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It follows a similar 2019 executive order by former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio that resulted in $10 million in advertising channeled to community outlets in its first year.
David Greising, of the Better Government Association: “Today, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the council keep sizing each other up. Their power struggle is not nearly as dramatic as the days of the “Council Wars,” but the stakes are still significant: The future balance of power between Chicago’s mayors and the city’s aldermen may be at stake.”
Just this month in Englewood, statistics show murders are up 33%, robberies are up 91% and car thefts are up 185%. Also, Englewood has experienced a string of more than two dozen armed robberies. The average home in Englewood averages about $102,000, according to Redfin, which is actually down 22.1% from last year.
“I think it’s stupid,” one Metropolis resident said. “I’ve worked for the system for 28 years, and I think it’s about the dumbest thing Illinois has come up with so far.”
Dank Kirk, a former high-ranking prosecutor at the Cook County State’s Attorney Office, says holding someone for an alleged hate crime or felony threat to a school all hinge on proving the suspect is a flight risk. “How many times are you going to have a defendant that has an airline ticket in hand or says to the judge I plan on leaving? That’s simply not going to happen.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who signed the act in 2021, said there needs to be changes to clear up what he calls misinformation regarding the measure. “So let us amend the act to make it very explicit. That violent criminals that are in jail awaiting trial, that Jan. 1 is not some deadline to let people out.”
Illinois also is among only four states that still need to pay outstanding state unemployment trust fund debt, with $1.3 billion still left to be paid carrying interest for taxpayers. If not addressed by Nov. 10, the state could have its Federal Unemployment Tax Act credit reduced by 0.3% for each year, according to a letter from members of the U.S. Congress to Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
“The CDC has made a recommendation, that’s true, but this is a process that we need to consider. All across the state we have representatives that want to be heard on this subject, I think it’s appropriate,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.
Gov. JB Pritzker’s opponent in the Nov. 8 election, Darren Bailey, said Illinois schools are a mess and changes need to be made. “I think administrative bloat is one of the biggest problems and we need to get money to the classroom. The reality is that the majority of high schoolers across Illinois cannot read or do math at grade level.”
The key to breaking the cycle of arrest-jail-repeat is linking people with the services they need, writes the head of the Lawndale Christian Legal Center. And that make us all safer.
Every year on Halloween, Good Kids Mad City holds an event in Hyde Park where members cop watch — observe police activity with the goal of de-escalating and discouraging police misconduct — and conduct outreach to young people. According to the lawsuit, members are concerned officers will arrest and harass them during their event.
On the SAT — a standardized exam used by many colleges as part of admission criteria — 29.8% of the state’s 11th graders were proficient in reading while 28.8% were proficient in math in 2022, a drop of almost 7 percentage points in reading and 6 percentage points in math from 2019. Among Chicago’s 11th graders, 21% were proficient in reading and 20.5% in math on the SAT, dropping 5.3 percentage points in reading and 6.2 percentage points in math from 2019.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is continuing his calls to repeal part of the SAFE-T Act that gives people on electronic monitoring the ability to leave their houses two days a week so they can work, attend classes and purchase groceries. Dart said the bail provisions in the SAFE-T Act were unlikely to have a huge effect on the jail’s population because Cook County has already made big changes to bail practices that have allowed a large number of people to leave the jail without paying cash.
Numbers from standardized tests administered last spring show steep declines in the percentage of students who met or exceeded state standards in English language arts and math compared to 2019, the last year tests were administered before the pandemic. Overall, only 27.4% of third graders in Illinois met or exceeded state standards in reading, down from 36.4% in 2019. Only 23.1% of Illinois eighth graders scored proficient in math last year, down from 32.6% in 2019.
As a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners and a paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson is best known for authoring a measure that sought to prevent landlords from refusing to rent housing to people with certain criminal records. He also authored a nonbinding resolution in the summer of 2020 that called for county officials to “redirect funds from policing and incarceration to public services not administered by law enforcement that promote community health and safety equitably.”
Some sources said major donors spent heavily during this year’s primary election and await more money calls from campaigns for Chicago mayor. “It comes down to donor fatigue,” a political consultant said.
Ted Dabrowski, president of Wirepoints, said graduation rates can be misleading. The Wirepoints report noted that social promotion, hyper-inflated teacher evaluations and misleading accountability designations from ISBE all help deflect the blame that Illinois school children are not being properly prepared for the future. “You see that in school district after school district where the kid can’t read and you see it every year that they are tested, and they have very high graduation rates,” Dabrowski said.
According to the World Business Chicago Bulletin, Chicago has over 100 locally headquartered Logistics Tech companies that employ over 34,000 individuals. The sector saw an 802% increase in growth capital investment — the highest among peer cities – between 2019 and 2021 and five unicorns and two publicly held Logistics Tech companies headquartered in Chicago.
Why would Raoul be covering up a scandal that points directly to Pritzker’s office? Surely it has nothing to do with Pritzker’s campaign giving Raoul’s reelection effort $1 million this year and $3 million to his initial election in 2018, right? Not in Illinois.
Ted joined John Kass on The Chicago Way to discuss Pritzker’s lackluster record of the last four years, new data on how the pandemic impacted student achievement, the misconceptions about the ‘SAFE-T’ Act and why Amendment 1 on the ballot in Illinois is bad for the state.
Stephen Glickman, a Chicago labor lawyer who represents both workers and employers, is undecided about voting for the amendment because of its “ambiguous language” on economic welfare and safety. “What it will lead to inevitably is litigation,” he said. “It will probably lead to more strikes.”
“As for what the city should do, 58% of residents agree that Chicago would be safer if police funding was increased. At the same time, 62% also think that the city should shift part of the police budget to community efforts outside law enforcement. Such a full-spectrum approach may defy easy political categorization, but it is indicative of the pragmatism most voters applaud: They don’t care what the solution is so long as it works.”
Elections up and down the ballot could potentially impact the SAFE-T Act’s fate, especially with pending legal challenges still moving their way through the courts.
During the second Governor’s debate, Darren Bailey deflected when asked about how he would change Illinois’ abortion laws. Instead of answering the question, Bailey changed the subject, referencing a conspiracy theory about current Governor J.B. Pritzker and his family foundation’s investments in healthcare.
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