Reasons not to vote for Umholtz for judge

Valerie Umholtz is running for judge in the 10th Judicial Circuit. The 10th Judicial Circuit in Illinois covers five counties: Peoria, Marshall, Putnam, Stark, and Tazewell. Her husband is the State’s Attorney for Tazewell County, Stewart Umholtz. He’s also her campaign manager. He’s also a big monetary contributor to her campaign:

[Valerie] Umholtz raised roughly $48,500. That includes more than $10,000 transferred from the previous campaign for attorney general of her husband, Tazewell County State’s Attorney Stewart Umholtz. She also received a recent $20,000 loan from him.

The Journal Star Editorial Board has endorsed her over her Republican primary challengers, John Vespa and Bruce Thiemann. The board acknowledges the relationship, but ultimately feels it’s “manageable”:

Voters should know that Umholtz is married to Tazewell County State’s Attorney Stu Umholtz, which could pose a conflict in those courtrooms in which the state’s attorney has a presence – felony, misdemeanor, traffic court, potentially some others. Her election would reduce the chief judge’s flexibility somewhat in assigning courtrooms, but from where we sit it’s a manageable situation – Umholtz could be placed in Peoria County, for example – and therefore not disqualifying. That said, it’s fair for voters to factor it into their decision.

A couple thoughts about this situation:

First, when the paper says it “could pose a conflict in those courtrooms in which the state’s attorney has a presence,” that doesn’t just mean Stewart Umholtz himself, but anyone in the Tazewell County State’s Attorney’s office. Mr. Umholtz’s conflict of interest is imputed to the entire prosecutor’s office. While it may be “manageable,” it’s not optimal. Tazewell County is the second-largest county in the 10th circuit with a little over 38% of the five-county population. It seems to me that the only reason to vote for a judicial candidate with such a huge potential for conflict of interest within the circuit is if there’s some compelling reason to vote against her challengers. The Journal Star offers only one reason to vote against Vespa — his low grade by his peers on the Illinois State Bar Association’s bar poll. No reason is given to vote against Thiemann. (Incidentally, Thiemann received higher ratings than Umholtz on the bar poll.)

Secondly, the Illinois Code of Judicial Conduct says, “A Judge Should Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in All of the Judge’s Activities.” It goes on to elaborate: “A judge should . . . conduct himself or herself at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Lawyers are able to slice ethical nuance with a scalpel, but laymen will look at Umholtz the judge married to Umholtz the State’s Attorney and see plenty of “appearance of impropriety,” even if any real conflict is “managed.” And when it comes to promoting “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,” it’s the laymen that count, not the lawyers.

In the end, voters should ask themselves why they would want a Republican judicial candidate in the general election (and ultimately, a potential judge) who is disqualified from presiding over so much in Tazewell County when the other candidates have no such conflicts. Despite the Journal Star’s endorsement, I don’t see any good reason to vote for Umholtz.

Saturday must-see links

If you haven’t already seen these this week, you’ll want to check them out:

  • Outside the Horseshoe for January 26, 2010, from WCBU 89.9 FM radio. Tanya Koonce has a conversation with Peoria County Administrator Patrick Urich, Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons, and County Board Members Andrew Rand (Dist. 4) and Stephen Morris (Dist. 10) about the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum project. What we can deduce from the conversation here is that, at least in the county’s perception, Lakeview Museum is trying to dominate and control the project. I suspect their perception is true; Caterpillar had similar problems working with Lakeview which led to their decision years ago to put their visitor center in a separate building instead of sharing space in the museum.
  • Blacktop Reform from DeWayne Bartels of the Peoria Times-Observer. You may be surprised to learn that the next time you want to get your driveway blacktopped, you’ll have to pay a lot more money and have fewer contractors from which to choose. The County Board is trying to run non-union blacktop paving contractors out of town. Let this be a lesson to current and future Board members: do your homework before you vote!
  • School Board Member Laura Petelle’s thoughts on the final candidate for District 150’s New Superintendent. She wants to assure everyone that the process this time was “far different and more comprehensive” than the past. In other words, they did a better job of vetting the candidates than the board that hired Kay Royster did. That should give residents some comfort.
  • Racism alleged within the Peoria County Democratic Central Committee. Rachael Parker is a sitting Peoria Board of Education member running for a seat on the Peoria County Board, and her campaign manager and communications director sent out a press release accusing local Democrats of being racist. They also questioned why the Peoria Journal Star did not interview Parker. I’m wondering how the Journal Star got a quote from Parker for their January 15 story if they didn’t interview her.

Happy reading/listening!

Chamber says thanks for not raising (some) taxes

In Tuesday’s Peoria Journal Star, I saw that the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce took out a small ad (image at right) on the front of the Business section. It says, “The Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce says THANK YOU to Peoria city and county leaders, their administrators and partners for balancing their budgets without any tax increases. This is a huge benefit to our regional businesses and residents!”

Brought to you by an organization that supported (or didn’t oppose):

  • raising sales taxes to build a museum downtown
  • raising property taxes to expand the Peoria Public Library
  • District 150’s “efforts to make tough decisions,” including raising property taxes and closing schools
  • establishment of a charter school which will lead to higher taxes at least in the short run

Some taxes hurt “regional businesses and residents,” but others don’t. Only the Chamber can tell the difference. And did you notice that the Chamber is representing regional residents now? I guess they think they speak for everyone.

If I might be allowed to speak for myself — as not just a “regional” resident, but an actual Peoria city and county resident — a static tax rate is not a “huge benefit” when it’s coupled with continued cuts in service. Who wants to keep spending the same amount for fewer and fewer benefits? Nor does a static tax rate mean that taxes were not raised. The tax rate is a percentage of the equalized assessed valuation of property within the city/county. If the property values go up and the tax rate remains constant, guess what? We’re paying more in taxes!

Blogging Bits and Pieces

Here are some odds and ends that I just don’t feel like writing a whole post about:

  • It looks like District 150 has just about settled on a new superintendent, and her name is Grenita Lathan. She’s currently the “interim deputy superintendent at California’s San Diego Unified Schools.” Other than that I don’t know much about her, and there’s surprisingly little on Google, Lexis-Nexis, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, or any number of additional sources I checked. Oh, there are some snippets here and there. You can see some interview footage with her here. Commenters on another post have several links to quotes and information they find troublesome. Some have already passed judgment. I’m kind of old-fashioned, though. I like to wait until someone actually screws up before I start criticizing them. From what I’ve heard, the first thing she wants to do is purge the administration of unnecessary and ineffective administrators. I certainly can’t complain about that.
  • John Vespa was not endorsed by the Journal Star to succeed his brother as the 10th Judicial Circuit judge. The reason they give for passing him over is that “Vespa fell below the 65 passing grade” on something called the bar poll “and is ‘not recommended.'” They say the bar poll (where responses are anonymous) is “controversial,” but they evidently believe it. Not surprisingly, the Vespa campaign begs to differ. They report: “To understand the relevance of the bar poll … it is important to look at … the number of people participating. There are 911 lawyers in the Circuit that are eligible to participate in the poll, according to the ARDC website. Of those 911, there were only 152 that registered an opinion. (16.3%) The majority of those 152 felt John met the requirements of the office. Of course John would expect to have some legitimate detractors, particularly given the fact that half of his practice is devoted to criminal defense. In fact, it would be troubling if he did not. (All of his opponents practice for the most part, civil law only).” As the Journal Star would say, “Voters can make of that what they will.”
  • One of my readers recently told me about this site called “How We Drive” — and specifically, this post on “Parking Availability Bias.” Very cool site full of interesting information.
  • The “religious group” that the city is considering to operate the public access channels on Comcast’s cable system is called GPS-TV, and is located in Washington, Illinois. Here’s their website.
  • You can download a transcript (PDF format) of Mayor Ardis’s State of the City address here. Of course, the biggest announcement of the speech was this: “I have spoken at some length with County Board Chairman Tom O’Neill and we are prepared to put together a group that will be charged with exploring the opportunity to move Peoria City?County towards combined municipal government.” It will be interesting to see what recommendations that group makes in the future. Will it just be combining certain functions, or a total UNIGOV proposal?

Liveblogging the Peoria City Council 1/26/2010

Good evening, and welcome to Council Chambers at Peoria City Hall. Once again, I’ll be liveblogging the meeting tonight. If you’re following live, please remember to refresh this post frequently as I’ll be updating it throughout the meeting. All council members and the Mayor are present tonight. A hyperlinked copy of the agenda is available here.

It’s 6:26 and the City Clerk is reading the consent agenda:

Continue reading Liveblogging the Peoria City Council 1/26/2010

Savings of Woodruff closing keep getting lower

First, District 150 officials estimated that closing Woodruff High School would save $2.7 million in salary costs plus $800-900k in operating costs. Then, on the night of the vote, the estimate was “$1.5 to $2.7 million.”

This morning on WCBU radio (89.9 FM), it was reported that closing Woodruff High School will save (drum-roll, please): $1.2 million.

District 150 apparently takes the Bullwinkle Moose approach to estimating savings: “Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a number out of my hat! Nothing up my sleeve. Presto!”

If only someone would have Rocky the Squirrel’s clarity of thought: “But that trick never works!”

Irving crusades for three-second transitions

Councilman Dan Irving (5th District) is leading the charge for a change to the city’s electronic sign ordinance. So far, no one with the city is on his side. The Zoning Commission voted against it. City staff is recommending denial. Still, Irving is still planning to bring it to a vote on the council floor Tuesday night, hoping that his council colleagues will see things his way.

How does he see things? Well, right now, the sign ordinance requires that electronic message boards change their images instantaneously instead of scrolling, fading, or dissolving. According to the council communication, he wants to change the ordinance so that such gradual transitions are allowed as long as the transition lasts no longer than three seconds. This, he says, will “promote Peoria’s business-friendly atmosphere” and “provide additional marketing of products in this challenging economic environment.”

In his testimony before the Zoning Commission, Mr. Irving stated what led him to ask for this change, which was summarized in the meeting minutes this way:

Council Member Dan Irving . . . commented that the intent of the Ordinance is that these electronic signs are popping up all over the City. He stated that a business owner who has purchased one of these signs, who was not aware of the Ordinance, had approached him and wanted to utilize the technology on his sign. He commented that he does not have the answer regarding these signs and stated there is a much bigger issue because most of the signs that keep popping up are not in compliance.

I personally like Dan Irving, and in fact I even endorsed him for election to the council. But this is a ridiculously ill-conceived council request. Let me count the ways:

  1. First of all, when you look out over Peoria and consider its challenges, is the dissolve rate on electronic signs really the one you want to spend a lot of energy and political capital attacking? Is this really the hill you want to die on?
  2. How, pray tell, does a three-second dissolve, fade, or scroll between marketing messages “provide additional marketing of products”? Answer: it doesn’t. This supposed benefit is empty rhetoric.
  3. “Requests for signs with non-static transitions shall be considered on a case-by-case basis and through approval of a Special Permit. Standards for consideration will include the location of the proposed sign, traffic volumes, and traffic speeds.” So, in order to get this coveted three seconds of cross-fading time, a business has to apply for a special use permit, which starts into motion a whole chain of events including: setting a public hearing date, mailing a notice of the hearing date to all properties within 250 feet of the subject property, review of the application by the Site Plan Review board, holding a public hearing, deliberation and decision by the Zoning Commission, and finally approval or denial by the city council. In addition, it appears the city staff would also need to conduct a traffic count and speed study of some sort as that information is one of the standards for consideration. I fail to see how this is in either the business’s or the city’s best interests. It will cost the city money in staff time, and it will be more trouble than it’s worth for businesses. What business owner is going to go through all that for a three-second dissolve rate?
  4. Non-compliance with the code is not, in itself, a compelling reason to change the code. If signs that keep “popping up” are not compliant, they should be brought into compliance through code enforcement, not sanctioned.

When Irving originally proposed having the Zoning Commission consider this idea, I asked him what changes he wanted to see. He told me via e-mail toward the beginning of December that “more and more businesses are putting up these electronic signs and then finding out they cannot use them because of our electronic sign ordinance” which requires static images that last at least ten seconds and change instantaneously. He continued, “Proctor Hospital has one of these [electronic signs] and it was allowed an exception or variance to our current ordinance. It is like watching a movie when you go past. I am looking to allow these types of signs in commercial area where there is no residential present and where the changing or fading of the image would not create a traffic risk.”

This sounds to me like he was favoring no restrictions on how often the images change on signs in certain areas (they could be “like watching a movie”), which is quite a different scenario than what is now being proposed. One wonders if the businesses who contacted Irving will be satisfied with such a scaled-back response to their request for unfettered use of electronic signs.

If I were Dan Irving, I would either withdraw the item or table it. It looks like a lose-lose situation all the way around.

City reaches agreement with Comcast

The City of Peoria’s cable franchise agreement with Comcast expired in 2006, and ever since then the City has been trying to negotiate a new agreement. Along the way, they have passed numerous temporary extensions and held a few public forums where residents could express their feelings about Comcast’s cable service.

Now the city has finally reached an agreement. One big change: it’s term is significantly shorter at five years (previous franchise agreements were for twenty). The shorter term means that “after two years, the renewal process will begin again.”

The proposed franchise agreement has another significant change: Comcast will cease providing a studio and equipment for public access programming, something the cable operator has done since its inception. Instead, that responsibility will fall to the city, who is apparently planning to outsource it to an unnamed “religious group” that is reportedly “ready to step in and run the public access channels” for reasons unknown. One can only speculate as to what effect this will have on public access programming.

Getting rid of public access responsibility is not unique to Comcast’s dealings in Peoria. Just last month, Springfield’s city council voted to take over their public access channel, “Access 4,” after Comcast ceased programming it. The State Journal-Register reports that “Comcast must provide three channels for public, educational and governmental access programming,” but the franchise agreement “doesn’t require Comcast to operate the channels.” The reason? “Comcast is doing what they have to do to cut back,” Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin was quoted as saying. In Peoria, they have already laid off George Bean, “manager of Peoria’s public access channel for almost 20 years.”

CAT bullying County on museum

Peoria County Board Member Merle Widmer is reporting that Caterpillar sent a threatening letter regarding the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum (PRM) to all County Board members demanding “a positive response from the Peoria County Board by February 12, 2010.” The letter, signed by CEO Jim Owens and CEO-elect Douglas R. Oberhelman, went on to say, “Failure to move forward in a responsive manner will result in Caterpillar withdrawing its funding for a PRM and termination of our plans to move forward with the Caterpillar Visitor Center.”

The bullies are back, and they want action.

You may recall that this isn’t the first time that Caterpillar has strong-armed community members to support the museum. In December 2008, they sent letters to the all the county school districts asking them not to put a tax referendum on the ballot that would have provided desperately-needed funds to the cash-strapped rural districts who don’t have access to the Public Building Commission. Why? Because it would have jeopardized passage of the museum tax referendum which was slated to be on the same ballot.

So the school districts lost out on education funding, and the museum referendum passed, raising the sales tax a quarter of a percent. Even after all that, the museum group was still unable to raise the remaining private funds they needed, despite promises from museum supporters that the shortfall would be easy to make up once the referendum passed. The County Board had the audacity to insist the museum group keep their word and raise the remaining money before starting construction, which has delayed the project considerably. Also contributing to the delay has been an apparent inability to agree on the makeup of the new museum’s board and operational bylaws.

Now Big Yellow has turned its muscle on the County Board, giving them an ultimatum. The county needs to move forward — presumably with a contract between the County, City, and Lakeview — by February or else Cat withdraws all its funding and its plans to build a visitors center. If the deal falls through, who will get the blame according to Cat? The county! Yes, it’s all their fault the museum can’t get its act together, I guess. Cat even included this little gem in their letter: “Delays (by the county) have cost our community $5 million dollars in New Market Tax Credits.” Et tu, Feles? After all the county has done for you? After successfully shepherding through a tax increase in the middle of a recession that will contribute $37.5 million to the cause, you’re going to throw them under the bus for your failed attempt to secure more taxpayer money? There’s gratitude for you.

Well, the bullying is already paying off. Just a couple hours after Widmer published his post on the matter, he received an e-mail informing him that “all misunderstandings have been cleared up and the collaboration contract will soon be ready for the County Board vote.” It looks like Peoria taxpayers’ milk money will be dutifully handed over by the deadline.

Check Merle’s blog for the latest news.

Supreme Court says corporations have first amendment protection

A landmark ruling was handed down by the U. S. Supreme Court today:

Overturning a century-old restriction, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as much as they want to sway voters in federal elections.

In a landmark 5-4 decision, the court’s conservative bloc said corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals and, for that reason, the government may not stop corporations from spending to help their favored candidates.

And therein lies the problem — the danger, really — of this decision: “corporate personhood.” It’s this notion that corporations, because they have legal “personhood,” therefore have the same constitutional rights as living, breathing persons. Count me among those who think this idea of corporate personhood has gone too far.

I would encourage you to read Justice Stevens’ dissent to the ruling–I know it’s full of a bunch of legalese, but at least read the sections titled “Identity-Based Distinctions” and “Our First Amendment Tradition.” I’ll let you read his supporting documentation in his dissent, but here’s his conclusion:

The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.

There’s already a movement afoot to amend the constitution to make it clear that the rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution are for human beings, not soulless corporations.