Reinvent Illinois

Pension Reform

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:21:22 +0000

Pension costs are growing and represent a huge annual cost for the residents of the state. As far as I know, it is possible for an employee to retire, begin to recieve their pension payments, and then be rehired (even for the same position) allowing them to collect their pension AND payment for their work.

This seems to me to be wasteful. Pension payments should be postponed to people who have been rehired.

Another consideration should be that pension payments made prior to the retirement age of 65 should be lower than the final payments, if they get paid at all. Prior to age 65 these people should be working and if they want to retire early then the individual should fund that early retirement, not the taxpayers.

The retirement age should be increased to 67 to start with and then gradually raise it even more. People are living longer and are healthier. Therefore, they should be able to contribute for a longer period of time. Again if people want to retire earlier there is no problem with them saving to obtain that goal. It should not be given to them.

In looking at how the government budgets it is apparent that the process is broken. The current process is setup to incent those responsible for the budget to ensure that the entire amount is spent. If they don’t spend it then they’ll get less the next year. Incentives should be created to identify a way to foster savings in the budgets.

Saving a million dollars here and there is all well and good, but until the REAL problems are addressed those other efforts are not worth worrying about.

Inefficient workers cause the state to employ many more people than necessary. An independent group should be created to review all state government departments with the purpose of reducing headcount and driving efficiencies. The member of this group MUST be serious about their task and must NOT be political in nature. Any effort in this area that becomes political will be doomed to failure before it even begins.

Speaking of efficiencies, union rules MUST be changed to allow for more efficient day to day operations. It doesn’t make any sense for contracts to get bogged down dealing with cubicle size/color/etc. Workers must be able to do simple tasks that are not in their job description. Any “normal” employee should be willing to pitch in and assist in a task that is not specifically spelled out in their job description. Union workers should be no different. Job descriptions are not the bible, instead they are a basic description of the types of tasks that one could reasonably expect to perform in their job. They do not cover any potential eventuality.

That’s probably enough for now. Like I said above, any reform that does not cover the major problems is no real reform. I would also think that if the state government got serious about tackling these problems and made some actual progress then the citizens would not be as strongly opposed to a tax increase as they would be. I know that I would be willing to pay more to get IL on a stronger footing, but that is contingent on the politicians doing their part too.

DRS counselors

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:17:07 +0000

Now that DRS counselors are doing all the reassesments and inital assessments for the BI waiver, they have managed to invalidate all the appeal process set up to protect the customers in the waiver.

This is happening in 2 ways. (Mind you they were put in place to avoid the conflict of interest posed by allowing case management agencies to do assessments as well as set up the services for the customer)

1. The counselor in Peoria has added hours to home service plans that were taken away by case managers even after there was an appeal process, sometimes tripling the number of hours in the service plan. The addition in hours is added without any changes in the customer’s needs and no change in the Determination of Need Score. To me this invalidates the appeal procedure and wastes money.

2. When a counselor changes the service plan, they do not send out service notice letters to customers. This is a requirment of the program. These letters allow the customer to appeal if needed. It is there right!! Also the personal assistants are not informed in a timely manner.

How is making the counselors do the assessments/ressessments not a conflict of interest.

Eliminate Lt. Governor

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:14:58 +0000

Why does Illinois NEED a Lieutenant governor? There are a half dozen states that do not have one and they seem to be functioning and surviving a lot better then Illinois. In a state who finances are in such disarray, and where Springfield considers borrowing as a source of revenue, please FIND a way to cut that position, salary, rental of office space, travel expenses, health benefits, etc., to show the consumers and tax-payers of Illinois, you mean business about change the poor spending we’ve seen for decades.
QUIT wasting our money!!!

One license plate

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:38:57 +0000

good ideal on one license plate on rear ,i suggest while driving around town or on highway, you check and see if you can see illinois on rear plate ,because the dealers name on plate frame has it covered,this you need to check out.

Primary elections

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:29:27 +0000

I think Illinois needs to have an independent ballot for the primary. It is nobodies business what party we vote for. Some of us vote for the person, not the party.

Amend Regulations on State Grants

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:10:39 +0000

Amend regulations on state grants to allow programs to save money one year and carry it over to the next, instead of penalizing them for not spending every dollar. As the director of an adult literacy program funded by the Secretary of State, I have had to pass up opportunities to save money, since I was oblidged to spend the entire grant award by June 30. Otherwise, the amount of unused funds would would be deducted from the following year’s award. Funding for such programs is minimal, yet payments are very late (8 months overdue this fiscal year) and it becomes difficult to prudently spend dollars in the last 4 months of a program.

Lift smoking ban

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:05:55 +0000

The original report on the dangers of second hand smoke was found to be fraudulent by federal courts, yet second hand smoke has been out-lawed through-out IL costing IL millions of dollars per year in lost revenue.

Either find legitimate medical reports on “second hand smoke”, of which none exists and I will support them or cancel the smoking ban in IL.

Second hand smoking dangers equate with the global warming scams and educated elected representatives should not continually fall for scams as they have.

If you want to out-law oders then ban oders but saying that second hand smoke costs lives is rediculous otherwise these claims could be supported by studies.

Get back millions of dollars by allowing smoking in IL where private Americans choose to smoke.

Streamline Government

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:04:28 +0000

Illinois has four times more units of government than Wisc. That means 4 times more taxing bodies. Let’s streamline local government.
I don’t know where you live, but an example of wasteful government in my neighborhood are the “township” bodies. They are just seats of patronage. Going to county wide units of government seem more productive. We need to take advantage of economies of scale.
Take Libraries for example. Why don’t we have one Lake County Library System just like Kenosha County does?
And let’s talk about school districts, some are so small they really can’t be justified! All of those school administrators, circulum assistant principals, etc, etc, etc! If some of those district were combined we could spend more money on teachers and books, rather on administrative costs.

Creating jobs

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:06:13 +0000

Call for the repeal of the death tax, lower the corporate tax in Illinois and capital gains tax in Illinois. Cutting taxes like reagan did in the ’80s created private sector jobs and promoted capitalism. Push hard for this.

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:04:36 +0000

I am so frustrated about the changes in the BI Waiver program for people with brain injuries, which was passed with the help of Rep. David Leitch and family members of people with brain injuries, as well as nurses in rehabilitation units. My agency contracted through DRS to assess and manage home services for people wiht brain injuries, which is the only program for support of people who live with BI (Brain injuries). DRS in its limited wisdom and with its “world class service” has slowed these services down to a trickle. They do not manage things very well and so do not have time to respond. My agency still does case management but due to conflicts in interest, we do not do any reassessments or authorizations. The counselor at DRS, who tries to do all the reassesments that my agency did with 9 case managers, is a nice man, but there is no reason why our agency cannot keep doing all paperwork for these people. Things like ramps and bathroom re novations take forever to get approved and it takes forever to pay the contractors so they do not want to make bids anymore. The transition period was so long and confusing that the customer are still trying to figure out who to call about what and why. There just seems to be no end to stalling. This change in the system does not improve any of the services nor speeds the process. WE have no one to complain about our problems. No one at DRS seesm to want to take responsiblity.