#il-gov

The Bruce Rauner shutdown begins in Illinois #RaunerShutdown

Starting today, Illinois state government employees won’t get their paychecks that they earned because Republican Governor Bruce Rauner shut down our state’s government and is holding the people of Illinois as political hostages because he wants a series of non-fiscal political policy proposals, which don’t belong in the state budget, to be rammed into law as part of the state budget.

The…

La Salle County, Illinois Board overwhelmingly opposes Bruce Rauner's wage theft agenda #StopWageTheft

With 23 members of the La Salle County, Illinois Board voting in favor of a non-binding resolution opposing Bruce Rauner’s wage theft agenda, 2 members voting in opposition, and 4 members not voting either in favor or in opposition for whatever reason, the La Salle County, Illinois Board has officially adopted a resolution opposing Bruce Rauner’s wage theft agenda:

The La Salle County Board…

Bruce Rauner gets ZERO support in the Illinois House for his wage theft agenda #RaunerFAIL #StopWageTheft

Democratic Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan scheduled a vote in the state house on Republican Governor Bruce Rauner’s wage theft agenda, and not a single member of the Illinois House of Representatives voted for the legislation, although most of the Republicans voted “present” instead of actually voting against it, presumably because they’re too scared of actually taking a stance on whether or…

Illinois Supreme Court UNANIMOUSLY throws out pension theft scheme #StopPensionTheftIL

This is a couple of days old, but I have great news to share:

The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled unconstitutional a landmark state pension law that aimed to scale back government worker benefits to erase a massive $105 billion retirement system debt, sending lawmakers and the new governor back to the negotiating table to try to solve the pressing financial issue.

The ruling…

Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner reversed an executive order by the previous governor that briefly required state vendors to pay their employees at least $10/hour. With Rauner’s new executive order, state vendors in Illinois can now get away with paying their employees only $8.25/hour, the current state minimum wage for most wage-earners:

Ten weeks after the Illinois election, Gov. Bruce…

SPRINGFIELD — In a newly unearthed radio interview, Republican private equity investor Bruce Rauner admitted earlier this year that he once favored the outright elimination of Illinois’ minimum wage.

That little-known acknowledgment marked the first time the multimillionaire from Winnetka is known to have gone on the record as having ever favored ditching the state’s $8.25-an-hour minimum wage entirely for 1.1 million Illinois workers.

Targeting that voting bloc, the minimum wage issue has been at the heart of Democratic efforts to hold on to the Executive Mansion. Once again drawing attention to the issue, Gov. Pat Quinn announced this week that he planned to go seven days living on the minimum wage to dramatize the plight of the state’s working poor and to underscore the need for hiking the state's $8.25-an-hour minimum wage.

While acknowledging that he once supported an elimination of the minimum wage, Rauner said later in that Jan. 10, 2014, interview on Bloomington-based WJBC-AM that either ending or reducing the state’s minimum wage to the lower national standard, as he advocated during a candidates’ forum in the Quad Cities last December, was ill-advised on his part.

“I have said, on a number of occasions, that we could have a lower minimum wage or no minimum wage as part of increasing Illinois’ competitiveness. I’ve said that many times,” Rauner told WJBC host Scott Laughlin.

“It’s a mistake for me to focus on lowering the minimum wage or eliminating it because there are better ways to increase Illinois’ competitiveness,” Rauner said at the time.

RELATED ANALYSIS:  Emanuel signs executive order raising living wage to $13 an hour What if Illinois raised the minimum wage?

Rauner appeared on Laughlin’s program to tamp down the possible impact of a series of Chicago Sun-Times stories at the beginning of the year that outlined how Rauner, in the span of five months, had staked out three conflicting positions on the minimum wage.

Last September, Rauner told a downstate audience that he was “adamantly, adamantly opposed” to raising Illinois’ minimum wage. Then in December, he proposed moving Illinois’ rate back to the national $7.25-an-hour rate.

Last January, he said that stance from December was “flippant” and a mistake and said he’d be open to actually increasing Illinois’ minimum wage if it was paired with business-friendly reforms.

Rauner’s campaign stopped short Wednesday of saying Rauner misspoke in the interview with his first-of-its-kind radio mention about eliminating the minimum wage.

“In this interview, Bruce acknowledges — as he has repeatedly — that his past statements about the minimum wage were a mistake and he supports a federal minimum wage increase that would raise Illinois’ minimum wage and he supports raising the state minimum wage in conjunction with pro-business reforms,” Rauner spokesman Mike Schrimpf told Early & Often, the Chicago Sun-Times online political portal. “The online story that accompanied the interview also confirms that.”

Quinn’s campaign pounced on the new disclosure.

“We’re not surprised to learn that Republican billionaire Bruce Rauner advocated eliminating the minimum wage just this year. This is his real position, the one he’s trying to hide from voters to get elected,” Quinn spokeswoman Brooke Anderson said.

“Whether he’s dropping $140,000 on a luxury wine membership or pushing to eliminate the minimum wage, Bruce Rauner is the most out-of-touch candidate for governor in Illinois history,” she said.

The Rauner camp countered that the attack was mere political diversion from fallout over a patronage hiring scandal during Quinn’s watch at the Illinois Department of Transportation.

“This is simply another misleading attack from a governor desperate to distract from the fact that he handed out illegal patronage jobs to political cronies at the expense of our veterans,” Schrimpf said.

Tea Partier Sam McCann considering independent or third-party run for governor

The conservative blog Illinois Review is reporting that Republican State Senator Sam McCann of Carlinville, who is considered to be an ultra-conservative Republican, especially on social issues, is considering a run for governor as either an independent candidate or as a member of a minor political party:

Although no official statement has come from State Senator Sam McCann, rumors persist that…