ILLINOIS TREASURER CANDIDATE OWES $1,800 IN PROPERTY TAXES; WSJ SAYS ANTI-VIOLENCE PROGRAM WAS A “BOONDOGGLE”

Frerichs says he legally doesn’t have to pay the taxes. Crain’s Chicago Business political columnist Greg Hinz has more on the issue:

A dispute over property taxes has erupted in the race for Illinois treasurer, with Democratic nominee Michael Frerichs having to explain why he failed to pay a type of property tax on space he leases for his political and legislative offices — the latter for six years in a row.

Mr. Frerichs, a state senator who represents the Champaign area, says that he now has paid the levy on his political office but that the legislative office legally should not have been billed, since it is used exclusively for public purposes. Senate President John Cullerton’s office says it agrees with him.

But the Illinois Department of Revenue so far is ruling that Mr. Frerichs does owe the money — just over $1,800 to date, including interest. And GOP nominee Tom Cross hopes to make a major issue of it in a race that generally doesn’t draw many headlines.

At issue are taxes on two suites of offices Mr. Frerichs rents in Champaign from the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District. One suite, 600 square feet of offices, has been used since 2007 for Mr. Frerichs’ Senate staff. The other, next door, has housed his political operation since 2010.

Since the transit district is a public agency, it does not owe taxes on property it uses. But a leasehold tax that effectively is the same as a property tax is owed by those who rent space from the district, at least some of them.

Ergo, the Champaign County treasurer has sent bills to Mr. Frerichs.

Wall Street Journal calls Neighborhood Recovery Initiative a “boondoggle”

A murder trial is set to begin in Chicago with a teenage defendant accused of murdering another teenager two summers ago. The link between the two is they were both on the state’s payroll at the time of the killing, working for the now-defunct Neighborhood Recovery Initiative.

Wall Street Journal reporter Claire Groden has more on the failure of the program in a subscription-required article:

Two summers ago a home invasion by gang members on the city’s South Side went wrong when one of the robbers shot another one in the back of the head, according to Chicago police. Sixteen-year-old Douglas Bufford was killed, and 19-year-old Jermalle Brown was charged with first-degree murder. His trial begins on Aug. 15, and it may attract more attention than usual in a city plagued by violent crime, just as his arrest did. Why? Because at the time of the shooting, Douglas Bufford and Jermalle Brown were also on the Illinois state payroll, earning $8.50 an hour to hand out antiviolence pamphlets.

Such are the bitter ironies of Gov. Pat Quinn’s Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, a now-defunct $54.5 million program whose failures are under new scrutiny as the Illinois governor, a Democrat, campaigns for re-election in November. Mr. Quinn launched the anticrime plan four years ago to “take on the root causes of violence in neighborhoods all across the city of Chicago.” That didn’t happen. Over the first two years of the initiative, the Chicago murder rate rose 20%, and the murder rate within city limits today is triple the national average. A state audit of the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, or NRI, suggests that as much as 40% of the program’s funding was simply wasted.

The NRI program was instituted in fall 2010 after three Chicago police officers were killed in two months and an 8-year-old girl was killed by a stray bullet in a gang shootout. Mr. Quinn found much of the program’s $54.5 million in his discretionary budget, money that was supposed to be directed to the Second City’s most violent areas.

Under the NRI, an agency called the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority made grants to social-welfare organizations, which in turn subcontracted with local groups like community centers and churches. The idea was to reach families through mentoring, part-time jobs, parenting classes, early-intervention school counseling and the like.

Yet the NRI also appeared to put a high priority on patronage. In a noncompetitive process, aldermen recommended institutions for grants, producing strange allotments for an anticrime program: The NRI ended up targeting 23 neighborhoods, but seven of the city’s 20 most violent areas were not among them.

Tribune columnist calls on Karen Lewis to run against Rahm

While Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis remains “50/50” on running for Chicago mayor, one columnist believes she should enter the race.

Writes Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn:

Not, again, because I believe she’d necessarily be good at the job but because she has the constituency and the bluster to turn Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election bid from a snoozy coronation into a zesty political scrap.

We need and deserve a debate on the issues and on the directions in which the city is heading. And since the potential challenger with the best resume, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, announced last month that she’s not going to take on Emanuel, Lewis now looks to be the best person to spark that debate.

Progressive Ald. Bob Fioretti, 2nd, is assembling a campaign team for a likely run, and a Lewis candidacy would probably boost his chances.

True, they and other announced candidates — former Ald. Robert Shaw, police officer Frederick Collins and lawyer Amara Enyia — will split the anybody-but-Rahm vote. But remember, to win outright, a candidate in the Chicago mayor’s race must receive more than 50 percent of the vote. Otherwise, the top two vote getters are entered into a run-off election.

So the more challengers there are driving their voters to the poll, the more likely it is that one of them will emerge with a clear shot at Emanuel, who, with his swollen campaign war chest and considerable political chops, remains the prohibitive favorite.

And Lewis, who recently underwent bariatric surgery and is cutting a trimmer figure, has plenty of time between now and May, when the next mayoral term begins, to learn the intricacies of the garbage grid.

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