News Progress

•July 6, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Only the Illinois Supreme Court stands between voters and the opportunity to strike back, constructively, at a state political system that has hung a huge pension albatross round our necks, brought us budget gridlock and, many think, has the state circling the drain.

The state election board has said the petition drive for a redistricting reform initiative has passed muster. The issue is now before the state courts as to whether the proposal is constitutional.

The 1970 state constitution provision for redistricting has not worked. The process has become highly political, with the party in power drawing lines to benefit incumbents.

[At present, for example, Democrats have majorities of three-fifths and two-thirds in the House and Senate, respectively, far higher than the typical split between the two major parties.]

The Independent Maps initiative has proposed a complicated process that would try to siphon off the partisan politics and give the job of drawing state legislative maps to an independent commission, rather than leave it with lawmakers.

[Independent commissions seem to be working effectively in Arizona and California.]

The provision in the Illinois Constitution that allows use of the citizen initiative for Legislative Article limits amendments to “structural and procedural” subjects. Read More

•June 29, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

All I can see ahead for state finances is short and long-term harm for the state, which will be very difficult to repair.

Gov. Rauner obviously has no Plan B for his strategy of getting House Speaker Mike Madigan to knuckle under to his demands for a “turn-around agenda,” with which I am generally supportive.

I have a Plan B.

After more than a year without funding for food for prison inmates, electric power for state facilities all over the state, and even toilet paper for state employees, among many shortages, Rauner is desperate for some funding.

It would appear that Madigan derives personal satisfaction from letting Rauner—and all of us citizens—twist slowly in the wind by refusing to deal with the governor. Yet a friend of mine who knows the speaker much better than I do said, “No, rarely is anything personal with the speaker. Absolutely the only thing in the world he cares about in political control.”

[The speaker did pass a budget that is wildly greater than the revenues to pay for it, and even the Democrats in the Senate rejected it.]

Another good friend of mine passed along a telling story, this one about the Rauner team. Friend had been invited right after the 2014 election to sit down with Rauner’s top staff to talk about the transition into the new governorship. Read More

•June 22, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

I am giving readers a break from my rants about the destructive state budget impasse.

In that regard, I am hearing from savvy observers that the next real full-year budget may not come until after the 2018(!) gubernatorial and legislative elections.

Those contests will equate to a political Armageddon (a final battle between Good and Evil, depending upon your point of view). Such a delay in budgeting, the fundamental responsibility of those we elect, would be unforgivable.

Instead, I want to focus on the importance of face-to-face conversation in a world “AF” (After Facebook). In only a short decade or so, this social platform has become central to the lives of many of my friends and hundreds of millions worldwide.

The topic comes to mind following a recent visit to the postcard pretty town of Prophetstown (pop. 2,000), nestled along the Rock River between the Quad Cities and Sterling, where I wowed (he writes, modestly) the local Lions Club with a talk about Illinois.

I was invited by old friend Bud Thompson (probably nobody in the town knows his first name is Howard), who is the consummate community leader. Read More

•June 22, 2016•

By Jerry Ginther
NP Columnist

When I was in grade school, I was a big fan of Walter Farley, author of The Black Stallion series. I read them all. Anytime a book report was required, one of Mr. Farley’s books was the adventure of choice so I wasn’t at all surprised when I learned recently that he was actually writing to my age group. However, when I was a freshman in high school, my English teacher suggested, after I submitted two of those reports back to back, that my coverage on the topic was sufficient for that year. She further advised that it was in my best interest to read other authors. It was about that time that I realized it wasn’t merely a suggestion.

In the vast majority of his books a young lad named Alec Ramsey was the protagonist leading an exciting life with these amazing racehorses, on and off the track. In any one of those books, I could be Alec riding the famous Black or any of the other horses he rode across the finish line. What an adventurous life! There was even a book about a colt of the Black’s becoming a harness racehorse. Actually, that story was the one that touched my life where I was at the time because I could see harness racehorses training nearly every day.

During my preteen years, and for a few more, I lived close to a training stable for harness racehorses, Roxborough Farms. Saturdays during the school year and many weekdays during the summer would find me at the stable watching the workouts being timed by stopwatches. Based on their times, decisions were made concerning which horses would go to various race tracks and which ones needed more work before going anywhere. I learned what was a fast time for a half-mile and a mile. I knew the names of every horse in the barn and kept up with their training progress. I had learned the “trade language” from being at the training track so often that I could place myself in the excitement of the stories in the books.  Read More

•June 8, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

In recent years I have been on the outer fringe of the periphery of Illinois politics and government. To refresh myself, I spent the last two days of the recent legislative session haunting the corridors of our stately capitol.

I talked with former college students of mine who are now senators, reps, lobbyists and agency officials throughout the bureaucracy.

Frustration isn’t a big enough word to capture their overall mood. Despondency, with all hopes for a better day slipping away, says it better.

Everyone in the capitol except for Gov. Bruce Rauner and House Speaker Mike Madigan will tell you, if some must do so off the record, that this second year without a state budget is hurting the state down to its foundations.

These alpha males are locked in a now highly personal death struggle that blocks out consideration of anything but political victory and, each hopes, vindication that all the state has suffered will have been worth it.

Even when a budget is enacted, the well will be so poisoned that constructive, far-sighted policymaking may be impossible until both men are gone from the scene. Read More