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Wirepoints President Ted Dabrwoski presented the report Wednesday which looked at various metrics of public safety pension health and local budgets. “Illinois’ top-down, one-size-fits-all pension mandates leave city officials with few options but to raise taxes, slash services or endanger the retirements of city workers,” he said.
Mark Konkol: “If Cook County’s top prosecutor needs a reminder of her responsibility to make sure mistakes aren’t made investigating every angle of a ‘heater case’ that Chicago leaders feared would lead to riots once the public saw video of the last moment of a young boy’s life, well, somebody send Foxx an email.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been openly critical of how long the Civilian Office of Police Accountability has taken to finish investigations under the leadership of Sydney Roberts. The mayor was particularly outspoken about COPA’s protracted investigation into the botched raid on the home of Anjanette Young.
Lightfoot, who campaigned for mayor in 2019 on a promise to root out corruption in City Hall, has repeatedly called for Ald. Ed Burke, the other indicted member of the Chicago City Council, to step down. Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson was indicted on seven charges that he lied to federal bank regulators and filed false tax returns.
More than half of Illinois’ largest cities have severely underfunded pension funds, according to a new report from Wirepoints. State Sen. Win Stoller said almost 100% of property taxes in Peoria are now being dedicated to pensions. “What we have to realize is when we do that, we’re taking resources away from the things we ought to be spending money on — our infrastructure, our schools, our health care, our public safety.”
“We have all these examples of public and private businesses up and running serving customers face-to-face,” state Rep. Joe Sosnowksi said. “There’s just no excuse – at all.”
Governor JB Pritzker just extended the moratorium on evictions until the end of May. While that’s welcomed news to renters on the verge of losing their homes because of financial hardships created by the pandemic, smaller landlords who haven’t been paid in months are also on the verge of foreclosure.
“Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza reports that Illinois’ stack of overdue bill payments has been whittled down to $3.4 billion. That’s very close to the amount the state would pay in a 30-day payment cycle. In other words, Illinois is now on track to pay its bills on time — within 30 days of receipt…Still, the state’s got a long way to go before — if — it can dig itself out of debt.”
Illinois students rank 22nd in the country in financial literacy.
The state’s community colleges saw enrollment plunge by 13% this spring compared with spring 2020, according to research from the National Student Clearinghouse. Total postsecondary enrollment in Illinois dropped by 5.2% and undergraduate enrollment slid by 7.5%. All three figures are worse than the national average.
The alderman was arraigned Wednesday afternoon on a 16-count indictment in federal court. Munoz is accused of using thousands of dollars in political donations for his personal expenses – and then lying about it.
The committee, following a long and contentious debate, advanced legislation that would require public schools to teach sex ed by July 2023. The legislation would require age-appropriate education for students grades K-12 on the subject of consent among other additions to the sex ed curriculum.
Fees collected on documents filed through the Recorder of Deeds offices are intended to go toward grants through the Rental Housing Support Program and distributed throughout the state. But a report from the Illinois Housing Authority found 68% goes to the Chicago area and some downstate counties receive little or nothing.
While the state is seeing a natural increase as births continue to outpace deaths and it gains people from other countries, so many people are moving out of Illinois and to other states that the total population is in decline.
Jim Dey: “The 50-page report, prepared at the request of legislators angered by what occurred, excoriated the department’s leadership while neglecting to mention who put that leadership in place. After he took office in 2019, Pritzker appointed a hack politician — former Aurora Democratic state Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia — to run the department. The move boosted her pay and stood to fatten her pension.”
“(H)ave minimum qualifications for the director so that we just don’t pick just a random person to be heading the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs,” said Veterans Affairs committee chair state Rep. Stephanie Kifowit.
While many of the members agree with the changing of dress code policies, many do not want to withhold funding from schools that could be low-income, to begin with.
“But ‘fully reopen’ and ‘Illinois Restored’ are misleading terms, details in his plan show. Phase 5 is defined as: ‘All sectors of the economy reopen with new health and hygiene practices permanently in place.’ Permanently.”
On Wednesday morning, Judge Harry Leinenweber sought to set a date on which the trial could begin, acknowledging that the pandemic has created a backlog of cases and trials while the courthouse was largely closed. In response, defense attorney Patrick Cotter said the office of U.S. Attorney John Lausch has “intimated” that the prosecutors may file a superseding indictment and that as a result, no trial date should be set until that is filed.
“For one, there is no guarantee that Lightfoot will be reelected mayor in two years. As Lightfoot campaigns, the next CEO will have to navigate a highly politicalized election season in which the head of CPS will be under the microscope….The school district also may be taken out of the mayor’s control altogether, as momentum is building behind a bill that would eventually create an elected school board in Chicago.”
The Taste of Chicago, which typically takes over Grant Park in mid-July, will feature to-go meals designed to showcase local restaurants at pop-up events throughout the city for the second year in a row. The announcement by the mayor’s office made no mention of plans for Lollapalooza.
The group’s first recommendation is that Jackson’s replacement commit to better funding education in predominantly Black and brown communities, pointing to the district’s controversial decision in 2018 to shutter four Englewood schools in favor of opening one new high school in that neighborhood.
It is unknown if Kim Foxx’s second in command resigned as a result of the handling of the Toledo case. However, the report says Foxx wasn’t aware of exactly what would be said in a related court hearing.
The lawsuit, seeking millions of dollars in damages, was the first to be filed in connection to the outbreak. The allegations in the lawsuit closely mirror a state report that was released last week on the outbreak.
Chief executive officers from across the country have once again ranked Illinois as one of the worst states to do business. For the eleventh year in a row, Illinois placed 48th in the 17th annual Best and Worst States for Business survey from the Chief Executive Group. The Connecticut-based business media company surveyed 383 CEOS from companies with annual revenues between $50 million and over $1 billion.
Rebecca Pallmeyer, the chief judge of the Chicago federal court, called the threats against judges “kind of shattering…We are supposed to be exercising the law and carrying out the law and doing what we believe to be the right thing and that we believe follows precedent — that’s the role.”
Aldermen offered two reasons for the openings: disinterest in giving up the big unemployment checks currently being distributed, and young people not wanting jobs outside of their own neighborhoods.
Rising costs for Illinois’ 650 local pension funds are wreaking havoc on city budgets, taxpayer wallets and the retirement security of hundreds of thousands of police, firefighter and municipal workers and retirees.
Illinoisans are suffering from more than just the nation’s worst state-level pension mess. For most residents, another problem hits much closer to home: Illinois’ local pension crisis. Wirepoints has quantified the negative impact of local pension costs by examining the finances of Illinois municipalities from 2003 to 2019. While just seven of the 175 measured cities received an F grade in 2003, that number had grown to 102 cities by 2019.
“I think the light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter and brighter by the day,” said Michael Jacobson of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association.
“The people of Chicago want two things from their mayor: They want to be safe, and they want their kids in school. She has struggled to provide either.”
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