“Central Illinois’s once-mighty small and mid-sized industrial cities are almost entirely Detroit and almost no San Francisco…Springfield, Peoria, and Rockford — the forgotten borderlands of the country’s Rust Belt region — feel particularly hollowed out. All are losing their populations at alarming rates. Worse, each city made CBS News’ “50 Most Dangerous Cities in America” list last year, with the latter two surpassing Chicago in terms of violent crime rate. It wasn’t always this way. Life here used to be pretty good.”

House Bill 1428 lowers employee contributions to 1 percent of compensation from 3 percent for the CTA’s Retiree Health Care Trust.

IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson said, “…(T)he IHSA is a rule-driven organization that should continue to align with ISBE rules for the good of its membership. The board felt that not following the mandate was akin to a team picking and choosing what rules they were going to follow in a football game or volleyball match.”

“Remaps are crucial to governance at every level — federal, state, county, local. They define the superstructure for so much governmental decision-making — everything from taxation and education policies to infrastructure priorities. And remaps can, if done in a nonpartisan way, establish a bulwark against one-party rule.”

The full letter from Rep. Adam Kinzinger to President Biden is linked in the article, but it reads, in part, “I have been disappointed time and again by the failures of the state political leadership to forge a bargain and rebalance state energy policies so as to keep our nuclear plants online. After missing opportunities in 2020 to get something done, the General Assembly and Office of the Governor are once again on the verge of failure.”

Tucked away in the Governor’s COVID-19 Executive Orders signed this past Friday, the residential eviction moratorium was extended through Sept. 18. A previous iteration of the moratorium lasted through Sept. 3.

“Illinois is historically one of the slowest to recover after this, but tourism and higher ed aren’t going to be the only things that help us,” state Rep. Avery Bourne said. “We have to grow faster than we have in the past, and faster than our neighbors to recover, which includes way more broad reforms than just those two things.”

“Many communities across our country have become news deserts – through this legislation, Illinois is taking a step toward addressing that challenge,” Pritzker said in a statement. “Robust local journalism is vitally important and I look forward to reviewing the recommendations from the Task Force as we seek to maintain and grow a strong press corps in Illinois.”

“The disconnect between Illinois’ high education spending and below-average student outcomes stems from overspending on the heirarchy above its schools. Overspending on district administration drives up costs while siphoning dollars away from students and teachers in the classroom, where spending has the best return on investment for student achievement.”

As part of the ruling Monday, Judge Robert Dow told Democrats to keep arguments from Republicans and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in mind: “The panel also reiterates the comments made on the record urging the General Assembly to take into account the views of the Plaintiffs in crafting any amended plan with the objective of presenting for the Court’s consideration a plan that satisfies all constitutional and statutory obligations, not just those raised in the existing pleadings and motions.”

Rep. Andrew Chesney hopes the bill be discussed during the state’s Special Session Aug. 31. “I don’t believe that my local administrators are less qualified to make decisions about their students and their classrooms than the Chicago-based Superintendent of Schools for Illinois. I do not believe that IDPH knows more about proper mitigation protocols for local locations than the local health administrators who work and live here.”

The governor said, “I will remind you that if we are not able to bring these numbers down, if hospitals continue to fill, if the hospital beds and ICUs get full like they are in Kentucky – that’s just next door to Illinois – if that happens, we’re going to have to impose significantly greater mitigations.” Thirty-seven Illinois counties and Chicago are at a “warning level” for intensive care unit bed availability.

Lawyers for the four defendants sought in June to convince the judge to toss certain charges in the indictment, arguing it suffered from a series of “fatal” gaps — including the lack of a clear quid pro quo.

“This seemingly innocuous collection of conditions will have some serious repercussions when it comes to reining in misconduct by unionized public sector employees. Any law that regulates the behavior of Illinois police officers, schoolteachers, or trash collectors could be upended by a union contract.”