With the start of the new year, I thought it appropriate to take a look back as some of the news that caught my eye during 2007:

The race to replace Congressman Ray: First, U.S. Representative Ray LaHood’s decision to retire caught everyone by surprise. He was one of the first GOP members of the House to call it quits this election cycle because, as LaHood himself says, it’s no fun to be a member of a minority party. It threw re-election plans for a loop throughout the 18th District. State Rep. Aaron Schock essentially blew off LaHood’s suggestion that everyone wait before endorsing anyone. But Schock sprung into action. Behaving like he was following a pre-planned strategy, Schock worked the phones and contacted all party leaders and got their endorsements.

From the moment he decided to run, Schock has gone out of his way to make it appear that he’s the inevitable nominee. The other two guys in the race - former Peoria City Council member John Morris and Heartland Partnership CEO Jim McConoughey aren’t playing along with this scheme, however. They both have put up viable campaigns. And Aaron hasn’t helped his own cause with numerous foot-in-mouth incidents. Yes, it’s true: He really did suggest selling nuclear weapons to Taiwan. Yes, he really did get kicked out of county party headquarters for running a national campaign out it (it’s a campaign spending violation). Yes, he really did send out literature suggesting LaHood as endorsing him, when LaHood isn’t. It’s really making Schock look out to be too immature for the job.

There wasn’t a shortage of folks considering seeking the Democratic nomination. But in the end, it was as hard getting a viable Democratic candidate as it usually is in the 18th. Dick Versace - the guy who coached B.U. more than two decades ago - tossed his hat in the ring. But he took his hat out of the ring a few months later, too late for anyone to get into the primary. There are some folks reconsidering their decision to not be considered.

A big gulp of racism: Black people weren’t getting inside the 4 a.m. bars in downtown Peoria. In fact, there were often very large numbers of them hanging outside the bars. Some complained the bars’ rather silly dress codes were keeping them out. Some have suggested that occupancy rules were keeping them out. Sure. Whatever. In any case, large groups of black people loitering in Peoria isn’t exactly conducive to promoting convention trade. Eventually, the Peoria City Council added one bar to the 4 a.m. liquor zone. It’s owned by a black person and caters to black people. This is supposed to lure some of the loiterers there.

The whole mess made Peoria look bad, but I can’t really call it racism when the city gives a minority business owner a coveted 4 a.m. license. Of course, the puritans in Peoria were aghast. If the latest a bar could stay open in Peoria was 2 a.m., they would complain that any bar was allowed to stay open past midnight. Hell, these folks are upset that grocery stores can stay open on Sunday. In my humble opinion, the city’s decision works, even if it is inelegant, and codifies what I think is a form of racism being practiced by some of these bars. But I don’t want the city putting itself in a position of trying to decide where and when some business is discriminating. Let the state and federal courts do their jobs for a change.

A study in contrast: A passenger in a car on Interstate 74 is killed by a brick tossed from an overpass. A Bradley University student died in a fire started by his roommates. These two stories are related, in that they happened at approximately the same time frame, and the public linked them. As soon as news of Katrina Kelly’s death hit the streets on July 14, people were calling it cold-blooded and calculated murder. This was the general public’s conclusion before anyone knew anything about how or why this happened. But when Danny Dahlquist died on Aug. 12 in a fire set by his roommates, the public almost immediately seemed to clamor for forgiveness and mercy. Rakiem Campbell pleaded guilty in Peoria County Circuit Court to vehicular endangerment in exchange for a 15-year sentence - the maximum under law - for tossing the concrete block that killed Kelly. As part of the deal, a murder charge was dismissed. Much of the public considers the sentence too lenient.

Nicholas Mentgen, Ryan Johnson, David Crady, Daniel Cox are still awaiting trial on relatively minor arson and fireworks possession charges for their lethal, drunken prank. Their sentences, even if they go to trial, will almost certainly not approach the ten years that Campbell is likely to serve. I’m guessing if these people serve any time in prison at all, it will be condemned by some for not being lenient enough.

So what are the differences? Well, the roommates knew their victim and tried to save his life when their realized their prank went wrong. In Campbell’s case, this was just the last in a long list of violent behavior. He didn’t know his victim, and there’s no evidence he expected anything other than harm to come to someone.

But there’s another difference: Campbell is black. The BU students were white. Only a fool would think these cases are identical. But only a fool would think that race played no role in the differing reactions by the public and the Peoria County State’s Attorney’s office.

Kellar Branch re-opens to Pioneer Rail Corp: It’s over folks. The Keller Branch rail line - which runs from the river to waaaaaaay out in North Peoria beyond Pioneer Parkway, is NOT coming down. Period. End of story. The Surface Transportation board has had its the final say. Pioneer Rail Corp (who the City of Peoria wanted to kick off the line) and Central Illinois Railroad (who the city hired to oversee the line until it’s demolished) has long since turned on the city and wants to be the lone provider. The folks who wanted to rip out this line and replace it with - I kid you not, a walking/biking trail - are flabbergasted they aren’t getting their way. They are just soooooo used to the fact that developers usually get what they want in Peoria.
Manual 22: Twenty two students at Manual and ten at Woodruff High School were given jaywalking tickets. And it was a huge story for about a month. Community activist Rita Ali, who witnessed the incident, said students were not walking down middle of the street. Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard stood by his officers, who reported they were jaywalking. The whole thing collapsed, and the tickets were dismissed after the students attended assemblies. The vehemence at which white people wanted these kids punished surprised me, as did as the insistence by black people that the police are targeting them in a deliberate effort to keep black people down. I don’t buy the conspiracy theories. And I am also fairly certain that black drivers are more likely to be stopped that white drivers. But I’ve also talked to whites and blacks who have encountered the aggressive, confrontational style of jaywalking that so frightens people.

GateHouse Media buys the Journal Star, other central Illinois Newspapers: It took them little time to offer buyout agreements to veteran staffers. They’ve refused to replace reporters who quit to take other jobs or those who were promoted to fill vacancies. They laid off support personnel. I’ve lost track of the number of lost positions. In my humble opinion, I’ve noticed a decline in enterprise reporting, shorter articles and bylined articles that seem more like press releases. I think it’s due to having an overworked staff. GateHouse Media has also bought out newspapers in Galesburg, Springfield, Lincoln, not to mention local weeklies in the Times Newspapers chain. This includes my old stomping grounds, the Peoria Times-Observer. If this continues, Peorians can forget about being able to get quality print journalism from their one and only newspaper of record. Putting out a quality newspaper requires people with enough time and resources to do the job. GateHouse seems intent on gutting the paper to nothingness.

District 150 caves: Last year, District 150, the Peoria Park District and the Peoria Housing Authority made a behind-closed-doors agreement that would have shuttered Glen Oak School and led to the construction of a huge new school on land adjacent to Glen Oak Park. Essentially, the park would become the school’s de facto playground. The nearby community freaked, because they didn’t want their kids walking that far and across Prospect Avenue; they didn’t want to lose any more park land to development; and they didn’t want to see GOS shuttered, as it would continue to destabilize the neighborhood. After a long and bitter fight, the park board declined to participate, but not before the allegedly cash-strapped school district paid top dollar prices to buy some property on Prospect. THIS YEAR, the district did it right. Rather than have no public input, they had public input on steroids. They held a series of public hearings, moderated by an outsider, and ended up deciding to follow the advice they were given consistently at these hearings: Build TWO schools to replace the total of four schools that will be closed. The only question that remains is where the East Bluff School will be built.

Predictions:

1. There will be new taxes coming into Peoria City Hall’s coffers to pay for additional firefighters, additional police officers and other projects. City Council members are sick of saying “no” to reasonable requests for sidewalks and lighting projects (among other things). This new tax revenue might come from taxes on liquor and on drive-thru fast food (it’s an idea I heard once proposed to pay for litter cleanup). There might, perhaps, be some sort of public service fee attached to utility bills, one based on usage, that might get institutions like BU and the hospitals to pay their fair share for the services they receive.

2. There will be BIG changes proposed for Peoria School District 150. At least, there will be if they don’t get their heads out of the clouds and apply some common sense to their decision making.

3. Peoria School District 150 will pick the current Glen Oak School site as the location for its new East Bluff school.

I wouldn’t want to be a mainstream reporter these days. It was tough enough of a job back when I was doing it. These days, I sometimes wonder if it’s ethical to even offer college journalism programs, considering that newspapers are laying off reporters as profits drop. The newspaper industry blames the Internet for sucking up all the classified ad dollars. And then the Internet has given us blogs, which have proven to be quite a headache for the mainstream media.

There have been plenty of examples of these trends here in the River City.

In nearby Springfield, the well-respected State-Journal Register sent letters to staffers trying to induce them into taking early retirement. A few weeks after that, the publisher, editor and managing editor decided to quit, effective on the same date. Not that this has anything to do with the bloodletting, they assure us. It’s a development that should trouble Peorians, because both newspapers are owned by the same outfit, GateHouse Media, whose business model is designed around buying up all the newspapers in a region and cutting staff, regardless of the effect on quality.

Not that there hasn’t been some churn at the Peoria Journal Star already. Since GateHouse took over, more than a dozen staffers’ newsroom staffers have retired and moved on. None of have been replaced. Managing Editor Jack Brimeyer announced his retirement. Assistant ME John Plevka will take over.

And then there is the grief that blogs - including my own - have been giving Journal Star reporter Karen McDonald. The biggest story in the 18th District Congressional has been State Rep. Aaron Schock’s statement that he wants to U.S. to sell nuclear weapons to Taiwan. That story was broken by a columnist from the State Journal-Register, not McDonald, the J.S. reporter who was at the scene when Schock made the announcement. To make matters worse, what little subsequent reporting the JS did on the issue didn’t carry McDonald’s byline … except for a very routine story saying that Schock had announced her was no longer advocating selling nuclear weapons to Taiwan.

While the Journal Star virtually ignored this controversy, it was played up in newspapers across the state and on blogs across the world. Much of the coverage on the blogs (including my own) was very unkind to McDonald.

The end result was a week-long, juicy controversy that offered a ton of opportunity for voters to compare and contrast the three candidates for the GOP nomination - not to mention the Democratic candidate, who is unopposed - before the February primary election. So far, there’s not been not much difference among the Three Amigos of Schock, Jim McConoughey and John Morris on the issues, leaving it to voters to figure out for themselves who has the gravitas for the job. In what is a very rare case, the Journal Star Editorial Board blistered Schock with a comprehensive recap of the controversy, including details not touched by its own reporting staff.

November wasn’t a kind month to Schock, nor to the Journal Star. Hopefully, he’s learned a lesson. As outgoing Congressman Ray LaHood told WEEK: “Words matter.” If you are running for an office that can affect foreign policy, you can’t just spout something off to seem tough to your party’s right wing.

The Journal Star and reporter McDonald learned their lessons too, hopefully: The era in which a reporter can show up, transcribe a few quotes and dash off to cover other assignment are over. Reporters’ work is being fact checked and bias-checked, not only by competing mainstream media, but also by the blogs, which grow more influential with every passing election. And if the media keeps producing the kind of lackluster political coverage the PJS has been providing, look for more and more voters to be looking toward blogs to fill in the blanks.

A tale of two city departments

At the Nov. 6, City of Peoria budget hearing, city council members Bob Manning and Barbara Van Auken were very critical of the city’s inspections department. Manning wanted to know why some inspectors have hundreds of cases in housing court, while some have virtually none. Van Auken said this (and I’m paraphrasing): ‘Week after week, month after month, we have individual who do no cases at all. That cannot be a reality that there are no violations. I am suggesting with you we have a problem with personnel not performing. I would like for us to explore setting standards.’

Inspections director Kunski replied that they have made adjustments already by stopping warning notices for environmental and housing and limiting limited the number of warning notices an inspector can give in a two year period. Van Auken replied that there needs to be more specific performance standards based on the area of the city in which the zoning inspectors operate.

It’s funny, because I heard similar complaints during the budget hearings last year. I somehow do not think creating new performance standards will be high on the to-do list at city hall.

Compare this exchange with the words that came out of Peoria Police Chief Settingsgaard’s mouth when he gave his department’s presentation during the budget sessions. He brought up the subject of the so-called ticket quota. He makes no apologies for demanding that his officers turn in no less than ten traffic tickets a month. He recently informed officers that he wants to see similar ticketing done for “quality of life” violations. There is no reason at all that every single officer cannot come across ten obvious violations, he says. When should officers give out these tickets? Whenever they see them, and have the time to do them, and it doesn’t make them late to a call.

And don’t think for a moment that council members do not appreciate this attitude from the police department.

Pulling a Meigs

In case you missed it, the folks who want to rip out the Kellar Branch rail line (that would be the City of Peoria, Village of Peoria Heights and the Peoria Park District) lost again. They tried to get the Surface Transportation Board to kick Pioneer Railway off the line, thereby ensuring that the only operator is Central Illinois Railway, the company the city hired to operate the line and, one presumes, willing to so the city’s bidding and quit operating on the line, allowing the city to destroy it and build a walking/riding path.

A smart person would admit defeat and give up. The STB is never going to allow a working rail line to stop operating, leaving customers in the lurch, to let someone build a trail. But the people who really, really, really want a trail won’t give up - why should they, it’s just taxpayers who are footing the bill for constant appeals. So I fully expect there to be an appeal to the appellate court, not to mention endless pleading to congressmen and senators to intercede and made the mean old STB make a decision contrary to mission and let them build the thing.

But that’s not enough for Peoria City Council member Pat Nichting. More than any other member of the council, Nichting can be counted on to represent the interests of developers, especially those who operate in his fifth district. And as I’ve noted before, the fierce determination to ram this trail project cannot be explained simply as a desire for more walking and biking. If that was the real concern, they would be pushing for the Peoria Park District to maintain the trails they already have. No, it’s apparent that there’s money to be made by developing land alongside the trail, and the developers want the rail line removed. Period. They want no discussion of a trail alongside the rail line. They simply want the line removed.

This brings us back to Nichting, the developers’ pal. As of this writing, he was planning to bring a motion to the council calling for the city to just go right ahead and build the trail, regardless of the fact that the STB had ruled that it cannot be closed as long as there are customers using it. To quote the article:

“He said the city should consider a ‘Meigs Field operation,’ referring to when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley in 2003 ordered private crews to destroy a Chicago airport’s runways in the middle of the night.

” ‘There are options,’ Nichting, a trail proponent, said after learning that the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB), which has exclusive domain of the nation’s railroads, denied a request from Peoria and Peoria Heights to keep Pioneer Industrial Railway off the eight-mile line. ‘(The options) include litigation and possibly doing a Meigs Field operation. There one day and gone the next.”

Well, isn’t that just lovely? Not one month ago, the city was all up in arms about a small group of teenagers who were ignoring the law and walking down the middle of the road. Now, we have a sitting city councilman who is demanding that if the city can’t get its way legally, that it break the law in the middle of the night. Does Nichting think that should be an option when someone wants a zoning variance from the city and is denied?

Feh. Rail fans are all up in arms about this. I’m laughing, because it won’t happen. Oh, I’m sure, there are six votes out of eleven on the council to keep stringing the trail-supporters along by pretending this thing has a shot. But there are NOT six votes on the board in support of ordering the city manager to order anything remotely like this to occur. Even if the council were to order the kind of Meigs field strike that Nichting suggests, I rather doubt that City Manager Randy Oliver would follow that order. Losing one’s job is NOTHING compared to being arrested on federal charges.

And I am also sure that someone has sent a copy of this Journal Star article to the powers-that-be in the federal government, who are no doubt eager as Hell to lock up city council members who might conspire to demolish a rail line that the federal government has adjudicated what remain operational.

”A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Macbeth, 5. 5

That’s it? That’s all there is to this?

It was quite a let down at Peoria Police HQ last week. I was looking forward to months of increasingly bitter acrimony and accusations of racism as the city tried to prosecute a bunch of high school age kids for obstructing traffic. And by prosecute, I mean, “try to get them to pay the tickets.” Instead, the city is letting the Manual 22 (and Woodruff 10) avoid punishment for the egregious sin of walking down the road. Read the rest of this entry »

After the Sept. 18 “summit” meeting of the Peoria School District 150 board and the Peoria City Council, I spent a few minutes chatting with board members Mary Spangler and Debbie Wolfmeyer.

I’m glad I did. Spangler brought up one of the issues that makes her and other board members and school administrators so bullish on their school construction plan: Lighting. They have seen studies, Spangler said, that show there’s a strong correlation between how well-lit classrooms are with the student achievement. Bear in mind, this is NOT just about making sure that the rooms are bright enough to read and see the blackboard from the back of the room. It’s also about the lighting source, and that’s why they want new buildings with plenty of natural light pouring into rooms.

I couldn’t agree more. I was a student at Glen Oak School in the 1970’s when the district decided to go around and brick up most of the windows in the classrooms. They did this all across the district in order to save money on heating.

As I understand it, anyone who complained that it was depressing to sit in classrooms without natural light, the argument was made that windows were too distracting for students. Student achievement would certainly soar now that the kids can’t stare out the windows all day.

It’s the same old story. Different decades bring different educational theories and different magic bullets that will cure troubled schools.

Read the rest of this entry »

John Morris spent a day enjoying the news media reporting on the results of a campaign poll “as if it were gospel.”

Actually, I suspect that the habitually upbeat former Peoria City Council member wasn’t really all that much amused as he was annoyed. Not that he would ever admit it.

For those who missed it, State Rep. Aaron Schock released the results of an opinion poll that showed him leading the race for the Republican nomination for the seat in the 18th District U.S. House seat that will be vacated by the retiring Ray LaHood. It also showed him walloping at least one of the announced candidates for the Democratic nomination. The press release also bragged about the massive amount of money Schock spent on past campaigns.

The underlying message: ‘No one can afford to campaign against me.’

Morris isn’t buying it, he says. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had a lot of fun with Ray LaHood on these pages as well as the pages on my blog, PeoriaPundit.com. I imagine, though, that wasn’t quite so much fun for the congressman.

Now that LaHood has announced his retirement and the end of his current term in January 2009, I think it’s appropriate to explain the source of my pique with Peoria’s one and only congressman.

We go back a long way. My dad was, shall we say, an enthusiastic supporter of G. Douglas Stephens, who ran against LaHood’s former boss, Bob Michel. I believe the statute of limitations has run out, but familial loyalty prevents me from retelling some of the Dad’s tall tales about the lengths he and his cronies (or would that be “co-conspirators?”) went shortening the lifespan of Michel’s campaign signs back in 1982. It’s entirely possible Dad embellished things a bit.

But Michael retired and his top aide LaHood ran and won in 1992. When LaHood faced Stephens in 1994, I was a reporter for the Journal-Courier in Jacksonville. The boss assigned me a write lengthy follow-the-candidates-around profiles on both of them (the boss didn’t seem concerned that my old man was a Stephens supporter). I think I did a pretty good job. LaHood won, of course, and I tended to be the one assigned to cover him when he showed up for ribbon cuttings or to read stories to grade schoolers (“‘Who, who!’ went the owl, “Who who!’” Ya shoulda been there). Read the rest of this entry »

Bear with me. This is still a column about media and politics in the ol’ River City. I’ve been doing this for several years now, and I think I’ve earned the right to digress a bit and devote just a few paragraphs to the most media-saturated non-news story of this decade. And I promise, before I’m done, I will mention a few things about Peoria.

I was driving home from work last night listening to the Jim Bohannon show on WMBD 1470-AM, and Jimbo was asking/pontificating about Paris Hilton. He wanted someone to explain to him why Paris is a celebrity, because she has no talent other than being somewhat ‘more easy’ on the eyes. It was a slap at the media for making her a celebrity and for the public for being fascinated with her life. Read the rest of this entry »