“What they show is that back in March, there were still over 100,000 total calls waiting for calls back…only fallen to 75,000 calls,” said Adam Schuster, Senior Director of Budget and Tax at the Illinois Policy Institute. Schuster says it is hard to say whether that improvement is a result of IDES doing a better job, or it is just the economy improving.

A republication of our Wirepoints article.

The state legislature is set to wrap up its business by the end of the month, but has yet to take action on the budget, redistricting, or ethics reform. Hundreds of bills are percolating in the capitol.

IDPH and the Illinois State Board of Education and 87 other parties have filed notice they oppose the legislation. Four parties publicly showed support, including the Illinois Education Association.

The formation of the new town is the result of a merger of Alorton, Centreville and Cahokia, which voters approved last November. Curtis McCall Sr, the former supervisor of Centreville Township, was a proponent of the merger. “It’s a bittersweet day, as my son said, the previous mayor,” McCall Sr. said after being sworn in. “There is roughly over 150 either appointed or elected employees that lost their job starting today.”

But IDES spokeswoman Rebecca Cisco issued this statement: “IDES continues to work with claimants who have requested an overpayment waiver and the process by which refunds will be issued as those waivers are approved. The guidance for this process has evolved since the implementation of the CARES Act last year.”

They gave updates on redistricting hearings, a proposal for Asian American history curriculum in schools and a task force for statues on state property. Of course, next year’s budget is on everyone’s mind.

Since the attack, Kwame Raoul said his office has set up multiple layers of security, and put in place application-level security and monitoring, network authentication requirements, and firewalls. “And in our response to the audit, we indicated that because of the nature of our agency and the nature of our work, we consider all of our data high-security data.”

Said Sen. Sally Turner, “We have new new clerks come in and out, we have new elections, and, frankly, we don’t get to train them individually. We hope to have an Illinois Association of County Clerks and Recorders meeting in order to train people, but a lot of times we just have to seek out a fellow clerk to mentor one another.”

Per the report from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, after revenues fell by $2.74 billion last April, base general fund revenues in April 2021 grew $1.779 billion, in part because April income tax payments were delayed one year ago.

State Rep. Elizabeth Hernandez said after concluding more than 20 hearings, they’re now getting input from legislators to draw the maps. “It’s just a matter of compiling, it’s nothing new. There’s no secret. This is a part of the process.”

The Illinois Senate adjourned for the week without passing onto the House a bill to bring about ethics reforms.“I’m concerned that yet again we’ll have a very long drawn out process only to end up with watered-down proposals that still permit the very behavior that’s still the subject of criminal investigations today,” said state Rep. Tom Demmer.

The state will be entering the “Bridge Phase” May 14, a transitional period between Phase 4 restrictions and fully opening in Phase 5. Pritzker said Illinois could move into Phase 5, which removes nearly all COVID restrictions, as soon as June 11, barring a resurgence of the virus.

“The pension crisis at the state level gets all the attention, but if you listen to the legislature, most of them are ignoring what’s happening to our cities,” Ted Dabrowski said. “Anybody who’s traveled around the state and has visited our great cities knows that they are in deep trouble.”

“Gov. J.B. Pritzker has an opportunity to rebuild trust with voters who repeatedly have demonstrated their lack of confidence in state government.”

Gov. JB Pritzker’s 2022 budget proposal suggests cutting the tax credit donors receive from 75% to 40%. Of the lawmakers who spoke in Thursday’s hearing, there was little indication that Pritzker had support for his plan.

Michelle Gilbert, legal director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, said the CDC’s eviction moratorium specifically excludes states or municipalities that enact the same or greater level of public health protections than the CDC order.

“Meeting with members is nothing new,” House Speaker Chris Welch’s spokeswoman Jaclyn Driscoll said in an emailed statement. “In fact, the room we’re talking to members in is actually the same we met in 10 years ago.”

Nearly 14 months after COVID and its accompanying recession gripped Illinois, the state’s economy is recovering at a faster than expected clip, even with mandated capacity limits for businesses still in place. But the pandemic’s long-term effects on Illinois businesses will take years to untangle and recover from — if they didn’t fold completely under COVID’s weight.