From an announcement released by Congressman Tim Johnson’s office:

The Education and the Workforce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives announced today that a congressional field hearing will be held in Champaign on Dec. 15 to examine legislation introduced by Rep. Tim Johnson aimed to protect university governance.

The hearing will be at 10:30 a.m. Friday Dec. 15 in Room D244 of Parkland College. Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and Reps. Danny Davis (D-IL), Vern Ehlers (R-MI) and Johnson will preside.

“This is an important piece of legislation impacting many colleges and universities and their ability to govern themselves without intrusion by the NCAA,” said Rep. Johnson (R-Urbana). “We’re hopeful of a productive and civil dialogue to move this issue along.”

Rep. Johnson and outgoing House Speaker Dennis Hastert introduced the legislation last May in the wake of the NCAA’s refusal to remove the University of Illinois’ Chief Illiniwek from the association’s list of “hostile and abusive” mascots. That decision makes the U. of I. ineligible to hold post-season athletic tournaments.

“I am grateful that the committee has chosen to conduct a hearing here in Champaign-Urbana, where the symbol of Chief Illiniwek has been a source of pride and reverence for students, alumni and Illini fans - actually quite the opposite from the kind of symbols the NCAA seeks to eradicate,” Rep. Johnson said.

“While I am a strong supporter of the Chief, I must emphasize that this legislation is not about the chief per se but is a bi-partisan endeavor to preserve the autonomy of member institutions from dictatorial mandates from the NCAA,” Rep. Johnson said.

The legislation is called the Protection of University Governance Act of 2006 (HR 5289).

The bill limits the NCAA’s ability to impose sanctions on member institutions by reason of a team name, symbol, emblem or mascot. The bill would allow any college or university that is penalized for those reasons to sue the NCAA and seek a court order to stop the decision. The institution could also seek damages, including attorneys’ fees, for the revenue lost from not being allowed to hold an athletic championship.

Discuss.

Both lonetreeontheprairie and Scribal Terror are up for 2006 Weblog Awards.  lonetreeontheprairie has the scoop - be sure to vote early and often!

The GEO has been working without a new contract since August.  They think they deserve more money.  Wait, let me rephrase that - they think they need more money.  There is no mention in the NG article about the value provided to the U of I, or the market rate for people with their skills. No, the only complaint is that ”Our own minimum stipend doesn’t meet the published figures (by the UI’s Office of Admissions and Records) for what it takes to live in Champaign-Urbana,” per Christopher Simeone, graduate student and negotiator for the union.

A few points:

1. I assume that the stipend is in addition to a tuition waiver (please tell me if this is not so), so the total compensation is pretty decent.
2. The article states that the salary is for “a 50-percent time, nine-month appointment.”  If that is not enough money to live for 12 months in CU, get a summer job.
3. Who said that a graduate employee is supposed to make enough money to live on?
4. Has the U of I ever had any trouble filling these jobs?

I am sure there is more to the GEO position than the NG article indicates, but right now they look like a bunch of whiney little kids.

Petitions for municipal office can begin being filed on Monday. Yesterday, Deb Frank Feinen announced (unsurprisingly) that she’s running for re-election election to her appointed at-large seat in Champaign. (Her release did contain the nugget that she’s been endorsed by both current Mayor Jerry Schweighart and former Mayor Dan McCollum)

Tom Bruno and Giraldo Rosales are the other two incumbents, and are certainly running for re-election as well. Other names that have floated about for Champaign Council seats at-large:

• Karen Foster
• Bill Glithero
• Mike Henley
• Brian Mahaffey
• Greg Stock

At this point, I have no idea what Pat Avery is running for - Mayor, Council At-Large, or Council District 4. I think
In Champaign District 4, Marci Dodds is certainly running for re-election election to her appointed seat, but I don’t yet know who’s running against her, if anyone. And I don’t know if anyone else is considering or planning to run for Mayor.

What are your thoughts about the Champaign races?

Other than Champaign, how is your local municipal scene shaping up? Anyone got any rumors about Urbana, Mahomet, Rantoul or anywhere else?

UPDATE: Feinen is running for election, not re-election.  Same for Dodds.

Archpundit does a quick analysis of how he sees the 2008 Democrat Presidential field sorting out.

Let’s start off with what should be a fairly non-controversial statement unless you live within 10 miles of Washington D.C.

Hillary Clinton is not going to be the nominee. It’s great for Republican fundraising and it’s great for overpaid over the hill consultants, but that’s about it. She has no personality, no presence, and people don’t like her. They’ll say they’ll vote for her as long as she is the Democrat they know the name of the easiest, but once the other candidates raise their profile, she’s toast. For some reason no one has noticed that absolutely no grass roots Democrats are behind her and while the grassroots can be oversold, you have to have some support and buzz.

Read the rest. Archpundit is an Obama supporter (as I suspect most every other Democrat in Illinois will be) but his thoughts are worth checking out.

Now that the County Chairman has been selected, who will the County Board Democrats name to replace current Champaign County Auditor Mike Frerichs when he ascends to the State Senate in January?

The current scuttlebutt is Tod Satterthwaite. Will Democrats support him for Auditor when less than two years ago so many were campaigning against him for Mayor of Urbana?

The popular Showcase of Homes has just announced that it will be in Savoy next July. Lake Falls is a new subdivision going up south of Prairie Fields on S. First Street. Each year, I drag my husband to tour the new designs and decorating styles in the sweltering heat.

Firefox 2 is released, and it is blazingly fast (although this site is still way slower than it should be - but I’m working on it!).  This seems light years faster than IE7, and most of my FF1.5 plugins still work with the new version.

The vote for chairman of the County Board went about as I expected.  I think Pius Weibel brings some good things to the table and I’m optimistic about the next couple years.

First, he is the only Democrat to actually stand up and question some of the information being put out by Beckett and Inman.  You may recall that I was complimentary of his efforts last month.  His remarks to the press included statements about openness, and I hope he follows through on those.

Unfortunately, he put Beckett back in as Facilities chair, and that doesn’t bode well for openness.  He’ll need to make decisions early about whether he’s going to force the Beckett Inman team to be more forthcoming.

I worked well with Barb Wysocki for the better part of two years.  Even her ill advised denials of my FOIA requests I blame more on Beckett and Rietz than on her.  She did an admirable job, and if not for Steve Beckett, it is quite likely she’d be the chair still.  I hope I have as much success dealing with Pius Weibel.

I don’t usually agree with the good folks at the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform , primarily because they seem most concerned with ensuring that only the “right” money (public, in their case) and the “right” speech (”Speech for me, but not for thee!”) are allowed to influence our elections.

But they have done an analysis of TV news coverage of the 2006 elections, and have posted about their findings here.

But WCIA-TV in the Springfield-Decatur-Champaign market had the dubious distinction of the least amount of election coverage in comparison to the other 35 tv stations studied in five Midwestern states.

WCIA’s time spent on election coverage averaged just 78 seconds in the typical evening news broadcast. Stories about policy took a back seat to news reports on the “horse race” aspects of strategy and polling, which accounted for 73 percent of WCIA’s election coverage.

Of course, and this isn’t a WCIA-specific complaint, but it’s hard for me to complain about the lack of political coverage by the media generally while also complaining about the quality and bias of political coverage by the media generally.  So maybe less is more?

Rick Klau looks at their battle of Google Trends!

Here (huge .jpg) is Sunday’s column by the News-Gazette’s Jim Dey about Champaign Unit 4 Schools and an “ethnicity report” prepared by the school district (of which I’d love to see a copy).

The entire column is chock full of interesting facts, including enrollment statistics for many of CU’s private schools.  To me, the most interesting tidbit was:

Further, the ethnicity report shows that, even as school board members and administrators continue to press for substantial property tax increases to build a new elementary school to meet what they say will be a growing population, a number of elementary schools (Garden Hills, Stratton, Washington and Dr. Howard) have hundreds of empty seats.  There are even empty seats in once highly sought classes for gifted students in second through fifth grades.

“We have managed to lose a whole bunch of kids,” said Greg Novak, a retired librarian and union leader who is running for the school board in the upcoming spring election.

At a federal court hearing in October addressing a civil rights consent decree in Champaign, Novak attributed the absence of growth to a “loss of confidence” in the school system by large numbers of parents.  He said those who once did send or would have sent thier children to public schools in Champaign are opting to enroll them in private schools or moving to area communities like Mahomet, St. Joseph or Tolono.

Indeed, even as the growth in student population in Champaign stagnates, increasing from 9,125 in 1992-93 to 9,342 as of Sept. 29, area public schools are high-tuition private schools locally are flourishing.

There are so many points in this column worth discussing.

Here’s my notes from the meeting including all the votes. I hope that the Chair encourages County I.T. staff to get that wireless network up and running again so that we can live blog as many meetings as possible!

County Board Organizational Meeting

December 4, 2006 6:58 p.m.

Wireless isn’t working at Brookens – I say it’s a conspiracy against IlliniPundit.com

Tony Fabri is wearing a full suit – looks like he’s ready to sit up front.

Tom Betz is in a t-shirt and kaki pants – looks like he’s ready to not be here.

Ron Benzyl will not be here – I don’t know why.

7 p.m.

meeting come to order, new members are being sworn in by Mark Shelden.

Read the rest of this entry »

John Farney just called me from Brookens to report that the wireless internet access is unavailable at the Brookens Center. So he can’t live-blog tonight’s County Board Chair selection, but he’s promised to post all his notes as soon as he returns home after the meeting.

If any of you are at Brookens and know how to get him online, give him a hand, would ya?

UPDATE:  Democrat Pius Weibel wins the Chairmanship on the fifth ballot.