Last week, at a high-profile press conference that featured three live chickens, he released some details for state government savings. Expectations were high from a candidate whose campaign theme is a pledge to “shake up Springfield.” Rauner didn’t meet those expectations, and the media fallout continued through the weekend.
State Journal-Register political reporter Doug Finke takes a look at the budget plan that Gov. Pat Quinn’s running mate, Paul Vallas, calls a “joke.”
Writes Finke:
Let’s see, the Rauner plan has that hardy perennial of getting rid of the state airplanes. Voters love this idea, even if it doesn’t save hardly any money in the grand scheme of things.
Rauner wants to save $12 million by combining the comptroller’s and treasurer’s offices, like that’s never been suggested before. It only takes a change to the Illinois Constitution, which no one’s been able to engineer. Those savings just might be iffy.
Rauner would prohibit outside employment for the four legislative leaders, three of whom are lawyers. Rauner, though, is willing to share the pain and will accept neither a salary nor a pension as governor. Of course, he should be able to squeeze by on that $53 million he reported earning in 2012.
Rauner said the state can save millions by shoving lawmakers into a 401(k)-style retirement system rather than their current pension system. That’s the same idea he had in mind for all public workers: Freeze their current pensions and put them into a 401(k). Do you not think that, if that came to pass, some lawmaker somewhere from a safe legislative district would immediately be in court asking that it be declared unconstitutional?
Most of his savings comes from a $500 million cut in expenses at the Department of Central Management Services, the state’s purchasing and personnel agency. How that would be achieved is not spelled out in the proposal.
Apparently, for answers to this and other questions, we’ll have to wait for a future episode of “raise education spending and balance the budget while cutting taxes.”
Speaking of outside employment for the four legislative leaders, House Speaker Michael Madigan’s law firm got a $1.7 million tax break for a contractor and its partners.
Chicago Sun-Times investigative reporter Tim Novak has more on the doings of Madigan’s law firm.
Writes Novak:
Madigan’s law firm saved the Mesirow group more than $1.7 million in real estate taxes by persuading Cook County officials to slash the value of the River North building by 60 percent soon after it opened nearly five years ago.
Mesirow no longer owns the building at 353 N. Clark that still serves as its headquarters. But the law firm of Madigan & Getzendanner has continued to save Mesirow money by getting the tax bills lowered for the building’s owner.
And another tax cut is on the way. Madigan got Berrios and the Cook County Board of Review to again slash the estimated value of the property early this year. The resulting tax savings won’t be determined until tax bills are calculated later this summer.
Madigan says it wasn’t a conflict of interest for his law firm to win the tax breaks for Mesirow — which has been paid more than $9 million over the past five years to manage state pension funds that now total more than $300 million and another $5.2 million for financial and insurance services to the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority and other state agencies.
The speaker also says he’s done nothing to help Mesirow — where his son Andrew Madigan is a company vice president — get state business. The speaker’s son started at Mesirow as an intern in 2008. Mesirow says he now works in “business development for all lines of insurance,” often involving suburbs including Blue Island, Burbank and Cicero.
Madigan’s six-lawyer firm specializes in getting property-tax cuts for Chicago skyscrapers, hotels, shopping malls, car dealers and many others. Mesirow is one of the few clients that has contracts with the state of Illinois.
Below is a graphic from the Chicago Sun-Times of the tax cuts Madigan’s law firm has won for Mesirow:
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Brendan Bond is a staff writer at Reboot Illinois. He is a graduate of Loyola University, where he majored in journalism. Brendan takes a look each day at the Land of Lincoln Lowdown and it’s often pretty low. He examines the property tax rates that drive Illinoisans insane. You can findReboot on Facebook and on Twitter @rebootillinois.