“Throughout his career, Bob Flider was a tireless, effective leader for rural farming communities and global agri-business leaders,” said Quinn. “He served his district with distinction, and I am pleased he will continue to serve all the people of our state.”

From 2003 to 2011, Flider served in the Illinois House of Representatives, sitting on the House Agriculture & Conservation Committee, the Energy & Environment Committee and the Ethanol Production Oversight Committee.

Quinn’s appointment of Flider won the backing of Illinois House Deputy Majority Leader Lou Lang (D-Skokie).

“Bob is both a friend and a respected voice on Illinois agriculture issues,” said Lang. “Governor Quinn’s choice of Bob as Illinois Agriculture Director is an excellent decision.”

In addition to Lang, the head of the Illinois Farm Bureau also praised Flider as the next Illinois agriculture chief.

“Bob Flider worked well in the agricultural arena when he served in the General Assembly and on the House Agriculture committee. Bob’s door was always open and we look forward to working with him in his new role as Director of the Department of Agriculture,” said Philip Nelson, President of the Illinois Farm Bureau.

Flider was named an “Agriculture Certified Legislator” by the Illinois Farm Bureau in 2004, and he was named a “Friend of Agriculture” by the Illinois Farm Bureau in 2006, 2008 and 2010.

“After spending the last several years advocating for people in our farming communities and agribusiness, I look forward to continuing that work on a statewide level,” Flider said.

Flider’s appointment faces an Illinois Senate vote where he is expected to win confirmation.

House Deputy Majority Leader Lou Lang (D-Skokie) and Gov. Pat Quinn.

(Skokie, IL) – Gov. Pat Quinn advocated last week in his State of the State speech for both an end to the Illinois natural gas tax and the creation of a new tax credit for parents with children, drawing cautious support from Illinois House Deputy Majority Leader Lou Lang (D-Skokie).

“We have to analyze each of the items the governor is talking about and determine how we will pay for the initiatives and what is the potential return on the state’s investment,” Lang said. “And where there is a net gain for the state treasury, we should do it.”

The Quinn administration said the initiatives would cost approximately $294 million. Ending the gas tax would cost the state treasury $164 million and creating the child tax credit would cost $130 million. Quinn also proposed a veteran employment tax credit that would cost $5 million to $10 million.

Quinn’s office said the child tax credit could save $100 a year for the average family of four.

The governor touched lightly on the state’s top financial challenges around growing pension and Medicaid costs, but outlined no policy prescriptions.

“In many ways, the speech was incomplete,” said Lang. “There were some critical budget issues on which he could have talked, but did not. He talked about Medicaid reform and pension reform, but posed no solutions.”

Lang hopes Quinn will provide detailed proposals during his budget address to the lawmakers on February 22.

“The legislature will need concrete, detailed and realistic budget proposals from the governor on February 22,” Lang added. “It will be a day of budget reckoning.”

Laurence Msall, federation president, said lawmakers and governors have spent Illinois into a deep hole by expanding Medicaid, which provides health-care coverage to low-income families.

“What is most frightening is that even after the income tax, the state was not able to pass a budget to fully fund Medicaid,” Msall said, referring to a 67 percent personal income tax increase and a 48 percent corporate income tax increase in January 2011.

But even with that additional revenue, Illinois lawmakers still had to pay more than $1 billion in 2011 Medicaid bills.

The Civic Federation report paints a grim picture for Medicaid spending:

• Illinois is on pace to spend a total of nearly $14 billion on Medicaid this year
• Illinois’ Medicaid costs are expected to increase 41 percent over the next five years.
• Gov. Pat Quinn is budgeting only a 13 percent spending increase.

Illinois will see as many as 296,000 new people enroll in Medicaid once the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act takes effect in 2014.

Under the new law, which is designed to make health care and insurance more accessible, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of new Medicaid patients for two years. After 2016, Illinois will have to pay 50 percent of the costs.

The Civic Federation report also details increases in pension spending from $5.7 billion this year to $7.8 billion in 2017, and unpaid bills from $8.6 billion this year to $34.5 billion in five years.

Msall added that Medicaid spending is the biggest single cost for state government. The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services expects to spend a total of $14 billion on Medicaid this year, that includes both state and federal dollars.

The Civic Federation report calculates pension spending to rise 35 percent over five years, while Medicaid spending is expected to jump 41 percent.

By Benjamin Yount/Illinois Statehouse News

The legislation, Senate Bill 400, which the House passed on a vote of 67-49, would increase Illinois’ Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income, working households from a maximum of $283 to $566, boosting worker take home pay $55 million in 2012 and $110 million in 2013.

According to Deputy House Majority Leader Lou Lang (D-Skokie), a married couple with three children earning $30,000 a year would pay $799 in Illinois income taxes under current law. The new tax relief bill would drop their tax bill to $625 this year and $600 next year.

“For many hard-working families, $200 is a significant amount of money to go back in their pocket,” said Lang. “In turn, they will likely spend that money at a local business, boosting the economy.”

More than 2.5 million people benefited from the tax credit in 2009.

In addition to raising the earned income tax credit, the legislation also raises the standard tax exemption for households from $2,000 to $2,050, indexing it for inflation.

“By raising the standard, individual tax exemption, we will be adding an additional $40 million to Illinois households,” said Lang.

House lawmakers also voted, 81-28, for legislation, Senate Bill 397, to provide tax relief to top Illinois employers, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Sears, and nearly 30,000 small businesses.

“The business tax relief will keep more than 8,100 jobs in Illinois,” said Lang.

A plan to add five casinos throughout the state, expand the number of places where people can make bets at each casino, and allow video gambling at horse tracks eked out of the Legislature this spring but stalled in the face of opposition from Governor Pat Quinn.

Quinn has criticized the legislation repeatedly, calling it “top heavy.”

“The bill that they have proposed has many, many defects, and it needs to be improved substantially,” Quinn said earlier this week. “I’m going to speak about this later this month, and we’ll lay out some principles that I think ought to be used for the Legislature when it comes to gambling.”

Lawmakers will return Oct. 25 to the state Capitol for the start of the two-week veto session.

State Sen. President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, has put a temporary hold on the gaming legislation, preventing it from going to Quinn, who could reject part or all of the package.

From the end of the spring session until now, Quinn and legislators have met to discuss the gaming legislation, said state Rep. Lou Lang D-Skokie, who sponsored the gaming package in the House.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations, but there’s been no negotiation. The governor’s office is unwilling to negotiate and unwilling to tell us exactly what he wants in a bill,” Lang said.

Quinn said he is concerned about oversaturation, referring to the 10 current casinos in Illinois.

“If you have too many positions and casinos, they hurt each other,” Quinn said.

The possibility of more competition in the gaming market comes at a time when the state’s operating casinos are watching their profits drop.

The Rivers in Des Plaines was the 10th casino to open in Illinois and started operating this summer. Two months later, the closest in-state competitor, the Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, saw its lowest profits for August in 16 years, according to a study released this week by the legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

Unlike Quinn, Lang said competition between casinos isn’t the state’s problem.

“Certainly we’d be worried about cannibalization, but it is not the role or function of Illinois state government to guarantee those 10 riverboat owners a profit,” he said.

Adjusted gross receipts have been falling each year since fiscal 2008, the study said.

The study puts most of the blame for the decline on the 2008 statewide indoor smoking ban, which it said drove gamblers to surrounding states, such as Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri, where smoking is permitted in casinos.

The four riverboat casinos in the Chicago area saw adjusted gross receipts drop by $472.5 million, or 35.5 percent, between 2007 and 2010, the last year smoking was allowed indoors.

Adjusted gross receipts for Chicago-area casinos in neighboring Indiana, which allows smoking indoors and has more gaming positions, increased by $6.6 million, or 0.6 percent, during the same period, the report says.

This spring, the state House passed a proposal that would have allowed smoking in casinos, bordering states that allow indoor smoking. But the bill died in the state Senate.

The original gaming expansion bill passed the state Senate with 30 votes, the bare minimum for approval, and the House with 65 yes votes, just five more than the bare minimum for passage. To override a governor’s veto, a total of 37 out of 59 votes is needed in the Senate and 71 out of 118 votes in the House.

Because Quinn has not been willing to outline specific changes for the gaming expansion proposal, at least two legislators who voted no to the original expansion would vote to override Quinn’s veto, Lang said.

Andrew Thomason, Illinois Statehouse News

WBEZ radio’s Kristen McQueary has the story:

“Despite delays and debunked predictions—and a never-ending wait for Gov. Pat Quinn’s decision on a gambling expansion bill—supporters of expanded gambling in Illinois say they expect to find common ground by Oct. 25, the first day of the fall veto session.

The bill, stalled for months due to policy differences, political infighting and Quinn’s reluctance to increase gambling venues, remains a top priority.

But the waiting game may be ending soon. Unless Quinn outlines his concerns “in short order,” legislative leaders will present him with their own version of a clean-up gaming bill, known as a trailer bill, that will tighten control over the proposed Chicago-owned casino, according to State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie), House sponsor of the bill.”

Read the rest of the article here …

State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie)

(Skokie, IL) — August 25, 2011. Governor Pat Quinn last week signed legislation that requires insurance companies to provide insurance parity for both mental health care and substance abuse treatment, drawing praise for the measure’s approval but concern over funding from the measure’s legislative sponsor.

“No one should be forced to forgo critical mental health care because of where they live or because their insurance charges more for the necessary treatment,” said Quinn.

The legislation, House Bill 1530, sponsored by State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) and State Senator Willie Delgado (D-Chicago), prevents insurers from imposing additional barriers within the policy – such as financial requirements, treatment limitations, lifetime limits or annual limits – to treatments for mental, emotional, nervous and substance abuse disorders if no such stipulations exist for other health conditions.

The new Illinois new law exceeds the requirements of the recently-enacted federal mental health parity law, according to Lang.

“Federal enforcement is a more remote, lighter touch, relying on telephone calls and mail,” said Lang. “By matching state law to the federal standards, the Illinois Insurance Department can enforce the federal standards more aggressively than the federal government could by virtue of state face-to-face enforcement activities.”

Despite the governor’s signature on this legislation, Lang, the former Chairman of the House Committee on Mental Health Reform, expressed concern that Quinn’s effort to deeply cut funding for both mental health and substance abuse treatment services in this year’s budget undermines the coherence of any state strategy to improve behavioral health care in Illinois.

“Of course, I appreciate the governor’s signature on the mental health parity bill,” said Lang. “But we can’t slash funding for behavioral health care and then turn around and pat ourselves on the back and claim we’re helping the mentally ill.”

In the FY 2012 budget, Quinn proposed cutting $33 million from mental health director services and $63 million from substance abuse treatment, eliminating services for nearly 75,000 individuals.

“We have to pursue coherent behavioral health care strategy both on the substance and on the money,” said Lang.

“I urge the governor to sign this bill,” said Lang. “This bill will generate $1.6 billion for unpaid bills, bills in which governor has no other way to pay, and it creates or saves 90,000 jobs. When the economy risks falling back into recession, Illinois can not afford thumb its nose at 90,000 jobs.”

Former Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis joined the chorus of opposition to the state’s gambling expansion bill last week, warning that if it is implemented, “political corruption and crime syndicate infiltration will follow.”

Yet the concerns of Weis and other critics are largely addressed in the actual text of the legislation, a Chicago News Cooperative analysis of claims about the 400-page bill found.

Read the entire article here …

Moderated by Andy Shaw, President and CEO, of the watchdog group, two panels square off against each other at the Union League Club of Chicago on Wednesday evening for two-hours.

Lang, who sponsored the legislation, and Michael J. Mini, Director of Governmental Relations, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce face opponents Rev. Phillip L. Blackwell, Senior Pastor, at the First United Methodist Church of the Temple and Anita Bedell, Executive Director, Illinois Church Action on Alcohol & Addiction Problems.

“Illinois legalized gaming decades ago. That debate is over,” said Lang. “The question before us is this: is the state going to fully the develop its economic potential of a key tourism sector to save or create 90,000 jobs and bring $1.5 billion to the state treasury?”

Quinn is weighing whether to sign or veto the legislation which include a casino for Chicago, a top economic priority of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The Union League Club is located at 65 West Jackson Blvd. The debate will be held in the Crystal Room, 5th Floor. Registration begins at 5:00 P.M.; the program is 5:30 to 7:00 P.M. An audience Q & A session will follow the panel discussion.