* Eric Zorn tees off on the governor today. Zorn blasted Blagojevich for saying last week after the announcement of his $150 million anti-violence program…
“Children are being shot and killed. And for lawmakers to say we can’t do it, that’s exactly the reason why there’s so much violence out there today and so we’re just not gonna take ‘no’ for an answer.”
* Zorn…
In fact, last August… “no” was his answer to a remarkable anti-violence program: In cutting the state budget, he removed the entire $6.2 million allocation for CeaseFire.
* More from Zorn…
Friday, Northwestern University released a 229-page report concluding that gun violence dropped 17 percent to 24 percent in six of seven neighborhoods where CeaseFire mediators were in place.
The three-year study, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, offered the most striking proof yet that CeaseFire’s trained peacemakers—”violence interrupters,” who are often former gang members themselves—really do save a significant number of lives.
After Blagojevich cut funding to CeaseFire in August, 96 of the program’s 130 conflict mediators lost their jobs, according to founder and director Dr. Gary Slutkin, a University of Illinois at Chicago epidemiologist. CeaseFire’s analysis of police data suggests this has resulted in 170 additional shootings since September.
* Zorn goes on to point out that Blagojevich was an early backer of CeaseFire and that a House-approved bill to double CeaseFire’s appropriation is still sitting in the Senate Rules Committee, “where Senate President Emil Jones sends legislation to die.”
“Pass that bill and I’ll sign it!” Blagojevich did not say last week.
He should have.
* The State Journal-Register takes another whack at Gov. Blagojevich, this time over prison closings…
If Pontiac closes, 800 inmates would go to the Mississippi River facility, with the rest being shipped all over the state. Had Stateville’s wing closed, 400 prisoners would have moved to Thomson. Meanwhile, [a Department of Corrections spokesman] said 800 would have gone to — you guessed it — Pontiac.
If it strikes you as odd that a prison now in the governor’s cross-hairs was, until last week, part of the solution for another prison’s partial closure, welcome to wacky Illinois. Indeed, shuttering Stateville would produce an advertised first-year savings of $31 million. Boarding up Pontiac would supposedly save $4 million annually. We’ve yet to see an apples-to-apples comparison. […]
Is the governor’s reversal politically inspired, then? Did it happen because the legislator representing Stateville, state Sen. A.J. Wilhelmi, is a Democrat like the governor, while Rutherford is a Republican? Or because Rutherford supported putting a recall measure on the ballot, while Wilhelmi took a pass?
Good questions.
* Meanwhile, Dawn Clark Netsch had some harsh words for Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn…
Netsch was quoted in 1980 suggesting that Quinn should be strung feet-first from the third-floor brass rail in the Capitol rotunda. Her opinion hasn’t softened much in the years since.
“The showboating, the press conference every Sunday. … It was always, ‘We’re doing it for the people,’” recalled Netsch, now a law professor at Northwestern University in Evanston. “Put it this way: There are other people I would rather see as governor.”
* Rep. Bill Black had another view…
“Had you been here 25 or 30 years ago, I don’t think people would have said ‘Pat Quinn’ and ‘governor’ in the same sentence,” said longtime state Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville. “They do now.”