Category Archives: 2010 Election

2010 Election

Reasons not to vote for Umholtz for judge

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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.

2010 Election, Blogosphere, General News, Museum Block, Peoria County, Peoria Public Schools, Peoria Times-Observer

Saturday must-see links

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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!

2010 Election, City of Peoria, Comcast, Peoria County, Peoria Mayor, Peoria Public Schools, Traffic

Blogging Bits and Pieces

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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?
2010 Election, General News

Chicago Tribune wants a revolution

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The editors of the Chicago Tribune have an interesting take on why we keep electing the same leaders in Illinois:

Evidently, it’s Stockholm syndrome, the tendency of some hostages to bond with their captors. How else to explain Illinoisans’ habit of re-electing lawmakers who chronically spend and borrow billions more than taxpayers supply? The result: huge debts and unfunded obligations that will make this an unaffordable state for employers and workers to build a future.

They want us to snap out of it and clean house in the next election. And they’re running a series of editorials aimed at convincing voters to do just that. The first one — “A call to arms” — ran last Sunday, December 27. Today’s editorial is “Splurge. Borrow. Repeat.” While they’re obviously talking about state government, I think this can be applied to other levels of government as well — specifically in regards to fiscal irresponsibility:

If you enjoy the political culture as is — with the next corruption scandal never far off and with your public officials borrowing future generations into penury in order to prop up today’s treacherously uncontrolled spending — then you should support candidates who’ll protect the status quo. If, however, the failure of too many politicians to make urgently needed reforms infuriates you, then reach for a broom.

We hope you’re among the millions who are infuriated. And we hope you’ll reach for that broom.

Politicians at all levels of government are addicted to debt. The City of Peoria paid almost 11 cents of every dollar toward debt service in 2009 — a percentage that will go up in 2010 as the city cuts operational costs while simultaneously taking on more long-term debt. The next City Council election is in 2011 when all the at-large council representatives come up for reelection.