Comment: But the key portion is this: “Illinois is now in its third year under the Evidence-Based Funding system and the state has added hundreds of millions of dollars in additional school funding in the past two years. But it won’t be known for another two years how much of an impact that money has on the tax inequities and achievement disparities that were evident in 2017-2018.” [Emphasis added.] It will be interesting to see if it makes any difference.

FBI agents were looking for evidence of kickbacks in exchange for official actions as well as information related to five Illinois Department of Transportation employees and several lobbyists when they raided the Springfield office of State Sen. Martin Sandoval last week, records show.

Items named in a heavily redacted search warrant released Tuesday include those related to a highway company, a construction company, “any business owned and controlled by Martin Sandoval,” several municipalities and a political organization, among other entities.

Didech also cited the limits on abortion access as potentially dangerous to traveling government employees. “As a member of the Legislature, I have the responsibility to protect our state employees,” he said of the measure.

Another study confirms Illinois is over twice the national median rate.

The Flash Index is a weighted average of Illinois growth rates in corporate earnings, consumer spending and personal income as estimated from receipts for corporate income, personal income and retail sales taxes.

“As Illinois continues its path toward putting equity at the forefront of the state’s new adult-use cannabis expansion, it’s important to create opportunities in communities that have been hardest hit by the war on marijuana,” Pritzker said. “Not only will social equity applicants receive points on their applications, but many applicants will also get grants, technical assistance, low-interest loans and fee reductions and waivers.”

Three of the first seven recreational growing facilities licensed by the state will soon be owned by a publicly traded real estate investor with hundreds of millions in assets.

In most places education spending is rising. It isn’t showing up in teachers’ paychecks because so much of it gets diverted to pay for expensive retirement benefits for former teachers. Politicians’ overly generous past promises, sometimes made at the behest of teachers unions, are now coming back to bite the education sector.

Highlighting Illinois vs. Missouri: State borders have become arbitrary dividing lines between Medicaid’s haves and have-nots, with Americans in similar financial straits facing vastly different health care fortunes. This affects everything from whether diseases are caught early to whether people can stay well enough to work.

“If the plan is passed and ends up having the desired consequences, it could become a model for states like Illinois that have considerable debt of their own.”