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When Julie Stone drove into the Loop on Wednesday for a doctor’s appointment on Wabash Avenue, she took one look at the car-lined street boasting $4.25 an hour metered parking and veered into a nearby garage, where she happily paid more than three times that rate.

“You are destined to lose with the meters in Chicago,” Stone said, shaking her head as she exited the garage after her appointment. “You have to spend time finding a spot. They’re expensive, and then there’s a possibility of a ticket. It’s not worth it.”

Come Jan. 2, it may be even less worth it for many Chicagoans already seeing red over the city’s parking rates, which are among the highest in the country.

On Sunday, the third of five scheduled annual rate hikes will begin, according to Chicago Parking Meters LLC., which took over the city’s parking about 2 years ago under a controversial deal brokered by Mayor Richard Daley.

That means parking fees in outlying neighborhoods will be bumped from $1.25 to $1.50 an hour. Areas adjacent to downtown will jump from $2.50 to $3 an hour. Loop parking will increase from $4.25 to $5 an hour.

“I hate these meters,” said Brandy Scott, who threw her hands up in exasperation on Wednesday as she walked to her car in Wrigleyville. Scott, who works as a server in the city, said that the parking-rate increases have cost her customers and tips.

“I feel like someone is just sitting there with a piggy bank taking our money,” she said.

Other Chicagoans described the planned increases in less metaphorical terms.

“I’m annoyed beyond belief,” said one woman, who narrowly missed receiving a parking ticket in the Loop.

“It’s a travesty,” said another woman after paying a meter in Lincoln Park on Wednesday.

Chicago Parking Meters will begin the transition to the higher rates in the Loop and move outward into the neighborhoods under the roundly criticized lease agreement that gave the city a quick cash infusion of $1.15 billion, which has mostly been spent. The agreement covers the city’s estimated 36,000 parking spaces for a 75-year term and is expected to bring parking in the Loop up to $6.50 an hour in 2013.

In the months since the deal took effect, Chicago residents have coped with the rate hikes in different ways. Some, like Stone, have chosen to use garages, which tend to offer more expensive, yet more convenient parking without the risk of being ticketed. Others, who had regularly driven into the city, now hop on public transportation.

Verlane Franklin, who works as an office manager for the Chicago Board of Education, said she used to enjoy her drives into the Loop, which were about the only time she had to herself during the day. Now, Franklin said, she takes the bus to avoid the parking fees.

“Being in the car was kind of like a sanctuary, and I am missing that now,” Franklin said.

For quick driving trips that cannot be avoided, some Chicagoans said they are now risking tickets to park illegally. On Wednesday, hazard lights blinked along Ashland Avenue and people double-parked cars along Armitage Avenue before dashing into shops.

Irene May chose to pay the minimum at a parking meter in the Loop and then stayed in her car while her son went to his doctor’s appointment.

“I’m on a fixed income,” May said. “I can’t afford to park here, but he needs to go to the doctor. So, I’ll just move if they tell me to.”

At the same time, others said they have swung the other way, often overpaying to avoid tickets.

“I just did a max, and I’m like, ‘Why did I do that? I’m not going to be here for two hours,’” said Kimberly Arends, standing beside a pay box in Lincoln Park and frowning. Arends, 36, said she often finds herself swiping her credit card and hitting the maximum payment button because it is easier than running back to repay or worrying about a ticket.

“I end up overspending,” Arends said, “and I feel like I’m lining someone else’s pockets.”

Others, however, have noticed bright sides to the higher parking fees. On Wednesday, Nicole Guzior and her mother, Pat Guzior, were surprised to finding parking in the Loop after only five minutes of searching.

“Usually, we’d be driving around for at least 30 minutes,” Nicole Guzior said. “But now that they are charging more, there seems to be all these open spots.”

Some business owners in the city have had mixed reactions to the meters. On one hand, many say that the higher prices prompt greater customer turnover. On the other hand, people are more concerned about paying the meters and tend to linger for less time, said Deborah Urban, who owns Isabella Fine Lingerie in Lincoln Park and said that she has had to run out to pay meters for customers.

“It goes both ways,” Urban said. “But if I had to choose, I definitely would have the rates go back to what they were. They are ridiculous, plain and simple, and I can’t imagine what it would be like when they go up even higher.”

Source:  The Chicago Tribune

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, up against a deadline to close an estimated $487 million gap in the 2011 budget, surrounded herself at a press conference Wednesday with county officials who have agreed to slash their budgets.

Assessor Joe Berrios and Health and the CEO for the county’s health and hospitals CEO William Foley, and other elected leaders said they’ll be able to meet the 21 percent cut Preckwinkle asked, and that could result in layoffs or pay cuts or both.

“The county is facing an enormous budget challenge,” Preckwinkle told reporters outside her office.

She praised Berrios, Foley, Recorder of Deeds Eugene Moore, Cook County Commissioner John Daley, who heads the powerful finance committee, and members of the Cook County’s tax appeals board for pledging to meet the 21 percent cuts next year.

“They’re probably are going to be a lot of layoffs,” Berrios said. The assessor’s office has a $22 million budget and roughly 380 jobs - about 90 percent of them union.

The unions may be asked to consider concessions, including unpaid days off, to save some jobs.

The health and hospital system plans to meet the 21 percent goal and Foley said with the 300 to 400 layoffs–which will come with the conversion of Oak Forest and Provident Hospitals to urgent care centers–$83 million in cost savings will be realized. While the health and hospital system is a $1.1 billion operation, spokesman Lucio Guerrero explained that the county subsidy is roughly $400 million.

Some have raised concerns that the law enforcement arm of the county, including the sheriff and state’s attorney’s office, may be crippled by a 21 percent cut.

Cook County Public Defender Abishi Cunningham, who wasn’t at the press conference, told the Sun-Times earlier this month that the 21 percent cut means 130 lawyers on his 500-member staff could lose their jobs - and slow the wheels of justice for the poor defendants they represent.

“It’s a ripple effect,” Cunningham said. “If we lose lawyers, it’s going to slow down the process of enabling us to work on cases, which means that inmates will spend longer times at the Cook County Jail, which could be a problem for the county (jail) because the sheriff’s office has entered a court-ordered consent decree to reduce jail overcrowding.”

Cunningham said his office is looking at different grants available to keep the office in business. Annually the office handles 24,000 felony cases and another 230,000 misdemeanor cases.

Wednesday, Preckwinkle said she’s confident the 21 percent goal can be met, including the sheriff and state’s attorney’s office.

“They’re working with our staff and it’s my expectation that they will,” Preckwinkle said.

The clock is ticking on a Feb. 28th deadline to approve what is expected to a be a $3.5 billion spending plan in 2011.

Preckwinkle is expected to submit a spending plan next month, giving county commissioners another month to review and vote on a final budget.

While she can only request the 21 percent cuts, she can’t order them. Still, state law requires a balanced budget and Preckwinkle has continued to be the drum that “no one will be absolved” in the budget cutting process.

So, she said, she’s starting with her own office. While the budget is a work-in-progress, she is taking a 10 percent pay cut, meaning her $160,000-a-year salary will fall to $144,000.

In addition, she’s called for a moratorium on capital projects that aren’t essential, allowing for what she says is “a review” of some 200 projects with a price tag of $900 million.

Source:  The Chicago Sun-Times

 President Obama said Wednesday that he intended to install six appointees — including James Cole, his controversial pick for the No. 2 spot at the Justice Department — while Congress is in recess. The move will allow them to serve without confirmation by the Senate, where their prospects will only grow dimmer once Republicans gain strength in January.

Mr. Obama, who is vacationing here on the island of Oahu with his family, made the announcement via news release, without any explanation or comment, other than to say that the posts have “been left vacant for an extended period of time.”

But the White House and Congressional Democrats have been exceedingly frustrated by what they regard as Republican foot-dragging on Mr. Obama’s nominees, including Mr. Cole, a close friend of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. whose views on terrorism and close ties to the insurance giant A.I.G. have drawn scrutiny from Republicans.

Mr. Obama’s action brings his recess appointees to 28; former President George W. Bush had made 23 recess appointments by this time in his presidency. Administration officials said the six nominees have been waiting an average of 114 days in the Senate. Another 73 candidates for politically appointed jobs, many of them judges, were awaiting confirmation when the Senate adjourned; Mr. Obama will have to renominate them if he wants them to serve.

Mr. Obama’s action will allow Mr. Cole and the other nominees — four ambassadors, as well as the official who runs the Government Printing Office — to serve for one year. The deputy White House chief of staff, Jim Messina, defended the move, saying Mr. Obama felt he had no choice, especially in Mr. Cole’s case.

“We’ve been working hard with the Republicans and have seen some movement forward,” said Mr. Messina, who is with the president here. “There were some that, for whatever reason, they could not help us with and we felt were mission critical, and clearly the deputy attorney general is a critical position to help enforce the laws of the land.”

Democrats applauded the move. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called Mr. Cole “highly qualified” and complained that Republicans had refused to debate his nomination for more than five months. “I believe that he would have been confirmed by the Senate had his nomination been given an up-or-down vote,” Mr. Leahy said. “The delays in considering his nomination were unnecessary and wrong.”

Aside from Mr. Cole, the nominees include four ambassadors: Matthew J. Bryza to Azerbaijan, Robert Stephen Ford to Syria, Frances J. Ricciardone Jr. to Turkey and Norman L. Eisen to the Czech Republic. The first three are career foreign service officers. Mr. Eisen is a top adviser to the president on ethics who has been an irritant to Republicans since his days as the founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that investigated the former House Republican leader Tom DeLay.

Mr. Obama also installed William J. Boarman as public printer of the United States.

All administrations face delays in getting their nominees confirmed, and the problem has been worse under Mr. Obama.

While aides to the president insist the delays are the product of Republican obstructionism, Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University who studies the presidential nomination process, says other factors are also at work. The number of Senate-confirmed positions is on the rise, nominees are required to submit substantial background information that requires extensive vetting, and a single senator can easily put a hold on any nominee.

“Obama has set the record for the slowest process since J.F.K.,” Mr. Light said, as measured by the length of time it has taken to get his first class of roughly 550 appointees confirmed. “It’s really a mess.”

Source:  The New York Times

Click on link to see video: CTA to offer penny rides on New Years Eve

A Cook County judge could rule as early as next week whether to uphold a Chicago Board of Election commissioners decision allowing Rahm Emanuel to run for mayor in the Feb. 22 election.

But first, legal counsel for Emanuel, President Obama’s one-time chief of staff, along with a veteran election attorney fighting Emanuel’s bid will have to argue their cases next Tuesday morning before Judge Mark Ballard.

Burt Odelson, the main attorney for those objecting to Emanuel’s presence on the ballot, said he expects the judge to make a ruling on the case after that hearing at Cook County Circuit Court. He again told reporters that Emanuel doesn’t meet the residency requirement to be on the ballot.

“He wasn’t a resident of the city of Chicago one year prior to the election — nothing’s changed,’’ Odelson told reporters Tuesday after a brief hearing.

But Emanuel, who returned to Chicago in the fall, has argued that he only relocated to Washington to work for the president. He pointed to his Ravenswood neighborhood home — which he rented out in his absence — as proof that he intended to return.

Last Thursday, the Chicago Board of Election commissioners sided with Emanuel, ruling his name should remain on the ballot.

Under state law, the judge will have to decide if the election board’s ruling went against “the manifest weight of the evidence.” If not, the ruling will stand. That puts a heavy burden on the lawyers seeking to bounce Emanuel from the ballot.

Although 30 objectors opposed Emanuel’s candidacy before the elections board, only Odelson filed an appeal with the court. None of the other 30 objectors had filed their own suits — and paid the $343 filing fee — as of mid-day Tuesday.

At the hearing Tuesday, Judge Ballard asked Odelson to reach out to the two other attorneys who represented some of the objectors before the election board to see if they planned to file suit before Tuesday night’s deadline.

Odelson, who said he preferred to argue his case solo to the judge, quipped, “I’ll do that first thing tomorrow.”

No matter the outcome, Odelson believes the case will end up before the state Supreme Court.

Source:  The Chicago Sun-Times

Several lawmakers said Tuesday that Gov. Pat Quinn has been discussing plans to borrow billions of dollars to help soak up the state’s pool of red ink, which could be a hard sell when legislators reconvene next month.

The Democratic governor has already advocated borrowing $3.7 billion to pay for this year’s pension debt, but the Senate — despite its supermajority of Democrats — has not approved it. So a massive bond sale to cover unpaid bills along with the state’s obligation to its retirement funds may not bode well in a legislature that will have more Republicans come January.

Experts believe the deficit will top $15 billion by June, the end of the current budget year.

Legislators said Quinn has not specified how much he wants to borrow, and Quinn’s office would not confirm that he’s considering a borrowing plan larger than the $3.7 billion to cover pensions.

“He’s working on a variety of options,” Quinn budget spokeswoman Kelly Kraft said. “He’s working with legislators on both sides of the aisle to come to a solution to stabilize the budget.”

Those include a 1 percentage point increase in the income tax, estimated to raise about $3.1 billion a year, which Quinn has said would go toward education funding and “responsible borrowing,” Kraft said.

The state owes $3.7 billion to cover pensions this year, but Quinn has been unable to persuade the Senate to approve a loan, which he said would save billions of dollars in interest over the years. The state would owe another $4 billion in the budget year that starts in July 2011, and entered this fiscal year with an unpaid-bill backlog of $6.5 billion.

Senate President John Cullerton has discussed a borrowing plan with Quinn, but is “encouraging the governor to focus on getting some action in the House” on an income tax increase, said Cullerton’s spokeswoman, Rikeesha Phelon.

She said she was unaware of a specific number, but Cullerton’s office said Quinn has in mind a loan larger than the $3.7 billion for pensions.

House Revenue and Finance Chairman John Bradley, a Marion Democrat, said Quinn’s people have floated a large-scale borrowing idea.

“It’s a moving target,” Bradley said. “Everything’s on the table right now. Everything’s being considered.”

Borrowing would make sense if the state gets a favorable interest rate and can consolidate debt, similar to what consumers would do to clean up their money situation, Bradley said.

Rep. Raymond Poe, R-Springfield, said he could support some level of borrowing, but he would first need to see how the state plans to repay the money.

“We need to see a plan first,” Poe said. “We can’t shoot from the hip and say, ‘This is going to work or this is not going to work.’ We have to have it in a whole plan. What scares me is they are going to try to ram this through in a few days of the last session.”

Sen. Larry Bomke, R-Springfield, also expressed concern with how the state would pay back its borrowing.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about (the governor’s proposal) and if there’s a plan to pay it back,” Bomke said Tuesday night. “That certainly would enter into whether I could support it or not.

“I’ve consistently been concerned about continued borrowing without any mechanism to pay it back.”

Governments take out loans routinely on construction projects that have longevity, but borrowing to pay ongoing operating expenses is typically ill-advised.

Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said such a loan would need a much shorter term than a bond for a highway or bridge so that carrying costs are less.

Mautino said it would have to be accompanied by a dedicated pot of money to pay it back, such as an income tax increase. Quinn’s proposed 1 percent hike wouldn’t be enough, he said.

An income tax increase won approval from the Senate in 2009 but never got a vote in the House.

The legislature returns to Springfield next week and has several days remaining before a new General Assembly is inaugurated Jan. 11. The plan to borrow $3.7 billion to pay this year’s pension obligation passed the House but has stalled in the Senate.

Source: The State Journal Register - The Oldest Newspaper in Illinois

Judge Henry Hudson, via Associated Press

Judge Henry E. Hudson, who invalidated part of the federal health care law this month.

The legal challenge to the Obama health care act has invigorated a dispute as old as the Constitution about the framers’ most nettlesome grant of power, which gives Congress treacherously broad authority to pass laws “necessary and proper” to carrying out its assigned responsibilities.

The cases, which are presumed to be headed to the Supreme Court, center on whether Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce is so expansive that it can require citizens to buy health insurance. But as the litigation advances, the “necessary and proper” clause is taking on greater prominence in briefs and oral arguments, with the Obama administration asserting that it shelters the insurance mandate and state officials arguing that it buries it.

Because the facts are novel — the courts have never addressed whether Americans can be penalized for not buying something — each side has managed to glean what it wants from the Supreme Court’s most recent guidance.

A spirited debate broke out in legal blogs this month after Judge Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., invalidated the insurance requirement in part by rejecting the administration’s necessary-and-proper defense. As that case and others move into the appellate courts, scholars are submitting friend-of-the-court briefs that focus on the meaning of necessary and proper.

Some forecast that by the time it gets to the Supreme Court, a case that seemed to be about the commerce clause may be fought largely on necessary-and-proper grounds.

“I think it’s going to be crucial,” said Randy E. Barnett, a Georgetown law professor who recently filed a brief, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, that assails the insurance mandate with a necessary-and-proper argument. “The necessary-and-proper clause is always lurking in these commerce clause cases.”

The necessary-and-proper clause sits at the end of Article I, Section 8, after 17 paragraphs that enumerate the powers delegated to Congress, ranging from the establishment of post offices to the declaration of war. It conveys authority “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.”

The clause’s potential to concentrate power in the national government — it became known as the “sweeping power” — caused consternation among anti-federalists during ratification. And the Supreme Court has struggled since to define its limits, in decisions from McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819 to United States v. Comstock last May.

The next refinement could well come when the Supreme Court considers the health care law, probably two years down the road. Three Federal District Court judges thus far have ruled on the merits of the case, with two upholding the insurance mandate and Judge Hudson invalidating it (but not blocking it pending appeal). A fourth judge is expected to rule next year.

The Justice Department, which represents the Obama administration, argues that the insurance requirement is constitutional under the commerce clause and allowed under the necessary-and-proper clause as a rational means to an appropriate end. It points to a series of Supreme Court precedents that interpret those provisions as allowing the regulation of “activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”

The act of not obtaining health insurance, the federal government’s lawyers contend, is effectively a decision to pay later rather than up front in a market that consumers cannot avoid. Such decisions, they say, have a substantial impact on the market because many of the uninsured cannot afford their care and shift costs to governments, hospitals and the privately insured.

Furthermore, the lawyers argue, the insurance mandate is essential — both necessary and proper — to making other changes work, particularly prohibitions on discrimination by insurers against those with pre-existing medical conditions.

“We’re not talking about downstream effects,” Ian H. Gershengorn, a Justice Department lawyer, told Judge Hudson at an October hearing. “We’re talking about the very thing that enforces insurance companies to comply with the regulations.”

The judge, however, agreed with Virginia’s attorney general that the necessary-and-proper clause could not prop up an otherwise unconstitutional provision. Virginia argued, and the judge agreed, that the insurance requirement, by regulating inactivity rather than activity, exceeds the limits of the commerce clause.

“The necessary-and-proper clause does not provide a safe sanctuary,” Judge Hudson wrote, because it “may only be constitutionally deployed when tethered to a lawful exercise of an enumerated power.”

That prompted online rebuttals from a number of legal scholars who argued that Judge Hudson’s misreading would render the necessary-and-proper clause meaningless.

“It reads the necessary-and-proper power out of the Constitution,” Andrew Koppelman, a Northwestern University law professor, wrote on the legal blog Balkinization, “because it won’t allow it to add anything to the enumerated powers.”

The Supreme Court’s seminal instruction came from Chief Justice John Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland, which upheld Congress’s right to incorporate a national bank. While the court found that the necessary-and-proper clause granted Congress broad authority, Marshall set outer limits by writing, “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional.”

The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., affirmed the scope of Congress’s authority 191 years later in the Comstock case, which upheld the federal government’s ability to detain sexual predators beyond their prison release dates. Writing for the court, Justice Stephen G. Breyer pointed out that the Constitution did not explicitly grant Congress the power to criminalize conduct or imprison offenders, but that the necessary-and-proper clause made each possible.

The court laid out five “considerations” to help determine whether a statute was in fact necessary and proper. Lawyers in the health care cases differ over whether those considerations constitute a test, and if so whether the insurance requirement would pass.

Each side has also found encouragement in Justice Antonin Scalia’s concurring opinion in the last significant commerce clause case. In Gonzales v. Raich in 2005, the majority found that the clause allowed the government to prosecute the possession of medical marijuana. Justice Scalia, while agreeing, wrote that the case should have hung on the necessary-and-proper clause.

Congress can regulate “even noneconomic local activity if that regulation is a necessary part of a more general regulation of interstate commerce,” he wrote.

That might provide solace to the administration, except that Justice Scalia used the words “activity” or “activities” 42 times in his ruling. The court has never been asked whether inactivity should receive the same blessing.

Source: The New York Times

This year, 81 percent of city schools failed what is called “adequate yearly progress” because too many kids didn’t pass reading and math tests, according to state records.

Mazany, the interim CPS chief, considers that an unfair measure because it doesn’t consider progress in other areas, such as graduation rates.

Several lawmakers and educators question whether CPS’ underlying challenge is its governance: Mayoral control may no longer be right, they say, and perhaps the system should have an elected school board like those in suburban districts, as well as an educator — not a CEO with business acumen — running schools.

“Urban education is a question mark across the nation,” said Clarice Berry, president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. “Nobody has been able to come up with an answer yet, and you need someone who understands the basics.”

State House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, a Chicago Democrat who voted against mayoral control 15 years ago, said she would be surprised if lawmakers switched direction.

Though some educators oppose mayoral control, “I don’t know if there is otherwise a huge public demand for going back the other way,” Currie said.

But with a new mayor coming in, Currie added, “It will be a new day dawning. Who knows?”

Source:  The Chicago Tribune

 Illinois is among 15 states sharing in $206 million in federal money for making significant progress in enrolling uninsured children in Medicaid.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the awards Monday. Illinois’ award amount is $14.9 million.

Funding for the performance bonuses was included in the 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization legislation.

To qualify, states must simplify enrollment and renewal processes and significantly increase the number of children insured through Medicaid.

Illinois also received a performance bonus last year.

Source:  The State Journal Register - The Oldest Newspaper in Illinois