Posted on 03/31/2009 10:33:28 PM PDT by Impy
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Governor Pat Quinn is promising to go through the state budget line by line to look for waste and inefficiency. Some lawmakers say all he needs to do is take the elevator one flight down to find a waste of taxpayer's money. Dane Placko reports on the debate over what to do with the lieutenant governor's office.
The state constitution doesn't provide for filling the vacancy. Quinn insists on keeping the useless vacant office open.
Mr “Clean” wants two salaries?
The vacancy can’t be filled. Since the 1970 constitution the LT Guv is no longer even President of the State Senate. It’s useless.
But I think state’s should have LT Guvs elected on a ticket with the Governor, a person of the same party to take over the office if necessary.
Here’s an idea to throw around, abolish the Sec of State and give it’s duties to the LT Governor.
Or at least allow a vacancy to be filled.
He doesn’t get the salary, but he insists a handful of his underlings there are doing important work on the penny ante projects he was working on.
Alaska’s Lt Governor functions as Sec of State. Actually, all they did was switch the job title in the ‘60s when it used to be called Sec of State. They should either restore the powers of IL Lt Gov to be President of the Senate or give them some sort of authority or abolish the office. There also needs to be a manner with which the office can be filled (having either the Gov appoint when a vacancy occurs or having the next ranking official in the Senate ascend to the job, as what occurs in NY & PA).
The Lt. Governor also gets two fully staffed office suites, just like the Governor -- one in the capitol building in Springfield, and another in the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago.
Of course we could have solved all this last year when the "Constitution Convention" was on the ballot, but the sheeple in Illinois rejected it due to a fear campaign that they'd somehow lose their state pensions under a new constitution. Now the only way to reform the way our government is set up is through massively amending the Constitution.
They ought to merge the Illinois Treasurer and Ilinois Comptroller into a single office as well, and put them both under the jurisdiction of the State Auditor General (currently an appointed office)
The Illinois Secretary of State is already an enormously powerful official, since he's also in charge of transportation and the dept. of motor vehicles, the state librarian, state historian, "keeper of the great seal of Illinois" etc. I wouldn't want to make the guy Lt. Governor as well... especially with senile Jesse White currently holding the job.
Since the office of Lt. Governor if vacant, the next in line according to the order of succession is the Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, and not her father, the Speaker of the House (I don't know who's in line after little Lisa) Why they made the A.G. next in line, I don't know, logic should dictate that it would go to the SOS or the Speaker of the House.
Personally I think Gov. Quinn committed political suicide by proposing an income tax hike in his annual budget address. Hasn't he learned that you're not supposed to shove these things through until AFTER you win re-election?
Illinois state Constitution, Article V, section 7:
“If the Lieutenant Governor fails to qualify or if his office becomes vacant, it shall remain vacant until the end of the term.”
someone should total up how much the lunches for all the congress critters costs.. after all, they put it on the tax payers tab
when they start eating oodles of noodles on a daily basis... THEN i might think they are serious about cutting spending, instead of just raising taxes.
Dave O'Neal. He was elected with Big Jim Thompson in '76 and reelected in '78 (when they switched to the off-year elections). I'm forgetting if it was he or his predecessor, Neal Hartigan, that was the first to win the job on a ticket elected with the Governor (remember Dem Paul Simon won Lt Gov even as Republican Dick Ogilvie won the Governorship in '68). O'Neal thought he was going to win the open Senate seat in 1980 when Adlai Stevenson the 3rd retired (in anticipation of running for Governor in '82). When he failed and it went to Sec of State Alan Dixon (one of the few Dem successes in the Reagan landslide), he had nowhere to go. Thompson made it plain he wasn't going to step aside in '82, so O'Neal just quit in July '81 and left the office vacant for a year and a half. I don't think anyone much noticed. Of course, that then gave then-House Speaker George Ryan his opportunity, and he managed to serve a whole 8 years in the job. When he was succeeded by Bob Kustra in '91, Kustra was the anointed choice for Senator in '96, but after he was upended by Al Salvi in the primary, he eventually quit early, too, in July of '98.
I would prefer they keep the office around (New Jersey's past is proof of how awkward the suddenly transfer of power is without a Lt. Governor), but give it some teeth. I think everyone can agree that it would have been better to have Pat Quinn preceding over the state senate than Emil Jones. I agree with Impy they have a procedure in place to name an acting Lt. Governor in the event of a vacancy too. I think in a few states, like Texas, the Lt. Governor post is arguably more powerful than the Governor. I wouldn't go that far, but Illinois certainly should at least give the job similar clout as Vice President, and perhaps a few more actual powers than Joe Biden has under the U.S. Constitution. (perhaps a provision that the Governor & Lt. Governor meet once a week to discuss the affairs of government... this would have forced Blago to keep Quinn in the loop about the state budget)
Yeah, there was a rivalry. Simon was being groomed for the Governorship by the Daley Machine and was all set to face Ogilvie in '72... that was until the anti-Daley Dan Walker upended Simon in the Dem primary. Had Ogilvie not ramrodded that income tax through, he would've won reelection without much of a problem. A little interesting fact that Je$$e Jack$on endorsed both the anti-Jewish Chuck Percy and Ogilvie in '72 for reelection.
"I think in a few states, like Texas, the Lt. Governor post is arguably more powerful than the Governor."
My state could make that claim, too. Recently, a survey was conducted on who were the most powerful people in TN and Ron Ramsey, our GOP Lt Governor, was ranked ahead of Gov. Bredesen. At the time Dubya defeated Ma Richards in '94 for TX Governor, the Tory Democrat Bob Bullock was the Lt Governor. Bullock, a very experienced pol, could've really inflicted maximum damage upon Dubya if he so chose to since this was, after all, Dubya's first elective office. Instead, he ended up serving as a mentor and showing him the ropes. I think this also accounted partly for why Dubya never formed a really strong and visceral dislike for operating with Democrats. Given a fairly productive and bipartisan atmosphere he had in Austin, he never quite "got it" that that wasn't how the federal rodents operated. It really showed in his last two years in office when he just totally was lost (and Harry Reid & Nancy Pelosi were no Bob Bullock).
Neal Finkelman, a Gurnee conservative, says that he was the lt. gov., July 1998-Jan. ‘99. He must have been appointed by then-Gov. Edgar.
Neal “April Fools” Finkelman ?
Why did you call him April Fools? I lived near San Diego, 1996-2001, and I haven’t found much information, about him. I looked for him, using google.
You googled him ? Seriesly ?
Yes, I’m serious, and I didn’t find very much information, about him.
About San Diego ?
I was there because I was in the navy.
Did you serve with Rusty Griswold ?
Huh? Woo the hell is Neal Finkelman? Whoever he was he was never the LT Governor of Illinois.
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