-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Wirepoints has obtained a copy of letter detailing a federal bailout request sent by Illinois Senate President Don Harmon.
“In war and in all crises as swiftly moving as this pandemic, leaders acquire enormous latitude. There is no time for fact checks, court challenges, FOIA, legislative hearings, elections and all the rest. The opportunity for deceit, political manipulation of news and suppression of basic rights is at its apex. Vigilance in the watch over government, too, therefore must be at its apex.”
Fitch Ratings has downgraded Illinois’ credit rating to BBB-, one notch above junk, in response to the continued negative impact of the Coronavirus and Illinois’ already-tenuous financial position. It also assigned a negative outlook to the state, meaning another downgrade is likely as the pandemic continues.
Meanwhile, Eddie Johnson collects a pension of $189,000 a year. It’s not believed that pension is at risk, regardless of the inspector general’s findings.
Multiple employees with the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) told The Daily Beast they were being forced to work in an unsafe office environment even though they could theoretically get their jobs done from home.
“A quarter of our office is not coming in because they don’t want to die,” one IDES employee told The Daily Beast.
As Illinois tackles the coronavirus pandemic, the state Department of Public Health is tracking the use and availability of ventilators and ICU beds across 11 regions in the state. See what the situation looks like at hospitals in your area.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot will ask aldermen next week to retroactively bless her executive order that gives her additional power to spend city money and make changes to the 2020 budget to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. The mayor issued the order on March 17, creating a new section in the city’s budget to consolidate coronavirus expenses and giving her the ability to move money around to cover the costs that are piling up as the city tries to cope with the pandemic.
While Congress is sending nearly $14 billion to help Illinois repair the economic damage inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, little of it will be available to ease the pain downstate communities will face in the form of lost tax revenue and cuts to basic services.
Lightfoot was quick to condemn the botched demolition, but has been under fire for allowing it to occur in the first place. Some aldermen also have blasted the mayor’s efforts to strip members of the City Council of some of their powers, saying this wouldn’t have happened if not for her reforms last year.
“Some cities and states have worked hard to manage [pension and retiree health care] obligations, while others let them mushroom. Accounting under reasonable assumptions, in 2017 these obligations consumed less than 20% of revenues in New York City and San Antonio but more than 60% in Chicago and Dallas.”
His 10-bed ICU has been at capacity for weeks. At the moment, there are nine confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases. Eight patients are on ventilators. Many of them have organs threatening to fail. “And I’ve got three more in the emergency room who are waiting for a bed up here,” Kirugulige says after leaving the patient’s room. “I know the city has all the data, but it doesn’t feel like anything is flattening for us.”
Fitch Ratings on Thursday downgraded the state’s credit from BBB to BBB-, a reflection of the havoc COVID-19 is wreaking on the state’s precarious finances.
Established last month, the $100 million Chicago Small Business Resiliency Fund has received more than 8,000 applications, but has approved only 124 loans for about $4.7 million as of Friday.
Patients started arriving Tuesday afternoon, and five were there Friday, officials said. “They are all people who have low-acuity COVID-19,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who noted that the pop-up hospital was not designed to treat the sickest patients.
One ray of hope is that some ethanol plants can convert to making sanitizing products and even consumable alcohol.
Illinois acts as a tax collector of sorts for towns and cities. The state collects income, sales, excise and other revenue and then remits it back to the municipalities via the Local Government Distributive Fund.
The Illinois Education Association President Kathi Griffin said the group supports Pritzker’s decision: “We believe it is the right move to ensure the safety of our students, our educators and our communities.”
In a 44-page decision, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sidney I. Schenkier ticked off concerns that Yarbrough disregarded requirements to post jobs, failed to get court approval for various ranking positions, favored people with political pedigrees and tried to make some workers miserable by assigning them to far-flung suburban offices.
“Even the federal government, sometimes especially government, doesn’t do things as well as the private sector,” Pritzker said. “What I can tell you is that we’ve got private-sector consultants, big ones, that have come in to help us put up the proper websites that we need in order to fulfill on what the federal government and Congress passed.”
Loaner devices aren’t a cure-all to the hurried transfer of learning from classrooms to homes brought by the coronavirus pandemic, and schools are now confronting new questions: namely, how to increase student participation in Google Classroom sessions, how to provide enough content and community to engage students long term, and how to seek out families whom they haven’t been able to reach.
But not every Aurora company has the ability to adapt in that way, which has led the Aurora Chamber of Commerce to advocate for a host of legislative items at the state level to assist the town’s small businesses.
Peoria-based OSF HealthCare, which operates numerous downstate hospitals, as well as Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Evergreen Park, announced cost-cutting measures April 7, starting with reduced pay for executives. But the planned cuts also include unpaid leaves of absence, reduced retirement plan contributions, mandatory paid time off and a hiring freeze on certain positions.
Illinois has the lowest bond rating in the nation and would pay a higher interest rate on those government loans than any other state in the country, regardless of how low interest rates currently are. Fitch downgraded the state’s Issuer Default Rating to “BBB-” from “BBB” Thursday.
She extended until June 1 the deadline for payment of a host of business taxes for the months of February, March and April.
Unlike some states, Illinois hasn’t named specific facilities where the virus has been detected. That’s been true even in cases of significant clusters of death. The lack of comprehensive information has led one advocacy group, AARP Illinois, to ask the state to begin posting cases and death counts online for each nursing home.
SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER