From the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette (Editorial):
No limit to Blagojevich administration's deception
Tuesday September 30, 2008
An Illinois appellate court ruling last week raises significant constitutional questions about the legitimacy of the Blagojevich administration and its operation of a multimillion-dollar health care program.
The conventional wisdom in Springfield has been that once Senate President Emil Jones retires in January, there will be changes in the way the Legislature treats Gov. Rod Blagojevich. With Jones' retirement, Blagojevich will lose his most important ally in the General Assembly, the thinking goes, and lawmakers will be free to treat the governor with well-earned, utter disregard: rewriting his budget, rejecting his appointments and ignoring his initiatives.
We would have – to borrow a phrase from Ed Rollins, President Reagan's former political director who was talking about the Bush administration – not a lame-duck administration but a dead-duck administration.
But an Illinois appellate court decision last week highlights a flaw in the ignore-Blagojevich strategy. After all, this governor has had no problem ignoring the will of the people, overturning the wishes of the Legislature and legislative agencies and now, perhaps, even lying to the courts.
At issue is a Blagojevich initiative to expand FamilyCare, a state-subsidized health care plan. The action was taken over the objections of the Legislature and its Joint Commission on Administrative Rules. Last spring a circuit judge in Cook County issued an injunction to block operation of the program and the JCAR again ruled against it,
But the appellate court found that even after the injunction was issued the Blagojevich administration and its Department of Healthcare and Family Services defied the court: "defendants continued to operate the FamilyCare program."
Further, the appellate court found, the administration doesn't seem to have any handle on the Family Care program. "Moreover, defendants admitted to the trial court that, even at this early point in the creation of their FamilyCare Program, they already cannot identify program participants, provide them with notice or monitor payments; they do not even know (or at least have refused to reveal) where the premiums have been collected, are kept and how much remains," the court wrote.
The Blagojevich administration, it seems, treats the courts with the same indifference it treated The News-Gazette a few years go when we filed a Freedom of Information request for information about another health care program and were told it was a "low priority." Later we were told the numbers we wanted weren't available – the same response the courts now have received.
As Ron Gidwitz, one of the plaintiffs in the case, told the Associated Press, "You've got an agency which is totally incompetent and a governor and agency head who are breaking the law." He's right. It's time for the Legislature to do more than just ignore this deceitful, defiant and dangerous governor. If the federal prosecutors sniffing around the governor don't act soon to rid Illinois of Blagojevich, the Legislature should move to do so.