“This will be a difficult year (at least) for local governments, and maybe for citizens, too. Forewarned is forearmed.”
The move would give the state of Illinois power to give and revoke licenses to police, giving city leaders the power to determine whether Illinois officers who commit offenses can remain on the job.
He noted Pritzker has tried and failed to persuade the Illinois Supreme Court to shut the lawsuit down; tried and failed to transfer the case to Sangamon County court in Springfield; and now has tried to put the case in federal court.
“It’s not like that everywhere. Many governors and mayors around the country acted swiftly to take on public employee costs, freeze hiring, institute layoffs and cut budgets as the effects of the pandemic raged through their spending blueprints.”
“We don’t see how the mayor can complain about the illegal recording of what was an illegal meeting. Under the Illinois Open Meetings Act, any gathering of a ‘majority of a quorum’ of the City Council — 14 or more members — to discuss public business must be open to the public.”
The Chicago Department of Public Health, which serves about 2.7 million city residents, announced in late May its own plans to bring on 600 additional contact tracers by mid-September. That’s a $56 million effort.
“If you sleep during a riot what do you do during a regular shift when there’s no riot?” Brown added.
“And what it shows is sobering…In layman’s terms, researchers have essentially created a SimCity on steroids using Argonne’s Theta supercomputer to create forecasts of the spread of the virus for up to a simulated year.”
“You can sit at a table outdoors, not eat food, and drink. All we’re asking for is to have the same rules that bars with food licenses are adhering to,” one bar owner said. “There seems to be a complete block in the thinking that somehow bars can’t be trusted.”
A 2018 analysis by the People’s Law Office shows Jon Burge-related lawsuits have cost the city more than $132 million — and counting. And yet Burge — like many other officers who have left the force in disgrace — was able to collect a pension.
A tent city has been erected on the corner of 63rd Street and Blackstone Avenue, a vacant lot is owned by the city. Organizers of the protest said they believe the lot should be set aside for affordable housing.
Public finance watchdog Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski said leeway during a crisis is fair, but he said there was nothing in the budget to change state spending practices or address structural deficits. “We’re continuing the same path we’ve been on which is the reason why we’re just one notch away from junk and I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re the first junk-rated state in the country.”
Asked if any Republicans were invited to that event, the governor’s press secretary said the roundtable with Black Lives Matter was “meant to be a listening session for the governor to learn from activists.”
The state is also now reporting “probable” cases of the virus separately on the IDPH website, per U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance. “Reporting probable cases will help show the potential burden of COVID-19 illness and efficacy of population-based non-pharmaceutical interventions.”
Cook County, Illinois, sued the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in September over what they consider a discriminatory, arbitrary rule that they say overburdens county services by causing immigrants fearing deportation to forgo critical services like emergency medical care.
“Justice in America requires more than improving law enforcement. We cannot put racism behind us until we invest in opportunities for quality education, medical care that meets the highest standards, jobs with livable wages, and safe, affordable housing.”
In addition to Lightfoot, the group includes Cincinnati and Tampa mayors as well as police chiefs from Phoenix and Baltimore. They’ll be looking at police contracts and officer wellness programs. Another idea is developing cultural literacy.
Congressman Bobby Rush, whose office is at 65th Street and South Wentworth Avenue, said of the burglary to his office, “They even had the unmitigated gall to go and make coffee for themselves and some popcorn — my popcorn — in my microwave while looters were tearing apart businesses within their sight, within their reach…They were in a mode of relaxation and they did not care about what was happening to businesspeople, to this city. They didn’t care. They absolutely didn’t care.”
In April, Pritzker’s own Office of Management and Budget predicted revenues would drop by more than $4.6 billion for fiscal year 2021…Despite these lower revenue expectations, Illinois will spend $2.4 billion or nearly 6% more than last year’s $40.4 billion budget.
Lifting the lockdown will help to prevent mass business failures and permanent job losses. Illinois families cannot afford to be out of work for an extended period of time.
An Illinois Policy Institute analysis estimated the overall state economy was shrinking by at least $183 million per day during the government-imposed lockdowns.
Comment: This really isn’t just for math wonks. It’s also for non-wonks who want a look behind the curtain on COVID projections. The math behind the curtain is mostly nothing more than high school algebra, but with lots of scary looking Greek abbreviations that are often just informed guesses.
She believes Lacy noticed the police collar on the boxer.
“I was like, ‘ok this is real, he is not going to let me by him. He kept using profanity,” Arroyo said. “‘F this, F the police, I’ll kill all of them.’”
Expenditures include more than $11 million to staff the alternate care facility at McCormick Place, where only 38 patients were transferred, and $1.3 million to rent more than 400 rooms at two hotels in Springfield for first responders, healthcare workers and COVID-19 patients who required isolation. But not a single person ever stayed at either property.
As the virus spread, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ordered states to provide information to the federal government about COVID-19 in nursing homes. But the requirement did not extend to homes for the disabled.
With members from Black Lives Matter Chicago, Good Kids Mad City and the Chicago Teachers Union planning to attend, Obama CBA Coalition organizing member Ebonée Green said the fight for affordable housing goes hand-in-hand with the message that black lives matter.
Seven years ago, the town of Washington in central Illinois was hit with a tornado. Now, some say the COVID-19 shutdown is an even bigger disaster.
“Riots are the language of the unheard,” said Jones, an Elgin Community College student, during a Black Lives Matter talk Wednesday on “Policing in the U.S.” hosted by ECC’s Multicultural and Global Initiatives Committee.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s justifications for maintaining one of the strictest reopening schedules in the country are falling by the wayside. Even his own science and data are working against him.
University of Chicago Professor John Birge says any new lockdown must be carefully targeted. If cities like Chicago and New York had done that in round one, he says hundreds of thousands of jobs and many businesses that are now gone could have been saved.
“In Chicago, hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars each year are spent on affordable housing, homeless services, neighborhood opportunity programs, violence prevention, community engagement, racial justice, family and support services, police accountability, community relations and public health…Those appropriations tend to increase each year. So this is a problem much deeper than money appropriated to CPD.”
The guards from three private firms will not return, according to a statement from the office of Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The city had been prepared to spend as much as $1.2 million.
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