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The Illinois Pro-Family Alliance and Thomas More Society contend the “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards for all Illinois Educators” are “unconstitutionally vague” and “amount to a form of ‘compelled speech.’”
Jim Dey: “That’s been the pattern across the state, where trial judges have responded to lawsuits challenging Pritzker’s unpopular restrictions with favorable decisions don’t last long on appeal.”
The Supreme Court’s order brings a total of 19 cases involving legal challenges to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 related restrictions, all brought by restaurants with indoor dining service, that are now consolidated in Sangamon County Court before Judge Raylene Grischow. All of the cases raise the same question about the governor’s authority to issue multiple, successive disaster proclamations under the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Act.
Mark Konkol: “What the governor described was truly awful, but it had nothing to do with his bumbling public refusal to rule out joining them in Florida for Thanksgiving. His scripted plea for privacy might have made more sense if the governor had expressed it when the fake news broke — a week ago.”
Four sites were set up and ready to be used in April at an estimated cost of at least $15 million each. Illinois’ public health director said only one, Metro South, might be used. “We want to hold off on our alternate care facilities until we are at that dire point,” Ezike said.
Ald. Walter Burnett (27th Ward) said the capital improvement plan helped smooth the 2021’s budget rocky passage to approval. “The capital improvement thing wasn’t even there at first, and the mayor and the administration brought that up to satisfy us, to allow us to be able to bring something back to our community and make some improvements, and hopefully be able to bring up property values in our community with infrastructure in those communities.”
Dr. Marielle Fricchione, medical director in CDPH’s COVID bureau, said schools would not reopen in January if the level of spread the city is seeing today continues.
State Rep. Blaine Wilhour: “Let’s be perfectly clear: The defeat of the progressive income tax is a repudiation of the entire political class. Voters in Illinois are tired of paying the price for the reckless spending of career politicians of both parties. The people of Illinois want fiscal sanity, real solutions to the state’s economic issues and a vision for the future that gives hope to all ‘classes’ of people.”
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said studies from across the world and in other districts in the state show schools are safe if proper mitigation measures are followed.
“As we’ve done follow ups, we’ve received a lot of voluntary compliance so we haven’t had to issue any violations on a grand scale,” Executive Director Chima Enyia said.
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch released details of criminal charges Wednesday against four former ComEd employees, including John McClain, a former state lawmaker-turned lobbyist. In the indictment, McClain consistently refers to Madigan as “our Friend” in communications with others in ComEd. The charges also note the group would hide payments from the utility by falsifying records.
A junior Cabinet position for Emanuel would invert a power dynamic that has long complicated the relationship between the hard-charging Emanuel and President-elect Joe Biden.
The Finance Committee advanced the mayor’s $12.8 billion spending plan to the full City Council for a final vote Monday. Ald. George Cardenas (12th Ward) set the tone for what is sure to end up as the most divided City Council vote in Chicago history: “I’d rather face the music now. Years from now, it just gets harder.”
In Chicago, where Mayor Lori Lightfoot just proposed another property tax increase, taxes over the last 20 years have increased even more, to 115 percent.
State Sen. Robert Martwick, D-Chicago, said the governor has the authority to act as an executive short term, “but long term policies should be set out by the General Assembly, that’s our role. So, yeah, we absolutely should be having hearings and discussions and we should be playing a role in this process.”
“It has justified what we have contended even back in March,” said Illinois Retail Merchants’ Association Executive Director Rob Karr, “that you don’t need to drive distinctions between essential and nonessential retail, there’s no reason that a bookstore, or an apparel store or a craft store can’t be open under the same operating conditions as a grocery store.”
The downtown occupancy rate fell to 87.1 percent in the third quarter, down from 93.8 percent a year earlier, according to the Chicago office of Integra Realty Resources, a consulting and appraisal firm. The rate has never been that low in the 22 years since the firm’s executives began tracking the downtown market. But the suburban apartment occupancy rate rose to 95.3 percent in the third quarter, up from 95.1 percent in the second quarter and 95.0 percent a year earlier, according to Integra.
About half the leadership of the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund says it has suffered mistreatment by a few of the trustees, and fighting continues over whether complaints are being properly heard.
Office vacancy in Chicago’s central business district rose to 15.4%, the highest rate in nine years, according to data reported in October from real estate services firm CBRE. And vacancy is expected to rise as the pandemic endures and office patterns continue to change.
Some states require the legislature to authorize disaster proclamations, others allow the legislature to end them. In Illinois, there are no such strings attached.
With an increase in homicides and a record number of opioid deaths, 2020 would have been a taxing year even without the thousands of people who have died from COVID-19. The office has seen more than double the number of deaths as in 2019.
Many Illinois school districts are reverting fully to online-learning due to the jump in COVID-19 cases, but another set of numbers argue that schools should stay open – and in fact, open even more. The survival rates since the beginning of the pandemic for those 20 years and younger is 99.99%.
Ted was on with Tom Miller this week talking about the state of Illinois’ fiscal crisis now that the progressive tax failed and a federal bailout seems less likely. The rundown: Illinois has $7 billion in unpaid bills, a budget $6 billion in the red, 5-year projected deficits of $4 billion each year, over $300 billion in state retirement debts and the state is rated just one notch from junk status.
“The bank of good will is running on empty for a mayor who used her inaugural address to portray the City Council as corrupt, raced back to City Hall to issue an executive order stripping aldermen of control over licensing and permitting and used her first council meeting to humiliate indicted Ald. Edward Burke (14th).”
Lightfoot officials said they would work with aldermen on projects, an olive branch of sorts to the City Council at a time when the mayor is struggling to lock in 26 votes for her 2021 budget plan. The move also gives her a signature spending plan to point to if she runs for reelection and a way to create jobs for residents.
Jim Dey: “‘Like all government budgets, these new projections are only about cash going in and out. They ignore growing debt, including growing unfunded pension liabilities, which are Illinois’ biggest problem. Illinois may fill its budget deficit as it usually does, but its true books haven’t been balanced since 2001,’ warns Wirepoints financial analyst Mark Glennon.”
Marisol Gutierrez, a mother of five children in the CPS system, says that remote learning has not worked for her children. “It’s long overdue. Get these kids in school safely, even if it’s a couple of days in school and a couple of remote learning days. I have different age ranges and they’re not learning. It’s physically exhausting for them to sit six-plus hours in front of a computer.”
According to the proposed 2021 budget, the city has budgeted roughly $78 million for vaccine distribution and outreach. This is about a $50 million increase over 2020’s budget, but includes all vaccines, not only the yet-to-be-approved coronavirus ones.
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