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The legislation was a Senate Floor Amendment to Illinois HB 370, which would also create a “Youth Health and Safety Advisory Working Group for the purpose of identifying and reviewing laws and regulations that impact pregnant and parenting youth.”
“Given that Illinois is a 59 percent to 41 percent Democrat-Republican voting state, a 14-3 Democrat-Republican split in districts does not serve the state well. It disenfranchises downstate and rural voters, giving them little representation. It also gives only Democrat representation to all the Chicago suburbs, which possess a significant proportion of Republican voters.”
Laurence Msall said the Bears are a “jewel in the crown of tourism attraction” for Chicago — “in spite of last Sunday,” he added, when the team was flattened by the defending Super Bowl champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“(T)he Lightfoot administration opted to calculate the tax hike using a nationwide consumer price index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rather than the one the federal agency maintains just for the Chicago area. So rather than a 0.9% change and a tax hike of $14.7 million next year, Chicago property owners will share a $22.9 million increase on a 1.4% change, which will then carry over to 2023 and beyond.”
“Redistricting may seem like an arcane exercise, but it’s vital to the work of government because it’s the framework for so many decisions our elected officials make — from taxation and education policymaking to infrastructure priorities. If carried out fairly and openly, remaps build citizen trust in politics and politicians. As long as the process is carried out in hidden backrooms, that trust will remain elusive.”
The city is poised to get nearly 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine for kids during the first week after the vaccine is authorized, Dr. Allison Arwady said. Vaccinations are free and do not require insurance or proof of legal status.
There are more than 39,000 numbers in the state’s system. Those are people waiting for a callback for help. Around 16,000 of them are having passwords problems. Those with problems logging in skyrocketed after the state launched a new security system called ILogin.
“For the first time, we have enough population over 30,000 on the Southwest Side that we can draw a compact continuous ward that includes at least 50% of Asian Americans in the ward,” said Grace Chan McKibben of the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community.
Among their claims, the group says the city’s mandate was not approved by city council and goes beyond the Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s authority, and it takes issue with how the mandate has been applied across the board, saying teachers have it easier because unvaccinated teachers don’t have to pay for their own testing or take time away from work to get tested.
By the time the House Executive Committee opened Tuesday evening, there were 660 proponents of the change, but more than 48,200 opponents. State Sen. Terri Bryant said she’s never seen that much opposition to a bill before.
“This is the kind of map that convinces more Americans that their vote doesn’t matter, and pushes to those that still bother to vote further apart into tribes unable to communicate with each other,” Joel Funk, a resident of the Metro East area, said during virtual testimony before the House Redistricting Committee.
State Sen. Sue Rezin said with all of the other controversial issues surfacing this week, incentives to grow jobs in Illinois could be one good thing that comes out, but the devil is in the details.
“There’s all the talk about transparency and trying to do all we can with all the hearings but I do find it amazing that this hearing today did not get posted until late yesterday afternoon,” said Rep. Tim Butler. “This is a hearing that could have been posted six days ago.”
Immediately after a judge ended the gag order on Chicago’s police union president, he went right after Mayor Lori Lightfoot again about her COVID-19 vaccination mandate and reporting policy. Some aldermen joined his crusade.
A 2020 research brief found that participants had 48% fewer crime-related arrests compared to their peers — and that they were still less likely to be involved with the criminal justice system in the year after the program ended. Participants were also likely to attend seven days more of school a year than a control group of their peers and were involved with fewer incidents of misconduct on campus.
CDPH says in addition to distributing vaccines to its more than 700 providers, it’s working out details to set up clinics. The department previously worked with Chicago Public Schools to administer shots to older students, and the same thing is in the works for younger children.
Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and Mississippi have all dropped below the city’s threshold for being under an “orange” category on the travel advisory, bringing the list of places on the city’s warning list to 41 states and two territories.
“Without more northeastern Illinois residents returning to the office, the CTA fare cuts won’t increase ridership the way we’d like,” said Erin Aleman, executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. “In the long term, we need to rethink how transit operations are funded.”
Mark Konkol: “During her tenure, (Ald. Silvana) Tabares hasn’t made many headlines. Until, that is, she became the lead sponsor of the ordinance to not only to repeal Lightfoot’s vaccine mandate but also strip the mayor’s ability to make any executive orders that would place city workers on a no-pay status.”
“Giving voters the power to recall elected officials won’t solve all of Illinois’ problems. There is no silver bullet. But, for decades, those in power have been promising reform, with little to show.”
“We go through these exercises, but nothing really changes. … We move people back into the districts and then, some mysterious way, they find their way back at headquarters,” Ald. Jason Ervin said.
Ralph Martire, of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability: “First and foremost: the state’s tax policy is so flawed in design it doesn’t work in the modern economy. Hence it regularly fails to generate the revenue growth needed to cover the cost of providing the same level of services from one fiscal year into the next.”
Congress sent states hundreds of billions of dollars to help them pay for pandemic-related expenses. For state officials not to use those funds to refill their UI funds, and to raise taxes instead, is a betrayal of taxpayers. As the aforementioned states are demonstrating, some states, like Texas, will take the optimal approach, while states like Illinois and New Jersey will serve as examples of what not to do, just as they do with so many other policy matters.
“At least four brand-name online sportsbooks — DraftKings, FanDuel, PointsBet, and BetRivers — have converged on the Chicago market…turning a steady profit margin of 4 to 6 percent. Their take could be higher, but state law prohibits sportsbooks from laying odds on games involving Illinois college teams.To win over bettors, who gaming experts say are primarily tech-sharp young and middle-aged men with cash to burn, sportsbooks are spending millions on advertising, phone apps, and gambling incentives.”
A republication of our Wirepoints column.
A more bizarre and destructive mismatch of economic circumstances and policy direction would be hard to imagine.
Matt Carolan of JLL, a global real estate company, said the future of Chicago’s beautiful office buildings, occupying over 150 million square feet just in downtown continues to depend on when city employees get back to work. “You start to have conversations with people and wonder, are people ever going back to the office.”
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