:

Citing a flood of lawsuits from applicants who were denied concealed carry permits because of objections from local law enforcement that were shrouded in secrecy, the Illinois State Police announced Monday that it will require a state review board to give more information about why applications are rejected. 

The amendments direct the board to notify an applicant if their application is likely to be denied, giving them an opportunity to refute the objection. 

The new rules, filed Thursday as emergency amendments and distributed publicly on Monday, are already in effect, according to the state police.

Here's how it would work:

Under the new rules, the board is required to notify an applicant if there is a credible objection to his or her application, give the basis of the objection and identify the agency that brought it. The applicant will have 10 days to respond.

That sounds like a reasonable improvement over the status quo. Even so, gun rights supporters aren't enamored of the emergency rules and don't think that ten days is enough time for an applicant to respond:

These new rules are an acknowledgement that the current system is fundamentally, broken, unfair and illegal.” said Thompson, but the rule don’t specify if they will apply to currently denied applicants. 

Among Thompson’s confers, he said, is the short period of time — 10 days — that applicants have to gather rebuttal evidence.

There are also some due process concerns:

J.D. Obenberger, a lawyer representing some of the denied applicants, said the rules fall short of fixing the board's most serious problems: The heavy representation of law enforcement and the leeway that the board has to consider information beyond applicants' criminal record.  

“Whether any applicant gets a hearing is totally by the discretion of a board that is dominated by law enforcement,” Obenberger said. “They assume that every arrest is going to be a good arrest..And that's not true.”

Bottom line -- the details of the concealed carry law are likely to remain a work in progress and many of the changes, regardless of how small, are likely to become proxy wars between those on either side of the gun debate. And some of these issues may spill over into statehouse elections as both parties search for ways to excite their base voters. 

Update: An emergency rule differs from a standard rule making in that the rule can go into effect for a set amount of time without formal approval from the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR). The rules must eventually be published in the Illinois Register and subjected to the appropriate public comment period and JCAR approval. The concealed carry rules concerning applicant objections are scheduled to be posted in the Illinois Register on July 25.

The Bond Houses Might Be Watching the Wrong Actors

I found this chart in COGFA's 2015 Capital Plan Analysis: 

The chart compares the bond ratings among the ten states that have the highest net tax supported debt in the U.S. As you can see, Illinois has the worst rating. This isn't any kind of news flash, but it makes for an interesting visualization. And it's most decidedly not good!

The analysis includes the following quote from Standard and Poors: 

After the legislature passed comprehensive pension reform legislation, Standard & Poor's took the unusual step of assigning a  developing outlook to Illinois' general obligation bonds in December 2013…(T)he developing outlook was a first; it reflects our assessment of the magnitude and scope of issues facing Illinois. We believe the final outcome of legislative deliberation on the budget and judicial deliberation on the pension reform will cement the state's credit direction and could have a profound effect on its budgetary performance and liquidity.  A developing outlook indicates that we could raise, lower, or affirm the rating during our two-year outlook horizon. We believe Illinois' ability to affect change to revenues and spending programs is well-established, so its credit direction will largely hinge on the willingness of policy makers to decisively address chronic budget issues. The outlook suggests that we think there could be progress on this front. (emphasis mine)

This analysis was written prior to the Kaverva decision and its possible implications for an eventual Illinois Supreme Court ruling concerning the constitutionality of the pension reform law. The bond houses were certainly keeping an eye on the legislators. Unfortunately, it may be the judges that throw a wrench into the budgetary reforms by limiting options for reigning-in health insurance and pension costs.   

Nothing comes easy in Illinois politics and government.

Expanding the "Fairness" Calculus in Illinois' Pension Debate

It's time for a balanced discussion of "fairness" in the debate over Illinois pension policy toward current employees and retirees. 


The Wall Street Journal published a justifiably critical opinion piece about the decision in Kanvera v. Weems. This is the case where the Illinois State Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that retiree health insurance subsidies are protected from reduction under the clause within the Illinois Constitution that prevents the impairment of pension benefits. I expressed my disagreement with the justices, as well as my concerns about what the decision will mean for Illinois' fiscal future in a previous post. The Journal offers forth a similar analysis:

The ruling is a dreadful precedent for sensible pension reform. The court majority opined that the state constitution is "aimed at protecting the right to receive the promised retirement benefits, not the adequacy of the funding to pay for them" and "must be liberally construed in favor of the rights of the  pensioner." And unions have sued to block last year's de minimis pension fixes that tweaked cost-of-living adjustments, raised the retirement age for younger workers and capped annuities for employees making six figures.

The conclusion of the article zeros in on the real issue:

But if retirement benefits are held inviolable, lawmakers will have no choice but to raise taxes to the hilt and the judiciary will be a co-equal partner in the state's collapse.

This makes for a good entry point into a discussion about "fairness." The term "fairness" is frequently invoked as a talking point by members of the affected retirement systems and the unions that represent participating employees. The argument made is that current benefit levels are promises, employees always paid their full contribution, the state didn't fulfill its contribution requirements, and honoring the benefit levels is the only fair thing to do. The union-backed lawsuit against the benefit reductions in SB 1 is based almost entirely on these premises. 

It's widely agreed upon that the state grossly mismanaged the public pension funds by deliberately underfunding and even skipping payments entirely in some years. This historical mismanagement put the funds on the ropes. The 2008 market collapse dealt the knock-out blow.

State leaders are trying to tunnel out of the immense hole by reducing benefits, causing pension fund participants to scream foul about having to shoulder the financial burden through reduced pensions. They believe this is unfair and that the moral argument is squarely on their side.

But is it really? Something, or rather someone, always seems to be left out of the "fairness" calculus in the Illinois pension debate. We need to ask the following question. If it's unfair to reduce pension benefits for public employees, then what's the remedy to fix the pension systems and avoid a financial collapse of state government? There has to be a remedy. 

If you can't cut spending, the only other realistic remedy is to raise revenue. And this means tax increases. 

Is raising taxes to address the pension crisis "fair?" Let's consider a few numbers. 

The following data is from the most recent biennial report from the Illinois Department of Insurance. The report was published in 2013 and includes data from 2012. The Department's published data almost always lags behind by two years. For the sake of consistency, I'll use 2012 data throughout this post. 

According to the report, there were just over 500 thousand participants in the four state-funded pension systems that were included within the pension reform law (SB 1). This number includes active employees and beneficiaries.   

A look at Illinois' 17 public pension systems shows that slightly more than 1 million Illinois workers currently receive, or will eventually receive a guaranteed benefit from a public pension system. About half of these employees (state-funded systems) also receive, or will be eligible to receive generous taxpayer-funded retiree health insurance subsidies. 

Based on December 2012 numbers from the United States Department of Labor, almost 6 million Illinoisans were employed (and paying taxes). This employment number remained around 6 million in more recent years.

This means that about 5 million out of approximately 6 million workers employed in 2012 were not enrolled in systems that provide guaranteed pension benefits or fully-subsidized health insurance benefits. Those fortunate enough to be enrolled in a pension plan most likely have a defined contribution plan subject to the vagaries of the market. 

It's also important to note that most public pension plan retirees are guaranteed income protection through a cost-of-living adjustment. This is not the case with defined contribution plans.  

It should also be acknowledged that SB 1 results in a "haircut" for existing benefit levels. Using one example, the reforms don't entirely do away with the guaranteed cost-of-living adjustments. The law just reduces them from being compounded at 3 percent a year to a number that more accurately reflects actual inflationary growth. But the annuity is still guaranteed growth. Wouldn't 401k participants gladly take that deal?

Advocates of increasing taxes so that the state can act "fairly" and honor its "promise" to public employees must believe that it's completely "fair" to compel approximately 5 million people who don't enjoy guaranteed pension benefits and fully-subsidized retiree health insurance to see their pay reduced so that not one single retirement dollar comes out of the checks of about 500 thousand state-funded pension plan participants (SERS, TRS, SURS, GARS) -- or about 8 percent of the total number of employed workers in Illinois as of 2012. 

A tax increase would leave this silent majority with less money in their checks to pay their mortgages, pay for health care, set-aside funds for college, and pay everyday living expenses. These taxpayers broke no promises to state public pension fund participants, yet may find themselves on the hook for the remedy. They are too often forgotten in a "fairness" debate that only seems to include two actors -- public employees being victimized by the poor fiscal management of elected state leaders. We can't forget that Illinois taxpayers are essentially innocent bystanders that may be forced to participate in a solution to a problem that isn't of their making. Now THAT'S the real unfairness. 

My argument isn't that tax increases should be off the table. Illinois' finances are a mess and tax increases may very well be part of the long-term solution. I only suggest that those invoking the concept of "fairness" should consider that they don't own the moral high ground when their preferred remedy is to have their neighbors bail out the pension systems. 

A tax increase remedy is unfair to the vast majority of Illinois taxpayers who may be compelled to bail out the pension systems without receiving anything in return for themselves. And they won't have recourse to file lawsuits if their checks are "impaired" by a higher tax rate in order to shore-up the state pension systems. 

Some Thoughts on Leadership

I just finished reading an article published in 2013 about Bears' Coach Mark Trestman. Coach Trestman is a man that I've come to admire after reading his book, watching how he carries himself, and observing his ability to get a team to "buy in" to a unified organizational vision. This paragraph from the story sums it up well: 

"It was never about titles," Trestman says standing on the field in Bourbonnais. "We never talked about it. We talked about building authentic relationships so on gameday they knew you had their back. It wasn't you gave pep talks, it was showing guys how valuable relationships are and how working hard will give you a chance at success."

And that's really the secret to group success. Whether you're on an athletic team or working for an organization. It's not about your personal goals and ambitions. You don't try and win for yourself. You strive to win for your teammates and co-workers. And ultimately, you win and elevate the organization by helping THEM win.

Concealed Carry Law Lacks Transparency for Denied Applicants

The Chicago Tribune reports (digital subscription required) about a lawsuit filed by individuals denied a concealed carry permit following an appeal to the State Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board responsible for reviewing challenges to applicants. The review process was instituted to provide a measure of "due process" so that applicants could appeal rejections for further evaluation and correction where appropriate. The process works as follows:

The state police review every application and can automatically deny any applicant who does not follow application rules, pay appropriate fees or meet standard background requirements. A provision in the law also allows local police and other officials to object to a person's application after the applicant has passed a fingerprint background check and met the other requirements for a license. 

The Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board, a panel with law enforcement backgrounds, considers the objections in private and is not required to explain the reasons behind its decisions except under order from a court, according to the state police's interpretation of the statute.

Apparently the statutory review process is ambiguous and makes it impossible for the state review board to inform applicants of the reason for their rejection. State Representative Brandon Phelps, an architect of the law, agrees that the law needs some tweaking:

"The problem is that we gave the review board the benefit of the doubt, and we didn't give them any rules to operate by," said Phelps. "Right now, they are too secretive, and that's not the way we wanted it. We wanted them to be an extra layer of security to make sure people who don't deserve a concealed carry license don't get one."

The Illinois State Rifle Association is quite obviously unhappy with some of the denials:

Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, a plaintiff in the NRA lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, said some of the denials are likely mistakes."A lot of people have been denied wrongly, perhaps because of mistaken identity, inefficient court records or records that weren't filled out properly," said Pearson. "We've got cases of people who never had an (domestic abuse) order of protection issued against them, but someone who had a similar name did. The purpose is to get all this straightened out and run things more accurately.

And gun control groups are seizing on the lawsuit as an example of what they perceive as the expansionist aims of gun rights supporters:

Some gun-control advocates, however, view the wave of lawsuits as an effort by pro-gun advocates to loosen restrictions in the state's concealed carry statute, which was hastily cobbled in the General Assembly after a U.S. appellate court struck down the concealed carry ban in December 2012. Law enforcement review was a compromise needed to get the law through the legislature, according to representatives from both sides who were involved in the debate. 

"It's the NRA's game plan across the country. When there's not legislation pending, they file lawsuits," said Mark Walsh, campaign director for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. "They never liked this part of the bill. But in a lot of communities, local law enforcement knows a lot more about whether someone should have a concealed carry permit. They know if they're going to someone's house every two weeks on a domestic violence call."

It's difficult to understand how simply informing an individual as to why his or her application was denied somehow undermines the input afforded local law enforcement regarding an applicant's fitness to carry a firearm. This claim strikes me as a bit of hyperbole from those that remain fundamentally opposed to the concealed carry law. Applicants should only be denied based upon the parameters for denial under existing law.

The lack of transparency in the review process should be fairly easy to fix as long as concealed carry opponents recognize that, based upon federal court decree and state statute, the right to concealed carry is now settled law in Illinois.  And if there's a need to tighten the eligibility restrictions, so be it. 

Illinois' Constitution Does Not Have to be a Financial Suicide Pact

The Illinois State Supreme Court ruling in Kanerva v. Weems cast a dark and foreboding shadow over Illinois' already gloomy financial picture and may create a backlash that will end with a significant change to the Illinois Constitution.

In Kanerva, the Court found that state retiree health insurance subsidies are protected by the "impairment" clause of the Illinois Constitution. This clause reads as follows:

Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefit of which shall not be diminished or impaired.

The immediate ramification of the ruling is that a class action lawsuit against the state's authority to reduce the health insurance subsidies can proceed. The 2012 legislation to eliminate the full health insurance subsidy and require state retirees to pay some portion of the cost was an important piece of the overall state fiscal reform puzzle. This is big money. Here's what the State Journal-Register reported in May of 2012 as the bill was winding its way through the legislative process:  

House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, a co-sponsor of the bill, said the state spends $876 million on retiree health insurance. He said 78,000 state retirees pay no premiums for their health insurance, something that costs nearly $7,400 per person.

The Court's decision appears to have wiped out hundreds of millions in savings to Illinois taxpayers. But the broader ramification concerns how the Court is likely to rule on legislation to reduce pension benefits for existing employees of state and local governments. 

Prior to this ruling, the impairment clause was largely understood as applying only to benefits awarded under the Illinois Pension Code. In what can be viewed as nothing less than an ill-timed bombshell for Illinois taxpayers, the justices ruled that all of the benefits that are limited to, conditioned on, and flow directly from membership in the state's public pension system must be considered to be benefits of membership in a state pension or retirement system. In short, retiree health insurance subsidies qualify for protection under the "impairment clause" and, consequently, cannot be reduced. 

I'm admittedly not a constitutional scholar, but the reasoning employed by the Court on this point strikes me as a pretty radical reach in logic. Here's what appears to be the crux of the Court's argument:

“Health care benefits are not referred to in the pension clause, but neither is there any limitation imposed concerning them,” according to the Illinois Supreme Court. “It is a well settled principle that pension rights should be liberally construed in favor of the rights of the pensioner.”

Simply put, because the Constitution doesn't explicitly say that health insurance benefits are not covered by the pension impairment clause, then we're just going to presume that they should be included. With apologies and all due respect to the justices, this appears to be tortured logic. It's also chilling that Kanerva was a 6-1 decision.

In stating that "pension rights should be liberally construed in favor of the rights of the pensioner," the Court has likely tipped its hand that it will find a handful of bills that reduce benefits for state and Chicago municipal employees unconstitutional. The 2013 law that reduced benefits for 4 of the 5 state-funded pension systems was estimated to save $160 billion over 30 years (insofar as these estimates are accurate). It now appears more likely than not that these savings will not materialize once the Court rules on the law. State leaders will have to go back to the drawing board and revisit pension reform without any expectation that public employee unions will cooperate by negotiating an agreement. Why should union leaders cooperate if they believe that the Illinois Constitution and Supreme Court are squarely on their side?

And that's why Illinois taxpayers may need to choose between considerable and permanent tax increases or a serious effort to change the state constitution. The latter solution presents a more attractive option to voters, but will potentially set in motion a battle royal between voters and entrenched public employee unions. 

Fox Chicago has a good segment on the Kanerva decision.

Where Are the Mr. Smiths?

I made it my ambition to get involved with politics and government after watching "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in junior high. The speech in the clip below is what made me realize what I wanted to do with my life. I can trace it back to that singular moment.

I'm still idealistic enough to believe in Senator Smith's pleadings against an "establishment" that serves no interest except for the cultivation of its own power and self-interest. I still believe in the nobility and honor of ethical service to others. And I still believe that there is no endeavor more worthy of pursuit than the "lost cause." I believe that the greatest "lost cause" involves the wielding of conferred power with respect and humility. It's about the realization that power doesn't belong to an individual and their allies. It is merely borrowed to accomplish a purpose. And it must be returned to its source when that purpose is accomplished. Power cannot "belong" to a person or group of people. Power cannot be earned since nobody is actually worthy of it. Power can only be entrusted. And it must never become an entitlement or be used for personal gain.

If leaders maintain a humble and ethical relationship with power, everything else will take care of itself. Where are the Jefferson Smiths? We need them now more than ever.