-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Mark Konkol: “At this point, the details of CTU’s wish list don’t matter much. History tells us that whatever concessions Chicago Public School officials make are only met with new union demands.”
CPS parent Ammie Kessem: “Union leaders, it seems, aren’t dedicated to reopening schools. Instead, they keep moving the goalposts and adding new items to their endless list of demands…After 400 days without school, without friends, without normalcy, those 20 days in school would be the best 20 days ever for many Chicago high schoolers.”
“Chicago has ‘north of 30,000’ home businesses after an explosion-by-necessity during the stay-at-home shutdown triggered by the coronavirus. Only 4,000 of those home businesses are licensed by the city — partly because Chicago’s home-business ordinance is more restrictive than any other major city.”
“It was Acosta’s work as a liaison for corrupt former state Sen. Martin Sandoval that finally landed him in hot water.”
The DOJ says the city is required to install accessible pedestrian signals that give audio or tactile cues when it’s safe to cross the street. According to the suit, Chicago has just 15 of those signals out of 2,700 crosswalks with visual signals.
If an employer requires their employees to get the vaccine, they must compensate them for the time it takes to get the vaccine, if it is given during a shift, of up to four hours for each dose, according to the proposal.
“I want us to start reclaiming our public spaces by putting up monuments of people that matter to us, who did great things for us,” said Shelia McNary, head of the North Lawndale Coordinating Council Art & Culture Committee.
A statement from the Park District reads in part, “The agreement calls for the District to maintain the statue and obtain approval from the JCCIA before making any substantial changes to the statue or plaza. No substantial changes were made to the statue or plaza therefore the Chicago Park District is not in violation of the agreement.”
Yvette Loizon, ISP’s general counsel, said that in the month of March alone, the agency approved 67,847 applications, the largest number of approvals in a single month in more than a year.
“When you can’t even publish a report about a conflict of interest (without permission from a panel of lawmakers), it’s really a toothless provision,” Legislative Inspector General Carol Pope said.
“We believe a solution exists to break ground on the South Side and transcend economic barriers while protecting the environment and preserving our parks. The question is, will anyone look at the trees and park space rather than the parking spaces and politics.”
The behind-the-scenes involvement with top officials of former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration are now among the activities being scrutinized in two federal civil rights complaints that allege environmental racism as the city helped move a source of pollution out of the white, wealthy Lincoln Park neighborhood to a Latino-majority community.
This is a major extension from the previous 60-day limit. A waiver submitted in 2019 by the state to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was recently approved.
The American Tort Reform Association tracked 176,053 TV advertisements in the United States for legal claims or services mentioning COVID-19. More than $1 million of the $3.1 million was spent in Illinois, according to the group.
A proposal by Mayor Lori Lightfoot that moved closer to passage on Tuesday would prohibit employers from firing or disciplining employees who leave work to get the vaccine.
“After we worked together to achieve a balanced budget in 2019, our state, like all the others, was hit last year by an unprecedented global pandemic that has threatened the health and safety of Illinoisans and strained our state coffers. COVID-19 temporarily interrupted the progress we were making to undo the damage left behind by Gov. Bruce Rauner, who saddled state residents with massive additional deficit spending and caused the state to suffer eight credit rating downgrades in just four years.”
Even modest rainfall causes Centreville, 10 minutes from downtown St Louis, to be overwhelmed by sewage that overwhelms homes and streets. Residents of the majority-Black community that have endured long-term flooding from sewage claim that a proposed plan to remedy the issue is insufficient.
“It often seems, in fact, that foreign adversaries like Russia and China have greater access to U.S. government documents than most Americans do…Many of the old problems with the Freedom of Information Act continue to plague our state.”
Spokeswoman Annie Thompson had no immediate comment on whether the hack had affected the office’s ability to do its day-to-day work representing the state in court and working to protect consumers.
Those playing in low-risk outdoor sports – bass fishing, baseball, softball, tennis and track and field – do not have to wear masks while playing. However, those on the bench, or not actively competing must still mask up.
Illinois ranked #6 on list of where small businesses have the greatest potential to bounce back after the COVID-19 pandemic.
CTU VP Stacy Davis Gates says teachers are always “wanting more” because of the best interest of their children and students. “Reopening a facility that has the resources that we need, the safety mitigations that are necessary, is the work that the adults have to do in this moment to make it safe.”
The state also said that the “vast majority” of vaccines being administered in Illinois were developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNtech. For next week, the state said it expects to receive 483,720 total doses of COVID-19 vaccine, of which 5,800 doses are expected to be Johnson & Johnson.
“The failure to resume the normal rhythm of schooling in historically progressive states amounts to the most significant failure of public policy in a generation.”
Enacted in 2008, Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act bans the attainment of a person’s unique bodily information and storing it without the person’s consent. Unlike other similar laws, BIPA is the only one that allows for a private lawsuit rather than action from a state’s attorney general.
Pritzker shows Mayor Lightfoot that public unions are his priority—school reopening, not so much. The union would rather not reopen at all this school year. And thanks to legislation signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the district can’t require it. The statute repeals part of an Illinois law that had restricted the teachers’ right to strike over subjects other than wages and benefits.
Politicians and so-called experts have been blind to the need to balance the direct risk of the virus, however small that risk may be in some circumstances, against the economic and indirect but enormous health effects of shutdowns.
The state of Illinois itself will get $7.75 billion and the remaining $6 billion will go directly to counties and cities. The flood of federal dollars is nothing to celebrate. It will only encourage Illinois’ worst habits and delay reforms.
Robert Rybaltowski has made contact with IDES more than 40 times since the state erroneously stopped his unemployment benefits almost two weeks ago, but it’s getting him nowhere.
“If we’re looking at this deal with an eye toward history — and in doing so, we’re reminded of the long years of unrealized grand plans for Block 37 on State Street — we have to at least raise the possibility that the state will have to convey the building to a developer on the cheap, if not for free, in order to spark new development there.”
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