Is Bost outburst worth noting?

Our state’s General Assembly spent their spring months trying to balance a budget with a big hole, while also trying unsuccessfully to resolve the long-festering shortfalls in pension funding and having to deal with healthcare for lower-income residents.

BOST: This week's legislative highlight?

Yet why do I suspect that the lingering image most people will have of the Illinois Legislature for this year, and perhaps for some time, is the site of Mike Bost having a hissy-fit and losing control while on the Illinois House floor?

THE VIDEO SNIPPET of Bost, a Republican from in and around Carbondale in Southern Illinois, is all over the Internet. We get to see him throw his papers in the air and punch at them as they fall back to his desk top (and the floor).

We got to hear him say some dirty words (unless we happened to view it on television, in which the profanities were blipped out).

The incident occurred Tuesday, and doesn’t seem to want to die – because it is the kind of stupid, trivial moment that needs no context to comprehend. A p-o’ed legislator loses his temper!

I literally woke up Thursday morning, turned on a television, and got treated to the sight of Bost on a national news broadcast – with one-time Chicago newswoman Robin Meade getting a chuckle about our state’s crazed politicos.

SOMEHOW, I HAVE a feeling that people will remember Bost longer than they remember whatever attempt at a pension funding solution our Legislature tried to concoct in its final hours of the 2012 spring session.

I also suspect that Bost on Tuesday managed to write the lede to his obituary. I’m not saying he’s on the verge of death, either literally or politically. There may even be some people who gain respect for him because of his outburst.

But it will be the lasting image many of us will have of the man, even though he has served in the Illinois House since 1995 (which means he’s been around long-enough to remember the two-year aberration when Republicans ran roughshod over Madigan and Democrats)  and doesn’t seem to be in any political danger of being dumped on an Election Day anytime soon.

Even though, by government standards, Bost’s outburst doesn’t seem all that outrageous. Sadly enough, neither is the reason why he was upset.

FOR THE RECORD, it was because of the aforementioned pension reform issue. A possible reform plan was presented to legislators, who were then asked to consider a vote on it.

Bost claims he only had 20 minutes to try to digest the content of several hundred pages of content related to the issue. He tried to turn this into a matter of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, ram-rodding partisan measures through the General Assembly by keeping the legislators ignorant.

Which is true enough, but not just on this issue. Way too many legislators vote on measures based solely on the couple paragraph summary they get presented by their leaders.

By “leaders,” I’m including the Republican leadership – who often keep their members in a tight rank-and file when it comes to casting votes on bills. This really isn't anything new.

THERE’S ALSO ONE other factor to consider when trying to put the Bost hissy-fit into context – it was a one-man operation, which makes it lesser in my mind.

Let’s not forget the incident near the end of last year when state Sens. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, and Mike Jacobs, D-Moline, had to be separated from what could have become a physical brawl.

That moment got so out-of-hand that McCarter literally tried to get the Sangamon County state’s attorney’s office to prosecute Jacobs on criminal charges – claiming he was assaulted with a punch to his chest. Fortunately for common sense, prosecutors didn’t get involved.

Although to some of us, the grand-daddy of all legislative outbursts will be that moment when now-retired state Reps. Bill Black of Danville and Terry Parke of suburban Hoffman Estates let their tempers get the best of them during a 1992 legislative debate over public education funding.

DID THEY PUNCH each other? Did they push and shove? Who had the better “form?”

Even now, some two decades later, it still can be a topic of discussion for political observers to quibble over – in between those “high-minded” policy talks about issues that often delve to the level of “Where’s mine?” and “Who gets dumped on more?”

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Expulsion from the caucus? What a joke!

I saw and heard a lot of rhetorical nonsense during the seven years I spent as a reporter-type person at the Statehouse in Springfield, but none as ridiculous as the rhetoric flying about now by Republican partisans who are ticked off that they were unable to prevent their Democratic colleagues in the Illinois House from approving a borrowing plan to help pay the state’s pension obligations.

The measure to approve borrowing required a larger majority than the size of the Democratic caucus. Which means the only way the measure could approve would be if some Republican members of the Illinois House were willing to go against the GOP stance.

THAT APPEARS TO be what happened. The measure got the bare minimum votes for a 60 percent majority – with two retiring Republican representatives, Bill Black of Danville and Bob Biggins of suburban Elmhurst, voting “yes.”

That is why some political people in Springfield are seriously trying to push the notion that Biggins, at least, is some sort of traitor, and the Republican minority in the Illinois House may go so far as to expel him from the caucus – which would mean he would not be included by the party leadership in any negotiations they have.

Somehow, I doubt anyone with any sense is losing sleep over this possibility. In fact, the only people who think that expulsion is a realistic option are the ones whose partisanship is so intense that it clouds their better judgment.

Both of these legislators are long-time members (Biggins since 1993, Black since 1986) who have made it clear that they are not seeking re-election this year. Their time in the Illinois Legislature is coming to an end.

SO PERHAPS IT means they have nothing to lose by being sensible enough to consider such a borrowing measure – rather than take some hard-line ideological stance whose purpose is to prevent anything from being approved this year by the General Assembly.

Which would result in a long-time financial problem continuing on for another year because of a failure to act.

What amuses me about this expulsion talk (which late Tuesday was encouraged by Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego) is that it all is focused on Biggins. No one is seriously talking about doing anything to Black. Party officials have come up with a lame justification saying that Black admitted to them prior to the vote that he might side with the Dems – whereas Biggins did not.

Of course, Black is the legislator with the outspoken demeanor who has proven he will say anything he believes. If the Republican leadership seriously tried to say they were going to expel Black, he’d tell them where to shove their political caucus.

THERE ARE THOSE people who are pointing out that Biggins met with with aides to Gov. Pat Quinn. Some are even trying to claim that Biggins has been promised some sort of political appointment or other government job after he leaves the Legislature – should Quinn get re-elected come Nov. 2.

Biggins denies such talk, telling reporter-types, “I asked for nothing.” Quinn also on Wednesday denied offering Biggins anything. For the time being, I’m going to believe them, although it would not shock me if a future Quinn administration were to give Biggins some special consideration.

It may very well come down to Biggins deciding that he had nothing to lose since his 18-year legacy as a low-key state legislator from west suburban DuPage County is set.

I’d like to think he saw the need to address at least some of the financial problems that threaten to drag Illinois down into the depths, rather than focus on how those problems could be turned into a negative for the political opposition.

SO WHILE I can appreciate why some people are concerned that Illinois would set itself up to take on $3.7 billion in debt (that is a LARGE loan), I also realize that the time has come to put aside partisan politics and ensure that legally required contributions to the state’s five public employee pension systems are actually made.

Those debts have been creeping up on Illinois for years, if not decades. It is time that someone be willing to take a political action that might break for the norm – even if one way this issue can be spun is that it shows some competence on the part of Democratic officials when it comes to the actual act of governing this state. Of course, this could all fall through rather quickly, since the Illinois Senate is showing great reluctance to give its own approval to what the House of Representatives did.

In fact, if there is anyone whose vote I find offensive, it is the “present” vote cast by Rep. Robert Pritchard, R-Hinckley. Early on, he indicated a willingness to vote for the measure. On the final vote, he couldn’t bring himself to support it, but also wanted to be able to say he did not oppose it because that would make him out to be nothing more than a political hack.

Hence, he gave us the political equivalent of taking up space and wasting oxygen. I would have respected him more if he had just voted, “no.”

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Illinois’ regional differences crop up once again in bill offering four-day school week

I can remember a moment more than a decade ago when the Illinois House of Representatives was considering a bill that would make it state law that people could not ride in the backs of pickup trucks unless those trucks were equipped with seat belts and everybody was strapped in.

Who ever heard of a pickup truck with seat belts in the back? Not me. Not anybody.

I CAN RECALL one rural Illinois legislator being particularly critical of the measure on the grounds that this bill (which was sponsored by a Democratic legislator from the North Side) was a case of a Chicago person trying to put a city-way of viewing an issue into the minds of all Illinoisans.

Because it was just the way things were done that people would pile up in the back of a pickup truck for a ride.

That bill went down to defeat, becoming one of those moments when the Legislature quit being Democrat versus Republican and became urban versus rural – with suburban people using the rare moment to “stick it” to the city.

Now what made me remember this incident, that I believe took place in 1997?

IT WAS UPON learning that the Illinois House on Monday gave an overwhelming vote of support (81-21, to be exact) for a bill that would allow public school districts in Illinois the option of converting their schedules to four-day weeks.

In short, students would go to school for four days, and have the other three off.

Such a concept is in place in 19 other states, and tends to be used by school districts in those states that cover rural communities – particularly districts that cover many miles of territory (instead of the typical suburban school district that usually covers a town and part of another) and has many students who have to be bused in from isolated areas.

This is a rural concept that a political person wants to impose on Illinois (although I would hope the Chicago Public Schools would have the sense to realize how ridiculous it is). That political person is state Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville, who during his decades in the Legislature has developed not only a reputation for being blunt-spoken, he also was the lawmaker who spoke out all those years ago on the absurdity of trying to impose an “urban” idea on the rest of the state.

COULD IT BE that some people don’t appreciate the irony of Black criticizing one region’s officials for trying to look out for public safety with ideas that were totally comprehendible to anybody in Chicago, but is willing to impose his “region’s” ideas on the rest of the state?

Now the one difference is that it would be the local school boards that would decide whether they want to bother with the idea of a four-day school week.

The Chicago Teachers Union already is making it clear they don’t approve, and there also are the complaints from some parents who rely on the fact that their kids are in school Monday thorugh Friday to account for their presence and activity while the parents are at work.

So I don’t expect to see Chicago Public Schools students getting a three-day weekend any time soon.

I WOULD EXPECT a lot of the suburban districts whose officials already are concerned that their students don’t spend enough time in the classroom would not be quick to endorse the idea either.

So perhaps this really is a concept that would be taken seriously only by those school districts in isolated parts of central and Southern Illinois, where Black told reporter-types that some officials have approached him saying that a four-day school week would help them save money at a time when school districts are likely to have their state aid payments hacked to pieces.

Specifically, they say the cost of transportation is running high, since those rural districts can be spread out over large areas, and all school districts these days are having to pay more to the companies that operate school bus routes because the companies are charging the districts more money to cover the rising costs of fuel for the buses.

Yes, that is one factor. But I question how much the overall savings really could be, since you would now have to have longer school days. Which means teachers working more hours per day. Which I’m sure means the potential for them to pick up more money if such labor is expected.

THERE IS ALSO the fact that I don’t like the idea of making more widespread the differences in public schools based on where they are. It undermines the concept even further that a student at a public school – regardless of which school he/she attends – ought to be capable of having equal opportunity of obtaining a basic education.

I’m skeptical that having three-day weekends all the time would not negatively impact the ability of students to retain what they have learned. Those rural school districts, particularly when one gets into Southern Illinois, are some of the worst funded in the state. They make the Chicago Public Schools look like a financial paradise, by comparison.

I’d hate to have to think we’re going to have to start looking down on anyone educated in a rural public school in Illinois because they imposed this measure to save themselves the cost of some gasoline for the school buses.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Illinois Senate could still kill off the concept (http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/2117024,house-bill-four-day-school-week-032210.article) of a four-day school week in Illinois.

What does it say about me (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/illinois/article_63741a97-2b44-5303-945c-547facf94529.html) that I'm in agreement with Rich Daley on an issue?