Congresswoman Schakowsky “is not going to talk on the record” about public employee pensions.

I have been puzzled of late by the silence of Chicago north side and north suburban Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky on the issue of the state’s public employee pensions, including teacher pensions. Many of these employees live in her congressional district, of course.

Democrat Schakowsky has made much of her defense of Social Security and Medicare in Congress.

How ironic it is then that the Democratic Party organization in her district, of which she is the de facto head, is leading the charge against public employee pensions in Springfield.

These pension bombers would include Senator Dan Biss and Representatives Elaine Nekritz and Robyn Gabel.

So I called Congresswoman Schakowsky’s legislative office here in Chicago (773 506 8342) and spoke with her assistant, Leslie Combs.

I explained that I wanted to write a post about Congresswoman Schakowsky’s views on the current pension fight. I had heard that she had concerns about the direction the issue was headed. But I had not seen or heard anything directly from the Congresswoman.

Ms Combs said she would get back to me.

That was on Friday.

On Saturday, this message was left on my voice mail by Ms Combs:

“Given she’s not an expert on the topic in the state, she not going to talk on the record on this issue. She going to look at your blog – she’s very eager to do that.”

I’m glad to get another reader, of course. But that was not the intention of my call.

She’s not an expert of public employee pensions in the state?

Really?

I tried getting back to Ms Combs and left a message on her voice mail earlier today.

Was that really what the Congresswoman wanted me to go with?

Because Congresswoman Schakowsky did go on the record. 

Her office said that she was not an expert on public employee pensions in Illinois and that she would not go on the record.

She went on record that she would not go on the record about an important public policy issue for her constituents.

As for being an expert?

Become an expert.

I had to.

The public employees in her district had to.

I haven’t heard back from Ms Combs.

Just another day in Bizarro Word.

Who caused Illinois’ debt?

Illinois is broke. No money promised to teacher retirees. But $35 million more for those connected to the Chicago Democratic Machine and their patronage charters.

Rahm and UNO Boss, Juan Rangel.

UNO’s Juan Rangel and Alderman Danny Solis’ patronage army get millions from their charter school scams.

Their latest multi-million dollar “soccer academy” skimmed millions from the state with millions more to come.

If Illinois is broke, here is why.

Reports the Sun-Times:

UNO’s insider contract deals go beyond the Soccer Elementary Academy. Records show the companies that benefitted from the 2009 state grant to UNO have included:

 ◆ D’Escoto Inc., owned by Federico “Fred” d’Escoto, whose brother Miguel d’Escoto holds the second-ranking post with UNO and was the city of Chicago’s transportation commissioner under former Mayor Richard M. Daley. D’Escoto Inc. has been paid more than $1.5 million so far, mainly for overseeing construction management on all of UNO’s state-funded projects. Miguel d’Escoto’s son, Miguel T. d’Escoto, works for d’Escoto Inc.

UNO hired d’Escoto Inc. without seeking other bids, Rangel says, because the firm provided the sort of services that government agencies often contract for based on merit rather than price alone. “I trust that they are looking out for our interests,” he says. “I’ve known the d’Escotos for decades. Fred’s reputation is impeccable.”

 ◆ Reflection Window Co., owned by Rodrigo d’Escoto — another brother of Miguel d’Escoto. It stands to make nearly $10 million for work on all of the UNO schools built with the grant money. Reflection was paid about $6.7 million for work on the Soccer Academy Elementary and Galewood schools, and it has a contract for about $3.1 million for work on the high school that’s under construction.

 ◆ Aguila Security, which was run by Manuel Acevedo and Joe Acevedo — brothers of state lawmaker and longtime UNO ally Edward Acevedo — during the time the company provided “site security” for UNO on the Soccer Academy Elementary project.

 ◆ Toltec Plumbing, owned by Virginia Reyes, whose brother Victor Reyes was a top mayoral aide during the Daley administration and also headed the now-defunct Hispanic Democratic Organization. Victor Reyes was UNO’s lobbyist when it landed the 2009 grant, and his law firm is doing zoning work for UNO that will be paid for out of the state grant money, according to Rangel.

◆ Windy City Electric, which has ties to Ald. Edward Burke (14th) and was banned from working on City Hall contracts after city officials determined that brothers Anthony and John McMahon operated the company in their wives’ names to obtain millions of dollars from city contracts set aside for businesses owned and operated by women. Windy City was paid $1.67 million for work on the Soccer Academy Elementary’s construction.

Anthony McMahon is a top precinct captain for Burke, a longtime UNO backer whose Southwest Side ward is home to five of the charter network’s schools. Burke’s daughter-in-law has worked for UNO since 2009.

In 2010, Rangel endorsed Burke’s brother, state Rep. Daniel Burke (D-Chicago), when he narrowly won a Democratic primary fight against a Hispanic challenger.

 ◆ The law firm of Chico & Nunes, headed by attorney Gery Chico, who has done zoning work for UNO and been paid with money from the state grant.

 ◆ UNO JaMS, a not-for-profit “social enterprise” initiative of UNO that provides janitorial services at its charter schools.

 Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike voted to approve the grant for UNO almost four years ago. Rangel says he was surprised at how much money UNO got from Springfield.

“Did we think we could get $98 million? No,” he says. “But we shoot for the moon. We asked for $100 million.”

Rangel says UNO — which also is getting about $67 million from Chicago Public Schools this year to run its schools — will seek more state money to build new schools.

Though the city is weighing whether to close underused public schools, he notes that UNO’s schools are in neighborhoods on the Southwest Side and Northwest Side where public schools are increasingly crowded because of the fast-growing number of Latino students.

 “What people don’t understand is we’re talking about different communities,” he says. “In our community, there are too many kids and not enough schools. Our parents won’t agree to busing their kids to where [underused] school buildings are.”

 After the new Soccer Academy High School is complete, Rangel says UNO will have $15 million left from the 2009 grant — not enough to build another new school. So UNO is asking Springfield for another $35 million.

The inbox. More on Deadbeat Illinois. The impact of low taxes on the rich, no spending on the poor.

Fred:

I worked at one of Illinois’ correctional centers for over twenty-five years. The institution is nearly eighty years old, cockroach infested, racoons in the cellhouse attics.

Sometimes there was hot water.  Sometimes not.

One time I was about to make a hall check and an outdated flourescent light fixture dropped twelve feet from the ceiling and crashed to the floor.

I saw worms in the shower drain in one building.

The concrete fire escape stairs were crumbling.

I pushed the lamp test button on the cellhouse control panel to check the control panel lights and it short circuited and opened six cell doors that were on deadlock. I sat with the locksmith at lunch and for thirty minutes he complained that the main door locks on the cell houses were obsolete and almost impossible to fix.

A safety and sanitation lieutenant told me the institution would require 98 million dollars to bring up to code. A fellow officer was driving an inmate to a doctors appointment and the axel broke on the vehicle.

Inmates with severe psychiatric problems who depend on regular treatment and monitoring of their medications are regularly released and are dependent on public health services which are being done away with.

I could go on.

– Claudette Thomas Radke

Four Chicago mega-corporations pay their CEOs more than they paid in federal taxes.

Abbott Labs paid CEO Miles White $19 million, while the company received a $586 million federal tax refund.

Barbara Gilhaus, who retired after teaching 31 years in Illinois, receives $28,000 a year from the Teacher Retirement System.

Governor Quinn gave Motorola a ten-year $100 million tax break.

Motorola paid no federal corporate income taxes in 2011. It paid its former CEO Sanjay Jha more than $47 million in total compensation.

Motorola Solutions, which makes communications equipment for government and industrial customers, paid $2 million in federal income taxes in 2011.  CEO Gregory Brown made $29.3 million.

Did I mention that the median teacher pension in Illinois is $24,000 a year?

Among non-Chicago corporations who paid less in federal taxes than they paid their CEOs in compensation:

• Citigroup, with a tax refund of $144 million based on prior losses, paid CEO Vikram Pandit $14.9 million in 2011, despite an advisory vote against it by 55 percent of shareholders.
• Telecom group paid CEO Randall Stephenson $18.7 million, but was entitled to a $420 million tax refund.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Corporate secrets. Truth is bad for business.

By Friday we will know how the corporate interests of the state of Illinois intend to try and screw teachers and other public employees out of their pensions.

What we will not know is how much these corporations pay in income taxes.

That’s because it is a secret as to how much public-held corporations pay in state income taxes.

And it will remain a secret unless Senate Bill 282 can get through the General Assembly.

Naturally, the corporations think this is a terrible idea. Bad for Illinois’s business climate they complain.

It says something when transparency and truth is bad for business.

And it is.

“It’s like drawing attention to ourselves in an unflattering way, and this is being done at the very time when we’re doing everything we can to promote jobs and growth and prosperity and bring business to Illinois,” Whitley said. “We’re doing everything we can to improve our image across the country, which by the way, is not a particularly flattering image, and then we see legislation like [S.B.] 282, which just gets people unnecessarily, inappropriately excited about the message Illinois wants to send out to employers.”

 Right. They don’t want you to get unnecessarily and inappropriately excited by how little they pay compared to how much you pay.

The Hyatt’s Penny Pritzker has seven bathrooms, appeals her taxes and screws her employees.

Penny Pritzker has seven bathrooms.

H/T: Matt Farmer

For well over two years the employees of the Hyatt Hotels in Chicago and elsewhere have been in dispute over a contract.

Hyatt is owned by the Pritzker family. Most prominently, Penny Pritzker. She served as chief fundraiser for Obama’s 2008 campaign and is a high ranking member of his 2012 re-election campaign.

Chicago Public Schools board of education member Penny Pritzker and her husband, Bryan Traubert, own a a seven-bathroom, 8,400-square-foot mansion on three typical city lots in Lincoln Park.

Seven bathrooms.

They must do a lot of reading in that house.

It’s not surprising that a multi-millionaire like Pritzker would own a Lincoln Park mansion. She probably owns several.

The issue is that when it comes to paying their taxes, they are cheap. In fact, the whole Pritzker family is cheap.

Crain’s:

Public records show Ms. Pritzker’s cousins Nick Pritzker, Tom Pritzker and Gigi Pritzker Pucker all have filed to lower bills on their homes in Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast, for combined savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past eight years.

Gigi Pritzker Pucker?

Okay, never mind about that.

Penny Pritzker refuses to settle a contract with Unite Here, the union that represents Hyatt housekeepers and other hotel workers.

She also sits on the Civic Committee which is leading the charge against teacher pensions claiming Illinois is broke.

Seven toilets, won’t pay her property taxes, screws her employees and argues that Illinois is too broke to pay teachers the pensions they were promised. And votes to close Chicago schools.

In Chicago, we call that a civic leader.

Illinois is broke? Not too broke for old style patronage.

Traffic control expert, former Alderman John Rice.

There is the usual political in-fighting among Chicago and Illinois politicians. Madigan doesn’t like Quinn. Quinn doesn’t like Rahm, Rahm doesn’t like people who work for a living. That kind of thing.

But they all have two things in common.

They all want to blame teachers and their pensions for the state of Illinois’ budget woes.

And they all spend our money to hire their pals.

The Chicago News Cooperative reports on Governor Quinn’s hiring of former 36th Ward Alderman John Rice. Rice was hired to fill the newly created position of deputy director of traffic safety at $84K a year.

Rice lost his aldermanic seat last May and began “working” for the state in November.

His qualifications?

Rice declined comment Monday. Shortly after he began at IDOT, Rice said he was qualified for the new state job because he once ran valet and snowplowing companies and managed valet services for Jam Productions.

I guess I could be the governor’s pilot because I fly in a plane now and then.

GOP House Leader Tom Cross: Give tax money to Sears and CME. Freeze employee wages.

GOP House Leader Tom Cross, who along with Mike Madigan, Governor Quinn and Rahm Emanuel got the massive tax breaks for Sears and the CME, demanded wage freezes for state employees.

The State Journal Register:

Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration should push for a wage freeze in upcoming state employee labor negotiations, House Minority Leader Tom Cross said Thursday.

At a Chicago news conference on the one-year anniversary of the state’s income tax hike, Cross said a union wage freeze is among the cost-control measures the state should adopt as it continues to struggle with its finances.

Cross, R-Oswego, and Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, both said the state needs to enact Medicaid reform, pension changes and spending cuts to get out of its financial crisis.

“The ability to, or need to, freeze those salaries, not give increases, needs to be looked at as the governor starts negotiations with AFSCME,” Cross said.