Chicago Daily Observer

Dear Governor Blagojevich,

On April 15, 2008, the Circuit Court in this action issued a preliminary injunction enjoining your Medicaid FamilyCare program for failing to meet certain statutory prerequisites. The other constitutional and non-constitutional objections to what your Administration have yet to be addressed. As a result, at the present the approximately 25,000 persons and families enrolled in the program are now without health insurance coverage they paid for and the doctors, clinics, hospitals that provided medical services in reliance on their getting paid under the Mediciaid FamilyCare Health Insurance Program either won’t be getting paid ever, or, if you are successful in your appeal, for many months or years to come. This is tragic for many people who relied on you and your Administration that they were covered under the new Mediciaid FamilyCare Health Insurance Program and that you could create such a program on your own authority without ... Read More...

The stealth saga of Richard Caro vs. Rod Blagojevich in Cook County Court continued yesterday, with the Governor requesting a payment in exchange for his compliance with a court ordered injunction.

Rod Blagojevich and the other defendants in the Constitutional case concerning JCAR compliance filed a notice of appeal requesting a stay of the preliminary injunction or alternatively a $14 Million bond as a condition to keep the injunction in place.

Judge James Epstein rejected both appeals, and retained jurisdiction to hold Defendants in contempt if
the injunction is violated. Judge Epstien also rejected defendant’s argument that they can’t identify the payments that have been enjoined. Defendants were given till Monday April 28 to seek a stay of the preliminary injunction
pending the appeal.

At 2pm Wednesday, April 23, 2008, Judge James Epstein is set to hear a motion requesting compliance with the Preliminary Injunction against Governor Blagojevich issued last week.

The Healthcare and Family Services Defendants have yet to take the
necessary steps to comply with the injunction previously issued. Judge Epstein will consider a contempt action to compel compliance with his previous order.

On April 15, Judge James Epstein issued a preliminary injunction immediately enjoining Governor Blagojevich and Illinois Healthcare and Family Services from continuing the expanded FamilyCare program.

On the same day Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued a massive executive order to combine more state agency functions, a Cook County judge ordered that Blagojevich’s administration has to stop expanding a state health program to middle-income adults. But that’s not going to stop Blagojevich from trying. In the meantime, residents who already started receiving state-sponsored health care under the governor’s expansions are left in limbo over whether they’ll continue to receive those benefits. We’ll have more on the governor’s move to consolidate state agency functions tomorrow. It’s a mess.

Judge James Epstein has issued a preliminary injunction immediately enjoining Illinois Healthcare and Family Services expanded FamilyCare program.

The injunction was denied with respect to the expansion of the Free Breast & Cervical Cancer screening program in a narrowly worded decision.

Riverside attorney Richard Caro and business leader Ron Gidwitz have led the case against Governor Blagojevich in Cook County Court.

For the second time since last fall, a legislative panel threw a wrench Tuesday into Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan to expand health care access to 147,000 Illinoisans – an initiative he enacted even though lawmakers never approved it.

Later Tuesday, two Democratic members of the Illinois House of Representatives unveiled legislation they said would accomplish what the Democratic governor has said he wants to do by making more people eligible for the Family Care program. The legislation is House Bill 6297, sponsored by Reps. David Miller of Lynwood and John Fritchey of Chicago.

A bipartisan panel of lawmakers wants to hear what Gov. Rod Blagojevich has to say about state government’s finances before it decides whether to approve rules implementing his proposal to expand health-care access.

The panel, known as the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, met Wednesday but postponed until Feb. 26 its consideration of rules dealing with a larger Family Care program. The governor’s desired expansion would add 147,000 Illinoisans to the program, which allows uninsured parents or guardians to qualify for discounted medical treatment.

llinois House Speaker Michael Madigan wants to put curbs on Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s power, prompting a Republican leader to predict the legislature will “grind to a halt” this year.

Madigan, D-Chicago, is seeking to add a clause to most House bills preventing Blagojevich and his state agencies from writing their own rules about how to administer the laws.

For those who already are convinced that Gov. Rod Blagojevich is nuts, here’s something to add to the growing pile of evidence: He’s now insisting that legislation he once signed into law is unconstitutional. You can reasonably ask why he enacted the law in the first place, and the obvious answer is that the law no longer serves his cynical political purposes, so he pretends that the law, and the Illinois Constitution, doesn’t apply to him.

SPRINGFIELD – A Cook County judge is allowing Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to intervene as a third party in a lawsuit that challenges Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s authority to expand a government health-care program without lawmakers’ approval.

Opposing Blagojevich in the lawsuit are Riverside attorney Richard Caro, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Ronald Gidwitz and Greg Baise, president of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. They say the Democratic governor overstepped his authority by expanding a program the General Assembly did not fund.

A Cook County judge is allowing Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to intervene as a third party in a lawsuit that challenges Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s authority to expand a government health-care program without lawmakers’ approval.

Opposing Blagojevich in the lawsuit are Riverside attorney Richard Caro, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Ronald Gidwitz and Greg Baise, president of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. They say the Democratic governor overstepped his authority by expanding a program the General Assembly did not fund.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan formally intervened Thursday in a lawsuit that effectively pits allies of her father, House Speaker Michael Madigan, against Gov. Rod Blagojevich in a political and legal dispute over health care spending.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a motion intervene on December 26, 2007 as a plantiff in Richard Caro and Ron Gidwitz constitutional case agains Governor Rod Blagojevich.

The Shriver Poverty Law Center has also filed a motion to intervene, as a defendent in this case.

Here is the link for all Chicago Daily Observer Coverage of the Richard Caro vs. Rod Blagojevich Case.

Filing as independent taxpayers of Illinois, businessman Ron Gidwitz, Illinois Manufacturers Association President Greg Baise, and Riverside lawyer Richard Caro have joined in a single lawsuit vs. the Blagojevich Administration.

In court action Tuesday, Caro, joined by lawyers from the firm of Ungaretti & Harris presented a complaint and request for a temporary restraining order to restrict State of Illinois spending to legislatively approved purposes.

The position of the Illinois Attorney Generals office was questioned, as the office is representing the defendant (Comptroller Dan Hynes) as well as intervening as a plaintiff.

Nearly drowned out by the media silence, the Richard Caro case vs. Rod Blagojevich continues in Cook County.

In a phone conversation with Caro, a long precedent of case law involving the judiciary acting to requiring state agencies to act within legislative spending and authoritative boundaries.

Cases have been successfully argued against such state boards as the Illinois Liquor Control Commission, the Nursing Home Licensing Board, the State Board of Education specifically referring to the executive branch of state government working beyond their legislative authority.

Caro also expects some consolidation of the Ron Gidwitz/Illinois Coalition for Jobs litigation with his own litigation as suggested by Judge Zappa in Sangamon County.

On Governor Blagojevich’s behalf, the Chicago Tribune, Sun Times and the Chicago Reader have steadfastly refused to publish any notice of the Caro lawsuit, nor the dismissal of the Illinois Coalition Lawsuit, which Judge Zappa concurred with the attorneys for ... Read More...

To their credit, the Springfield State Journal Register is carrying the story of yesterday’s dismissal of the Ron Gidwitz/Illinois Coalition for Jobs case vs. Barry Maram and Dan Hynes challenging Governor Blagojevich’s unilateral spending allocations.

The Tribune has not noticed the dismissal, though they did cover the case itself twice, while the Sun-Times carried neither the case nor the dismissal.

None of the two Chicago newspapers have reported the existence of Richard Caro case vs. Governor Blagojevich, though the SJ-R references the case, without context.

It will be interesting to see how if the Tribune decides to carry any information about the Caro case, as the reason for the dismissal of the Gidwitz case was that the Caro case is already pending.

Given that the Tribune has refused to acknowledge the existence of the Caro case, how will they explain the dismissal? Such a dilemma when you are ignoring the ... Read More...

A Sangamon County judge Monday halted a lawsuit challenging Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s authority to expand health-care programs on his own.

Judge Leo Zappa agreed with Blagojevich’s attorney that a similar lawsuit already filed in Cook County should be allowed to proceed unimpeded. Zappa said there’s a danger of different rulings coming out if both cases are adjudicated simultaneously.

Dear Governor,

Your criticism of those who oppose your recent expansions of healthcare programs to persons who do not satisfy established legislatively approved eligibility requirements as being **** Scrooge-like in many ways,” is telling. What you don’t understand is that concerned citizens and taxpayers like myself, who are fully supportive of making basic healthcare available to all, want those reforms to be achieved in a constitutional manner. The Separations of Powers Provision in our State Constitution strictly prohibits the Executive from infringing upon or exercising the powers the Constitution exclusively reserves for the Legislature to exercise. It is for the Legislature to decide to amend, expand public assistance programs, enact new ones, and to determine the funding that will be made available for each such program.

The Chicago Tribune didn’t stretch itself unduly to mention a lawsuit brought as a public interest by my friend Richard Caro. But what the legislature won’t do…and what all the combined weight of the editorialists’ cannot evidently accomplish…Richard—who passes the plate every Sunday at 11 a.m. Mass at St. John Cantius (the mother church of authentic Catholicism) is accomplishing. He is like Roland at the pass, the heroic medieval soldier who held the pass in Spain enabling his comrades to pass through unharmed by the Saracens and who with his dying breath blew the trumpet that summoned reinforcements.

Who is Richard Caro and what is he doing? He’s a mild-mannered (deceptive) public interest lawyer, a doctor of jurisprudence, who is today’s version of the English barons at Runnymede who taught the tyrant King John a needed lesson in 1215—and got him to sign the Magna Carta, the charter of our ... Read More...

Cites Possibility that Taxpayers’ Dollars Have Been Spent in Violation of State Constitution.

Former prosecutor and current public interest attorney Richard Caro who has been in the forefront of a constitutional battle to keep the governor of Illinois from transgressing the rights of the legislature, has filed a motion for reconsideration after a dismissal of his case by a circuit court judge.

In his motion, Caro pointed out that his action was designed to prevent any public expenditure in behalf of the AllKids bridge program by transferring money not appropriated to it by executive fiat. Judge Kathleen Mary Pantle did not address that point in her preemptory Sept. 28 dismissal of his lawsuit, he says.

Caro’s point that monies have been in fact expended unconstitutionally has to do with the governor’s Aug. 30 announcement that the program was being established and implemented. Judge Pantle concentrated on a very narrow point ... Read More...

To the surprise of absolutely no one in state government, Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office is declining to get involved in a political and legal dispute between her father and Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

In a letter released Thursday, Ms. Madigan’s office said it won’t rule on whether her father, House Speaker Michael Madigan, has a conflict of interest in working as a property tax appeals lawyer at the same time the House considers legislation to cap annual tax hikes for homeowners in Cook County at about 7%.

Richard Caro Hits Gov’s Unconstitutional Switch of Taxpayer Funding as “Major Media” Ignore Historic Courtroom Give-and-Take.

Public interest attorney and former U. S. prosecutor Richard Caro Friday dominated the circuit courtroom as he once more criticized Gov. Blagojevich’s attempt to switch legally appropriated state funds to his pet political causes not approved by legislative vote—which Caro called a tortured misapplication of Illinois’ amendatory veto powers. Caro, a Riverside attorney, is facing the power of the legal apparatus of the state attorney general who under the law must defend the governor’s action.

Under the powers, a governor can line-item veto, can reduce somewhat an amount of appropriation previously made by the legislature. He can tweak legislation so long as it remains within the purview that the legislature intended. But Blagojevich moved whole-hog monies from a designated purpose by the legislature to his own favorite cause which was not approved by the ... Read More...

Blue-Chip Firm Retained by State to Defend Blago

A cadre of eight lawyers appeared in circuit court today in opposition to a suit filed by Riverside attorney Richard Caro challenging the constitutionality of Gov. Blagojevich’s attempt to use amendatory veto powers to switch appropriations to purposes of his own choosing rather than that which the legislature intended. They asked for ten days to respond the Caro’s suit.

Caro, a distinguished constitutional attorney and himself a former prosecutor, acts on occasion as a public interest lawyer when he sees what he identifies as unconstitutional applications. Earlier this week he asked for a restraining order to prevent the governor from switching funds to the Illinois All-Kids Healthcare act despite the legislature’s refusal to appropriate them for that purpose. At stake is Illinois’ amendatory veto law which allows a governor not just to line-item veto but to exercise certain reductions and changes in ... Read More...

Files Historic Legal Action Questioning Constitutionality.

Special to The Chicago Daily Observer

An historic request for a temporary restraining order to prevent Gov. Blagojevich from expanding coverage of the Illinois All-Kids Healthcare act to persons not otherwise eligible was filed Tuesday by a Riverside attorney who challenges the constitutionality of the governor’s action, The Chicago Daily Observer learned exclusively.

Richard Caro, Riverside attorney, filing as an Illinois taxpayer on behalf of other taxpayers, is asking the circuit court of Cook county to determine the constitutionality of a “de facto appropriation and designation of approximately $16 million” by the governor. Blagojevich vetoed the appropriation for the purpose it was enacted but attempts to use his amendatory powers to move the money to purposes for which the legislature has given no authorization.

Caro says his action does not ask the court to determine the wisdom of expanded coverage, declaring “that is for ... Read More...