Quantcast
Channel: Illinois Civil Justice League » adomite
Viewing all 762 articles
Browse latest View live
↧

April 16, 2015

April 16, 2015, 8:15 am
$
0
0
College Of DuPage Under Federal Investigation
From the Chicago Tribune
In a sign of intensifying scrutiny of the College of DuPage, federal prosecutors have opened a wide-ranging criminal investigation at the embattled community college, issuing two subpoenas this week that seek documents tied to spending and other matters, according to records obtained late Wednesday.
The subpoenas, which were served to college administrators Monday, cover three main areas: administrator expenses, contracts with the college's fundraising foundation and credits awarded to police recruits at a law enforcement academy on the Glen Ellyn campus.
The subpoenas come as the publicly funded college has been grappling with tough questions about spending and financial oversight, including the awarding of one of the largest severance packages ever to a public employee in Illinois to its president, Robert Breuder.
The school released the subpoenas in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Chicago Tribune.
"The College of DuPage and the College of DuPage Foundation are confident in the proper conduct of their affairs and will fully cooperate with any government investigation," said Randall Samborn, who has been hired to handle crisis communications for the school.
The subpoenas, from a federal grand jury, present the state's largest community college with new legal and public relations problems. They follow a Tribune investigation that raised questions about everything from the spending of top administrators at the campus's high-end restaurant to the decision to give additional academic credits in a program without increasing the amount of training.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon declined to comment Wednesday.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧
Search

April 17, 2015

April 17, 2015, 7:15 am
$
0
0
Judge Kolker To Preside Over Employee Unions’ Lawsuit Against Gov. Rauner
From the Madison County Record
St. Clair County Associate Judge Christopher Kolker will preside over a suit that state employee unions filed against Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Chief Judge John Baricevic assigned the suit to Kolker on April 10, after it had passed through the hands of two county judges and three federal judges.
The unions challenge an order Rauner signed in February, prohibiting them from deducting money from paychecks of workers who don’t belong to the unions.
According to Rauner, forcing employees to support the unions violates their rights of free speech and free association under the U.S. Constitution.
Rauner sued the unions first, seeking judicial approval of his action at U.S. district court in Chicago. He created an escrow account to hold payments that the unions would normally collect, in case the unions prevailed in the dispute.
The unions then sued him in St. Clair County, claiming his order exceeded his authority under the Illinois Constitution.
Baricevic assigned the suit to circuit judge Stephen McGlynn, but the unions moved for a substitute judge.
Any party to a civil suit in Illinois can exercise a right of substitution once, if the judge has not made a substantive ruling.
After McGlynn granted substitution, Rauner removed the suit to U.S. district court in East St. Louis.
Rauner intended to move for transfer and consolidation with his suit in Chicago, but the unions moved to remand the suit to St. Clair County.
U.S. district judges Phil Gilbert and Nancy Rosenstengel recused themselves, and the assignment passed to District Judge Staci Yandle.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧
↧

April 20, 2015

April 20, 2015, 5:28 am
$
0
0
BND Editorial: Workers’ Comp Isn’t Finished
From the Belleville News-Democrat
In 2011, Illinois lawmakers took a bunch of victory laps for their workers’ comp “reforms.” But four years later, those reforms have produced minimal savings.
Businesses in Illinois did see their workers’ comp premiums drop, but not by much. Illinois had the fourth highest rates in the nation in 2012; now Illinois has the seventh highest. That’s not the way to create a competitive edge for Illinois or to persuade other companies to move here – especially because other Midwestern states have much more favorable workers’ comp rates. Missouri is 21st on the premium list out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia; Indiana is 50th.
The reason for such minimal improvement is that lawmakers didn’t reform the causation standard. In Illinois a worker’s job doesn’t have to be the sole cause of an injury, or even the primary cause. With those loose standards, it’s no wonder that premiums remain so high.
It’s time for lawmakers to raise the standards on causation and put Illinois on a level playing field with our neighbors.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

April 21, 2015

April 21, 2015, 5:03 am
$
0
0
Law Schools Try To Adapt As Job Market Sours
From the Washington Post
Law schools across the country are facing their lowest enrollment numbers in years, causing some to slash their budgets and revamp their programs in an effort to attract students worried about finding a job in a diminished legal industry.
Just over 41,000 people applied to go to an accredited U.S. law school in the most recent admissions cycle, compared with 77,000 in 2010 and 90,000 in 2004, according to the Law School Admission Council. Even top-ranked Harvard Law School witnessed a drop in applications before rebounding in the last two years.
Poor enrollment is hurting the bottom line at some schools. Washington and Lee’s School of Law said it plans to cut 12 positions in the fall, while Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School delivered pink slips to more than half of its faculty and staff members last summer.
Going to law school used to feel like a no-brainer for college graduates seeking financial security. But that calculus has changed, with many firms that suffered during the recession still struggling to fully recover. Last month, Wiley Rein, one of the Washington area’s biggest law firms, cut 48 attorneys and staff members, an estimated 9?percent of its overall workforce.
“It’s still really difficult for first-years. I’m seeing people with good credentials from good law schools struggling to get jobs,” said Darin Morgan, a partner at Major, Lindsey & Africa, a legal recruitment firm.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

April 22, 2015

April 22, 2015, 5:25 am
$
0
0
Chicago Sued Over Police Department's Alleged Stop-And-Frisk Practices
From the Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Police Department's controversial stop-and-frisk policy has routinely violated the constitutional rights of mostly African-Americans who have not committed any crime, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday.
The suit was filed on behalf of six African-American men from the South and West sides and seeks class-action status. The defendants are the city, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and 14 unnamed police officers.
The 36-page lawsuit alleged that the "suspicionless" street stops have led to constitutional abuses including unlawful searches and seizures as well as excessive force.
According to plaintiff Gregory Davis, police officers stopped him in July 2014 while he waited in his vehicle on South Stony Island Avenue for a family member to come out of a Walgreens store. Officers asked Davis, 58, why he was sitting there and demanded his driver's license and insurance information, the lawsuit alleged.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧
↧

April 23, 2015

April 23, 2015, 5:40 am
$
0
0
Lynn Sweet: Springfield Bill Would Make It Harder To Sue To Block Obama Library, Lucas Museum
From the Chicago Sun-Times
Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants lawmakers in Springfield to approve legislation to make it harder to successfully sue to prevent building on city parkland the Obama Presidential Library complex and the museum for Star Wars creator George Lucas.
The attempted end run around lawsuits came in a measure drafted by the city and sponsored by state Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago. He introduced the legislation on Wednesday, and in a matter of hours it sprinted through a committee vote.
Raoul told the Sun-Times there were no objections to his amendment and he expected a Senate vote on Thursday in Springfield.
I reported on April 14 that the decision was made to locate the Obama library, museum and presidential center in Chicago - with a determination to be made later this year whether the facility would be in Jackson Park or Washington Park. Raoul represents these South Side communities.
But before the Chicago-based Barack Obama Foundation makes the announcement - not expected for several weeks - the foundation and the city wanted to minimize threats from any potential lawsuit. A foundation spokesman told the Sun-Times the city consulted with the foundation about the legislation.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

April 24, 2015

April 24, 2015, 5:39 am
$
0
0
I-LAW ‘Reform Rally’ Will Push Legislators To Take Up Civil Justice
From the Madison County Record
Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch will host its second “Rally for Lawsuit Reform” in an effort to create awareness and inform state legislators about the need for lawsuit reform in Illinois.
The rally will be held on April 29 at the state Capitol in Springfield.
As the first governor in more than a decade to embrace lawsuit reform, Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration has made the environment in Springfield much more welcoming compared to last year’s event, said I-LAW Executive Director Travis Akin.
“The most important take away here is that we want to communicate to lawmakers the importance of judicial reform,” Akin said.
Akin added that it is crucial for Illinois lawmakers to hear from “real” people concerned about the state’s clogged courtrooms, and the rally provides an opportunity for citizens to be heard.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

Group Says Lawsuits Continue To Bring Down Illinois’ Economy

April 24, 2015, 5:43 am
$
0
0
From the Belleville News-Democrat
A business-backed group that keeps tabs on Illinois courts says it has conducted a new study showing litigation hurts the state’s economic growth.
The Illinois Civil Justice League’s president, John Pastuovic, said the study, called Litigation Imbalance III, “has uncovered disturbing data that shows why business has been hesitant to invest in Illinois and has taken meaningful jobs elsewhere.”
The group says a problematic volume of lawsuit filings “has deepened in Cook County, intensified in Madison and St. Clair counties, and taken root in downstate Jackson, Jefferson and Williamson counties.”
“Creating new and meaningful jobs is the solution for nearly every major issue facing Illinois today,” Pastuovic said. “Unfortunately, the data detailed in this report as well as the findings in other national studies have made small, medium and large companies justifiably gunshy about our state. Businesses cannot and will not reinvest in Illinois until these established, deep-rooted and documented problems are addressed once and for all.”
↧
Search

April 27, 2015

April 27, 2015, 12:17 pm
$
0
0
Madison County Jury Rules For Doctors In Med Mal Case; Plaintiff Had Sought $2 Million
From the Madison County Record
A Madison County jury returned a defense verdict in a medical malpractice lawsuit on Friday, concluding that Drs. Tibor Kopjas and Michael Mandis did not violate standards of care in treating a patient’s MRSA infection from an IV site.
The jury, consisting of eight women and four men, reached their decision after deliberating just over an hour on the fifth day of trial in Circuit Judge William Mudge’s court.
Plaintiff Fred Simon’s daughter Stacey Luber sued Kopjas, Mandis, Anderson Hospital and others in 2006 claiming the defendants failed to timely and properly diagnose and treat Simon for bacterial sepsis. Simon later died on Aug. 17, 2005. According to the court record, cause of death was pneumonia.
Only Kopjas and Mandis remained as defendants at trial. Kopjas was Simon’s primary care physician. Mandis made rounds at the hospital for Kopjas during the decedent’s hospitalization.
Plaintiff attorney Colleen Jones of St. Louis began closing arguments on Friday morning. She established that while Simon, 76, did suffer “some underlying problems,” such as diabetes and kidney failure, he was a relatively active man. She added that experts suspected he had roughly 10 more years in life expectancy.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧
↧

April 28, 2015

April 28, 2015, 6:38 am
$
0
0
Rauner: 'Moral' Duty To Take Illinois Back From Unions, 'Corrupt' Insiders
From Crain's Chicago Business
With a series of titanic budget votes coming up fast, Gov. Bruce Rauner went into full campaign mode today, depicting himself as a man on a sacred mission to break the hold that "corrupt" insiders and labor unions have on the state's government and economy.
Speaking to a friendly business group here in Chicago, the state's new GOP governor appeared to pull no punches and signaled no interest in compromise—and, if anything, he seemed to lengthen the list of things on his agenda.
"We have a moral duty to act," Rauner told the Alliance for Illinois Manufacturing. "We have a duty to minimize how much we have to take from you. That money belongs to taxpayers."
Right now, Rauner said, "the unions control everything. There is not a school district in America that can withstand a strike of over a week." The result, especially here in Illinois, is "higher taxes. Deficit spending. It's a conflict of interest we've got to take care of."
Alluding to "tough votes" that will occur within a month or two in Springfield, Rauner said "special interests" are "yelling and screaming and trying to intimidate the process." But they have so weakened the Illinois economy that a "crisis has created the opportunity for structural change."
Rauner called for five changes in particular: "real reform" of the state's worker compensation system; tort reform to prevent trial lawyers from controlling the judiciary through campaign contributions; trimming the state's "uncompetitive" unemployment insurance program; a freeze of at least two years on "the nation's highest property taxes"; and "allowing local governments to decide for themselves" whether to ban closed union shops at private employers.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

April 29, 2015

April 29, 2015, 6:38 am
$
0
0
St. Clair County Steps In As Lead Plaintiff In Class Action Against Guardrail Maker Trinity Industries
From the Madison County Record
When Hamilton County dropped out as a class action client for Swansea attorney David Cates, he found a new client in the St. Clair County government that his family helped to elect.
On Feb. 20, two weeks after the firm of Cates and Mahoney filed a complaint for St. Clair County as lead plaintiff in a federal suit over highway guardrails, the firm gave $250 to the campaign fund of county board chairman Mark Kern.
That check followed a long trail of Cates family contributions to St. Clair County Democrats and their central committee, adding up to $17,505 since 1999.
Last year Cates and Mahoney gave $500 to county treasurer Charles Suarez, $450 to judicial candidate Heinz Rudolf, and $250 each to Kern and the central committee. In 2013, the firm gave $650 to the central committee and $400 to Suarez.
In 2011 and 2012, before Cates teamed with Ryan Mahoney, his firm gave $2,000 to the central committee, $600 to judge Vincent Lopinot, $400 to Suarez, and $200 to coroner Rick Stone.
Cates’s father, former county highway engineer Darrell Cates, gave $6,750 to the central committee and $500 each to Kern and Judge John Baricevic from 1999 to 2007.
Cates’s mother, Fifth District appellate judge Judy Cates, gave $1,200 to Suarez and $180 to the central committee last year.
Neither Kern nor state’s attorney Brendan Kelly returned calls asking how St. Clair County involved itself in the suit.
Minutes of county board meetings in December and January don’t mention it.
Cates and Mahoney sued Trinity Industries in November, on behalf of Hamilton and Macon counties. They alleged that Trinity concealed dangerous defects.
They sought restitution for wrongful profits and an injunction requiring replacement of guardrails on every county road in Illinois.
On Feb. 6, Cates and Mahoney amended their complaint to remove Hamilton County and install St. Clair County as lead plaintiff.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

April 30, 2015

April 30, 2015, 6:53 am
$
0
0
Illinois County Does Booming Business In Asbestos Lawsuits
From the Associated Press
Few of the tourists who drive old Route 66 through this rural Illinois town are aware of its true economic engine: a booming business in asbestos lawsuits that attracts law firms from across the country.
Since 2005, those lawsuits have generated a $14 million surplus for Edwardsville and solidified Madison County's place at the center of a long-running national debate over personal-injury claims.
A decade after former President George W. Bush came here to tout class-action lawsuit limits, the number of asbestos suits has reached record levels, with caseloads that surpass specialized courts in far larger cities such as New York, Chicago and Baltimore.
Lawsuits have also proliferated in smaller industrial communities such as Beaumont, Texas, and Charleston, West Virginia, but Edwardsville is the smallest and perhaps most unlikely of the bunch, with just 24,000 residents. The city 30 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri, is better known for its historic downtown and the scenic drive along the nearby Mississippi River.
From 2012 through 2014, an average of 1,500 lawsuits claiming injury or death from asbestos were filed in Madison County — a nearly threefold increase from just five years earlier. By comparison, a Philadelphia court that specializes in personal-injury complaints involving birth-control devices, denture creams and other consumer products averaged a little more than 300 asbestos lawsuits over the same time period — in a city nearly 65 times larger than Edwardsville.
Madison County has the highest rate of lawsuits filed in Illinois, 8.2 per thousand residents in 2013, according to a report issued this month by the Illinois Civil Justice League. That's twice as many as filed in Cook County, home to Chicago.
The group Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch rallied Wednesday at the state Capitol to highlight concerns about the legal system, including the asbestos courts. They will find a sympathetic ear in Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who is pushing legislation to make it more difficult for plaintiffs to "venue shop," saying people should only file lawsuits in the county where a company has an office.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

May 1, 2015

May 1, 2015, 6:36 am
$
0
0
Liberals Form Kennedy-chaired Think Tank In Chicago
From Crain's Chicago Business
Leading Illinois liberals are forming a well-endowed think tank here, hoping to offset the influence of Gov. Bruce Rauner and resurgent conservative Republicans.
Innovation Illinois will be led by former aides to ex-Gov. Pat Quinn with a board chaired by Christopher Kennedy, who recently stepped down as chair of the University of Illinois board. Focusing on research and public commentary, it is designed to be a sort of counterweight to the Illinois Policy Institute, a libertarian group that has rolled out policy papers on pensions and other items and helped staff Rauner's administration.
"Too often in Springfield, the debates leave out the poor and the working class," said co-founder John Kamis, a former city staff member and attorney who oversaw Quinn's performance-based budgeting panel. "Good policy moves from the inside out. We want to provide a voice."
The new group is "a progressive think tank" designed to "look at the best policies and practices in other states," said interim CEO Michelle Saddler, who was secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services and briefly served as Quinn's chief of staff. The state can't just "cater to the job creators and the rich," she said. "We're going to provide a counterbalancing voice."
Kennedy is traveling out of the country and was unavailable for comment.
Some other fairly well-known folks who will serve on the Innovation Illinois board with him include Chicago Federation of Labor President Jorge Ramirez, Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economist Roger Myerson, Willis Group Managing Partner John Atkinson and Jay Rowell, a former deputy secretary at the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
The message the group really wants to get out is that "sometimes, government does things that are good," Saddler said. That means talking about issues such as education, labor, health care and entrepreneurism—and most particularly about big budget cuts that Rauner has proposed in most of those areas, he said.
The group has received "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in financial backing, with the source of some but not all of it eventually to be disclosed, Kamis said. The group will not formally lobby or endorse candidates.
"We're not a PAC," he said. "We're a research organization."
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧
↧

May 4, 2015

May 4, 2015, 8:00 am
$
0
0
Rauner, Business Groups Push For Illinois Workers' Compensation Changes
From the Chicago Tribune
When state lawmakers approved broad changes to Illinois' workers' compensation insurance system in 2011, supporters hoped employers would save at least $500 million a year after medical fees for doctors who treat injured employees were scaled back and changes were put in place aimed at reducing fraud.
Four years later, major business groups say they've seen just a fraction of those savings. They're pushing for more stringent regulations in the system that doles out money to workers injured on the job. And this time, they've got a new power player on their side — Gov. Bruce Rauner.
The Republican governor has made workers' compensation changes part of his pro-business agenda, a sweeping series of proposals that include limiting damage awards in civil lawsuits, scaling back the influence of labor unions and doing away with prevailing wage laws that set pay for taxpayer-funded construction programs.
Much of Rauner's agenda is a tough sell to Democratic lawmakers allied with labor unions and trial lawyers that are staunchly opposed to it, and as a result few at the Capitol expect he'll get all of it passed. But one area that might be ripe for compromise is workers' compensation reform, given that lawmakers already agreed to an overhaul in recent years and there's wiggle room to negotiate further changes.
On Tuesday, Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan will convene the chamber in a rare committee of the whole meeting to allow all 118 members to hear testimony on the workers' compensation issue. Meanwhile, Rauner has put together his own group of lawmakers to examine the topic.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

May 5, 2015

May 6, 2015, 6:50 am
$
0
0
Illinois Among Five 'Sinkhole States' In Post Great Recession America
From Reboot Illinois
When cruising around downtown Chicago, nothing is worse for your tire than driving over a pothole. The streets of Chicago are full of potholes caused by the winter weather. Every day, road construction clogs up the traffic in the streets and yet still there are potholes.
It seems to be an unending situation — much like the state of Illinois’ accumulation of debt.
While financial conditions in many states have shown improvement in the years after the recession that began in 2008, the economies of Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey continue to deteriorate.
These five states are being called “sinkholes” by Truth in Accounting, a nonprofit think tank in Chicago that analyzes state data, because they have the highest debt per taxpayer after available assets are tapped.
Here is a chart from TIA’s sister website, State Data Lab, comparing the increase in debt from the recession until recently, for the five sinkhole states. Click here to view an interactive version of the chart.
Illinois’ state economy ranks 49th out of 50 states.
Although it does not rank beneath Connecticut, (Connecticut ranks 50th) if you examine the increase in debt from 2009 to 2013, the percentage of debt had increased significantly more for the state of Illinois, when compared to the increase of debt that Connecticut saw. In Connecticut, taxpayer burden went from $41,200 to $48,200, a 17 percent increase. In Illinois, taxpayer burden surged from $29,100 to $43,400 in 2013, a whopping 49 percent increase from 2009!
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧
Search

May 6, 2015

May 6, 2015, 6:54 am
$
0
0
Illinois Workers' Compensation Gets Rare Full House Hearing
From the Chicago Tribune
What is the value of a finger? An arm?
The Illinois House spent more than five hours Tuesday discussing such questions during a hearing on workers' compensation, the system that's supposed to make workers whole after they've been hurt on the job.
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner says workers' compensation costs are especially high in Illinois, stifling job creation and stunting growth. He's made changing the system a cornerstone of his first-year agenda.
So Democratic Speaker Michael Madigan, who presided over an overhaul of the system just a few years ago, convened the entire House to listen to testimony on the issue with less a month left in the spring session.
In a sign of where Madigan and fellow Democrats stand, the hearing was heavy on praise for the current system and light on input from the business community, which says the cost savings promised in 2011 have not materialized.
Of the hearing's nine sections, six focused on workers and their families' encounters with the compensation system in Illinois and other states, with a former member of the Workers' Compensation Board of Indiana present to explain how each situation would have been handled in the neighbor state. Rauner routinely cites Indiana as a haven for businesses seeking lower operating costs.
Laurie Summers, a nurse who described being injured at a workplace in Indiana, said she was at the Capitol to explain "why I would never recommend anyone to work in the state of Indiana," citing its workers' compensation laws.
Employers who pay into the system were represented only briefly, when a pair of panelists from the Illinois Manufacturers' Association urged some changes.
Greg Baise, president and CEO of the manufacturers group, said he wants medical costs under workers' compensation to be lowered, contending that coverage in Illinois pays thousands more for typical procedures like hernia and knee surgery compared with private or government health insurance plans.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

May 7, 2015

May 7, 2015, 1:30 pm
$
0
0
Illinois Employers Plan To Lay Off 1,100 Workers
From the Chicago Tribune
Illinois employers warned in April that they would lay off more than 1,100 people starting at the end of May, according to the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
Sunstar Americas, a maker of oral care products that is set to move its North American headquarters and manufacturing facility from Chicago to Schaumburg, reported to the state that it would lay off 329 people beginning in June in Chicago.
Mary Ann Hauert, a company spokeswoman, said in an email Sunstar offered Chicago employees transfers to its new Schaumburg facility. If an employee does not accept a transfer, that person will be laid off, she said.
Schaumburg pledged $3.3 million in tax increment financing funds to Sunstar in exchange for moving 300 jobs from Chicago and creating 25 additional jobs in Schaumburg. The state pledged tax credits to retain 335 people and create 25 jobs in the state. The value of the state incentive was estimated at nearly $4.3 million over 10 years, said Lyndsey Walters, a spokeswoman with the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, which administers the tax credit program. However, Walters said the company has not yet received any tax credits.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧
↧

May 8, 2015

May 8, 2015, 6:06 am
$
0
0
New Effort For Redistricting Reform Picking Up Steam
From the Peoria Journal-Star
Leaders of a revived effort to amend the state constitution’s requirements for drawing the state Legislature districts are working to fix what they call a “seriously flawed” political system.
Leaders of Independent Maps, a nonpartisan statewide coalition, were on Bradley University’s campus Thursday afternoon to brief volunteers tasked with gathering the hundreds of thousands of signatures required to place a constitutional amendment on the 2016 ballot.
After failed attempts in 2010 and 2014, the latter of which gathered enough public support but was struck down after a court challenge, proponents of creating an independent commission to draw legislative maps have reorganized, this time armed with the wisdom gained from defeated similar efforts in the past.
Business leaders, members of both political parties and representatives of the minority community are driving an effort to de-politicize and make transparent the process of drawing legislative maps.
“Right now the system is rigged so that incumbents automatically get re-elected. There’s no competition,” said Brad McMillan, executive director of the Institute for Principled Leadership in Public Service at Bradley, and a member of the Independent Maps board of directors. “It should frustrate anyone in Illinois that these maps are drawn completely behind closed doors with no transparency by a few powerful people.”
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

May 11, 2015

May 11, 2015, 7:13 am
$
0
0
Illinois Supreme Court Sends A Simple Pension Message: Pay Up
From Crain's Chicago Business
Pay up—no matter how long it takes and how much it costs.
That is the overwhelming, utterly clear message sent by the Illinois Supreme Court Friday in tossing out 2013 reforms to state pension funds as unconstitutional. The decision strongly suggests that other changes negotiated by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago and proposed by Gov. Bruce Rauner for the state are improper.
Effectively, the court ruled that generations of state lawmakers messed up, failing to take needed steps to pay for pension benefits that were enshrined in the Illinois Constitution as "an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired."
It is not the fault of state workers or retirees that state retirement systems are grossly underfunded, more than $100 billion short of what they'll eventually need to pay promised benefits, the unanimous court ruled.
"The General Assembly had available to it all the information it needed to estimate the long-term costs" of the promised pension benefits, the decision states. "The law was clear that the promised benefits would therefore have to be paid, and then the responsibility for providing the state's share of the necessary funding fell squarely on the Legislature's shoulders."
Though lawmakers argued that reducing benefits now would be needed to avoid painful tax hikes or reductions in services, the law they produced "was in no sense a last resort," the decision continued. "Rather, it was an expedient to break a political stalemate."
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧

May 12, 2015

May 12, 2015, 6:11 am
$
0
0
Madigan Slates Hearing On Rauner Plan To Limit Medical Malpractice Awards
From the Illinois Observer
News last Friday of the collapse of the state’s pension reform law overshadowed a new step by Speaker Michael Madigan to challenge Gov. Bruce Rauner’s agenda.
While the Illinois Supreme Court on Friday was rolling out its decision that the state pension reform law was unconstitutional, Madigan was simultaneously announcing that he will convene another House “Committee of the Whole” at noon Tuesday, May 12, to discuss the financial awards granted under Illinois’ civil justice system to victims and their families when killed or injured in accidents caused by medical or corporate or negligence.
Rauner has called for changes to the state’s tort law that would limit financial damages to victims in order to improve the state’s business climate.
“Our justice system is often the last chance for victims and their families after their lives were torn apart by acts of carelessness,” Madigan said. “Even those who have never set foot in a courtroom are protected by our system because it allows any person to expose shoddy products and reckless actions that make our state less safe.”
House lawmakers will hear from victims of medical malpractice and the family members of individuals killed in accidents or injured by products.
Madigan sought to turn the tables on Rauner’s regular criticism of the influence of “special interests” in Springfield by hitting the governor’s business allies as “special interests.”
“When Illinois victims’ protections are discussed, unfortunately the bottom line sometimes is considered more important than what is fair and right,” said Madigan. “Special interests spend millions in attempts to change our court system to work against regular citizens.”
Madigan’s newest House hearing comes on the heels of a similar House Committee of the Whole meeting convened last Tuesday to defend the state’s workers’ compensation system that was reformed in 2011. Rauner and business groups insist that the 2011 changes failed to go enough to eases employer costs for injured workers.
Read more in our daily News Update...
↧
Viewing all 762 articles
Browse latest View live
Search