Last year, aldermen Maria Hadden (49th) and David Moore (17th) tried to establish Juneteenth as a paid city holiday that failed due to budget constraints. The move declaring an annual day of observance on June 19th could clear the way for establishing Juneteenth as an official city holiday in the future.
Currently, there are about 20 officers on the mayoral detail Smith oversees, but police at City Hall and in squad cars posted outside her Logan Square home are separate from it.
“I think we have to dramatically reduce the amount we spend on law enforcement. I think it doesn’t make sense to think that you can have no police,” Preckwinkle said. “The police can’t be an agent for oppression and enforcers of racial inequality. The police have to be public servants.”
Officials there did say the city has received 315 complaints related to reopening, leading to 163 investigations. The city has issued 41 warnings and three citations.
Since the ordinance was requested to be sent to two separate committees, it landed in the infamous Rules Committee, where potential laws historically go to die. The parliamentary maneuver is regularly used to block measures opposed by the mayor or other aldermen.
Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski has been tracking all Illinois COVID data. He said Pritzker’s administration is trying to use the federal guidelines as cover: “The untold story of this crisis right now is half of Illinois deaths are coming from retirement homes and Governor Pritzker should himself be demanding an investigation to find out what happened.”
In years when education spending does increase, much of it is actually going toward pensions and not into classrooms. From 2000 through 2020, spending on teacher pensions increased by 200%, while spending in the classroom rose just 20% for K-12 schools.
While a fix in the way online sales taxes are collected and remitted to local governments should ease the pain of the loss of physical shopping in many municipalities, empty storefronts and vacant buildings due to Covid-19 might cause permanent damage to municipalities’ business districts.
In addition, the residential eviction ban has been extended through July 31.
“At a minimum, the safety and wellness requirements of the Consent Decree should be interpreted to require the City to marshall additional resources to provide for citizen protection such as requesting the assistance of other police agencies and even the National Guard,” the motion said.
Lightfoot’s office has said that none of the funds are specifically earmarked for policing as of now, but there are no guarantees that won’t change.
Sangamon County Clerk Don Gray anticipates his county will have about $250,000 in additional expenses because vote-by-mail packages are heavier and it takes more manpower and technology to process them.
Martin Burke, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign chemistry professor, said the university repurposed a veterinary diagnostic lab “into a world class human COVID-19 testing facility.” The saliva test developed by the university is scalable and not subject to supply chain bottlenecks that have limited access to nasal swab testing.
“The governor recognizes that, now more than ever, Juneteenth is a day that reminds us that the fight for justice and equity across the nation is not over, and while we will celebrate the end of slavery, we must also …honor the memory of those who have died simply because of the color of their skin.”
The pandemic has created an “inability to provide real community input” on permit applications like General Iron’s, Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th) wrote in a letter.
Numerous news outlets have tried to piece together the events of that weekend, painting a much more complicated scene than that of peaceful protests devolving into violence.
“The fact is elected officials, even ones who profess to be reformers, such as Lightfoot, an attorney, come to believe the government belongs to them and not the people.”
Illinois’ housing market was one of the weakest in the nation prior to 2020. Up to 130,000 homeowners could fall behind on their mortgage payments if state lawmakers fail to provide relief.
Steve Cortes: “Lightfoot embodies the callous indifference to the hopelessness that permeates her city. Nonetheless, both locally and nationally, Chicago’s political leaders find a supportive leftist coalition of race-baiters, public-sector unions, trial lawyers, and corporate media cheerleaders.”
Zorn: “It’s time to scrap the pregame anthem tradition…. As we’ve been seeing these past few weeks, certain traditions in this country have got to go.”
“It’s very difficult right now for the Legislature to do anything because we’re not in session until November, so now we’re saying that the governor must be bold in his efforts and deliberate about his will to deal with the problems in the black community,” state Rep. La Shawn K. Ford, D-Chicago said.
Mendoza says the financial damage from the pandemic is staggering, and it will take help from Washington to claw out of it. “It blew what is likely going to be about a $7 billion bill backlog on top of the $7 billion we had before the pandemic.”
“I called the Illinois Comptroller’s office and noted the recent decline in the bill backlog. The representative said ‘yes, we’re making good progress there.’ Then I asked who was paid and that was the end of the information line, at least so far.”
Ironically, Illinois actually does have genuinely good news to report on the virus, but it may convey a different lesson, so it’s a good time to consider a broader perspective on Illinois’ shutdown rule.
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