Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton is leading the Illinois Council on Women and Girls, which is working to provide women with more leadership roles, increase economic and academic opportunities, and address barriers such as gender-based violence and issues related to health and healthcare.

Illinois’ population dropped for the sixth year in a row. And Illinois students leave the state for school at higher rates than almost anywhere else. Rockford is trying to leverage its engineering and manufacturing industry to get people to stay.

It was the second straight year House Bill 3493 failed to pass out of the Prescription Drug Affordability and Accessibility Committee.

Illinois requires people to obtain a number of hours of training and continued education to get a state license. Cosmetologists are required to get 1,500 hours of education, the same for a barber license.

“When you have a misrepresentation of a dog that is represented as a service dog, that’s a public nuisance and could cause harm to the public,” State Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, told the House Judiciary Criminal Committee.

Under state and federal laws known as civil asset forfeiture, police departments may seize property – such as cars and cash – they believe is used in criminal activity. The funds then can be used for expenditures to supplement the law enforcement agencies’ budgets.

A lengthy United Way of Illinois report released Wednesday takes a deep look at the struggling, often overlooked households with earnings above the federal poverty level but still below the threshold of a basic survival budget.

Comment: We will have our own article up on this soon.

Chicago’s Richard Porter: “[W]e are not constrained by the ordinary and need not suffer in a box constructed by those running our existing government. Once we decide we’ve lost enough, we can step out of the “Chicago Way” box and establish something new that empowers us to pursue our dreams in Illinois again.

The state and local public health departments in Illinois have spent more than $20 million so far to combat the illness that’s created a global public health crisis.

University of Illinois economist Fred Giertz says the coronavirus was in the public eye for a while before it made an impact on the stock market, and Illinois’ economy may see the same delayed effect.