As the Democratic primary for governor enters its final week, Rod Blagojevich has been trying his best to paint Paul Vallas as some kind of ice-blooded cross between Louis XIV and the Terminator.
With bold ignorance of reality, Blagojevich accuses Vallas of cutting some 2,000 union jobs when Vallas privatized janitorial positions in the Chicago Public Schools system. He’s running commercials that feature testimonials of a few people who claim they got left out in the cold with hardly a dime to buy coffee, thanks to Vallas’ crude budget surgery.
Facts aren’t always fun, but here are a few for Hot Rod.
Vallas never lowered the wages of any janitor. There were 800 of them when he took over the public schools in 1995 as Mayor Richard Daley’s handpicked steward of the deeply overdrawn system; they kept their jobs. Vallas started privatizing new hires, on condition that they also be unionized. True, those new janitors made a few dollars less an hour and had lower pensions and medical benefits.
Those are the kinds of tough decisions that have to be made when you’re drowning in red ink; they closely resemble the kinds of decisions faced by governors.
As concerned as he is about union jobs, where are Blagojevich’s ads about the thousands of jobs Vallas created by constructing 70 new school buildings and renovating 600 existing ones?
Blagojevich hasn’t exactly earned crooning rights on this subject. Had he been in charge in 1995, there would be no Chicago school reform.
As your average Democratic doormat in the state legislature, Blagojevich voted against the legislation that turned control of the woebegone system over to Mayor Daley.
You probably won’t see a TV ad from Blagojevich about how he voted against Chicago school reform. But that’s what he did. He recently said he voted against it because there was no money attached to accomplish the reforms.
But surprise! Vallas did accomplish the reforms–without excuses. In a matter of months, he shaped up the school system financially and turned it around academically. It has a long way to go, but it quickly became a national model that other large urban areas have looked to emulate.
That’s not good enough for Blagojevich’s high standards. He states “we are not doing enough to help struggling or stagnating schools improve” and finds the answer in throwing lots more state money at the problem.
To back up that largesse, he trots out a trifecta of meaningless campaign flatulence: he’ll “pursue federal funding more aggressively,” he’ll “cut waste, fraud and abuse” and he’ll “make education the top priority.”
That may work for student council, but not in the big leagues. Blagojevich seems to be keeping his fingers crossed that by the time he moves into his spacious new Springfield home, someone will have invented the money tree. That way, he’ll be able to pay for the myriad new programs he wants to create, and once again avoid some of the tougher decisions the rest of us are faced with every day.
