* This is what happens when you are a good campaigner and a mediocre governor, and when your good campaign sensibilities don’t translate into sound governing…
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has suspended a prison program that allowed repeat drunk drivers, drug users and even people convicted of battery and weapons violations to serve less than three weeks’ total time behind bars.
Records obtained and analyzed by The Associated Press show that since September more than 850 inmates were released weeks earlier than they ordinarily would be. The Corrections Department was saving money by abandoning a policy that requires inmates to serve at least 61 days and awarding them discretionary good-conduct credit immediately upon entering prison.
That means some prisoners have enough good-conduct days to qualify for release almost immediately — before they’ve had a chance to demonstrate any conduct at all. The inmates are kept at the department’s prison processing centers and released after as few as 11 days.
Jorge Bogas spent just 18 days behind bars for aggravated driving under the influence after he hit two cars, hospitalizing one motorist for weeks, while driving the wrong direction on Interstate 57. Bogas sat five days in Cook County Jail, was transferred to the processing center at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet and released 13 days later.
The campaign self-preservation mode only kicked in when campaigner Quinn was notified about what Gov. Quinn was doing. Typical. Dan Hynes responds via press release…
“The details emerging about the Quinn administration’s secret prisoner release program are deeply troubling, and I think the people of Illinois deserve answers. The Governor’s decision to suspend this program is the right one, and I support his pledge to conduct a ‘top-to-bottom’ review. Given the apparent confusion and misinformation on display yesterday surrounding this program, I would encourage Governor Quinn to begin his review at the top, starting with himself and his top staff. The people of Illinois have the right to know who implemented this program, who signed off on it, whether anyone, and who, will be held accountable, and ultimately, who is in charge on such obvious issues of public safety.
“Given the Governor’s recent misadventures in transparency — including the abrupt resignation of a top aide amid an inquiry for politicking on state time, his refusal to acknowledge his campaign’s effort to knock an opponent off the ballot, and his administration’s outright refusal to allow a news outlet to investigate allegations of decrepit conditions at one of our state’s juvenile justice centers — where the press and the public have been stonewalled on matters large and small, I encourage this review to be conducted in public. Furthermore, given the potential immediate safety risk to communities across Illinois, I strongly encourage the review to be completed and the public made fully aware of its findings within a matter of days. Governor Quinn’s pattern of appointing blue-ribbon commissions will not suffice on this matter.”
* AFSCME decided Saturday to remain neutral in the governor’s race. That’s been anticipated for quite some time, but it’s still a big blow to Hynes because it shows that the state employees union isn’t confident that he can defeat Quinn, with whom the union will have to deal after the election.
* Meanwhile, my statewide, syndicated weekly newspaper column takes another look at the politics of the budget…
Last week we all celebrated - or bemoaned - the first anniversary of Rod Blagojevich’s arrest. After Blagojevich was impeached and removed from the governor’s office, I, like most others, thought things were going to be different with Pat Quinn in charge.
But the Statehouse bickering continues, and the gridlock over the state’s paralyzing and mind-boggling budget deficit is almost as bad as ever. Heck, it may even be worse.
You probably know by now that Gov. Quinn wants to take out a $500 million short-term loan and use about half of it to help pay some of the state’s bills during the holiday season - particularly focusing on private, not-for-profit human service agencies that take care of the poor, the infirm and the aged.
Comptroller Dan Hynes and Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias both must sign off on the borrowing, but Hynes said “no” earlier this month. Among other things, Hynes says there’s no money to pay off the loan and likened the idea to using one credit card to pay down another one. Ironically enough, Quinn nixed a similar idea when he was state treasurer back in the 1990s.
After much back-and-forth bickering between Quinn and Hynes, things seemed to calm down for a few days. Then, Quinn said last week that he wasn’t going to continue harping on Hynes’ refusal to approve the borrowing plan. At the same time, though, he couldn’t resist getting in a shot at his Democratic primary opponent and even attempted to link him to the disgraced Blagojevich.
“A year ago, with the previous governor under arrest, the comptroller signed off on a $1.4 billion short-term borrowing plan,” Quinn said. “I don’t know, if you’re going to do that, at that time, and a year later, running for office, saying you can’t borrow money to help human beings get paid in the month of December, the holiday season … I think he’s missing the boat on that.”
Quinn then said he was dropping the subject.
“But we’re not going to beat that horse,” he said. “If (Hynes) has his position, we just have to move on.”
But it was clear a couple of days later that Quinn was not at all intending to “move on.” Quinn addressed the Governor’s Conference on Aging last week and pledged to “get the necessary funds to pay our bills,” then added, “even if the comptroller is blocking my plan.”
AARP Illinois also held a news conference that day to warn that 200 human services agencies that deal with senior citizens could be out of business in a matter of weeks if the state doesn’t start making good on its overdue bills soon.
Hynes may be right about the narrow fiscal issues at hand - that there is no available money to pay off the proposed loan, that the state will need to use a third of its revenues to pay off its short-term loans in March and April and that the new loan would cover only 5 percent of the state’s overdue bills - but this is a political time bomb, particularly in a Democratic primary race. We’re talking about human service agencies that serve lots of poor people. It doesn’t take a media expert to figure out how to spin that one.
Of course, this would’ve been a much more effective bludgeon had Quinn not so thoroughly muffed the issue earlier this month by attacking Hynes with the false claim that Giannoulias was supporting the loan.
Still, we can expect more and more stories on this growing crisis. It’s the holidays, and this is a ready-made story for the season. Quinn can come off looking compassionate, while Hynes is in real danger of being portrayed as a fussbudget who is more worried about numbers and making Quinn look bad in advance of the primary than he is about real people.
Chicago’s WLS-TV (Channel 7) - the top-rated news station in the region - ran its second long story on this topic last week. In the piece, Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) is featured, demanding that political leaders “put aside our partisan differences, our political aspirations, and take emergency action now.”
That’s the sort of comment we undoubtedly will see more of as the rest of the media begins to pay attention to this topic. It’s a high-stakes game. Unfortunately, there are a lot of “little people” in the middle who are melting down while the state dithers.
* Related…
* State disciplines few nursing home administrators
* Several Illinois governor candidates say ethics reform law fell short
* Gov. hopefuls weigh in on crime, punishment
* Hynes scoops up a major union nod in race for governor
* Quinn taps former congressional candidate to lead anti-discrimination panel
* Gov. Quinn appoints new chair to human rights commission
* Thomson reacts to leaked memo
* Memo Says Thomson Prison will House Gitmo Detainees
* Memo may point to IL as site for Gitmo detainees
* Gitmo detainees coming to Illinois?
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