Anti-Blagojevich actions continue

While Gov. Pat Quinn today reversed one of the last decisions made by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, state lawmakers advanced two measures that aim directly at some of the accusations that led to Blagojevich's impeachment.


DNR
By Jamey Dunn
Quinn today replaced recent state Rep. Kurt Granberg as the head of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources with one of his senior policy advisers, Marc Miller. Miller was Quinn’s liaison to the Illinois River Coordinating Council. Granberg, a Carlyle Democrat, was appointed to the position by Blagojevich last month and reportedly was slated to receive a $40,000 bump in his pension.

During his first news conference as governor, Quinn said he wanted a “natural resources professional” in that position rather than the former lawmaker. Quinn described Miller as “a fisherman, he’s a hunter, he’s a bicycle rider, he canoes, he likes to go in kayaks he is a birdwatcher, a stargazer. You name it, when it comes to wildlife, he knows all about it.”

Miller, a Mattoon native, currently lives in Springfield. He left a job at the Prairie Rivers Network to work with Quinn in 2004.

Neither Miller nor Quinn would comment specifically about reopening state parks or rehiring employees who were laid off after Blagojevich cut the department’s budget last year. Miller said that in the “short-term,” the number of staff would probably not be up to the level it was five years ago. Quinn said he doesn’t know if Granberg will get a pension increase for the brief time he served as director, but Quinn said Granberg should “be happy with the pension that he earned in the legislature.”

And the legislative action
By Bethany Jaeger
JCAR
This Illinois House this morning reaffirmed the intent and power of a legislative committee that reviews rules coming out of the governor’s office. The power of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules was so contentious during former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration that it earned its own spot in the article of impeachment against Blagojevich as an example of his “pattern of abuse of power.” After the committee repeatedly rejected his attempts to expand health care to middle-income families without legislative approval and without designated funding, Blagojevich deemed the committee as merely advisory.

The House approved HB 398, which Rep. Gary Hannig, the sponsor and a Litchfield Democrat, said is a way to ensure that JCAR continues to serve as a check on the executive branch. Democratic Rep. Lou Lang, a JCAR member from Skokie, added, “Gubernatorial excesses were an important part of the impeachment proceeding, and it’s perhaps that case that if this bill were made law previously, we wouldn’t have had these issues.”

Ethics
Both chambers also have officially formed a special committee, with members of both chambers and both political parties, to review ways to reform state government and ethics. The official measure that creates the committee cites an “integrity crisis” created by two consecutive governors, Blagojevich and imprisoned former Gov. George Ryan.

House Speaker Michael Madigan said his previous efforts to advance reforms kept getting stuck in the Senate under then-President Emil Jones Jr., who has since retired.

“The first thing we’re going to do is to go to the bills that were passed in 2005 and 2007,” Madigan said on the House floor. “My record is real clear. I’ve been about the business of reforming the business of state government for several years now.”

The efforts Madigan mentioned included reforms to the way the state makes investment decisions on behalf of the five public employee pension systems, the process of entering into state contracts with businesses and the rules legislators and state officials must follow to avoid a conflict of interest. He also sent his chief legal counsel, David Ellis, to speak with Gov. Pat Quinn’s reform commission about changing state rules so that reports of ethical violations and punishments could be made public. According to a memo issued by Madigan’s office, Ellis also talked about tightening the process of granting waivers to the so-called revolving door law, which requires executive branch employees to wait one year before taking a job with a private firm that he or she either regulated or awarded a state contract.

Madigan said he expects the committee to meet “many times,” maybe twice a week, at the state Capitol. The scope is broad. “To me, all of Illinois government is open to change, every agency and everything that we do.”

Republicans didn’t like that the committees will have more Democrats than Republicans, reflecting the majority party’s rule of both chambers. “We certainly will cooperate with you in any way possible,” said GOP Rep. Bill Black of Danville. “But at some point, on something this important, I wish we could be treated as equals and not constantly as a minority to be accommodated.”

“This is too important to make it a committee controlled simply by one party,” he later added. “Both parties have had their problems. Both parties need to be a complete and equal partner to find a solution.”

From the Statehouse to the courtroom
Rep. George Scully, a Flossmoor Democrat, announced on the House floor that he has been appointed a circuit judge of Cook County, effective February 27. He’ll resign from the House that day. He’s served in the House since 1997 and was active in the electricity rate debate of 2007.

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Impeachment: Day 3

The evidence gathered during the third day of the Illinois House’s impeachment investigation will play a role in committee members’ decisions about whether to recommend impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Yet the answers committee members could not get from witnesses today is likely to be just as important, if not more, in determining whether the governor is fulfilling his constitutional duties.

Questions floated during today’s nearly seven-hour hearing focused on three things:

1. Has the governor exceeded his authority, and is he directly responsible for the expansion of a state health care program without legislative approval?
2. Do particular state audits of his administration document a habitual ignorance or flat-out disregard for state and federal laws?
3. Has his administration unnecessarily and inappropriately withheld information from the public?

Ultimately, the committee is looking for a pattern of behavior. Today’s testimony offered information that dated back to 2003, the first year Blagojevich took office.


“For those of us who have been around the building for the last six or seven years, some of it’s old news,” said Steve Brown, spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan, who is presiding over the impeachment investigation. “But in the context of a pattern of abuse of power, abuse of law, abuse of the appropriations process, I think it all shows a real pattern of behavior.”

The known work of the committee is done, Brown said. But it’s unknown yet whether the U.S. attorney’s office will give the OK to invite testimony from people involved in the ongoing criminal investigation(s), mainly Ali Ata and Joseph Cari (see the Day 1 blog). The committee went home for the weekend but will return to the state Capitol at noon Monday. Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, committee chair, told members to be prepared for two days of work, but the specific agenda is unknown.

Here are some highlights of information gathered from today’s hearing:

Administrative authority (JCAR)
Committee members could not get straight answers about who ultimately made the decision to expand the state-sponsored health insurance program despite rejections the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. Simply called JCAR, the bipartisan legislative panel reviews administrative rules to make sure they stay true to the legislative intent. Read lots of background information about the expansion of FamilyCare in previous blogs.

A group of businessmen filed a lawsuit against the governor, claiming that he expanded a state-sponsored health care program to middle-income families without legislative approval and without specific spending authority to pay for it.

Director Barry Maram pointed out that court rulings have not specifically addressed whether the Department of Healthcare and Family Services had authority to expand the program. Court decisions so far have only determined that the eligibility criteria used for the FamilyCare expansion don’t abide by federal employment rules (see more here).

Fun fact: Since JCAR was created 31 years ago, nearly half of the rules it has suspended or prohibited have happened during the past six years of the Blagojevich administration, according to Vicki Thomas, executive director of JCAR.

The governor’s office has said JCAR is just an advisory body. Thomas said if the state didn’t have a JCAR, it would lead to “abuse of power and serious problems of separation of powers because then you would have the administration making law.”

Audits
Auditor General Bill Holland cited a June 2005 audit that documented significant problems in the agency where the governor consolidated many of the state’s important functions, Central Management Services. So-called efficiency initiatives turned out to be not so efficient, costing state agencies more money than they saved, Holland said. But the agency’s contracting practices were even more problematic. Many times, members of the governor’s staff played key roles in selecting the companies that would receive the state contract, which is unusual, he said. In one instance, a state contract was granted to an agency that did not yet exist.

Holland said routine requests for such information as contracts and travel vouchers also have been problematic. “Every year those are questions we’re going to ask … but when we ask for information and it is now being routinely given to legal staff, that is not making it any easier. It is making it more complex,” he said.

Holland also repeated the scenario in which he said the governor illegally tried to import doses of flu vaccine after initial scare of a shortage, but the U.S. government never approved the European vaccine. It eventually was meant to ship to Pakistan, but it didn’t get used there, either, because it expired.

Freedom of Information
The administration had shown “disregard” and “contempt” of the law on rather routine requests for public documents under the state’s Freedom of Information Act, said Jay Stewart, executive director of the Chicago-based Better Government Association. He said the administration repeatedly denied his requests, which isn’t that unusual. But what is unusual is that officials couldn’t confirm whether they had the information requested, and if they did have the information, they wouldn’t provide it. Stewart said it was the first “hypothetical denial” he’s ever received. The association has been trying to get access to federal grand jury subpoenas served upon the administration.

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Check on executive power

By Bethany Jaeger
On the same day Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued a massive executive order to combine more state agency functions, a Cook County judge ordered that Blagojevich’s administration has to stop expanding a state health program to middle-income adults. But that’s not going to stop Blagojevich from trying. In the meantime, residents who already started receiving state-sponsored health care under the governor’s expansions are left in limbo over whether they’ll continue to receive those benefits. We'll have more on the governor's move to consolidate state agency functions tomorrow. It’s a mess.

The governor’s office already issued a statement that said it would address the judge’s concern about his health care expansions and continue to expand the FamilyCare program to more families. (The administration also announced a statewide tour about health care, seen here.) Legislators, in the meantime, continue to say they support health care but oppose the way the governor goes about expanding it without a way to pay for it.

Tuesday’s court order is only one of two lawsuits involving the governor’s authority to expand health care through executive power rather than through the legislative process. The governor also sued Secretary of State Jesse White for not publishing rules to implement the expansions, preventing the administration from acting. White’s legal team has until May 2 to respond to the governor’s lawsuit.

On Tuesday, Cook County Judge James Epstein technically didn’t rule on whether the governor could expand health care programs without legislative approval. On one hand, he decided that the administration was within its rights to extend an existing program for breast and cervical cancer screenings to women age 65 and older. He said the legislature approved $6 million for the program without imposing limits, allowing the department to expand the benefits as long as it was within that $6 million appropriation.

On the other hand, Epstein denied the governor’s ability to expand FamilyCare, which would offer state-sponsored health insurance to 147,000 adults from middle-income families for about $43 million in the first year. Because the FamilyCare program would offer state and federal Medicaid benefits to adults making up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, the program would have to abide by federal income limits and work requirements. This is technical, but the judge ruled that because the FamilyCare expansion as written doesn’t require the adults to be “employed or engaged in a job search,” the expansion fails to meet federal requirements and wouldn’t be reimbursed.

That means the administration is prohibited from expanding FamilyCare until a full trial decision or until the department changes or cancels the expansions. Epstein’s ruling also said that complaint filed by Richard Caro, a Riverside attorney, and by Republican businessman Ron Gidwitz and Greg Baise, president and chief executive officer of the Illinois Manufacturer’s Association, on behalf of the Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth, and Prosperity, likely would succeed in a full trial.

Caro, who maintains a Web site dedicated to the lawsuit, said in a phone conversation last week that he actually supports universal health care, but he objects to the governor’s use of executive power to spend state dollars without legislative approval. : “I filed to stop an unconstitutional, illegal expenditure,” he said. “Once the legislature approves the expansions, all well and good. It’s for the executive to work out with the legislature in the normal democratic process how best to proceed.”

State Rep. Lou Lang, a Skokie Democrat, is a member of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules that repeatedly rejects the governor’s executive power in trying to expand health care. He’s also sponsoring legislation that would do the same thing the governor is trying to do through his administrative powers. It hasn’t gone anywhere, but Lang said lawmakers would be more likely to help him accomplish his health care goals if the governor would sit down and negotiate.

Rep. Brad Bursynzki, a Clare Republican and JCAR member, said to expect lawsuits filed by the adults who were promised health care benefits under the governor’s expansion. “I have to tell you, I had a smile on my face when I heard about the injunction this morning,” he said. “But having said that, I really feel very deeply for the people that were enrolled in this program who now are going to be — I don’t think they’re going to be held harmless.”

NOTE: A House committee is considering a proposal to establish a form of universal health care right now. The so-called Healthy Illinois plan has been dormant for two years, so watch for an update about why it’s being considered now. It’s expected to advance out of committee tonight. (Four Democrats already voted in support of the plan and walked out of committee.)

Immigration rights
By Patrick O’Brien
More than 100 new American citizens rallied at the Statehouse today to lobby lawmakers on behalf of legal and undocumented immigrants.

They included Korean, Polish, Mexican, African and Arab immigrants who recently became citizens through the state’s New Americans Initiative, a program designed to help immigrants navigate the citizenship process.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights sponsored the day, in part to voice opposition to a House proposal that directs the state to report undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes to the federal government for deportation.

The measure’s sponsor, Carol Stream Republican Rep. Harry Ramey, says it’s just a matter of making convicted criminals leave the country, not of targeting innocent immigrants. “We’re talking about the bad guys.”

Fred Tsao, the coalition’s policy director, says the state’s Department of Corrections opposes the bill and says it’s “an attempt to score political points on the backs of undocumented immigrants.”

The coalition also wants lawmakers to provide an additional $500,000 in funding for the state’s citizenship program to address the growing number of applicants in Illinois. Applications in Illinois have doubled during the national debate over immigration policy by some estimates.

The coalition also wants to push a proposal that would allow undocumented detainees to have greater access to clergy and other religious counsel while in jail. A House committee is scheduled to hear the plan tomorrow.

Yuridia Carbajal of Waukegan recently became a citizen after 12 years in the United States. She says the opposition to undocumented immigrants is driven by fear of their potential political power. “They want us to be afraid of them, but I think they’re afraid of us.”

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Do-overs

By Bethany Jaeger
Thursday’s House rejection of a new state income tax structure isn’t a done deal. We knew it could come back in some form, but Rep. Gary Hannig, a Litchfield Democrat and deputy majority leader, filed a “motion to reconsider” after yesterday’s vote. (Scroll to the bottom of this page to see record of Hannig’s motion.) The maneuver allows the chamber to take another whack at the same legislation, maybe with some changes.

Twice last year legislators used the motion to block legislation from advancing even though it received enough votes to pass. Senate Democratic leadership halted an electricity rate deal from advancing to accommodate a particular utility (scroll down to "procedural maneuvering"). Downstate House members stopped a budget deal from advancing to gain leverage for electricity rate relief.

Hannig’s move was the opposite. The income tax measure failed, and Hannig was one voting against it. He said in a phone conversation Friday that he told the sponsor, Rep. Mike Smith, a Canton Democrat involved in education matters and passionate about education funding reform, that he agreed with him philosophically but didn’t think the constitutional amendment was ready to go on the ballot. So Hannig voted against the measure, but he filed a motion to reconsider so that Smith would have an opportunity to bring the measure back with some changes that potentially could change some Democratic and Republican “no” votes to “yes” votes.

So, yes, you can bet on Smith’s measure coming back sooner rather than later. Constitutional amendments must be approved by both chambers before May 4, and given that the measure still needs to be revised, approved by the House, read three different times and approved in the Senate, with a week off April 21-25, Hannig said the House would need to reconsider the measure rather quickly.

Rewriting the rules
By Bethany Jaeger
House Speaker Michael Madigan sent a letter to lawmakers today to describe implications of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s lawsuit against Secretary of State Jesse White. White’s office refused to publish administrative rules to the governor’s desired health care expansions because the rules never received approval from the legislative Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. Because the two offices disagree on the authority of JCAR and, therefore, the ability to publish the rules so the administration can enact the expansions, they want direction from the court, as one agency spokeswoman said this morning. “Both parties in this case recognize that the lawsuit is part of a process intended to clarify the laws surrounding healthcare expansions and JCAR’s constitutional standing,” said Ruth Igoe, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, which filed the suit and runs the programs. “We consider this an amicable process.”

Madigan disagrees and described the lawsuit in the letter as a “back-door effort to implement the governor’s policies.”

“The lawsuit, filed at the governor’s direction, is an explicit statement that he does not want executive agencies to work in a cooperative manner with the legislature,” he wrote.

The governor’s office did not return a phone call.

Watch Illinois Issues magazine for more about the implications of the lawsuit.

Redrawing the map
By Patrick O’Brien
The battle that ensues every 10 years to draw the map for legislative districts could be solved by more than names drawn from hat if a new measure becomes law.

The proposed constitutional amendment has the support of House Speaker Michael Madigan, according to Mike Lawrence, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Lawrence, long-time journalist and former spokesman for then-Gov. Jim Edgar, says the proposal would take the element of chance out of the controversial task of updating district boundaries every 10 years. And it would be designed to make it easier for the two chambers to compromise. Currently, both chambers must agree on the same map. Under this proposal, the House and Senate would draw and approve separate maps, essentially controlling their own destinies.

If the two parties can’t agree on how to compose the map, two Illinois Supreme Court justices would appoint a so-called special master to redraw the map. The special master usually is a lawyer, Lawrence says.

Since 1981, lawmakers have come to a standstill three times. So they randomly drew from a hat to pick the winning party that would redraw the map.

Control of the process typically benefits that party, often because districts are oddly designed to produce certain results.

For the state’s Republican Party, the next redistricting in 2010 may be especially important because of the changing demographics of Illinois, particularly in the Chicago suburbs.

The Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., reported last month that self-identified Republicans account for only 25 percent of Illinoisans. Democrats account for 35 percent, and independents 40 percent.

As more people leave Chicago and Cook County for the suburbs, Democrats gain strength in the suburban counties.

Lawrence says the plan would take some of the political venom out of the process and restore geographical sense to the map.

A House committee will hold a public hearing on the measure next week.

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"My way"

I have Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” stuck in my head. It’s a reoccurring theme in the Statehouse, especially on days like today. Two House Democrats are trying to take a different route than the governor to expand state-sponsored health insurance to 147,000 adults. They’re using legislation, something Gov. Rod Blagojevich tried to do last year but got nowhere. When that didn’t work, he tried using his administrative authority. He repeatedly got blocked there, too. It happened again this morning, but the administration is moving ahead, anyway, stating that it can afford the expansions and that it expects federal approval and matching funds to come through.

This morning, the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, a bipartisan legislative panel that reviews executive rules, again rejected and suspended the Department of Healthcare and Family Service’s effort to expand a health insurance program to two groups of people: 1) up to 20,000 individuals making up to 185 percent of the federal poverty level who were covered under the State Children’s Health Care Program; and 2) a new group of 147,000 adults who make up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Background resources: See the administration’s original proposal in the November 26, 2007, Illinois Register, and scroll down to No. 15854. You can read more about the governor’s attempt to expand health care in my February column of Illinois Issues magazine and in a November blog.

Rep. Lou Lang, a Skokie Democrat and JCAR member, summed up his constitutional concerns and frustrations during the hearing. “Under what chutzpah do you come to this body and ask us to approve a rule that we already rejected when you had the unmitigated gall to put 3,300 people on a program that you ask us to approve that we did not approve? Why are we here?”

“To have an open forum, to hear comment, to participate, to try to make sure that we’re implementing, to listen to concerns,” replied Tamara Hoffman, chief of staff for the Department of Healthcare and Family Services.

The legislation proposed by the two House Democrats would do exactly the same thing to cover 147,000 more adults. The difference is that it would require the full General Assembly to approve the money allocated to the program every single year, allowing them to adjust for budget shortfalls.

“If it’s going to happen, this is how it should happen,” said Rep. John Fritchey, a Chicago Democrat sponsoring the measure with fellow Democratic Rep. David Miller of Lynwood, in a Statehouse news conference.

Both said they hope legislative hearings would be more successful in getting answers from the administration. Hearings could vet out the details so the full General Assembly, rather than a 12-member panel, could decide whom to cover, at what level to cover them and how to pay for it in the long run. “Going through the legislative process I think empowers the voters,” Miller said. He added that maybe 400 percent of the federal poverty level isn’t the threshold. Maybe it’s less, but that’s what the hearings would aim to figure out.

Fritchey added that the legislation could buffer 3,300 new enrollees, a number given by the administration today. Those people potentially could lose FamilyCare benefits if a judge rules that the governor violated his constitutional authority to expand a health care program without legislative approval. Read background of the lawsuit filed against the administration here. If a judge did rule against the administration, however, Rep. Rosemary Mulligan, a Des Plaines Republican and JCAR member, said it’s more likely that the Department of Healthcare and Family Services wouldn’t kick anyone off of the health insurance program; it simply would eat the cost and make up for it elsewhere. Hoffman said the department won't speculate about what would happen if the lawsuit overturns the administration’s authority to expand the program.

Department officials also said it has the money in its current budget to cover the expansions, but they didn’t specify. The General Assembly never approved spending authority specifically to cover the expanded health care programs. Department heads left without answering questions after the vote.

Eight JCAR members rejected the administration’s rule. Two Republican members went against the grain. Mulligan and Rep. Brent Hassert of Romeoville said they’re not happy with the administration’s lack of answers and don’t believe it has the money to cover the expansions, but they do believe the department has the authority to do expand FamilyCare. That’s because, Mulligan said, the General Assembly approved that authority in 2006. Hassert added that the JCAR hearings on the governor’s health care plans are symptomatic of the ongoing game of politics between the governor and House Speaker Michael Madigan.

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Update on Blagojevich's health care lawsuit

Don’t expect to find out whether Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s health care expansion plans are ruled unconstitutional until at least next month. After a hearing in Chicago Friday, each party in the lawsuit needs to spell out its arguments in briefs for the judge to review. A status hearing isn’t scheduled until February 19, which happens to be the day before the governor’s annual and much-anticipated — or dreaded, depending on who you are — budget address. That’s when he maps out his agenda for the year.

Background: Attorney Richard Caro of Riverside sued the administration alleging the governor’s actions to expand state-sponsored health care were unconstitutional because he would have extended coverage to 147,000 more people for $42 million in the first year — all without legislative approval. The lawsuit includes similar allegations by the Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth, and Prosperity, represented by businessman Ron Gidwitz, a Republican who ran for governor, and Greg Baise, president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturer’s Association.

History: The governor first couldn’t get his health care plans through the Illinois General Assembly last year, mostly because he proposed paying for it with a huge tax on businesses. Then he tried to use his executive authority and advance the plan through the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, made up of six Democrats and six Republicans. That didn’t work, either. The committee rejected the emergency plan in November.

Future: Jim Duffett, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Better Health Care that’s supporting the governor’s efforts, said he hopes the court case doesn’t have a chilling effect on lawmakers who actually want to expand health care. He advises against using the lawsuit as a diversion to the evidence that a majority of Illinois voters are concerned about health care and want guaranteed affordable health care for all. See a summary of the statewide survey here.

Watch for more about the health care lawsuit against the governor in the next edition of Illinois Issues magazine, due out in early February.

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