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Mayor Lori Lightfoot set out early in her first term to chart a path to ease the financial and political turmoil that confronts mayors who try to increase Chicagoans’ property taxes, especially in election years.
Monday’s Granite City Labor Day parade, one of the largest parades in the region, is themed “Vote Yes on Workers’ Rights Amendment.”
More than 93% of students showed up to classes on the first day of school, the district announced Friday. A little over 91% of kids showed up on the first day last year, while 84% logged on to start the 2020-21 school year, the one featuring remote learning during the pandemic. First-day attendance averaged around 94.3% in the four years preceding COVID-19.
“These stunters they will not be performing these stunts if there’s no one there to see them,” said State Rep. La Shawn Ford. “And so they actually are part of the mob because they are coming together to create a show.”
Typically, Labor Day weekend is not only one of the busiest of the year in Chicago, but also one of the most violent. Last year, at least 59 people were shot over the Labor Day weekend in Chicago, the highest number over that weekend in years. There was also a spike in assaults and batteries – 66 and 90, respectively, both the highest over the same weekend in the past three years.
If it feels like violent crimes on the CTA are on the rise this year, that’s because they are. At this point last year, there were 465 violent crimes reported on the CTA system, compared with 592 during the same period this year.
“Offenders are no longer concerned about being punished for their violent acts, and that means they literally have nothing to lose by assaulting any human being they encounter in prison,” said Scot Ward, president of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police Corrections Lodge 263. “And if they are not accountable on the inside, how can you ever hope to safely return them to society once their sentences are over?”
“And we ranked them based on how well we thought they were doing to make sure their elections are safe and secure and state officials are making it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” said Zack Smith, a legal fellow with the Heritage Foundation. “Now, unfortunately, Illinois didn’t do particularly well on this metric.”
“The League of Women Voters, while that sounds like a nice organization, they don’t do a lot of nice work,” Catalina Lauf, a Republican candidate for Congress in Illinois, said in a video posted in May on Instagram, explaining her reasoning for refusing to participate in a league-sponsored debate. “They need to switch their brand fast, because their hyperpartisanship is turning off a lot of women who just want common sense.”
“Lake County’s main observance of the Labor Day holiday, the once-annual parade in Zion, is not being held this year. At one time, union members and their families proudly strutted down Sheridan Road in the city’s downtown and manned floats on the holiday weekend. The parade and celebration marking the rise of the labor movement in the 1890s not only in Zion and Lake County, but across the nation, has again been shelved. That in itself says something about the state of organized labor.”
“Here in Illinois, the labor movement has secured some big wins for workers despite these unprecedented national challenges…We’ve raised the state minimum wage, passed legislation to make major infrastructure investments, and fought to make our workplaces safer.”
The new law, sponsored by State Senator Scott Bennett, requires universities to give students access to online versions of their course materials on the first day of class. These online alternatives would be priced at a significantly lower cost than printed textbooks.
Opponents say that it would also essentially take future decisions over collective bargaining out of the hands of state lawmakers. “What it really does is preserve organized labor’s preference for not even having to discuss the issue,” said Todd Maisch, president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, which is opposed to the measure. “What we think, though, is that because it is so difficult to amend the constitution, that organized labor is trying to lock in the status quo for generations to come.”
Per the CPD, homicides in the city this year are down about 16% compared to 2021, while the total number of shootings (1,904) is down nearly 19%. But homicides year-to-date in 2022 are up some 35% compared to 2019 figures. In total, more than 2,352 people have been shot in Chicago thus far in 2022.
Illinois finished 28th on the list with a sales tax of $0.23 per gallon. Other than Kentucky, Illinois has a higher tax than neighboring states, with Indiana at $0.12, Michigan at $0.20, and Wisconsin with the nation’s second lowest tax at just $0.06.
“What I am presently seeing occur at Choate and hearing occur at other facilities concerns me more than it has my entire career,” Barry Smoot, a decades-long IDHS employee, wrote to Illinois Department of Human Services Secretary Grace Hou May 26, 2021. At least 26 Choate employees have been arrested on felony charges over the past decade.
While it is one of the most egregious examples of abuse of a Choate resident in a decade, a monthslong investigation has found that the incident is one of many instances of mistreatment at the rural facility managed by the Illinois Department of Human Services. Over a 10-year period running through 2021, the state police opened at least 40 criminal investigations into alleged employee misconduct at Choate, more than at any of IDHS’ other facilities in Southern Illinois.
This failure to prioritize union members could explain why 9% of state and local government workers in Illinois have opted out of their union since 2017. That includes nearly 10% of public school employees.
The project — including construction and operation of a proposed wind farm in Lake Michigan, about 10 miles from the shores of the Southeast Side— is intended to benefit Black and Latino neighborhoods, in keeping with the state’s goal of an inclusive transition to clean energy. “Whatever we do, it should be equitable,” said state Rep. Marcus Evans.
Chicago Police stepped up their use of the city’s overall curfew law this summer recording 141 curfew violations, an increase of approximately 57% as compared with the same period in 2021, according to police department data. The mayor’s expanded curfew law accounted for less than 3% of those violations.
Participants in the most recent survey reported most of their interactions with police were negative experiences, even when no enforcement actions were taken, and they lacked trust in their local police department. The report filed in federal court Thursday is meant to gauge CPD’s reputation in the community while it works to come into compliance with a federal consent decree ordered in 2019.
Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski joined Tom Miller on the WJPF Morning Newswatch to spread the word about Amendment 1. Under the amendment, Illinois would become the nation’s extreme outlier when it comes to government union powers. No other state protects bargaining, creates unprecedented rights or blocks Right to Work like Amendment 1 would.
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