IlliniPundit's blog

Tuesday, May 13, 2008.

The forces of reason and common sense have won a rare, if temporary, victory.

A proposed ordinance banning cell phone use while driving might be put off indefinitely by the city council.

Alderman Charlie Smyth, D-Ward 1, who proposed the ban, said the city might instead opt to take some interim steps while gathering information about how often traffic accidents occur due to cell phone use while driving.

In the meantime, the city council will consider enacting a distracted driving ordinance under which a person who gets into a traffic accident while talking on a cell phone or similar activity would be subject to a traffic ticket with a substantial fine of $500 or more, he said.

Yea!

Good article:

This coming fiscal year, Urbana expects to allocate $300,000 toward social service grants. That's an increase of $12,000 compared with the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

That level stands in contrast with Champaign, which this coming fiscal year plans to spend $113,000 on social service grants – but has announced that such grants will be ended, starting July 1, 2009.

Discuss.

From yesterday's News-Gazette:

The Champaign County Nursing Home, which will have to borrow money from the county to stay afloat, could save money by altering its mix of clients to reduce Medicaid patients – which would go against its tradition of serving the poor.

About 60 percent of its residents are on Medicaid, up from 48 percent in 2000, the first year for which Administrator Andrew Buffenbarger has census records.

About 28 percent are private paid and 10 percent Medicare, which has a higher level of reimbursement.

Taking care of the less-well-off has been part of the county's mission since it ran a poor farm on the same site as county offices.

But the rising proportion of Medicaid residents is hard on the nursing home's finances, Buffenbarger said, because "Medicaid reimbursement is considerably lower than the cost of services."

In other words, if Buffenbarger filled every bed in the new $24 million facility with Medicaid patients, the nursing home would lose even more than the up to $100,000 a month it has lost in the last two years. Instead, the home has run with about 80 of 243 beds empty recently.

Additionally, Medicaid reimbursement has not only been cut by $600,000, it's months behind.

Discuss.

UPDATE:  Big E has more thoughts here.

Some apparently expect the home to run on at least a break-even basis. But if that is the case, why is government involved at all? Is there a lack of private nursing home companies out there? Not likely. Why in the world would an impotent county government imagine that it is in a better position than a professional private company to run this operation? If the goal is to minimize expense to taxpayers, sell the damn thing to a professional operator and cut your losses.

It is not a little ironic that the idea of booting impoverished Medicaid recipients is being floated. If the goal of the facility is to provide refuge to those who would otherwise be out in the cold, this step would be absolutely contraindicated.

So what's it going to be, you dummies? A decision to provide heavily-subsidized care, or to make the facility a self-sufficient enterprise? The choices could not be more stark, but resolution will require courage and clear-thinking. I, for one, am not holding my breath.

I stayed away from IP.com this weekend, partly as a test to see how many trolls would show up in my absence to ruin otherwise constructive discussions.

Given what I've seen from over the weekend, and given my schedule over the next few weeks, I am now taking the draconian step of moderating all comments from unregistered users.  Unregistered users are still welcome to comment, but their comments will not appear in a thread until and unless approved by an administrator.  Registered users are free to comment without moderation.

Thank you, and I apologize for taking this step, which I hoped would never be necessary.

Monday, May 12, 2008.

Friday, May 9, 2008.

This is an interesting attempt at collaborative citizen journalism:

Now! Hampshire is unlike any newspaper you’ve ever read. To begin with it is published entirely online. What is more it is the only newspaper that consists entirely of citizen contributed news. That means you are not only a reader of Now! Hampshire, you are one of our reporters—if you decide to take up the challenge.

Founded by Seacoast entrepreneur Patrick Hynes, Now! Hampshire operates on the premise that there is a lot more interesting news out there than the people on the “news business” would lead us all to believe. And so we ask every citizen in the Granite State to take up their pens and note pads—along with the video and audio recorders—and start a news beat of their own.

Does your company, organization or school have something important to announce? Don’t settle with blasting off a press release—write a story about it and post it on Now! Hampshire.

Does your daughter or son have a game tonight? Record it on video and write up a blurb. We are thrilled to host local sports content.

Attending a county fair? Write a story about it.

Do you know a special, inspirational someone in your community? Show them you appreciate their contribution by interviewing them and posting it here at Now! Hampshire.

And remember: We’re looking for news. No opinion—just the facts.

I've often thought such an effort might be worthwhile in a smaller city like Champaign-Urbana, where local news is done well but very sparsely by legacy media outlets.

Thursday, May 8, 2008.

The Township Board (City Council) has granted Supervisor Linda Abernathy's request to put another tax increase for City of Champaign Township on the ballot.

Township Supervisor Linda Abernathy said the increased tax income would allow her to increase benefits to 50 disabled people receiving general assistance/transitional assistance from the current $150 per month to the state-recommended $223 per month. The additional funding would also allow her to create a $42,000 emergency assistance fund whereby extremely poor residents could receive a $225 grant once a year to deal with an economic crisis, effective July 1, 2009.

Abernathy asked voters in November 2006 to approve a 5-cent increase in the district's overall tax rate. But voters rejected that proposal by a 2-1 margin.

She said she proposed a smaller increase this time around because she recognizes that residents are feeling the economic pinch.

"People are feeling the burn, the pinch," she said. "I wanted to do something minimal enough to survive the shortfall, but not so extensive to turn the voters off."

At least she reduced the amount of increase she was requesting this time.

From today's News-Gazette:

The Champaign County Board will look at ways to rescue county finances from deficit-spending on its nursing home Thursday night – including the possibilities of raising taxes or even selling the facility.

The finance committee meeting will take place at 7 p.m. at the Brookens Administration Center, 1776 E. Washington St., U.

The nursing home lost $600,000 in Medicaid funding this spring, faces higher costs for agency nurses because it has had difficulty finding full-time nurses, has already borrowed from the county and expects to borrow more next month.

Finance committee Chairman Brendan McGinty said the committee's discussions would include a possible question on the November ballot to raise taxes to help fund nursing home operations, an idea raised by union members at the nursing home, which had layoffs this week.

On the other extreme, the committee will start the process of looking for a buyer of the $24 million facility, which opened last year.

That process is one "we don't have to execute, if we fix things in the interim," the Urbana Democrat said.

I'm amused, however, to notice media coverage of concern about the massive legal fees owed by the County related to the Nursing Home.  If I remember correctly, someone correctly predicted exactly this problem and was ignored. 

Of course, this isn't the only nursing home-related issue on which Mark has been both prescient and ignored, so we should probably be used to it...

Unsurprising:

The Urbana school board passed a resolution Tuesday night calling for a 1 percent countywide sales tax to be put on the November ballot.

With its vote, 11 school districts in the county have now passed such a resolution. Those districts represent almost half of the county's school enrollment, said Jane Quinlan, superintendent of the regional office of education. State law provides that districts representing at least 51 percent of the county's school enrollment can place a tax question on the ballot by approving a resolution such as Urbana did.

A county policy committee will discuss the proposed sales tax at a meeting tonight.

The Urbana school board also passed a resolution Tuesday pledging to use a portion of the money it would receive if such a tax passes to abate property taxes. The resolution states that the district would use $1 million annually to pay off building bonds.

"It's the first step in moving away from a total reliance on property taxes," said Urbana school board President Mark Netter.

Two more primaries, and two more relatively static results in the Democratic race for President.  The media meme about yesterday's results is that Obama beat expectations, so Hillary should drop out, but the racial breakdowns in IN and NC remained almost unchanged from earlier Primaries.

Obama won black voters overwhelmingly, getting 91 percent in NC and 90 percent in Indiana.  Clinton won white voters convincingly, getting 60 percent in NC and 61 percent in IN.

As race seems to have the most consistent correlation with vote preference in this primary, the actual results from state to state aren't varying that much from what can be predicted by the demographics and turnout projections.  FiveThirtyEight.com had some long predictions yesterday, using polling and some complicated statistical analysis, but they came very close to being right simply by using racial breakdowns and turnout predictions.

I'll also note the strange meme wondering whether Obama can collect enough votes from whites motivated by race, even while nobody is mentioning that black voters are consistently and overwhelmingly supporting the candidate who shares their skin color.

As I've said since Super Tuesday, the Dem race seems pretty static to me, despite the roller coaster of coverage.  The 2008 general election will likely hinge on whether the eventual Democratic nominee (still almost certainly Obama) can win over enough of Clinton's supporters, given the unprecedented length and vigor of the Democratic race.  Yesterday's exit polls indicated yet again that Democratic voters are becoming more attached to their candiate and more averse to the other candidate:

Nearly six in ten Obama supporters in Indiana say they would be dissatisfied if Clinton were the nominee -- that's (I believe) the high percentage of Obama supporters who have ever said that.

In both IN and NC, two thirds of Clinton supporters say they'd be dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee -- I believe that's the highest number recorded for that question, too.

The percentage of Clinton voters who say they'd choose McCain over Obama in a general election is approaching 40% in Indiana. Put it another way: in North Carolina, less than HALF of folks who voted today for Hillary Clinton are ready to say today that they'd definitely vote for Obama in a general election.

The general election will be decided based on this.  Obama supporters are convinced that Democrats will come home, because they're motivated by issues and Obama is right on their issues.  I understand the importance of issues, as you've seen from criticisms of the GOP over the years, yet I still think many voters are motivated by personalities and biographies, and while I don't doubt that many Clinton supporters will eventually support Obama, I think a significant percentage (10 percent?  20 percent) will not, due to the animosities and attachments created during this Primary.

And those are the key questions for November:  How many Clinton supporters will not support Obama, and how well can Obama do with white voters, given his inability to win them in the recent Democratic Primaries?

Gov. Blagojevich is using the surge of violence in Chicago for political reasons.

Blagojevich said the $150 million for his anti-violence initiative, which includes up to 20,000 summer jobs for young people in high-risk communities, isn't an unreasonable amount of money.

"This is an emergency. Children are being shot and killed. And for lawmakers to say we can't do it, that's exactly the reason why there's so much violence out there today and so we're just not gonna take no for an answer," Blagojevich said as he left the youth center surrounded by reporters trying to ask him questions.

Blagojevich's proposal includes spending $30 million to provide summer jobs statewide. He's proposing another $20 million to fund grants for after-school programs and other activities to keep kids off the streets. And he wants to invest $100 million to revitalize neighborhoods, support local businesses that create jobs and help police departments buy equipment, according to his office.

I'm shocked - shocked, I tell you - that anyone would use the deaths of children to push a political agenda.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008.

From today's News-Gazette:

Board member Valerie Woodruff said she's been approached by individuals who don't know much about the tax but are automatically opposed to new taxes.

But when board members explain that it could provide some property tax relief, "they're good with it" said board member Max McComb.

But one of the forum's attendees, Lea Ehrhardt, said she's not so sure that property tax relief will happen.

"The lottery was supposed to help pay for education. It didn't work," she said. "It looks like a good deal but it doesn't seem to happen that way."

She and two other attendees, Eric Thorsland and Joe Tandy, all said they'd like to see some sort of clause in the legislation that provides for an end to the tax unless it's reapproved by voters.

People are right to be skeptical.  Even in the best-case scenarios, residents of two school districts in Chamapign County would get absolutely no property tax relief, and residents of other districts would get much less property tax relief than this new tax would generate.

The reports about this just keep getting worse and worse.  Wasn't it just yesterday morning that the death toll estimates were in the hundreds?

It's horrifying, and good reminder to donate to the Red Cross if you'd like to help in some small way.

Here is a great roundup of the State Democratic Convention, via CapFax.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008.

There's a new ad, over on the right, for IlliniShuttle.com. Please check it out.

If any of you are interested in advertising on IP.com or know of someone who might be interested, rates are insanely cheap.

Please email me for more information.

Thanks.