As of late last week, health officials in Champaign County had suspended seven permits in connection with defying the state order by serving indoors.

CBS 2 wanted to know if other state departments are also stopping the mailing of all nine digits. By late Monday, the state could not confirm.

“A deficit-burdened Uncle Sam cannot forever come to the rescue. Putting aside this year’s partisan bickering about the worthiness of states and localities for federal COVID relief funds, it’s now obvious that old-school self-reliance and fiscal sobriety about business cycles and unforeseen emergencies must become the foundation of the entire intergovernmental fiscal scheme.”

The single incident of Legionnaires’ disease at the Quincy home comes as the facility also faces an outbreak of COVID-19. As of Dec. 26, the Quincy facility has reported five resident deaths related to COVID-19, 123 total positive cases among residents and 143 total positive cases among employees since the pandemic began.

“In the Quad Cities, businesses have already been hit hard by COVID-19 mitigations. Asking our Illinois small businesses to take on a third minimum wage increase in a year, especially as they continue to navigate an economy dampened by COVID-19, forces them into an unfeasible no-win situation,” Chamber President and CEO Paul Rumler said.

Just three new laws, plus a new provision of a previously passed law, take effect this new year after much of the legislative session was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, leaving less time and opportunity for bills to pass.

A few months ago, the forecast for Illinois’ 2020 corn and soybean harvests was concerning. By harvest time, however, farmers were breathing sighs of relief as yields for Illinois corn and soybeans beat US Department of Agriculture predictions.

Comment: The weighted average discount rate used by Illinois’ state pensions is about 6.8%. That makes the officially reported unfunded liabilities utterly fictitious for the reasons explained in this article. “Moody’s analysts expect to apply a 2.7% rate to local governments’ fiscal 2021 reporting, down from 4.14% in fiscal 2018 and about the same as Milliman’s current discount rate for corporate pensions. It will likely cause pension shortfalls “to increase by double-digit percentages” in the next two years, Moody’s says. As harrowing as that seems, the 2.7% rate is likely to prove higher than anything pension-fund managers can hope to