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“The law is what the court says it is, not what the Governor says it is.” Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon shared his insight on Governor Pritzker’s failed mask mandate appeal with Bruce St. James of WLS 890.
A spokesperson for Gov. JB Pritzker said Friday that the governor is “disappointed” in the appellate court’s decision, and is working with the attorney general to request an expedited review from the Supreme Court.
Journalist Bill Cameron, who covered City Hall for 50 years and retired in 2021, said corruption is “so out in the open. I’d like to say it’s getting better, but it’s not…You had to consider working there as entertainment, or it would make you sick.”
“Violent crime has been up and that’s what has us concerned,” Kimberly Bares said. “Carjackings, recovery of guns, some shootings — those kinds of things. We want to see the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office prosecuting. When the police have put together a solid case, we want to see that prosecuted. And we want to see the judiciary sentence appropriately.”
“That rule does not affect the executive orders issued by the governor under the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Act, including the governor’s executive order requiring the use of masks in school, the exclusion from school of persons exposed to COVID-19, and testing of unvaccinated school employees working on school premises,” Kwame Raoul said. “That order continues to apply to all persons not specifically named as plaintiffs in the” lawsuit.
Both the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Education Association asked to file legal arguments trying to help Gov. J.B. Pritzker persuade an appellate court to keep Pritzker’s statewide school mask mandate in place.
Like many Chicagoans, downtown business leaders were worried about potential unrest in late summer 2020 after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. Unlike most Chicagoans, they had access to real-time updates directly from city officials on an invitation-only Slack channel for office building owners and managers, retailers, condo associations and others in the central business district. This exclusive communications pipeline—the existence of which hasn’t been reported previously—provided information on planned protests, crowd movements, police tactics and other developments that wasn’t available to the general public.
Comment: $3.4 billion seems newsworthy.
The legislation also calls for reimbursing school staff for sick days they used during the 2021 – 2022 school due to the pandemic. Similar legislation was vetoed by Pritzker earlier this year, because it did not include a vaccine requirement.
Chicago Democrats made sure that, whatever the Democratic performance turns out to be in 2022, minority turnout will drive Democratic performance in the new 13th District. However, establishment Democrats’ radical gerrymandering coupled with their preferred congressional candidate selection created a mystery.
“The real problem underlying the school mask mandate confusion is Pritzker’s overreach. Illinoisans have lived over 700 days under the governor’s emergency authority.”
“Nine times in the six-page section of the order, three appellate judges used the word ‘moot’ to describe Pritzker’s legal arguments in attempting to govern over schools using executive order.”
A statement from Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery begins, “The Illinois 4th District Appellate Court’s decision released late last night makes one thing clear: school districts are free to implement their own safety measures around COVID-19. And they should.”
Purchased at an auction for $400,000 last week, the sculpture previously belonged to the Lincoln family, and it was displayed in their Springfield home until Lincoln took office. Before departing for Washington, D.C., the Lincolns gave the sculpture to a neighbor and it remained with the Miner family until being put up for auction.
Chicago Public Schools issued a statement Friday morning which says, in part, “These safety measures are what have allowed us to provide our students with the in-person learning environment they need throughout this school year.”
House Bill 2367 is modeled after a pilot program Cook County has run since 2017. The program waived the $120 in county fees for expunging or sealing records in cases where the defendant was found not guilty. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart advocated for the program, citing that nearly 20% of arrestees in Cook County Jail eventually have charges dropped or are found not guilty.
The TRO at issue also covered mandates requiring weekly testing of unvaccinated school employees and the quarantining of students and teachers who are “close contacts” of confirmed or probable COVID-19 cases.
David Greising, of the Better Government Association: “The tension between spending and discipline is coming to a head as leaders in the legislature and the Pritzker administration focus on how to make the most of $8.3 billion in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds.”
During the first year, Illinois residents bought $496 million or 74% of total sales while out-of-state residents bought the remaining 26%. The next year total sales more than doubled to $1.38 billion. That year, Illinoisans bought $943 million or 68% with out-of-state residents purchasing $436 million or 32%.
“The Illinois court system spends tax money. It signs contracts for everything from electronic filing systems to janitorial services. The public should be able to have a transparent look at how that money is spent. It should be able to see which procedures are in place to protect private information, and whether those procedures are carefully followed…No one is talking about digging into private court documents or interfering in the realm of judicial decision-making.”
An Illinois appellate court late Thursday night dismissed an appeal made by the Pritzker Admin, thereby leaving in place the Feb. 4 court order that effectively ended Illinois’ statewide school mask mandate as of that date. It will be interesting to see if Gov. JB Pritzker persists with the claim that his statewide school mandate remained the law despite the lower court’s ruling.
Illinois’ nation-worst pension crisis is all but forgotten as COVID, crime and schools continue to take center stage. But that doesn’t mean that the state’s retirement problems have gone away or are any less severe. Pension costs alone are set to devour nearly 24 percent of Illinois’ $45.4 billion budget in 2023.
“Moving the target date does not fix the funding issue,” said Chuck Sullivan, president of the Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois.
Dr. Allison Arwady thinks the city could see three of the four milestones — positivity rate, hospital beds and ICU beds — in the “lower” or “low” categories by early next week. Chicago’s mask mandate may be ended early to line up with the state, which plans to end its mandate Feb. 28.
Our own column on this new decision is here.
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