Seven other Starbucks locations in Illinois, including six in Chicago, have also filed for a union vote. They are part of a larger, nationwide wave of Starbucks unionizations that began when a location in Buffalo, New York, voted in December to become the first unionized Starbucks café in the U.S.

One of the provisions that worries law enforcement officials the most is the ending of cash bail Jan. 1. One state’s attorney said. “With this new law, our hands will be tied. What sane citizen in this state of Illinois would want the state’s attorney’s hands tied, the police hands tied, and give all the perks going to violent offenders. That’s what this law does.”

State Sen. John Connor said, “HB4316 is a follows-up last year’s Faith’s Law, which expanded the definition of grooming to educator-related situations not covered in criminal law. In a situation where a prosecution does not occur for a predatory teacher, this permits those school districts to track that information and share it with other districts.”

The bills received the backing of ISP, the state’s attorney general and broad majorities in the legislature. But civil liberties advocates and lawmakers from each party aired concerns about potential misuse of the cameras, a lack of clarity regarding how camera placements will be chosen, and that an individual would be prohibited from accessing their own camera footage via the Freedom of Information Act.

“Take the welcome increase in bond ratings. How good does it look in the context of the state’s financial standing? Wirepoints financial analyst Ted Dabrowski notes, ‘Illinois still needs 19 more credit upgrades just to get its rating back to where it was in 2009.'”

The bill extends the current B10 sales tax exemption until 2023 and then increases the biodiesel blend level subject to the tax exemption to B13 in 2024, B15 in 2025 and B19 in 2026.

Pritzker’s administration set aside more than $50 million from the COVID stimulus funds for violence prevention in the budget that passed last year. The funding, to be administered through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, offered a unique opportunity to flood resources into neighborhoods impacted by violence. But with the fiscal year almost over, the state has spent only $56,764, one-tenth of 1% of the money, as Illinois experiences its worst gun violence in decades.

Illinois spends 23% less on higher education than it did in 2007. University pension spending grew by 510% in that time. It doesn’t take a math major to see why tuition has increased 46%, making the average in-state tuition in Illinois the fifth-most expensive in the nation and the highest in the Midwest.

Illinois’ 15% increase was less pronounced than the 34% national increase, the state’s 53 documented instances marked the highest total in recent history. An ADL spokesman said college campuses have increasingly become hotbeds for white supremacist and antisemitic flyering campaigns, including at the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana, the University of Illinois-Chicago and the University of Chicago.

Said Dick Simpson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois Chicago, “Gubernatorial campaigns have gone from being $20 million campaigns to $100 million campaigns. To be successful, a candidate now needs to raise at least tens of millions. And much of that is spent on negative advertising. It’s a new phenomenon.”

Jim Nowlan: “That’s The Deal: A good, prestigious job, with a great pension, all in return for turning a blind eye to Lady Justice on those infrequent political cases that affect the party and its interests, such as pensions, term limits and gerrymandering. Most wannabe jurists consider it worth the trade. They wouldn’t be offered the judgeship if they didn’t.”

When a group of Democratic state senators joined Republicans in rejecting two of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s nominees to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board last month, it became clear that crime has become such a big issue in this year’s elections it is even driving some divisions within the governor’s own political party. How a little-known state board became a flashpoint for controversy also demonstrates how much has changed about politics and crime in just a few short years.