U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Chicago) was elected the new chair of the Illinois Democratic Party on Wednesday evening, becoming the first Black person and first woman elected to lead the state party into a new era after the resignation of Michael Madigan.
Illinois, under the pending federal legislation, would get cash exceeding its actual revenue loss for for 2020 compared to 2019 by 1703%.
“While Mayor Lightfoot considers the creation of the Chicago Monuments Project an audacious step toward racial reconciliation, it is nothing more than a goofy form of public therapy and a ridiculous attempt to indulge activists on a long march to re-write history.”
According to the university, the Harris Dean’s award is annually given to “an exceptional leader who has championed analytically rigorous, evidence-based approaches to policy, and who is an example for the next generation of policy leaders and scholars.”
Activists gathered outside City Hall on Wednesday morning. “Let us have democracy in our schools,” said Moises Moreno, director of The Pilsen Alliance. “Last time we were out here, we were talking about in the lame duck session that we had a chance to get this bill passed. But what had happened is that the mayor decided to step in and to act as a political sabotager to stop an elected representative school board.”
Though some arrests have been made, in early February, officials reported the percentage of arrests made in connection with carjackings in Cook County had fallen to 11% for the year so far, marking a third consecutive year of declines in the arrest rate for such incidents.
“Rebuilding trust in the Police Department was an issue upon which she campaigned. The rule changes, which will now go before the public for a comment period, strike a balance between the hard and dangerous work police must do and the rights of innocent civilians to not be mistakenly targeted or mistreated when search warrants are executed.”
“You’re three-quarters of the way through a school year, and so it’s very hard to then reprogram a school,” he said. “You’ve already gotten three-quarters of a class under your belt, you’ve got to keep your same schedule.”
All told, dispensaries sold more than $80 million in recreational pot products last month. That marked a drop from the record $88 million in sales recorded in January, when there were three more days of sales.
“If we are to try to resume some normalcy, then we have to help people get past their fears of vaccinating and show that the sooner we get vaccinated, the sooner we’re able to come out of our homes, the sooner we’re able to do the things we miss,” Ald. Raymond Lopez said, calling the proposal a “carrot versus a stick” to be used to motivate residents to get vaccinated.
Legislation backed by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group would require farming equipment manufacturers to make software required for repairs available to consumers for purchase.
Distributed evenly across Illinois’ approximately 12 million residents, that amounts to roughly $25,000 per person.
“Once we lose these shows, we are at significant risk of losing those conventions permanently to these other states, so it’s going to have a much longer term economic impact on our state than most people realize,” Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association President Michael Jacobson said.
“We watched as nearly half of our college-bound high school seniors left our state for better funded universities out of state,” Gov. JB Pritzker said. “We won’t let that happen any longer.”
Those 52,498 warning tickets went out during one week in January, but on March 1 the city started sending out the real thing, including a fine. A ticket every 12 seconds could mean nearly $100 million a year for the cash-strapped city.
“Critics of President Biden’s plan to allocate $350 billion in federal aid to state and local governments have argued that this money is largely unnecessary due to the recovering economy as well as unspent millions “under the couch cushions.” Yet the notion that subnational governments don’t need additional support is a myth, premised on a highly selective interpretation of the data and a refusal to acknowledge the hollowing out of state and local government capacity over the last few decades, particularly in the areas of public health and education.”
Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said the state needs to support small and big businesses, and that leaders need to unite on messaging. In contrast, House Minority Leader Jim Durkin said the way to reverse the state’s population decline isn’t through rhetoric, but through policy: “People are leaving Illinois because they are sickened by the policies, the corruption, the spending, the lack of accountability, and the failure to be responsible with their money.”
In Cook County, there’s actually a number you can call if you don’t speak English, don’t have the internet or don’t know how to use their website. But nearly three months into vaccine distribution in Illinois, there’s no multilingual vaccine helpline for the state or city as a whole. The city on Tuesday announced a multilingual helpline will start Thursday, but only for those trying to book an appointment at the new United Center mass vaccination site.
“So you’re going to take away teaching and learning time, so that you can administer a test that is not going to give you any data that you can use quickly to make sure that you are addressing the needs of students. It’s illogical, quite honestly,” said Kathi Griffin, president of the Illinois Education Association.
“The Chicago Monuments Project advisory committee is not a ‘public body’ and therefore the [Open Meetings] Act’s requirements do not apply to it,” Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Communications Director Christine Carrino said, explaining the city’s refusal to release committee recommendations and reports, attendance rosters and any recordings of its first six meetings.
The police changes will help prevent wrong raids and will ensure that the search warrants are “being carried out with a respect for human dignity.”
Most notably, the survey found 938 teaching positions are either unfilled or filled with someone not qualified for the position, affecting nearly one-in-five of the districts that responded. Staffing shortages had become so severe that more than 250 classes were canceled and 200 were moved online because school administrators could not find educators willing to teach them.
“The problem we’re facing now is that we’re losing the common conversation that binds us as a society…But the weaker our journalistic institutions become, and the greater the diversity of news providers, the more likely we’ll find that we have nothing in common anymore. And that is dangerous for democracy.”
The Chicago Teachers Union spent months fighting the return of elementary school students, but the union is optimistic high school students will return in some form by the end of the year.
Sam Fisher, of the Illinois Press Association: “Newspapers have played a vital role in providing transparency about government through the publication of public notices. It’s worked for more than 150 yearsl…Conversely, there are nearly 7,000 units of government in Illinois. Only about half have a website. How efficient and effective would that be?”
Ted was on AM560 this week talking about the state’s failure to vaccinate the most vulnerable Illinoisans, how state lawmakers abrogated their duty over COVID and let Gov. Pritzker rule by executive fiat, and how we still know little about the state’s failure to protect retirement home residents from COVID.
The outcome of the investigation could force Chicago to substantially change practices, particularly as they relate to locating polluting industrial sources near residential communities of color.
In Illinois, the unemployment system is difficult to navigate, even in the best of times. “For Illinois, their system was modernized in 2010. But still, we’re talking about 11 years ago,” said Alexa Tapia of the National Employment Law Project.
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