For weeks, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Burns has said he is willing “to put up my record as U.S. attorney against Roland Burris’ record any day of the week, and let the voters decide on that issue alone.”
On Wednesday, Burns set out to underscore that point by criticizing Burris for allegedly misusing taxpayer dollars during his last two years as Illinois attorney general.
Citing a report from the state auditor general for fiscal years 1993 and ’94, Burns blasted Burris for awarding $716,000 in no-bid contracts for a case-tracking computer system that never worked, for exceeding his appropriations for telephone calls by $313,000 and for failing to sufficiently monitor delinquent accounts, which resulted in write-offs of $12 million.
“Illinois taxpayers shouldn’t have to tolerate this kind of fiscal mismanagement,” Burns said during a news conference in his Michigan Avenue headquarters. “They deserve a governor who’ll treat their tax dollars like they are his own.”
Burns said his ethics reform plan would prevent this kind of abuse by requiring competitive bidding for all contracts that are more than $10,000 and subjecting all state agencies to more frequent audits.
Later Wednesday, Burris said he had not seen the details of the report. But he said the staffer put in charge of developing the computer system was fired and that the General Assembly had not given his office enough money to pay its phone bills.
Burns’ attack on Burris–the second time in two days he has accused Burris of fiscal mismanagement–came as polls show his campaign is desperately in need of some traction.
Gun grades: The Illinois State Rifle Association is taking aim at U.S. Senate candidate Loleta Didrickson in a mailing going out this week. The organization gave Didrickson an F and her rival, state Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Inverness, an A+ for their positions on gun laws.
“She’s very unfriendly toward the rights of firearms owners,” said association representative Jim Valentino. “She’s one of the most liberal Republicans you will find.”
Didrickson campaign spokesman, Ed Marshall, said the gun group’s grade was no surprise given Didrickson’s opposition to letting people carry concealed weapons. “Peter Fitzgerald’s fervent support for legalizing concealed weapons has led to this rating,” Marshall said.
A Tribune poll last month showed a majority of likely Republican primary voters agree with Didrickson in opposing laws that would allow private citizens to carry concealed weapons.
In giving the failing grade, the gun organization also cited Didrickson’s opposition to a measure that would have nullified handgun ordinances in Chicago and other towns such as Morton Grove, Oak Park, Wilmette and Winnetka.
Didrickson’s latest TV attack on Fitzgerald says the state gun group called Fitzgerald “two-faced” and “deplorable” for backing away from previous opposition to a ban on assault weapons.
Valentino at first denounced the ad as “absolutely false,” and said the words must have come “out of Didrickson’s imagination.” Later told of a newspaper article directly attributing the comments to his wife, gun lobbyist Pat Valentino, he conceded she may have called Fitzgerald two-faced in 1994. “But never a word like deplorable,” he said. “That’s not her vocabulary or her style of speaking.”
Direct attack: J.B. Pritzker, one of three candidates in the 9th Congressional District Democratic primary, fired his first direct volley at opponent state Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston) this week.
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The attack came in the form of a direct-mail flier accusing Schakowsky of not supporting a state bill that would have kept gun-toting students out of classrooms.
Schakowsky campaign officials said the flier is misleading and unfair because she supported a similar measure a year before and opposed a more recent version because it was attached to school measures she opposed.