-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
What’s not yet known is just how bad the drop in revenue will be for city government. Lightfoot said she thinks the city is well suited to weather the storm due to its “very, very diverse economic system.”
Major chains like Target and Jewel-Osco, and independent grocery stores alike said they’re refilling shelves as quickly as possible. But supply chains just aren’t keeping up.
“But both parties in Illinois have set a low bar for expectations of their own party leaders, even as they rail upon the opposite party nationally. Even in cynical Chicago and Illinois, the hypocrisy this election cycle has been stunning.”
If an outbreak hits, “things that don’t need to be done right now won’t be done right now,” said Dr. Raj Govindaiah, chief medical officer for Memorial Health System, which runs hospitals throughout Illinois. Govindaiah said the hospitals are also hiding the freebie surgical masks usually offered to visitors in the lobby, so that doctors and nurses can use them instead if supplies run tight.
At Chicago Public Schools, a district with 270,000 students who are poor and 17,000 homeless, the decision was harder than it looked to close its more than 640 schools for coronavirus mitigation.
All tollways across the state will remain open to traffic as the tollway takes toll booths and automatic payment machines offline over the next 24 hours.
The Illinois Supreme Court will livestream oral arguments scheduled on March 17 and 18, according to a news release Friday, “consistent with the CDC’s directives to avoid large gatherings and practice ‘social distancing.’”
“There is a noticeable decrease in traffic and activity, and easier to get into restaurants and that kind of thing. There’s always that impact and we do feel it during the regular breaks.”
Thursday, when announcing a ban on public gatherings of more than 1,000 people because of coronavirus concerns, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Tuesday’s primary election was a go.
Pritzker said Thursday that state officials will instruct local law enforcement agencies to break up events that disregard the ban.
“I understand the gravity of this action and what it means for every community in our great state,” he said Friday in Chicago. “None of the decisions we have had to make over the last week have been easy or simple.”
The $64 million flyover, started in 2014, is now expected to be complete by the end of this year. The city had originally planned to cut the ribbon on the flyover in 2018, then last year, then this spring.
The deal calls for the companies to protect low-income subscribers and extend access to under-served communities.
“The census is only nine questions – nine questions that impact every single person in your hometown, our state and across the country,” Grace Hou, secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services, said during a news conference Wednesday. “These nine questions are important for your family, your neighbor, your city, your county and your state because your response determines Illinois’ infrastructure, meaning roads, hospitals, schools, grocery stores and fire stations.”
In 2017, 39 percent of the roughly 2 million households in Cook County were either in poverty or met the ALICE threshold. That year, 44 percent of Chicago’s roughly 1 million households were below the ALICE threshold. When broken down by community area, the percent of households below the ALICE threshold increases starkly.
On average, homeowners gained $1,400 in home equity during the year, according to a report from CoreLogic. Among the 10 big cities in the study, the next-smallest average gains were nearly four times that. Shallow growth in home equity helps explain why the inventory of homes for sale is super-tight: potential sellers may not have enough equity in the house to fund a move up to a more expensive home.
Even if things return to normal well before the end of the year, a big hole probably will be blown in Illinois’ pending budget for 2021. And the deficit left for 2020 surely will be bigger than expected.
Comment: And this is about the situation before Coronavirus.
The virus and safety precautions are impacting the bottom lines of everything from large hotel chains and restaurants to independent movie theaters and music venues.
Officials are trying to relocate 94 Election Day polling places in Chicago and “more than 32” in the Cook County suburbs as concerns over the coronavirus hit warp speed. And growing numbers of election judges are pulling out of their assignments for next Tuesday’s primary election — 746 in suburban Cook County alone.
Two years ago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s floor leader, Ald. Gilbert Villegas, tried and failed to legalize “sweepstakes” machines; those lobbying efforts are part of the federal case against now-indicted former state Rep. Luis Arroyo.
Many bottled water purchases are being made online, allowing Chicago consumers to dodge the city’s five-cents a bottle tax. Thursday, the City Council’s Finance Committee agreed to close that legal loophole along with the one that has allowed online liquor buyers to dodge the city’s sliding scale of liquor taxes.
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