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Illinois Sen. Don DeWitte: “For example, members of the Senate Republican Caucus have filed anti-corruption bills that would give the Legislative Inspector General greater autonomy to investigate and issue subpoenas in cases of alleged political corruption and amend the State RICO laws to give wiretap authority to state’s attorneys to investigate crimes of public corruption. Neither have been granted a hearing.”
“Nobody wants to round up a bunch like kids and throw them in jail, that doesn’t really solve the problem,” Ald. Brian Hopkins said. “We can’t just look the other way and chalk it up to teenage hijinks. It’s more than that; it’s criminal activity, and people are actually being hurt by it.
“Last week, financial analysts at Wirepoints released — to the yawning disinterest of most Springfield politicos — a report outlining just how bad of shape municipal pensions are in…This is political and policy dynamite that’s just waiting to explode, and it eventually will.”
Because the judiciary in Illinois is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), data disclosure and responses to requests for information are discretionary, despite the fact that individual case files are a matter of public record and are open to any member of the public for inspection.
Outgoing Elk Grove Township Elementary District 59 Superintendent Art Fessler’s next job at the Northwest Suburban Special Education Organization is over before it even began. The new gig was being arranged to help Fessler work the 170 remaining days he needs to get a full pension.
Among the highlights is discussion of how, early in the pandemic, Lightfoot’s City Hall team last summer considered defying Gov. Pritzker’s indoor dining ban. Top staff members even scheduled a meeting to discuss how such a move would play out. Lightfoot and Pritzker repeatedly clashed in private on COVID-19 mitigation measures.
Among the highlights, the city is attempting to limit no-knock warrants by having them personally reviewed and signed off by a bureau chief. Search warrants will only be served by SWAT officers; A female department member must be present during a search warrant and a supervisor with the rank of lieutenant or above also must be there.
“IDVA was supposed to be following all protocols laid out in the IDPH and (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines specific to long-term care facilities,” Deputy Gov. Sol Flores told the committee. “We were told that that was happening by the home administrator (Angela Mehlbrech), and the staff that was on the ground.”
The loss of the state fairs last year was felt by many. Loss of revenue for the cities and loss of tourism business for local restaurants and hotels was only part of the picture. Du Quoin Mayor Guy Alongi said it was also a loss for families with college students who often work the fair.
Charles James, the Illinois Rural Health Association’s president-elect, said the bill addresses at the state level a big problem: the reimbursement structures for rural health clinics and community health centers meant they weren’t getting paid for remote patient visits.
The Coalition to Rebuild Illinois’ Hospitality Industry is supporting a bipartisan resolution to stop any tax hike, saying it would have a ripple effect throughout the state’s economy, dealing yet another blow to the restaurant and hospitality industry already reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic.
On April 19, a slew of tens of thousands of wide-ranging, private emails between Chicago public officials was quietly published online. City officials say reporting on these hacked emails, no matter their subject matter, would only encourage criminals to hack again.
Some business owners said they plan to keep the signs on their doors and maintain their mask-wearing rules. “It certainly poses questions about, how do we then make sure that people are indeed vaccinated, and hopefully they’ll be able to give us, as business owners, some guidance,” said Maren Rosenberg, owner of Escape Artistry.
In all, 18 people were shot Thursday in Chicago, two of them fatally.
There are only a couple of things that could stop Illinois’ explosive cannabis market growth, said Todd Maisch, president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce. He said that policymakers could ruin things by pushing taxes too high as evidenced by the tobacco market.
“Some of those numbers in there, a misallocation of over $13 million,” Tazewell County Clerk John Ackerman said. “This is not chump change being pushed around, there is serious misallocations listed in there.”
News that Illinois will follow new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on masks and social distancing both indoors and outdoors came as Illinois entered Pritzker’s “Bridge Phase” to a full reopening of the state economy.
If passed by the House and signed by Gov. JB Pritzker by June 19, this year’s Juneteenth would be an official state holiday. Because the holiday falls on a Saturday this year, Monday would be the day off for state workers.
The company’s lawyers have asked a judge to dismiss the whistleblower lawsuit, challenging the validity of the residency requirement for contractors, which was passed during the late Mayor Harold Washington’s administration.
Prosecutors do not oppose the move, which remains as a formality to bring an end to the corruption case that roiled Illinois more than a decade ago.
A frustrated Ald. Tom Tunney said Thursday it’s “frickin’ almost summer” and there has been “no guidance” from the city on whether or not block parties will be allowed — and, if so, under what capacity, mask-wearing and social distancing limits.
Illinois Treasurer Susana Mendoza recently wrote to the credit rating agencies asking for an upgrade, as reported this week. Primarily, she cited progress in reducing the state’s bill backlog, which is now down to about $4 billion, a number that probably can be considered pretty close to normal.
It doesn’t hurt to ask. Maybe the credit raters will agree; they have their own standards and I can’t speculate on their response.
But for ordinary Illinoisans, here’s the real question: Has the state really done anything to fix its structural deficit problems?
Well, the state
Solving Illinois’ pension crisis is one thing, getting Illinois politicians to tell the truth about the scope of the problem is another. Senate President Don Harmon’s comments on pensions contain the typical errors and half-truths about the crisis and the solutions this state needs.
Ted Slowik of The Chicago Tribune featured Wirepoints’ research in his piece on the local pension crisis in Chicago’s Southland communities.
McDonald’s is using its packaging to promote COVID-19 vaccination. Gov. JB Pritzker tweeted this yesterday:
Obesity is a huge and under-reported part of the COVID story. Seventy-eight percent of patients hospitalized for COVID have been overweight or obese. In countries where less than half of the adult population is classified as overweight, the risk for death from COVID-19 was about a 10th of the levels in countries with higher shares of overweight adults.
Interestingly, obesity may even increase the risk of getting infected in
The Illinois Senate passed a widely reported bill to ban hair discrimination in Illinois schools after spending plenty of time on it – two hearings in its Education Committee on different versions.
But on Wednesday, when the measure arrived in the House, it was quickly assigned to the Rules Committee, which usually means a bill is dead for the time being.
Maybe somebody in the House had the sense to see Illinoisans would prefer that their lawmakers spend their time on other problems. The bill had started to catch national attention. An article on it in People
“While the increase in revenues is good news, and a sign our economy is coming out of the pandemic, much of these funds are one-time in nature and should not be expected to recur in [the 2022 fiscal year],” Deputy Governor Dan Hynes said in a statement.
“And others with loud public megaphones ignore the damage the CTU has visited upon Black and brown children through the shutdown of government schools, instead draping themselves in DuSable Drive virtue signaling.Enjoy, my friends. One thing: Not everyone in Chicago is nourished by symbolism when serious problems are chronically ignored.”
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