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“With the state receiving $8.1 billion in federal aid thanks to American Rescue Plan, lawmakers have access to capital needed to begin its recovery, and these cuts are simply not needed to fill revenue shortfalls.”
Two sources said a restaurant employee mentioned to police Supt. David Brown last month that a series of “large group” incidents were impacting businesses in the area.
Comptroller Susana Mendoza: “But even with the delays and uncertainty caused by COVID-19, there is reason to be optimistic about sports betting and what it could do for Illinois’ budget.”
“Comparing the proposed maps to current maps, the metrics are similar, though overall less competitive. However, when evaluating the likely outcome in the next election, the new maps position Democrats to win two additional Senate districts and four additional House districts, everything else being equal. This is something that the committee did not want you, the voters, to know.”
Jim Dey: “Some of the corrections involved provisions of the original bill that were nonsensical. For example, police were barred from using force to arrest a resisting suspect if they concluded the suspect could be arrested at a ‘later date.’ The chiefs said that was ‘unreasonable’ because ‘almost anyone can be arrested at a later date.'”
In the final hours of the legislative session that ended early on June 1, Illinois legislators approved a package to help fund Nicor’s proposed gas line to the village of Hopkins Park in Pembroke Township. If Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s signs the measure into law, it would move the community into a decades-long fossil fuel commitment at the same time Illinois political leaders promise they’re working toward a clean energy future.
In Chicago, a woman was killed and nine other people were wounded when two men opened fire on a group standing on a sidewalk in the Chatham neighborhood on the city’s South Side. The shooters also got away and hadn’t been identified as of mid-Saturday afternoon.
As of December the backlog had been cut in half, but thousands of cases still remain open.
“They were able to get it across the finish line and get it done,” state Rep. Andrew Chesney said. “This was a unique opportunity where Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives, can come together.
“The fact that right now at Jones we have nine security officers, we have two SROs, and we don’t have a full-time social worker … that really says something about the priorities of mental health,” Cassie Cresswell, chair of the Jones LSC, said at a meeting Thursday. The LSC presented survey results showing 82% of student respondents didn’t feel they needed an officer in school to feel safe and just over half of teachers didn’t want cops in the building.
Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau disapproves of several items passed in the upcoming 2022 fiscal year budget for the state of Illinois, and took time at a recent Board of Trustees meeting to tell residents why. Among them: “They over doubled their individual budgets for their legislative staff, from $70,000 to $160,000. These are staffs that didn’t show up to work for most of the year, this is nothing but a slush fund on the taxpayers dime.”
Kristina Hamilton, of the American Lung Association of Illinois, says the “Preventing Youth Vaping Act” would give the state Attorney General more enforcement authority over e-cigarette companies. The measure, Senate Bill 0512, awaits action by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Pritzker and the Illinois Attorney General have some explaining to do.
Give them credit at least for being open about what they intend: No diversity of opinion about race. Wokeness shall be mandatory under pending directives for University of Illinois faculty.