They got $1.5 billion in fees for handling the federal PPP loans. BMO Harris topped the list — at least $232 million in fees — helping it have ‘a good quarter’ in early 2021.

The top executives at Blue Cross of Illinois’ parent company got big raises last year, as health insurance corporations emerged largely unscathed from the economic fallout of the pandemic. Adding insult to injury, insurers are overpricing premiums in the individual market, so much so that they had to return money—$2.1 billion—under the rules of the Affordable Care Act.

Paul Schimpf, former Illinois state senator and Republican candidate for Illinois governor: “In addition to a fundamental misunderstanding of the science, Pritzker’s desire to ignore other elected officials and go it alone on the pandemic will go down as one of his greatest leadership failures.”

“It’s time to once again expose why we believe many parts of the numerous Executive Orders the Governor has issued are outside his authority.”

Former IL state rep Jeanne Ives: “Legislative leaders and Gov. J.B. Pritzker know that if this program had been debated separately, outside the capital bill, it would have failed. Illinoisans should tell their legislators to end this program immediately.”

An ill-advised amendment tacked onto a shell bill passed out of committee on Wednesday in the Illinois House. It would bar anyone from becoming a Cook County Board of Review commissioner who is not a licensed attorney. That would weed out a lot of good government types. It also would weed out many experts in real estate and appraisals, whom you would think would be ideal candidates to sit on a board that hears appeals of property assessments set by the county assessor.

And who happen to be licensed attorneys? Why, the three incumbents on the board, all of whom