Blagojevich meets with ministers, spars with Daley
Gov. Rod Blagojevich said his criticism of the Chicago Transit Authority over its funding problems is not "cuckoo" like Mayor Richard Daley suggested Monday.
"But I will tell you what drives me crazy, and what drives me crazy is the CTA blaming years of mismanagement on senior citizens taking the bus for free," Blagojevich said after meeting with about 30 black ministers on Chicago's South Side about education funding issues.
Blagojevich and Daley have volleyed accusations back and forth about another round of cuts made by the CTA last week. Daley has blamed Blagojevich's program giving free rides to senior citizens for the budget issues, while Blagojevich has blamed the transit agency.
Blagojevich condemning the city for CTA's funding problems is "cuckoo," Daley said in a high-pitched voice, mimicking a cuckoo clock to laughter from those assembled at a news conference Monday. He then said he was "not getting into an argument" with the Democratic governor.
"He's arguing with everybody in America," Daley said of Blagojevich.
The governor's meeting with the ministers wrapped up a busy day that also included an aerial tour of flooded communities in the Chicago area after the weekend's record rainfall. Blagojevich, who wore jeans on his flood tour, apologized profusely about his attire to the ministers, whom he met with for nearly two hours.
The meeting came after pressure from State Sen. James Meeks to talk about education funding, improvements and accountability. Meeks recently staged a two-day walkout of Chicago Public Schools to protest a school funding formula that relies on property taxes and gives the money advantage to well-to-do districts.
Ministers and the governor are expected to meet again in a couple of weeks to further discuss education funding.
But how to fix the school funding formula is likely to be a prickly issue. Blagojevich has been resistant to raising the income tax to do it, something Meeks said the General Assembly might want to do anyway.
"If the governor doesn't put any other ideas on the table that can fix this problem without raising the income taxes, then the General Assembly will have to go to raising the income taxes," Meeks said.
Blagojevich seemed to stand to his ground on the issue in opening comments to the ministers. The groups then closed the meeting to reporters.
"In terms of school funding, I've been for just about everything except one thing: I don't want to raise taxes on people because I think it's just unfair," he said.
Meeks is also interested in a cluster program that would pour $120 million into four groups of schools over three years -- on Chicago's depressed South and West sides, in the suburbs, and downstate. It would begin by auditing the schools for appropriate curriculum and teacher development, and measure progress to show that more money improves student achievement.
Meeks said when ministers and the governor meet again to talk about school funding they'll talk about measures to the "tune of billions," but the ministers did not go into detail.
On another matter, Blagojevich also dismissed any suggestion that he larded up an ethics bill to kill it.
State constitutional officers including Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Comptroller Dan Hynes and Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias called on Blagojevich to urge Senate President Emil Jones to bring back the Senate to override the governor's veto of an ethics bill.
The House has already voted to override the governor's amendatory veto of the legislation, and the Senate has been under pressure to reconvene to follow suit. A spokeswoman for Jones said last week, however, that senators won't be asked to return early and will next meet on Nov. 12 as scheduled.