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“I think this will still be a critical election in Chicago,” political science professor Dick Simpson said. “It’ll be a referendum on the Lightfoot era.”
Illinois’ 4th District Appellate Court has affirmed a Sangamon County court’s decision from June that blocks a petition that tried to remove Amendment 1 from the November ballot. The case was brought by parents and teachers from Chicago Public Schools and claimed the proposed amendment would unconstitutionally enshrine union powers in the Illinois Constitution.
So far in August, Vote Yes for Workers Rights, which supports the labor amendment in front of voters this November, received $3.2 million from various labor unions.
Gov. JB Pritzker said his executive authority only goes so far. “There are things that you can’t do as an executive order. There are things that the legislature really does need to do, we need it enshrined into law. So, again, those things are all being worked out. We’re talking with the legislature, working with the attorney general’s office.”
Rev. Dr. Beth Brown, Anthony Driver, Oswaldo Gomez, Yvette Loizon, Cliff Nellis, Remel Terry, and Isaac Troncoso will serve on the board only until district council members are elected Feb. 28.
Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said Tuesday that abortion rights will be a central issue in the 2022 election, not just in his bid for reelection but in races up and down the ballot. That includes races for Congress and the Illinois Supreme Court as well as the governor’s race and state legislative contests.
Since David Brown took over as CPD’s superintendent in April 2020, the average CPD district has lost 23% of its officers. And the biggest losses have been in two districts that patrol Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods: The Englewood District has lost 30% of its cops since Brown came to town, according to the IG, and so has the Harrison District. Most other parts of town aren’t faring well, either. The Near North District covers areas like River North Streeterville, Old Town, and much of Lincoln Park. It has lost 29% of its cops under Brown.
The study shows that southern Illinois receives $2.88 in state funds for every tax dollar collected. Cook County gets back 98 cents, and some suburban counties only get 60 cents for each dollar sent to Springfield.
Chicago-area single-family home values rose 13.1% in June compared with June 2021. The June figure shows modest acceleration in home price growth, 0.2 percentage points, in June from May. Yet that’s in contrast to what happened in nearly every other major city in the country in June. Of the 20 big housing markets the index tracks, 18 saw slower home price growth in June than in May.
See Wirepoints own column here elaborating on the Wall Street Journal’s point.
State Rep. La Shawn K. Ford, who represents Chicago’s West Side in the State Assembly, said top prosecutor Kim Foxx has a responsibility to “pull people together in the justice system” to send the message that “if you murder someone … we will lock you up.”
Jim Dey: “(Tom) Demmer said Illinois needs stability — meaning no new income taxes or any taxes on retirement income to keep more people from leaving…Citing decisions to move corporate headquarters out of the state by Caterpillar, Boeing and Citadel Securities as evidence, Demmer said Illinois needs to become ‘more attractive’ for both employees and employers.”
“Illinois Republicans last controlled the state Supreme Court the same year the former John Hancock building opened along North Michigan Avenue, and the Chicago Cubs infamously blew the National League pennant…(T)hat 53-year string of political futility could end if Republicans thread the electoral needle and win elections for two open Supreme Court seats that cover big swathes of suburban Chicago.”
Dixmoor had at least seven water main breaks at different locations between Friday and Tuesday. Grants from Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to fix their infrastructure require a lengthy application and an audit. The Village President said, “Understand the audits was not up to par, but we cannot wait on audits to be done to get assistance. This is a state of emergency from what I see.”
Nearly a dozen City Council members have already resigned from office after their most recent election in 2019, or plan to retire at the end of their terms next year.
To encourage more psychologists, psychiatrists, substance abuse counselors and other mental health professionals to move to and practice in underserved areas, the General Assembly passed – but never funded – legislation in 2019 to establish a student loan forgiveness program for eligible practitioners. Thanks in part to new revenue from the sale of cannabis, the Community Behavioral Health Care Professional Loan Repayment Program is finally up and running.
The race for the seat currently held by retiring Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos is widely considered a toss-up in a national political environment believed to favor Republicans, though not as heavily as a few months ago.
In their ruling, the judges noted the plaintiffs established that government officials and agencies can’t simply ignore mounting scientific evidence that natural Covid immunity is at least as beneficial and durable as the protection against Covid afforded by the approved Covid vaccines. However, the judges said the cases at this point could not thwart the mandates, in part, because the plaintiffs did not present enough evidence that a person with natural immunity could not gain even greater protection after receiving a Covid vaccine dose.
“Illinois’ long-range financial picture remains as ugly as it is clear — debts and deficits as far as the eye can see. Nonetheless, Illinois’ revenue picture remains strong — at least for the time being. That’s thanks to the massive infusions of federal money stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.”
“We can’t live like this. The city has become – I won’t even say, Gotham City is a little bit better, because you have Batman,” said Uzma Sharif, the owner of Chocolat Uzma in the Pilsen community. “Here, you don’t have Batman – you know what I mean?”
Mayoral challenger Willie Wilson argues that the cost-saving plan to create 1,290 new precincts — down from 2,069 — will confuse Chicago voters, depress turnout in the Nov. 8 general and Feb. 28 mayoral and aldermanic elections, and “disparately impact racial and/or ethnic voting blocs.”
One new category schools were ranked on this year was a college’s potential “return on investment” — including factors like average ROI by age 30, median earnings one year following graduation and percent of graduates employed two years after graduation. Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois all ranked in the top 100.
Eight in 10 African-Americans and about half of white Biden voters “thought that young black men were more likely to be shot to death by police” than be one of the 7,500 blacks to die in a car accident each year. The reality is far different. In 2020, a total of 243 blacks were shot and killed by police nationwide with 18 of them unarmed.
“If somebody committed workman’s comp fraud, they should be held accountable,” Gov. JB Pritzker said about allegations respecting Jenny Thornley and Pritzker’s staff. Where’s the accountability?
Come and join legendary reporter John Kass and Wirepoints Senior Editor Matt Rosenberg at Evanston’s Canal Shores on September 18th!
The $5 million “microgrant fund,” split among the 50 wards, was billed by the mayor as a flexible “tool” to tailor investments across a diverse city to individual communities’ needs. Lightfoot often boasts that she doesn’t buy votes, but the program was also seen as a bargaining chip for aldermanic support for the $16.7 billion budget that ultimately passed.
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