Archive for October, 2008
October 15th, 2008
I’ve attended a handful of candidate forums and we’ve had candidates come here to the News Tower and when it comes to candidates for the General Assembly they all promise to work together, across party lines.
What party lines? Democrats have a supermajority in the Senate, making Republicans almost irrelevant and they are within four seats of having a supermajority in the House. Republicans HAVE to work across party lines to get things for their districts because their is no other choice. Democrats would be better served if they worked to heal the divisions within their own party; they can get things done without Republican help.
Also, I have yet to hear anyone defend the governor. Monday you read in Chuck Sweeny’s column that Democratic candidate Greg Tuite agrees with Republican incumbent Ron Wait that the governor should be impeached. Many candidates, from both parties, consider the governor to be the reason for political gridlock. Some blame Speaker of the House Mike Madigan because of his refusal to sit down face-to-face with the governor, but cut Madigan some slack because they say the governor cannot be trusted.
Illinois has four major political parties: The Green Party, which is running candidates for state rep, U.S. senator and U.S. rep among others, the Republicans, the Blagojevich/Jones Democrats and the Madigan Democrats. It’s the latter two’s failure to work together that has put important issues such as school financing, capital construction and pension debt on hold.
How do we fix this? It’s tempting to say we should vote out all incumbents and start over, but that would eliminate some good people who have not contributed to the current mess. However, some fresh voices, if they don’t allow themselves to be swallowed by the present political culture, could make a difference.
October 14th, 2008
The Register Star will begin publishing endorsements Sunday. Should we start with the biggest, president, or should we start with one of the hot local races such as Winnebago County Board chairman, Winnebago County state’s attorney or 69th district state representative? You can see videos of the chairman and state’s attorney candidates here.
October 13th, 2008
Ron Wait and Greg Tuite were here this morning for a joint appearance/debate in front of the Editorial Board. An edited video will be posted soon. We can’t post a full video for technical reasons I don’t understand.
It was a lively debate with some interesting exchanges. Chuck Sweeny will write about it in his column Tuesday and we’ll have more on the race when we start writing endorsements.
This has been a nasty race. An informed voter told me last week that she wouldn’t vote for either man because of how ugly the campaign has been.
It’s been one of the uglier, if not the ugliest, local campaign I can remember. Do you agree or do you think there have been nastier local campaigns?
October 9th, 2008
I assume the ad is for Ron Wait — his name is never mentioned — because it was paid for by the Illinois Republican Party, but I bet that Greg Tuite and Rod Blagojevich have never looked so good.
The back of the ad describes the “pay-to-play workout” accusing Tuite of giving the gov big bucks and profiting from it through a $42,000 per year part-time state job and getting $1 million in taxpayer-paid leases.
In concludes with “Democrats Greg Tuite & Rod Blagojevich … Pay-to-Play on Steroids.”
Do you think it’s an effective ad? I don’t because it tells me who NOT to vote for, but doesn’t tell me who I should be voting for. If there were a Green Party candidate in the race, maybe he’d get the votes.
October 8th, 2008
The damage facing the poorest and most helpless among us is catastrophic. How dare the governor and the legislature do this to those who have so little voice.
The governor signed a funding bill Tuesday that would restore more than $220 million in cuts, but he has not signed the bill that would allow that money to go to the agencies that need it.
What is he waiting for? These agencies need funding restored and they need to be paid in a timely manner so they can continue to serve people who have limited options.
PHASE/WAVE offers an example of how the governor’s cuts hurt. PHASE offers specialized treatment for people suffering various forms of chemical dependency, while WAVE provides domestic violence victims shelter and counseling. About 4,000 people a year are served.
Gary Hallbach, president and CEO of PHASE/WAVE, said his agency has not received any money from the state this fiscal year, which began in July. Hallbach said he was told it will be at least three weeks before his agency gets paid.
T
he payment delays coupled with a $285,000 budget cut — a cut that was made after the agency contracted for services — have led to positions going unfilled and two staff members being laid off.
That means fewer people are being served. Fewer people are getting help with substance abuse and fewer women and children are given shelter.
WAVE has 50 beds available, but only can fill 28 of them because of staffing issues. Hallbach said the agency had to turn away 300 people one month.
“It s going to continue to get worse unless the funding turns around,” Hallbach said. “That doesn’t appear to be the direction the state is going in.
“We use to be able to rely on money from the state. That’s not true today.”
Youth Services Network is an agency that works toward improving the quality of services to community youth and their families. YSN was established in 1982 to help impact the youth services system in Winnebago and Boone counties.
The agency will close its Belvidere office at the end of this month because it doesn’t have the money to keep it open.
YSN is 100 percent grant funded and lost $100,000 from the federal government and $300,000 from the state. The agency only has received one payment from the state this fiscal year.
The biggest cut was in the system of care program that helps keep foster children from bouncing from home to home. That program was cut 43.8 percent, which means there is less money available to mentor, tutor, counsel, drive — whatever the children and their foster parents need.
“If we don’t help the kids, we’ll be building more prisons because the kids can’t help themselves,” said Mary Ellen Commare, executive director of YSN. She pointed out that most of the children served — 130 at any given time — are 8 years old or younger.
“If we can’t serve them there will be more truants, more dropouts and more trouble,” she said. “It would save in the long run if we help these children today.”
Frank Ware, president and CEO of Janet Wattles Center, which provides mental health services, also painted a bleak picture.
“The combination of late payments ($2.2 million), cuts ($78,000) and ‘set-asides’ ($340,000) is a problem,” Ware said. “Sadly, we have no assurances that the problems are resolved. It is our understand that only a portion of the mental health cuts were included in the legislation sent to the governor.”
In a guest column that will appear in Sunday’s Opinions section, Ware calls for a summit to address the challenges nonprofit agencies face.
Perhaps the community can provide help because it’s apparent the state will not do its share.
The governor and legislature are guilty of gross negligence, irresponsibility and utter selfishness.
They’ve put petty political feuds above the common good. Shame on them.
They must fix this in the post-election session of the General Assembly. Once we lose these vital services, it will be hard to bring them back. Apparently our political “leaders” don’t listen to the agencies who work with the downtrodden because they don’t “pay to play.”
That’s disgusting.
October 7th, 2008
One of the signs that the financial crisis is hitting home is the number of shoppers in local stores. It seems most folks are nervous and are staying home rather than going to the mall or even to the grocery.
I get groceries at odd hours so I never notice a lack of a crowd. During yesterday’s edit board meeting, a couple of board members said they’d been the the mall and “you could have shot a cannon off in there and not hit anybody.” Another remarked that he had a similar experience at the grocery.
Have you noticed a lack of shoppers and diners? I haven’t gone out to eat in a while, but it seems there are still a lot of cars in the lots I pass.
So what’s your observation? Are people staying home to save gas and money?
October 6th, 2008
Comptroller Dan Hynes recently reported that the state is getting even further behind in paying its bills. The payment delay is 42 days, up eight days since I wrote about the topic in January. I’ve sent e-mail to local agencies that receive state money. The delays are longer for some than others. In January, I wrote that the delays cost Stepping Stones $30,000 in interest as the agency tried to meet its obligations while waiting for the state to come through.
That’s just one of the items on today’s editorial board agenda. We’ll also talk about Ted Biondo, who will be off the Winnebago County Board unless he wins a court challenge. He can’t run as a write-in because you need to file to be a write-in candidate and the filing period has passed.
I know write-in rules were changed in part to keep Mickey Mouse from getting votes, but I think it limits voters’ options. It’s hard enough for a write-in to win; why make it so hard for him/her to be an option for voters?
October 3rd, 2008
The ratings are in and the Palin-Biden debate drew45 percent of all viewers in the nation’s 55 largest markets, according to Nielsen. In Baltimore it was nearly 60 percent, but in LA it was only about 35 percent. Probably a lot of LA folks were watching the Dodgers pound the Cubs.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard as many people ask “Did you watch the debate” as I did after last night’s event. I’m sure curiosity about Sarah Palin played a huge role in the number of viewers, but you have to be pleased, no matter who you support, that so many people are interested in this year’s election.
My hope is that interest turns into votes Nov. 4. Interest needs to be turned into action.
October 2nd, 2008
At today’s edit board meeting we’ll discuss endorsements for Winnebago County Board chairman and Winnebago County state’s attorney. We decided on our presidential endorsement Monday and plan to run that edit on Sunday.
In the chairman’s race and in the state’s attorney race we held debates here at the News Tower. You can see edited versions at rrstar.com. Videos are about half way down the home page on the right side.
This is the first year we’ve used a debate format to determine endorsements in what we consider key races. We thought it would be better to see side-by-side comparisons rather than bring the candidates in one at a time. We think the process will help us make better decisions.
Other endorsements will be based on candidate forums, questionnaires and news stories. There are a lot of local races this year for us to study. I think it’s good to have competition on the ballot. It keeps incumbents on their toes and makes challengers do a lot of homework to sharpen their message.
October 1st, 2008
I read a story about a painted bike lane in Peoria that was being paid for from IDOT money. I wondered whether anything like that was considered in Rockford. Gary McIntyre, avid bicyclist and RMAP planner responded.
“The project that Peoria is doing is probably a demo project, hence the amount of funds coming from IDOT (and probably the Federal Highway Administration). About 10 years ago, the City of Portland, Oregon tired on-street painting of some of their bike lanes. But this application is still in the “experimental stage” according to John LaPlante (from T Y LIN International). Mr. LaPlante was the chief consultant for the RATS/RMAP study. He also is involved at the national level in drafting and preparing the Federal guidelines for all of the geometrics and pavement markings and signs for highways, bikeways and pedestrian facilities.
“From the Portland experiment and from the national guide manuals (Manuel on Uniform Traffic Control Devices MUTCD) and the Bike Guide, the only time that colored bike lanes should be considered is where there are complicated weaving movements of a bike lane across a right hand turn lane. Here is the web link for a report on this topic from the City of Portland: http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=58842 . Note that this report is 9 years old.
“One of the negatives of this type of on-street paint application is that in wet conditions, the painted surface is very, very slippery. The wet painted surface makes the light-weight bicycle unstable as the bicycle tires going over wet painted surface, especially when turning. There is less resistance / traction between the tires and the wet surface. Last fall I slipped on the Rock River Path at the Auburn Street Bridge on the damp/wet surface. I had to get a new helmet since the one I was wearing was damaged.
“I have heard that several private companies no longer apply this type of paint coverage in their parking lots for pedestrians to cross between the front-doors and driveways because customers have sued them from falling on these wet painted areas.”
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