IILLINOIS HAS THE JUCICIAL ELECTION THING ALMOST RIGHT

 

The sole purpose of this article is to point out the inherent flaws in the way Illinois elects its judges. 

Nothing I write here is to suggest that judges should not be publicly elected. They should. All of the “merit selection” methods are merely a way to substitute politics that the public cannot see for the politics that the public can see. E., Ballot counts. Additionally, nothing in this piece addresses the history of how we got here, which is also fascinating but beyond the scope of today’s essay. 

Apologies in advance that I use myself as an example of it essentially disenfranchises voters as a result of the way our state conducts elections. 

As the second-oldest practicing lawyer in Adams County, I have had ample opportunity to observe what separates an excellent judge from a mediocre judge. I have also been here long enough to observe the residual impacts of mediocre judging and excellent judging. Additionally, I have a good understanding of the trends in our courts and the behaviors of all participants in our court system. 

In other words, aside from partisanship, I have the training and experience to evaluate performance and the opportunity to observe both that performance and its impact on the community. My vote for our next circuit Judge would be a useful, constructive one. 

But there is a problem. Both candidates are encapsulated in the Republican primary. While both gentlemen are beyond qualified, skilled attorneys, and definitely fit for the bench, I have a preference between the two. 

My preference will never be recorded. 

I don’t vote in that primary. I never have. However many elections are left in my time on this earth, I probably never will. My primary gives me a chance to basically have a say in who will be our state's next U.S. senator. My party has four really neat people running to oppose the incumbent congressperson. While I admire all these people, here I have a preference. 

To express my considered preference in the judicial race, I would have to give up my say in who becomes our next United States Senator. I just can’t do that. It’s easy to say that “in Illinois, you can choose your party ballot every primary election.” That is true, but also misleading. Here, I have to choose between expressing my views on who will run our state and who will represent us in the upper chamber next year, and expressing my preference for the judicial candidate. 

The Illinois system is forcing me to choose between important acts essential to representative government. I can either choose my next US Sen., Comptroller, cor andidate for Congress ,or co my duty as a lawyer and “make efforts to strengthen the judiciary

 I can’t do both. 

The solution? It could not be simpler. Just as we elect members of the school board and park board in odd-year elections without partisan labels, we elect our judges the same way. If you don’t like that option, we could adopt the so-called “jungle primary,” but that would be trickier. We could even do the same thing in the fall general election. Heck, we retain judges on the general election ballot. What’s to say that we can’t elect judges on the general primary ballot (only)?  

I don’t want anybody to get me wrong. What we do in Illinois is a far cry better than any “merit selection” system I have ever seen. At least some people get a say in who will assume the bench. 

The process would be more representative and build greater trust in the judiciary in whatever county if everybody had a meaningful opportunity to voteon judicial selection. I am the perfect example of someone who has a preference in this judicial race and is essentially locked out of expressing that preference. There are three simple possible fixes (and pmoreif I put my mind to it.

 Here I am, the poster child for the following proposition: 

Public election of judges is good. Nonpartisan public election of judges would be better. 

My only point here.

GOOD TREASON, BAD TREASON AND "TBD" TREASON

 We celebrate today a public, open,  contemptuous act of treason..

Refined in the simplest terms, the Declaration was nothing more than a bunch of "British subjects" defying their own government's rule.

Since we celebrate it – – and we did win the war – – it is, by definition, "good treason."

During that same period of time, Benedict Arnold conspired with "the enemy," (which was actually the government of citizenship for "Americans" at the time).  But this was abhorred to an extent that his name is a synonym for capital treason.  Bennie had a bad year.

So treason is good except when treason is bad. This can also give one a headache.

Fast forward to January 6, 2021. One of the people who, after breaching the perimeter, went to the Senate chambers said, "as long as we are here we might as well form a government!" While this is technically not treason (because we are not at war) it is somewhere between treasonous and treason-ish. Our legal system is punishing that fellow and his colleagues.

So what is the difference between "good treason" and "bad treason?"

My take is this. In the Revolutionary war era, the dissident Americans had a vision, if not yet a Constitution, that was based on egalitarian principles and a decentralization of power (no monarchs). The act of treason was done with a presumably benevolent purpose (give or take, of course, a few women and black people--we're still working on that).

Once again, fast forward to today. There are people who would like to eliminate our constitutional Republic in its current form. They would like to reverse some elections (who wouldn't?). But they spell out neither their end game or a set of principles which their "replacement government" would seek to feature.

So today we celebrate "good treason."

For those who would shred our current system, for your activities to be "good treason," you have to do what those brave "Americans" did in 1776. You would be required to spell out in reasonable detail the replacement system you would install in the stead of the Great Experiment that started in the 1770s.

Not saying it's impossible. It's just a very tall order. As has been said about our legal system: "It is terribly flawed, but it is the best one in the history of man."

Revisionists, it's your move

A CAMEL IS A HORSE THAT WAS BUILT BY A COMMITTEE

 To my surprise many friends from many different walks of life have asked me to comment on what is generally referred to as "criminal justice reform Omnibus,"  Amusingly enough, these requests have come from police and police retirees, lawyers, journalists, academics and even from inside prisons. How could I possibly refuse such a eclectic group?

Motivated in large measure by some tragic deaths last year, the house took one big bucket and threw some passing thoughts, few slogans, a couple of good concepts and a few "way outside the box" provisions into it. When the bucket got to the Senate, the Senate pitched a few of their own into the bucket. That bucket is sitting, steaming, on the Gov.'s desk for a signature that has not yet come.

I will simply refer to it as the package". The package has a large number of extremely vocal supporters. Some would surprise you. It has a larger number of folks actively lobbying the governor not to sign it.

While I have no particular excuse for this use of my time I must confess to have actually read it. I do not know what possessed me. It is not exactly a page turner. Having been trained for more than 50 years to interpret the arcane language of legislative bodies, I still find this package difficult to interpret. Even more difficult is determining how the labor and enforcement of some of these provisions will be allocated.

I thought I could just do one blog post on the package and be done with it. That was a ridiculous idea. So I will pick a topic or two per blog, describe it fairly and then give my opinion. If you are interested, you are welcome to follow along. Fair warning: Illinois has a "line – item veto." This means the governor can more than slightly rewrite the legislation.

Once again, this thing is not law yet.

Just for today, let's just squash some unsubstantiated rumors:

1.     The package does not make ALL POLICE DISCIPLINARY REPORTS public. This seems to be a common misconception. It merely requires that all police disciplinary reports and investigations be retained. This is going to be a problem for some municipalities with really long-term police contracts. There are some contracts that require certain kinds of disciplinary matters to be "removed," after a period of time.  In some departments this is been read to mean "shredded." OPINION: since this does not become effective until January, 2023, the labor agreements should not be a big problem. The proponents of this provision believe it will somehow "weed out" overaggressive police by internally calling attention to patterns of practice and by making these complaints available during litigation. I doubt both of these propositions. Police chiefs are already good at spotting folks who don't handle authority well or who fail to understand that punishing is not part of the police officer's job. When litigants go fishing for "pattern of practice" evidence, these retainer reports are more likely to relate to attendance problems, vehicle accidents or uniform issues. One thing about this provision that is unclear to me is how it applies to employees with an addiction or alcoholism problem. These referrals are protected under the law, even if they are initially discovered under the guise of a disciplinary investigation. This is a clear clash of a federal law and what may possibly become state law. Having noted that, little "carveouts" like this are easy to do by amendment. Thus, I am pretty neutral on this provision;

2.     No, your license suspension for not paying your child support is not going to go away. Illinois law already changed so that unpaid parking tickets to a municipality will not generate an operator's license suspension. The package adds camera red lights and towing fees to municipal debts that will not generate a suspension. The package is unclear about whether in court fines for moving violations are part of the exemption. I am going to assume for now that that is not the intention of the law. The idea behind these exemptions is simply that the impact for people and minorities more greatly than others. My opinion of this is mildly positive. I have never felt good about a robot leading to the suspension of a driving privilege. If the driver is that irresponsible, he will find a way to get himself suspended anyhow. If he is just poor, there are other ways to collect camera tickets and towing fees. It's easy to say, "you shouldn't be operating a motor vehicle if you can't afford to do it lawfully." The problem with that is the vehicle has become a necessity to transport the driver even to subsistence employment, which is arguably better for the state than unemployment. If the bill passes unamended, something like 3000 people will be able to get their driving privileges back without paying a reinstatement fee. That is, I suppose, the good news. The bad news is that the Secretary of State is going to have no valid address for most of them and nothing in the package places a burden on the Secretary of State to go find them;

3. This is the ever popular "body – cam" legislation. Oversimplified, this requires all peace officers door body cam and the mandate bites large cities more quickly than the small cities, cascading from January 2022 to January 2025. I have written about this before. I am all in favor of rank-and-file patrol officers wearing body cams. The advocates for cameras should understand that the conviction rates for folks who are accused of using force against policeman, resisting process service or resisting arrest     Will go up. The problem with cameras for supervisors is that the supervisors will know they are on camera. Having been a prosecutor and police attorney for 30 years, I can tell you that some of the best police field training is not gentle and sometimes includes language that is not family – friendly. Most men, even those not in police work, will understand this concept. We have all had a drill instructor or a Ranger trainer or a football coach who taught us important things in ways that do not sound like Sunday school. By slapping on a camera, we take an important teaching skill and style away from that supervisor. By avoiding the camera, we also reassure the younger officer or trainee that his or her mistake does not go on to a blooper reel somewhere. Transparency is a wonderful concept but transparency can deter a type of training that might prepare an officer to survive a life or death moment later. Cameras on supervisors, as a general rule constitutes, to me, too high a price.

All rights, kiddies, there is much more fun stuff in this package and we will tear into it later. If you actually read this far, thank you and the to be continued. 

BLESSING ICU OUTTA BEDS AND WE'RE ONLY AT 11%

 So this is us at 11%. 

Winter will soon shut us in. We already have a preview of what that looks like. North Dakota 67%. ICU won't be full. It'll explode. 

So y'all just DINE IN, Have a mass THANKSGIVING HOE DOWN and call the Governor names, maybe fat shame a little (that's always clever) and we'll hit the big six-seven.

You know what happens then.  Our caregivers will start to die, and then quit. It'll be "Silent Spring" without the nuclear explosion. 

How did an all-knowing God create a tribe that so stupidly behaved contrary to it's own, enlightened self-interest?  Beats the Hell outta me.

And as you read through this (even if you have to move your lips), please note, I didn't say one word about Government shutdowns or "stay at home" orders or business closings. None of that should be necessary. Not a single word.  The Government should not have to tell you not to poke a Grizzly Bear with a stick or to jump into a shark tank.

If you can read the caption and stil say "Oh, it's no worse than the seasonal flu!" you are blind to facts.  If you  can read the caption and say, "Oh, it's only the old and immunocompromised that it's killing and they aren't dying from the virus but from the pneumonia," you are both medically ignorant and wantonly cruel.

And it is my home, Adams County, Illinois that leads in this idiocy.  No place else in Illinois has the percentage of non-mitigators we have--dug in-- here.  That is a whole lotta lung tissue for the virus to latch onto.  The more places you give it to live, the more folks you place in danger.

Even the dimmest of bulbs can see this threat being played out right before our eyes. We can choose to be North Dakota (it seems we have) or we can choose to mitigate. Every minute you talk about "mah rahts in 'Murica" you are one more sentence toward North Dakota.

Our pristine, lovely county with all its good people HAS NO ICU BED FOR YOUR DAD.  The community that saved the condemned Mormons, sheltered the Icarians, Propagated the Underground Railroad and fed the Starving Potawatomi escapees from the "Trail of Death" does not have enough decency and empathy to distance, mask and minimize contact.  Think about that.  We saved all those people with courage and empathy.  But we're too stupid and stubborn to save ourselves.

We do not have to be North Dakota.  They are the canary the canary to our coal mine.  We can think our way out of that.  If you don't mitigate--if you exercise your constitutional right to fart in same elevator we all riding--you are not exercising your rights.  You are volunteering to be North Dakota.

Your Call, Naysayers, Minimizers and SuperPatriots.

Comments are wide open and welcome.  I invite any medical professional to comment and show me where I said anything technically incorrect.  And, in the meantime, medical professionals, you are in my prayers, from under my mask and at a distance (and I've already had COVID once).

CENTRALIZED POWER VERSUS GOVERNING: WHY THE NEXT FIVE DAYS IS NOT THE TIME FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

This is directed to my friends in Western Illinois, suffering, as am I,  from the enforced lack of commerce. Most of what I say is probably applicable to about anyplace in Illinois, south of Interstate 80

You are angry. Let's be honest. You are also fearful. Many of you began with a distrust of the governor and have assigned several dozen kinds of bad faith to a shutdown order. While I feel your pain, insults, and body shaming is not made things any better for us.

Let's focus on why this is all so upsetting. Most of us recognize that the state has, within its police power, the right and obligation to take steps to ensure the general welfare. Most of us acknowledge that our state is currently a hotbed of infection and that the rate of infection is still rising. Yet my home county is just a few days from meeting the CDC requirements for initial reopening. So we are angry because we can't work or, in some cases, earn.

The previous paragraphs cover the obvious part. There is something else. Most people have not been able to articulate it. Our country, and thus our state, are founded upon opposition to centralized power. Now stay with me here: everything that has been done and ordered in Illinois has come from the executive branch, whether that is IDPH or the governor himself, it is all the executive branch. Neither the governor nor his principal lawyer is a stupid man. When he issued the order that went beyond the initial 30 days, while feeling he was keeping Illinois and safe, The Governor knew he was on thin legal ice. As soon as these little brushfire lawsuits, like Bailey's, popped up, the governor went to the third branch, the judiciary, to try and get a supervisory order. Since the legislature was unavailable to him, this was his attempt to share or, decentralize, the exercise of state power. I am sure it took the Illinois supreme court justices about 15 seconds to figure they did not want any part of that.

So the power remained in that repugnant state, centralized. Everything in our souls as Americans tells us to fight centralized power. Civil disobedience and protest are time-honored ways of fighting centralized control. But those techniques are only deployed by smart people when there is no hope in the near term that power will be decentralized.  That is not the case here.

That brings us to: "what makes sense on this Friday, May 15?" The game has changed. The legislature is coming to town next Wednesday.  What do you suppose they are hearing from their business and employee constituents? How many of them do you think actually believe they, or their predecessors, have given the governor legislative authority for a shutdown beyond 30 days?

By and large, Republican and Democrat, those lawmakers want what you want. They want commerce restored. They want the economy revived. But, being reasonable people, they would prefer to do that without running the risk of overwhelming medical facilities.

In other words, they WANT TO HELP YOU!  But you have to show them it will be OK

For just a minute, try to get entirely out of your own head and walk a mile in Those legislators' shoes. Are they more likely to "loosen things up," if they see people mingling, sharing confined space and not distancing or if the behaviors and proposals they have seen involve both commerce and safety? My take is they are far more likely to enact a plan with variances and phased return to trade if they believe the majority of citizens can interact safely and responsibly, avoiding cross-contamination.

So we make the current situation work to our advantage by, even in an act of civil disobedience, distancing and protecting against droplet projection. Even if one is a hard-core denier/hoaxer, it is easy to see that this precaution compliance for the next few days shows the legislature that loosening up is not dangerous. Remember, by the end of next week, the governor you all love to hate, is no longer going to be driving this bus.

At the risk of repeating myself, every business that can do so should create a "phase 3 safety plan", write it up, with diagrams, with photographs hack, throw in a drawn picture. Wrap that all up and send it to your county's health department as a request for a "variance." I can just about promise you that some enterprising legislator is going to show up on the general assembly floor with a handful of reasonable, responsible safety plans that can be enacted right now without harming the general welfare.

Now let's look at the other way: "How could we take this opportunity and comprehensively screw it up?" That's easy. All we have to do is demonstrate to the legislature that we do not believe there is any disease threat at all, that we can crowd into close quarters, indoors, touch each other, not cover coughs and do all that openly and notoriously. The more pictures of partiers hanging onto each other, the more counterproductive the message. The message? That our citizens do not have the discipline to reopen while observing basic safety protocols. That's the one we don't want to send.  And that is how we screw up this opportunity.

Please, understand I anticipate: "masks and distancing our bullshit," the disease is gone from here," and the ever-popular "you are just telling us to cave in to a dictator!"

I am doing none of the above. I am telling you that the lawmaking power is about to go back to where it is supposed to be – to lawmakers. Lawmakers are going to make decisions based on objective evidence. If the objective evidence is that we cannot behave in a moderately disease – defensive manner for a short while upon opening commerce, that lawmakers will be more hesitant to reopen business. I am suggesting a response to a legislative problem. While your personal feelings about masks, distancing, the governor's waist size, the governor's wife, the governor's motives are probably interesting; they are not responsive to what I am presenting here. What I have been interested in is getting my small business colleagues back up and running. The two-pronged strategy above has the best chance of doing that. Re-creating the Edmund Pettis Bridge does not.

At least think about it

LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN: LETTER TO AUTHORITIES SUPPORTING AMERICAN INGENUITY

ANTHONY B. CAMERON

ATTORNEY AT LAW

535 MAINE STREET * SUITE  12

QUINCY, ILLINOIS   62301

https://www.tonycameronlaw.com/

Telephone:  (217) 228-8669                                                                                                                                                    

Telefax:       (217) 228-2225                                                                                                                                                     IL Attorney No. 0374555

E-mail: dacamara@adams.net                                                                                                                                                  AR Attorney No.  73137

May 13, 2020

Hon. Jay Robert Pritzker, Governor

401 S. Second Street

Capitol Building, room 207

Springfield, IL  62706-1150

Hon. Kwame Raoul, Illinois Attorney General

500 S. 2^nd Street

Springfield, IL 62706 

Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director, Illinois Department of Public Health

535 West Jefferson Street

Springfield, IL  62761

Re:     Variances as a tool in COVID 19 positioning

Dear Governor Pritzker, General Raoul and Dr. Ezike:

          First, thank you all for keeping the safety of Illinois citizens preeminent.

          As counties and regions “clear,” I am reminded of another health and safety protocol adopted by our State and how its very flexibility made it successful.

          When I was a very young lawyer,  the Illinois Environmental Protection Act was in its infancy. I had the privilege to steward it as an Assistant Attorney General and later as Division Chief.

There were, of course, resistors, naysayers and those claiming “hoax.” But those opponents were proven wrong, precisely because the Act included in its toolkit a “variance” for people who were substantially complying or for whom compliance was technologically or financially going to take longer. The existence of this tool prevented those opposed to the Act from saying it was oppressive and offered no “less burdensome alternative.”

          One might ask, “how would this apply to the current emergency measure?” Two food operators I know independently of one another recently proposed, on sunny days, placing outdoor tables at a safe social distance, allowing families to do curbside pickup, then sit, as families, in the sun, distanced from others. I’m sure, encouraged by the opportunity for a “variance,” many food operators would develop other, creative, effective, and healthy formations.

Just in terms of the mental health aspect of all this, if families could dine outdoors while maintaining social distance, it could contribute to more content, societal acceptance of the current Executive Order.   As I am confident you all know, elements of the Executive Order are becoming increasingly unpopular downstate. Speaking plainly, that makes compliance less likely.

. In each of the “family dining” cases I referenced above, the local health department correctly told these operators their plan was not permitted under the Executive Order. Under your current protocol, that is true.

But what if the local health department had the authority to perform a due process analysis and issue a variance?.  The limitations in time and configuration would be detailed on the variance document. 

The engine that drives Illinois’ economy is the creativity of its entrepreneurs. The reasonable possibility of a variance would turn many restaurant operators into creators of constructive social and commercial experiments, many of which might benefit the citizens of Illinois and also limit economic damage.

There is no time to draft detailed standards for the variance. It would have to be a simple set of principles that would allow the delivery of food and assure against cross-contamination. Such a balance is a calculus that every sanitarian in every county’s health department is trained to make. The availability of the variance remedy would cast a ray of hope to many operators who want to keep people safe but also want to feed the citizens of their region and county.

As we found so many years ago, the availability of relief in the form of a variance built support for the environmental effort in our State

Time is of the essence.   By its nature, the Executive Branch, can act quickly.  Please enable the capable people of county health departments to issue tight variances to operators with good-faith plans.  Variances would promote safety innovation.  We would also find much more enthusiastic distancing, particularly in counties where the incidence of COVID 19 is relatively slight per capita.

I do not lobby.  I represent no client with this letter.  I write as one experienced in regulatory schemes and with a simple modification that I believe would benefit all Illinoisans in promoting more enthusiastic cooperation with the balance of the Executive Order.

My contact information is on the letterhead. I would be pleased and proud to discuss this with representatives of any of your offices at your relatively early convenience. This approach can only succeed if it is adopted relatively quickly.

Thank you for your kind attention. I wish you all the best of health and every success.

Sincerely,

                                                                      /s/ Anthony B. Cameron    

ABC:lm

cc:      Hon. Kyle Moore, Mayor, City of Quincy, 730 Maine Street, Quincy, IL  62301

Hon. Gary Farha, State’s Attorney, Adams County, 521 Vermont Street,

Quincy, IL 62301

Hon. Brian Vanderhaar, Sheriff, Adams County, 521 Vermont Street,

Quincy, IL 62301

Chief Robert Copley, Quincy Police Department, 110 S. 8^th Street,

Quincy, IL 62301

Jerod Welch, Administrator, Adams County Health Department,

330 Vermont Street, Quincy, IL  62301

Hon. Jil Tracy, 3701 East Lake Centre Drive Suite 3 Quincy, IL 62305

Hon. Randy Frese, 3701 East Lake Centre Drive Suite 3 Quincy, IL 62305

Hon. Kent Snider, Chair, Adams County Board, 507 Vermont St. Quincy, IL 62301

A THOUGHT FOR OUR LEADERS