Illinois Gov’t a Sputtering, Burning Trainwreck

2 comments June 11th, 2008

Gov. Rod Blagojevich will try once again today to kickstart talk about correcting a budget plan that he says is $2.1 billion out of balance. At 10:30 a.m., Blagojevich plans to meet with legislative leaders in his Chicago office, just as he did in the first such meeting last week.

But just as he did last week, House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, is expected to skip today’s meeting and instead send a surrogate. So when Blagojevich takes he seat this morning at a table with legislative leaders, he won’t see the face of one man whose support probably is necessary to win approval of any budget change — a tax or fee increase, perhaps, or an expansion of gambling — that the others all may agree on.

For his part, Madigan is busy promoting the notion that lawmakers ought to consider impeaching Blagojevich. A memo Madigan sent to House Democratic candidates says, “Criminal activity in the Blagojevich administration is no longer
theoretical - it is proven.”

It also says, “Blagojevich is clearly not an innocent victim of circumstances,” and that, “One thing we learned from the George Ryan case is that we should excise a tumor when it is first discovered; not leave it in the body to continue to spread and do further harm.”

You read that right. The governor has now, in the eyes of the House speaker, been relegated to “a tumor.”

As governor, Blagojevich has the power to veto the budget and send it back to lawmakers for their reconsideration. But as I noted in a previous post, Blagojevich has not mustered the courage to so much as threaten to veto the budget or, for that matter, call lawmakers back to Springfield in special session. By calling a series of meetings with legislative leaders, Blagojevich may look as if he is pursuing solutions, but without actually using — or even threatening to use — the actual tools at his disposal as governor.

Then again, Blagojevich could not veto the out-of-balance budget plan even if he wanted to do so. Though the Senate and House both approved that budget, the presiding officers of those chambers — Senate President Emil Jones Jr., D-Chicago, and Madigan — have not yet transmitted that budget to the governor. The governor cannot act on bills that lawmakers have not sent to him for his formal consideration.

As the CapFax Blog noted on Tuesday, this conundrum puts Blagojevich squarely at odds with Jones, his chief ally in the Legislature. The budget consists of multiple bills. And because most of those bills originated in the Senate, Senate President Jones therefore is the first to decide when to release those bills to the governor. (Both Jones and Madigan ultimately must sign off on each bill.) Jones spokeswoman Cindy Davidsmeyer did not respond to my requests for comment on Tuesday.

Under the state Constitution, the Legislature has 30 days to transmit the budget to the governor. Since the core of the budget did not pass until May 31 — the last day of spring session — the Legislature may wait until June 30 to send Blagojevich the budget. That’s the last day of this fiscal year. If Blagojevich does not act on the budget by the following day, then this state will enter its new fiscal year without a budget. If there still is no budget a couple weeks later, state workers will start missing their paychecks. Schools could miss out on their state money. And so on.

If the Legislature waits until late June to send Blagojevich the budget, he will face tremendous political pressure to approve it in full or make only limited cuts, rather than vetoing it in full. If vetoes the entire budget anyway, there is no telling when the state might have something resembling another budget. The political complications would be numerous.

For starters, lawmakers need a three-fifths majority to approve any budget at this point. That requires Republican votes — the same Republicans shut out of negotiations leading to the budget that passed May 31. Republicans would have lots of catching up to do, to say the least.

Jones may have another reason to avoid a summer session: If the Senate is in session for just a few days this summer, then pay raises will automatically kick in for Jones and other senators because Jones and fellow Democratic leaders refused to allow senators to vote on whether to reject that pay raise.

Lawmakers have just 30 days to act on the pay raise recommended by an obscure commission, or it automatically becomes law. The House has already voted to reject the raise; now it’s up to the Senate. Jones may prefer for the pay raise to kick in after the Nov. 4 general election. But to suspend the 30-day clock until then, the Senate must avoid session days.

For his part, Blagojevich also has reason to avoid a summertime session. The longer lawmakers are sitting idle in Springfield, as they did for much of last summer, the more likely they are to talk about impeaching the embattled Blagojevich.

Madigan is doing his part to fuel talk of impeachment. He said recently that his legal counsel had already researched the law on impeachment and he noted it takes just 60 votes in the House, a 118-member chamber, to impeach the governor. He also distributed a 14-page memo with talking points on impeachment to House Democratic candidates, according to news reports published Tuesday.

A Madigan aide said the document is not necessarily reflective of the speaker’s personal views but was prepared by House Democratic campaign staff.

“Candidates get incessant questions from the media about the impeachment process. Some asked staff if they could have background and information,” Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said.

Blagojevich responded:

“This is another example of the pettiness, silliness and backroom games that Speaker Madigan has been playing for months to prevent progress,” Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said. “We wish he would drop his behind-the-scenes maneuvering and come to the [legislative] leaders’ meetings.”

The full memo is here. If you’ve got 10 minutes, it’s well worth a read:

The list of Blagojevich’s malfeasance and inability to govern grows with every passing
day. It is not simply his legal problems that brought him to where he is today. These are
not stray, isolated incidents, but rather taken together they represent a clear pattern of
behavior and demonstrate Blagojevich’s consistently poor judgment and third-class
temperament. Time and again Blagojevich has been tested and found wanting.

From there, the memo lists precisely 30 examples of Blagojevich’s alleged “malfeasance and inability to govern.”

More to the point, it lists three reasons for the House to launch an impeachment investigation:

1. The ongoing federal criminal investigations of his administration,
including his role as Public Official A, have significantly impaired his
ability to do his job as governor. With Ali Atta’s guilty plea, the governor
has been directly implicated in a bribes-for-jobs scheme - the latest
revelation of malfeasance in the governor’s office. The conviction of Tony
Rezko on 16 or 24 federal corruption counts related to Blagojevich
administration activities also suggests something is seriously amiss. Using
common sense, and the totality of what has been learned so far about these
investigations, prudence demands that lawmakers act. Already, six
individuals associated with his administration have pled or been found
guilty of federal criminal charges in connection with their roles in corrupt
activities. Criminal activity in the Blagojevich administration is no longer
theoretical - it is proven.

Blagojevich is clearly not an innocent victim of circumstances.
Legislators have a responsibility to do what is in the best interests of the
state and not depend on the federal government to save us. One thing we
learned from the George Ryan case is that we should excise a tumor when
it is first discovered; not leave it in the body to continue to spread and do
further harm.

2. Blagojevich’s violation of his oath of office by repeatedly attempting to
operate outside of the Illinois constitution and state law - expanding
FamilyCare beyond the limit authorized by the General Assembly,
spending money absent express statutory authority, failing to comply with
AG ruling that federal subpoenas are subject to FOIA, and a gross abuse
of the constitution’s special session power - using special session as a
blunt force instrument for dealing with the General Assembly and
attempting to force it to submit to his will - rather than for deal with
emergency situations.

3. Finally, Blagojevich’s legal problems have clearly become a distraction
for the governor. He is largely withdrawn from the legislative process spending
most of his time hunkered down at home or in a political

campaign office in Ravenswood hiding from the public and refusing to
answer the media’s questions. Aside from an occasional meeting or event
appearance, he is not faithfully executing the duties of his office.
Blagojevich acts like an absentee governor - content to let his underlings
do as they wish. That’s not acceptable. We need an engaged governor
who wants to be the governor.

Governor Blagojevich’s inability to govern is the principal reason that the
state is in its current predicament and that stalemate is the order of the day
in Springfield. The first step to cleaning up the mess and getting the state
back on track may be to remove the governor from office. If the evidence
warrants it, we cannot afford to wait until 2010. That will be too late and
he will have had two-and-a-half years to do even more damage to the
state.

Yowsers.