* More like this, please…
Most insulting to voters’ intelligence is the special session to address education funding. Blagojevich, ever the factual contortionist, probably plans to somehow blame the state’s education funding crisis on Madigan from a stage at the Illinois State Fair after Tuesday’s special session.
In fact, Blagojevich is the reason there have been no reforms in the disgraceful way education is funded in this state because of his refusal to consider an increase in the income taxes.
Actually, Blagojevich already did blame Madigan for the problem, even though the governor has only once offered any real ideas on rethinking how the state should fund education. And what was that? A gross receipts tax and gaming expansion.
* More from the editorial…
The sad irony of the current feud pitting Blagojevich and Jones against Madigan is that in their hearts, Madigan and Jones probably agree that a tax swap is the right solution for the state’s schools.
But Jones chooses to be Blagojevich’s chief enabler, a sad choice by a man who once seemed to want his legacy to be fixing the state’s education funding problem once and for all.
The really “sad choice” was made last year, after the governor’s reelection, when the time was ripe to wipe away decades of inaction. Instead, the governor’s massive GRT proposal - and Jones’ support for it - poisoned the waters. Jones had his shot to forever enshrine himself as the father of education funding reform and he blew it.
* Kadner weighs in…
[Blagojevich is] calling the special session primarily to embarrass his political rival, House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), whom the governor contends is planning an income tax increase after the November election.
As for Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), he’s talked a lot about the need for school funding reform but has never allowed Meeks to get his bill on the Senate floor for a vote.
State Sen. Debbie Halvorson (D-Crete) has never been an activist in the school reform movement that had its birth in the south suburbs.
Now she’s running for Congress. Will Jones, her mentor, force Halvorson to take a position on such a controversial issue when any vote will surely be used by her Republican opponent during the campaign?
Good point. Anytime a Majority Leader tries to move up the political ladder, every legislative action can be pinned right to her lapel.
* And Sen. James Meeks talks about how he was burned by Gov. Blagojevich on the Lottery sale, an education funding promise the governor used to get Meeks out of the 2006 gubernatorial race and then forgot about after the election…
“He never discussed with me why he let it drop,” Meeks said. “He never said, ‘I made this promise to you, but I can’t keep it.’ I just had to suffer embarrassment in front of all my colleagues, and I had to listen to reporters in Springfield tell me that I got the shaft.”
“Meeks should feel betrayed by his colleagues in the General Assembly” who have not OK’d any of Blagojevich’s school-funding plans, gubernatorial spokesman Lucio Guerrero said.
But it’s Blagojevich who has created the poisonous atmosphere of mistrust in which the legislature will convene in special sessions next week to consider his other, other lottery-lease idea (this time it’s to help pay for a $25 billion construction plan) and to address school-funding reform.
Exactly.
* Related…
* Tribune: In return for more money …
* Hey, New Trier: Solve this crisis