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Lawmakers are asking the administration to watch over the Department of Human Services’ and the Department of Children and Family Services’ as both are reportedly stalling state funding to non-profits that received the Paycheck Protection Program funds from the federal government.
“Weak discipline of officers with founded complaints of misconduct, and provisions that discourage whistleblowing of misconduct, are two areas reformers want changed in the new contract. Will members of the FOP who perform above board, with integrity and honesty — the majority — pressure their own union leaders to abandon protocols that protect bad cops?”
“Part of the regular day-to-day function of the hospital is dealing with patients on isolation and keeping all of the staff and other patients safe,” one epidemiologist said, noting that the hospital typically deals with illnesses such as the flu and whooping cough. “That’s the regular business that we do, with masks and gowns and hand washing and negative pressure rooms when indicated.”
“We don’t know what types of policies and rules will be set forth for students who are medically fragile, for workers in the Chicago Public Schools who have compromised immune systems,” said CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates. “This is what I’m saying about the priorities of the Chicago Public Schools, continuously being upside down.”
The board voted 4-3 to keep the contract, which will be voted on later this summer. CPS CEO Janice Jackson has said changes will likely be made to the language in the new contract.
The latest data from IDPH on COVID-19 and long-term care facilities showed there were a total of 21,390 positive cases and 3,649 deaths. That’s more than half of the 6,707 total deaths statewide attributed to COVID-19, as of Tuesday evening.
The state funds are being matched with more than $65 million in non-state funds for a total investment of over $115 million.
In October, residents were slapped with a “public safety pension fee” to help the city get an additional $1.2 million by the end of 2019 to pay down pensions. The City Manager said pension payments for public safety retirees grow 11% each year. The fee was implemented to avoid a property tax increase.
The bigger problem is the tax’s impact on small businesses, which are just starting the economic recovery from Pritzker’s COVID-19 lockdown orders. A progressive tax would mean up to a 47% tax increase on over 100,000 small businesses, the state’s most prolific jobs creators.
David Skeel, law prof: “The best way for Congress to help states, both with their immediate coronavirus problems and with longer-term structural issues, would be to include a state-bankruptcy framework within any pandemic-response aid package it enacts.”
“To put the pension funding deficit into perspective, consider the student loan crisis, which has gotten lots of attention in recent years for its potential to trigger another credit crisis like the one we saw in 2008 and 2009.”
VIDEO: Republican Mark Curran, who is the challenger to US Senator Dick Durbin, spoke with FOX32 and told us he supports Elizabeth Warren’s tax proposal.
“If they want to get rid of the [sworn] affidavit, then take the residency requirement out of the frickin’ contract and also take the no-strike clause out of our contract and then, let’s see how serious you really are. Give us the same ability that teachers have and give us the ability to live outside the city and then we’ll entertain the conversation about getting rid of the affidavit,” Catanzara told the Sun-Times.
“We’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands of blood drives canceled,” said Jim Watts, president of the Illinois Coalition of Community Blood Centers. “A lot of them are the businesses where employees are working remotely. It’s different where you can walk down to the conference room and give blood versus making an appointment and drive across town.”
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Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has ended a tradition among prosecutors in her office she believes
Jim Dey: “While county jail populations have been expanding as a result of Pritzker’s refusal to accept transfers, the state’s prison population has been declining. He’s ordered mass releases of prison inmates as a means of controlling the spread of the virus.”
A joint session of the City Council’s Public Safety and Education committees will examine the program at 10 a.m. July 2 — nine months after the chairs of the committees demanded answers about the original audit, issued in September 2018. The Inspector General found the program was so poorly run that it increased the “probability that students are unnecessarily becoming involved in the criminal justice system.”
The two aldermen also co-sponsored legislation in 2019 to officially replace the Columbus Day holiday in Chicago with Indigenous Peoples Day.
Later Wednesday, the Chicago Teachers Union will hold a caravan and march. They’re calling on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to provide adequate cleaning for schools, as well as calling on the school board to pull police out of schools. They want the money to be allocated to measures that make schools safer for students.
“The status quo has failed,” she said.
“The governor has said it’s ok for some organizations to gather, to fundraise and to rally support around their cause but everyone else faces the threat of police enforcement or being shut down,” said Mary Kate Knorr, executive director of Illinois Right to Life. “Our request is simple: Equal treatment under the law.”
“This is a textbook example of why Illinois’ Freedom of Information Act needs to have criminal penalties for willful violations, and those penalties need to apply to the individual hiding records from the public.”
The Chicago Public School district headlined its recently released “toolkit to help foster productive conversations about race and civil disobedience” with an epigraph by Angela Davis, the former Communist and criminal fugitive who supplied the guns used in the Marin Courthouse massacre in 1970. “In a racist society, it is not enough to not be non-racist,” said Davis. “We must be anti-racist.” The toolkit provides links to materials written by the Southern Poverty Law Center and directs teachers toward Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist.
Refuting an earlier CBS Chicago story.
Iowa side booms while Illinois side languishes. The scene is playing out in other border communities around the country where workers and shoppers regularly cross state lines. The relatively stringent lockdown regime in Illinois compared with Iowa has created a clear shift in current spending patterns and potential longer-term consequences.
“The elected social justice warriors demand little or no bail for the violent who are released back onto the streets. Broken public school systems serve power interests, not the poor. Tax policy kills business and job opportunities in troubled neighborhoods.”
Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey criticized the guidelines laid out by the state, calling them too “vague.” “Enforcing mask wearing for younger students (will be tough). I don’t know the last time you tried to put a mask on a six-year-old, but it’s not easy.”
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