“You know, it’s getting a little confusing,” said Steve Hartenstein of the Stefani Restaurant Group. “How do you have the time to ask? And how do you – is it intrusive to ask somebody, ‘So have you been vaccinated? Show me?’”

When asked what the biggest impacts were on students, 44% of Illinois residents said “virtual learning challenges” and 29% said “no socialization.”

“I’ve been talking to them for months and they’re still not aggressive, so I’m not going to be voting for any nominee from the White House other than diversity nominees,” Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth told reporters. “I’ll be a no on everyone until they figure this out.”

The report references the May 2019 audit issued after the outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at the Quincy Veterans Home that made similar findings about the lack of uniform policies across facilities and the need to create them. But, when the pandemic hit Illinois in March 2020, those policies had not been enacted.

Simply repealing that law, however, would not, by itself, restore the right to vote for inmates because Article 3, Section 2 of the Illinois Constitution also prohibits prison inmates from voting.

According to Business Insider, Illinois teachers are the 12th highest paid in the country. The National Center for Education Statistics reported the average annual salary for teachers in Illinois in 2018-29 was $66,600. In neighboring Indiana, the average was $50,937. In Iowa, it was 58,140.

“It’s been a burden on brown and Black families for over 50 years, this artificial war perpetrated on our community for the benefit of others,” said state Rep. Mary Flowers. She pointed out that there are no limits on how much a recreational cannabis dispensary can sell, making their owners, all white in Illinois, millions in profits.

The bills aim to expand access to state contracts for minority-owned businesses, women, and people with disabilities, lower interest rates on payday loans, prevent employers from discriminating against people with criminal records and improve access to public housing.

Illinois spends $598 per student on district-level administration, more than two and a half times the national average of $237. If Illinois reduced its general administrative spending to the national average per student, it would save $716.6 million in bureaucratic costs.

While Chicago residents who don’t qualify for the United Center site fall under 1B for another week, the Cook County suburbs opened to 1B plus Monday. The rest of the state has been vaccinating people in the 1B plus category February 25. Monday, Governor JB Pritzker opened vaccinations to higher education and government staff, and media. Next week, the state includes restaurant staff, construction trade workers, and religious leaders. The entire state will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccination April 12. “This all speaks to confusion and lack of planning,” said Sen. Chapin Rose.

“Here’s the most important thing for you to take from this: passing ethics reform isn’t hard. In fact, the legislature could do it in one day. All they have to do is pass three bills to show they’re serious.”

The Classroom First Act aims to reduce Illinois’ double-the-national-average spending on “general administration” costs by consolidating 25% of the state’s 852 school districts. Nearly half serve only one or two schools. In 2017 there were more than 9,000 school administrators in Illinois who made $100,000 or more per year.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Kinzinger “has emerged as a national leader of the non-Trump wing of the Republican Party because of his willingness to denounce conspiracy theories and Trump’s embrace of the lie that he won the election.”

Mark Konkol: “When Arwady’s spokesman on Friday afternoon told me the city’s top doctor had no idea why the state is touting the percentage of vaccinated senior citizens as a bellwether for reopening, Pritzker’s newest pandemic policy seemed even more confounding.”