-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
A reprint of our Wirepoints article.
New data show Illinois lost private sector jobs amid a national economic expansion for the first year on record in 2019, a sign of the state’s deep structural problems in the run-up to the current market downturn.
For the umpteenth time, she noted “no one revenue stream is more than 13 percent” and that all of the “economically-sensitive” revenues together total just 25 percent.
As the coronavirus spreads and local, state and national governments work to contain and mitigate the outbreak, the Tribune is tracking Illinois cases.
In effect, the Illinois State Board of Education is asking school districts to formalize their remote learning plans, two weeks after the abrupt halting of classroom instruction. ISBE is giving districts a lot of leeway in how they provide remote instruction and how they account for student work.
“I can’t tell you how much of a financial impact it will have, because we don’t know how long the pandemic will prohibit us from doing elective surgeries,” she said.
The count, released by the Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois, is updated twice daily.
Claims now must be filed online and by phone on days and at times set by the Illinois Department of Employment Security based on the first letter of the filer’s last name.
The COVID-19 pandemic has strained the supply chain. However, supplies continue to move, especially after the government relaxed weight limits and allowed truckers to get in an extra two hours of driving in a day.
The commission held meetings throughout the first quarter of the year, but hasn’t met since March 5. It missed a March 31 deadline to produce a report with recommendations.
It has only been a few weeks since the spread of COVID-19 led many Chicagoans to adhere to social distancing restrictions and avoid large gatherings — all the more reason for crime experts to caution against reading too much into the lowered numbers over such a short time frame.
As communities across Illinois grapple with the spread of the novel coronavirus, there is a growing list of government sites that feature local data on the outbreak.
Illinois was among the first states to institute such far-reaching statewide restrictions ordering residents to stay home. Since then, more than half of the nation’s states have issued some sort of stay-home decree, with differing lengths and varying rules.
The number of hospital beds has not been updated during the governor’s daily briefings. But the Illinois Department of Public Health is tracking those numbers.
The latest statistics released by the Illinois Department of Public Health Tuesday found 937 new cases of the coronavirus in the state, and 26 additional deaths.
“The (U.S. Supreme) court…ruled in 2019 essentially that it is up to an individual state to decide how much power to give elected officials to draw their own district boundaries. That’s one reason why it’s so critical that Illinoisans be allowed to vote on whether to allow an independent legislative mapmaking process.”
Mail-in ballots trickling in are inching the city’s primary turnout to nearly 35 percent. That’s down sharply from the 53.52 percent city turnout in the 2016 presidential primary and the 52.70 percent in 2008, but above or comparable to the city’s showing in the remaining three presidential primaries this century.
Whole Foods says it has already increased pay by $2 an hour, offered two weeks of paid leave for workers who test positive for COVID-19 and stated workers who call out sick will not be penalized.
The COVID-19 financial wallop represents a nearly 50% loss of monthly revenue, potentially leaving as many as 175,000 patients in a lurch.
A new working paper from the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics includes calculations to put a dollar value on all those saved lives. “$8 trillion is over one-third of US GDP and larger than the entire annual federal budget. Whether in regular times or during a pandemic, it is difficult to think of any intervention with such large potential benefits to American citizens.”
The Gap has 76 stores in Illinois across its Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta brands, and Kohl’s has 66 stores in Illinois.
Blood supplies are down 40% over this time last year, said Margaret Vaughn, executive director of the Illinois Coalition of Community Blood Centers. She stressed that blood donation is safe, centers are spacing out chairs, and travel to donate blood is permitted under Illinois’ stay-at-home order.
As of Monday afternoon, a petition calling for Mayor Lori Lightfoot to freeze rent had drawn more than 14,000 signatures, but the mayor does not have the legal authority to enact a rent freeze due to state laws, a city spokesperson said. The petition also calls for the city to freeze mortgages and utility payments and to ban new filings for evictions and foreclosures.
But the department has plans for the higher-than-average number of people who have had to stay at home. A spokesman said, “We have a layered Emergency Operations plan that centers around maintaining critical staffing levels. Even with the increase in sick leave, it is lower than what it was this weekend and we have not yet had to implement any significant changes to maintain neighborhood patrols.”
Thank you to the Tribune for publishing.
In Illinois, the focus on the coronavirus crisis has been squarely on Chicago, but the hardships, fears and worries have spread across the state, even if the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 cases are in Cook County, not the state’s other 101 counties. And that has some public officials questioning Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s decisions.
The hospital’s medical director, Dr. John Walsh, said they have been “overwhelmed” by inmates suffering from the effects of coronavirus. “This is a disaster,” he said. “What I most fear, is that without some resolution, the number of patents coming in from Stateville will be excessive.”
About 6 percent of the entire Chicago Police Department was on sick leave Monday. On an average day, about 2½-4 percent of the department doesn’t report for duty for health reasons.
Pressed on whether Lightfoot said students would not return to school buildings for the rest of the year, one alderman said, “I don’t know if that was the exact words. But that’s the implication — that the rest of the school year will be remote learning.”
CHA officials waited weeks before hastily drawing up employee work-from-home plans that could reduce the risk of exposure for staff and residents. Some residents say they still haven’t heard what the CHA is doing to protect tenants and what will happen if the outbreak continues for weeks or months.
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