-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Friday is Mayor Lightfoot’s deadline for city workers to be vaccinated or begin regular testing for COVID-19. But FOP President John Catanzara plans to fight the mandate. “There’s no way they’re going to be able to sustain a police department workforce at 50 percent capacity or less for more than seven days without something budging.”
According to the city’s business office, between March 15, 2020-June 15, 2021, 81% of business licenses were renewed in the city. Through the heights of the pandemic, Chicago only saw about a 1.5% drop from it’s pre-COVID average. Regarding new business licenses, there were a little more than 4,000 in this same timeframe in 2020 but more than 5,000 this year.
Senate Bill 626 implements a pilot program in Cook County over the next two years designed to help people pay fees in traffic court. The program creates a sliding scale to help those at the poverty line.
Pritzker said bad actors have been trying to make schools “less safe…”There are people that are extraordinarily irresponsible who are going around the state suing because they basically want to make our schools less safe. That is not right, we are not at a moment where this pandemic is over we have to stand up for the safety of all the people in this state.”
If Chicago lawmakers end up deciding their pilot program is a success, they will struggle to figure out how to pay for it in the long run. They will struggle even more in trying to expand it to include additional families. Federal funds supporting the pilot program will run out in 2024.
The governor’s evasive remarks on a threshold to lift Illinois’ mask mandate mirror public comments Pritzker has used to justify extending his retention of emergency powers since the onset of the pandemic.
Multiple unions, including the Fraternal Order of Police and the Chicago Federation of Labor, have vocally opposed Lightfoot’s vaccine mandate. Only one in four members of the Chicago Police Department is vaccinated, according to the most recent data available.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a legislative ethics reform package Oct. 8 after an amendatory veto spurred minor changes in the language. While the omnibus ethics package is an overdue first step, Illinois’ political corruption remains rampant and in need of greater curbs.
Norman Montgomery, Executive Director of Neighborhood Development Services and one of the members of the Illinois African Americans for Equitable Redistricting’s leadership team, explained “As a tax-exempt organization, NDS doesn’t do politics. But the data behind the maps don’t seem to tell the same story that the boundaries show.”
Donald Donagher Jr., 69, pleaded guilty in federal court to one bribery count alleging he paid $869 in March 2014 to a Morton Grove trophy company that provided plaques for the program, and $1,000 to a company that catered the event. His company, Penn Credit Corporation, was one of two vendors contracted to perform debt-collection work for the county, and he thought Brown had given the two companies equal work.
Urban planner and writer Pete Saunders said race affects all the building blocks that make up growth, and individual decisions by residents, business owners and developers all add up to what he calls “Black avoidance…At the individual level, it is a rational choice, but in total, when you combine all those individual choices, it becomes something that has a great impact on those particular communities.”
2nd Lt. Fahim Masoud began working for the U.S. Army as an interpreter at age 17 and came to the United States in 2007. Now an intelligence officer, Masoud is based in northern Virginia but travels to Bloomington for monthly drills with Illinois Army National Guard.
The report found that, since a 2013 audit of CFD response times, the department still has not implemented the best practices, has not documented goals outside of a state-required plan, and “has not demonstrated a commitment to transparency with regard to measures of department performance.”
Orphe Divounguy: Despite having a young, highly skilled population with relatively higher COVID-19 vaccination rates, Chicago ranks second to last—behind only San Francisco—among the 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, in jobs recovered from pandemic losses. It couldn’t be clearer when looking at the link between the city’s lagging housing market, labor market, and how the city taxes and spends that it must change its strategy. But Chicago needs Springfield to act before pension reform can become a reality. Until state lawmakers get serious about providing relief, Lightfoot and the rest of the city’s leaders must start using their
In a statement on the site, (former resident Phil) Rockrohr writes that Park Forest “provides a real-life story of the challenges of achieving racial harmony” and of how one community achieved the goal. “I don’t know if it was the schools, the community events, the concerts or parades or the community culture or politics that de-emphasized race. No one knows why, but no one we interviewed said what took place was bad.”
Two weeks ago the City of Chicago dug its fiscal hole deeper with an irresponsible budget and now it’s Cook County’s turn. Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle has proposed spending $8 billion in 2022, $2.2 billion more than the $5.9 billion the county spent in pre-COVID 2019. That budget sets Cook County residents up for a fiscal cliff once the free federal money is gone.
Join Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski, Founder Mark Glennon and Analyst John Klingner on the fifth episode of Wirepoints podcast: The Dialogue. They discuss how bad COVID data is leading to bad decisions.
SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER